“Wild West” in Peru? Land trafficking, mafia and gunmen in Majes

Yesterday, two persons died and six were injured in a confrontation between land invaders and police in Majes district, Arequipa region. Land invasions, property conflicts, plot trafficking, and violent encounters have been escalating since Majes become an independent district 14 years ago, but this is first time people have been killed in a confrontation between land invaders and the police during an eviction.

A group of people invaded a piece of land owned by the Autodema (a regional state agency in charge of the Majes irrigation project) in December, and yesterday afternoon, the police showed up to evict them. They destroyed the straw houses and shacks and were met with resistance by the invaders who were armed with stones and guns. The result was two dead and six injured. 

First page of today’s local newspaper Correo: “Two invaders dead in eviction”.

During the last weeks, I have been trying to figure out how property relations and land transactions take place here, but it’s all quite confusing. The state – through Autodema – reserved a big area for the Majes-Siguas irrigation project in the 1970s, and in 2004 they transferred 6200 hectares to the Municipal District of Majes for urban development. But they had already given rights to urban plots to approx. 4000 families; rights which these families now have to formalize through the Municipality and Public registers. The municipal Formalization office currently has 20.000 cases. They try to make the process of urban development as orderly as possible, and their maps look very orderly indeed. 

But I have started to realize, that it’s a complete chaos out there: a no-mans land where nobody has control and where mafia, gunmen and corrupt politicians rule… The director of the Formalization Office at the Municipality (a female lawyer who explained the legal norms and rules to me) told me that she has received death threats and has met armed thugs when she went to give someone an evacuation order.

As everywhere in Peru, there is undoubtedly a lot of corruption involved. The district’s first mayor was actually in jail for three years because of “irregularities”. To complicate the situation further, a family showed up some years ago with papers saying that the lands that supposedly belonged to Autodema and the Majes project, really was their private property, and they made a lawsuit against Autodema and the Municipality.

Simultaneously, there are land traffickers and mafias operating on the same lands. Sadly, most of the victims are migrants from the highlands or relatively poor people who have been fooled into buying a piece of land from someone who is not the legal owner. The false owner might succeed in selling to not only one, but two or three persons who now think that they are the new owners. These situations might result in ugly confrontations.

Another problem is the invasion of others’ land. If you have bought a plot legally, but does not live there, others might just take it and build a house there. And if you go to kick them out, you risk to be beaten up. It’s your responsibility to look out for your land; owners are advised to build at least a shack and plant some trees to show an intention to live there, and to check on the place regularly. If someone invades, you should report it to the police immediately. However, if you don’t check on your plot for three years, you risk losing it to an invader.

The sad part is that there are families who really need a place to live, people who have moved from a poor rural community, where making a livelihood from small scale farming is becoming more difficult every day. But the ones gaining money on the need for land, are traffickers who make it a “profession” to invade and to resell the land. Some even invade the land that others have invaded before.

On Sunday, I was invited to a meeting in a desert area, where a group of 200 persons bought land in 2004 and formed an association. Their plan is to build houses and have small farms, but they haven’t done anything yet, because there is a legal dispute over the land between the family Vásquez Díaz, who sold the land to the association, and the state. Meanwhile, other people have invaded the territory and made started to construct buildings. These persons are armed, and when we arrived to the meeting place, we met a police office and an attorney, and we learned that there had been a shooting episode earlier that day, and a man was hurt. This is not the first time; in the last couple of weeks, thugs have beaten up a man and there have been shooting several times. When the police go there to check, however, they hide their guns and the police don’t find anything. But people are ready to defend their territory and start building their own houses to strengthen their claim to the land. 

The armed invaders seen from a distance. I don’t know them, but I suspect they are crazy.

What did the fox say? Drought, frost and loss in Colca Valley

Unfortunately, it seems that the fox, the seagulls, the flowers – and don Pedro – were right after all (see blog post “What does the fox say” 25 november 2013). The 12^th of December, I attended a seminar organized by the meteorological institute Senamhi, and the director assured us that the rain would come as normal. However, as often happens, the meteorologists were wrong, and the local reading of signs in animals and plants proved to be right.