Peru / Edition 1

by John Crabtree, Susana Pastor

Overview

This outstanding series provides concise and lively introductions to countries and the major development issues they face. Packed full of factual information, photographs, and maps, the guides also focus on ordinary people and the impact that historical, economic and environmental issues have on their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780855984823
Publisher:	Oxfam Publishing
Publication date:	01/28/2003
Series:	Oxfam Country Profiles Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	91
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.75(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

John Crabtree is a freelance consultant, editor, writer, broadcaster and teacher on Latin American issues. He has lived and worked in Peru and Bolivia as a journalist and analyst, and is currently based in Oxford, UK.

Susana Pastor is one of Peru's leading documentary photographers.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Peru and the Peruvians

The paradoxical co-existence of abundant natural wealth and pervasive human poverty is something that has struck generations of visitors to Peru. With its mineral reserves, oil, and gas, its fish resources, and its diverse agriculture, it is a country that should generate wealth for all to share. In reality, however, more than half of Peru's population earns less than the equivalent of two dollars a day. As the geographer Antonio Raimondi famously remarked, Peru is like a beggar seated on a bench of gold.

With their nose for gold and silver, the Spanish conquerors – or conquistadores – were swift to realise Peru's economic potential. From the mid-i6th century onwards they turned Peru into the centre of an empire, the main function of which was to finance the Spanish crown's seemingly inexhaustible appetite for war. In the 19th century, following Peru's independence from Spain, the British and Americans – defying all geographical logic – built railways across the Andes in order to extract copper and silver from the mines of the Peruvian highlands, or sierra. More recently, foreign multinational companies have opened up new mining ventures, such as Yanacocha near Cajamarca, and Antamina in Ancash, which mean that Peru will continue into the 21st century in its role as a supplier of minerals to the world market.

However, mining, and other extractive industries like fishing and hydrocarbons (oil and gas), have not produced a balanced pattern of development, either for Peru or for the majority of Peruvians. Although they generate export earnings, these economic activities produce little by way of employment or stimulus to other areas of the economy. This is the case today more than ever before. Mining, for instance, increasingly employs machinery rather than labour. Modern mining companies typically import technical know-how, and many of the other goods and services they require, as inputs. They do little to benefit the regions where they operate; rather, they frequently contaminate the rivers and divert precious water sources away from local agriculture and other uses.

Peru's governments have long wrestled with this paradox of wealth and poverty, but without success. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a left-leaning military government nationalised foreign mining and oil interests, introduced a radical agrarian reform, and took steps to promote local industrialisation. It hoped that this would lead to a more balanced kind of development that would permit redistribution of wealth and income. It failed to do this, and instead it built up unpayable debts. Since then, governments have reverted to the more traditional export model, claiming that private initiative and individual property – not the state – will provide the most reliable means to extricate people from poverty. As this book will show, this is a view that is not entirely borne out by the facts.

Politically, Peru lacks a strong democratic tradition. For much of the 20th century it was ruled by authoritarian regimes, many of them military. The majority of the population lacked a political voice. The main party to express popular interests, the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana, better known as APRA, aroused such distrust in elite circles that it was kept firmly at arm's length by successive governments, winning office only in 1985, over 60 years after it was first founded. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Peruvian military took it upon itself to break the power of the landowning elite, paving the way towards greater social participation. The establishment of full democratic rights was only achieved in 1979, when those who were deemed illiterate (mostly indigenous people) finally won the right to vote.

In spite of this legacy of exclusion, the voice of ordinary people has gained strength over the years, often at the margins of the political system. An array of grass-roots organisations, rural as well as urban, has come to demand that their views and interests be taken on board by political leaders. Organisation runs deep in Peruvian political culture. In part, this reflects the strength of the peasant community, whose origins are rooted way back in Peru's pre-Hispanic past. A sense of community identity has persisted despite the best efforts of the conquistadores and their successors to erase it. Today, such organisation can make awkward demands on the country's rulers. It often jars with the activities of political parties and their leaders. It is patchy, stronger in some places than others. Its demands may be highly localised or very specific. Yet such popular organisation provides the bedrock on which a more genuine and participatory democracy can be built.

Who were the first Peruvians?

When the Spanish first arrived in Peru in 1532, they stumbled on one of the most sophisticated of all non-European civilisations. At its height, the Inca empire stretched some 4000 kilometres along the Andes, from what is now southern Colombia to northern Chile. Its population is reckoned to have exceeded 14 million. Through military conquest and administrative subordination, the Incas exercised control over a wide variety of ethnic groups, imposing a common religion and language (Quechua). Roads radiated from the capital, Cuzco, to the four corners of the empire, facilitating transport and communication. Cuzco was a magnificent city, with palaces reputedly decked in gold and silver. The foundations of these are still visible, as is the massive citadel of Sacsahuamán that overlooks the present-day city. Yet despite its size and sophistication, this was a civilisation that did not know the written word, the wheel, or the arch.

The Incas followed a long line of earlier Peruvian civilisations. The first conquest of the Andes is thought to have taken place some 20,000 years ago, and the remains of the earliest civilisations date from as far back as 11,000 BC. Various different cultures developed on the coast and in the Andes. Compared with some of its predecessors, the Inca civilisation was relatively short-lived. It first emerged in the valley of Cuzco in the 13th and 14th centuries, and entered its most expansive phase only under the Inca Pachacutí, less than a century before the Spanish arrived.

Apart from numerous spectacular ruins, important traces of the Incas still persist five centuries after its demise. The ayllu, the basic unit of Inca landholding, is still the foundation of agrarian society in the Andes. In the Inca ayllu, grazing land was held by the community while crop land was allotted to individual families according to their size, much as is the case today. Labour tasks, like ploughing or repairing irrigation ditches, were also carried out communally, distributed according to age and gender. This is still the norm in Peruvian peasant communities. With its complex systems of irrigation and terracing, Inca agriculture was able to sustain a population considerably larger than that which lives in the Peruvian Andes today.

The formation of modern Peru

The extent of modern Peru is defined by the way in which the Spanish empire broke up into separate jurisdictions prior to and during the wars of independence at the beginning of the 19th century. As the centre of colonial rule, Lima – known as the 'city of kings' – saw its influence dwindle during the 18th century. Peru was the last republic to be liberated', in 1821. A lack of definitive frontiers led to conflicts with its neighbours that have soured relations ever since. As a result of the War of the Pacific (1879-83), Chile annexed the provinces of Arica and Tarapaca. In 1932, Peru came to blows with Colombia over the border town of Leticia. In 1941, and again in 1995, there were wars with Ecuador over their disputed frontier. Recent governments have sought to resolve these issues, and since 1969 Peru has been a member of the Andean Pact alongside Chile (which withdrew in 1975), Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. Still, border problems have yet to be buried entirely. As the 1995 war with Ecuador showed, they can sometimes resurface with surprising force and in unexpected ways.

A fractured landscape

Range after range of bare, jagged ridges rise up out of the coastal mist. The landscape is the texture and colour of crumpled parchment, devoid of human inprint but for a thin black line, way below. This is the road up to Ayacucho from Pisco on the coast. It loops this way and that as it pushes upwards towards the high mountain plains, or puna. The line of the cordillera, the watershed between the Amazon and the Pacific, is etched with light, dusty snow. To the east, the sun's rays throw darts of light across this vast, barren terrain, as the land begins to slope downwards, brown turning to ochre and grey, and eventually with hints of green. Whether seen from the air on the morning flight from Lima to Ayacucho, or traversed by road or even railway, the Andes are the defining feature of Peru's uncompromising geography, a wall that separates cultures and peoples, an obstacle both to economic integration and to the development of a single sense of nation.

Most Peruvians now live on the coast, or costa, a narrow strip of inhospitable brown desert bisected by fertile valleys, irrigated by the rivers that descend from the cordillera. The city of Lima, along with the port of Callao, has a population of over 8 million. It is home to nearly one third of all Peruvians. Several of Peru's other major cities are built on or near the coast. On the face of it, it is odd that Peru's main centres of population have grown up in areas where there is so little water or natural vegetation. Nothing grows in the coastal deserts unless water is brought from elsewhere, and even in the coastal river valleys, water supply is seasonal and dependent on rainfall in the sierra. Despite this, the coastal deserts are full of the remains of pre-Columbian civilisations that managed to flourish in spite of the lack of water. According to one of the more plausible theories, the mysterious Nazca lines were a sophisticated method of identifying potential water sources. Situated to the south of Lima, they consist of vast geometric patterns and outlines of animal forms, etched into the desert sands.

The river valleys are oases of vegetation. A thin irrigation ditch is often all that separates brown from green, a frontier between ecosystems. The valleys have long provided food for the citizens of Lima, as well as export cash-crops such as cotton, sugar, and latterly 'niche' products like asparagus. Rich coastal estates were among the areas affected by the 1970s agrarian reform, when they were converted into co-operatives. The agricultural possibilities of the coast have since been enhanced by massive and costly public investment projects that use lengthy aquaducts to bring water to the coast from the high Andes. In the case of the Majes project, near Arequipa, the headwaters of the Amazon were diverted and channelled westward through the cordillera to irrigate the coastal desert plains. As a result of this hugely expensive project, Majes has the distinction of producing some of the most costly alfalfa the world has ever known.

The arid climate of coastal Peru and Chile is a result of the Andes blocking the moist trade winds that blow westwards across South America from the Atlantic. The prevailing winds blow in from the Pacific instead, whilst temperatures are moderated by the cold Humboldt ocean current that flows northwards from Antarctica to the tropical latitudes off Ecuador. A low-lying coastal mist is normally the only source of humidity. The Humboldt is a branch of a cold current that flows eastwards at latitudes close to Antarctica, and then turns north up the coast of Chile and Peru. The cold water brings with it nitrates and phosphates from the seabed, generating abundant plankton and thus a wealth offish. Every few years, however, the Humboldt is displaced by a warm current that flows southward from the tropics. This is the El Nino ('boy child') phenomenon, named by the fishermen after the baby Jesus because the increase in sea temperatures is first noted around Christmas time. Rather than seasonal blessings, El Nino disrupts the climate. It raises the sea temperature, killing the plankton that bring the fish. It brings rainfall where normally there is none, causing floods and landslides. And it wreaks havoc in the highlands, or sierra, causing drought in places where agriculture is critically dependent on regular annual rainfall.

Across the Andes and into the Amazon

Lying between the western and eastern ranges of the Andes, the inter-Andean valleys were once the cradle of the Inca civilisation and its precursors. These valleys have traditionally been Peru's main bread basket, as well as the source of most of its mineral wealth. During the colonial period many cities grew up in the sierra, notably Cuzco, but also Cajamarca, Huaraz, Huancayo, and Ayacucho. Mainly peopled by Spanish immigrants, such cities grew rich on the commerce spawned by mining. By far the most important mine was Potosi, situated in what is now Bolivia, whose silver was carried overland to Lima and thence by galleon to Spain. Labour for the mines came from the indigenous population, who were forced to work in inhuman conditions by their Spanish masters. Since the 19th century, the economy of the sierra has stagnated. It has been bypassed by the development that has occurred in Lima and on the coast. With its ornate colonial churches and once aristocratic mansions, Ayacucho is a striking reminder of a vanished Peru.

From pre-Inca times, peoples have farmed in the Andes. Traditionally, communities would offset the risks inherent in peasant agriculture by farming at many different altitudes. Today, some communities farm at over 4000 metres above sea level. Notwithstanding this diverse approach to farming, good land with access to water is in short supply. Until the 1969 agrarian reform, such land was concentrated in the hands of exploitative landlords, known as gamonales. Though the reform fragmented the landed estates, it failed to resolve the problems of peasant farming. As we shall see further on, subsistence peasant farmers in the sierra remain the poorest of the poor in Peru.

Where the Andes fall away to the east, land and rainfall become plentiful, and entirely different ecosystems emerge. Steep-sided valleys lead downwards to the sub-tropical lowlands, known as the 'high jungle' (or selva aha) where, in recent years, coca – the raw material for cocaine – has been king. Most of these areas were opened up to inward migration only in the second half of the 20th century. They were colonised by farmers from the sierra, many released from feudal-style bonds by the agrarian reform, and attracted to the selva by its agricultural potential. But this inward migration was at the expense of lowland indigenous peoples, whose lands were progressively encroached upon. Conflicts over land led to clashes, often violent, between settlers and indigenous people.

The foothills of the Andes eventually give way to the flat Amazon jungle (selva baja). From the air, it looks like a carpet of green, broken only by the wide, red-brown, meandering rivers that form the Amazon river system. Although it constitutes half of the country's surface area, the Amazon jungle is home to less than five per cent of Peru's population. Its main city, Iquitos, situated just below the point where the waters of the Ucayali and Marañon rivers merge to form the Amazon proper, is still only accessible from the rest of Peru by air or river boat. This jungle is one of the most biologically diverse regions on the planet. So far, the Peruvian Amazon has been less affected by deforestation than neighbouring Brazil. Nevertheless, its rich natural resources mean it is just as vulnerable to uncontrolled exploitation. The lowland Indians, whose lifestyle is perilously dependent on the environment, are threatened by the inroads of outsiders, whether highland migrants, logging firms, oil and gas companies, or those who come to pan gold.

From coastal deserts, to high mountains, to equatorial rainforest, Peru incorporates a vast range of different ecosystems and micro-climates. It is a hotspot for biodiversity. Peru ranks eighth in the world for the diversity of its flowering plants. Yet, as we shall see, many of Peru's fragile ecologies are increasingly under threat as a result of the development of unsustainable extractive industries.

Winners and losers in a fractured society

On one side lies Monterico, one of Lima's most affluent suburbs; on the other, Pamplona, a city of the poor. A high wall separates the two, arrayed with spikes and broken glass. The wall is a frontier between two worlds, a symbol of social separation and division. Constructed as a line of defence against land invasions, for the citizens of Monterico it acts like a dike stemming the rising tide of poverty; for those in Pamplona it is a physical reminder of the seemingly insurmountable barriers to social advancement.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Peru"
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Copyright © 2002 Oxfam GB.
Excerpted by permission of Oxfam Publishing.
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Table of Contents

Peru and the Peruvians, 1,
The fight for democracy, 21,
Peru's beleaguered economy, 35,
Affirming rights, 55,
The natural environment, 70,
Conclusion, 80,
Facts and figures, 83,
Dates and events, 84,
Sources and further reading, 85,
Oxfam in Peru, 87,
Acknowledgements, 88,
Index, 89,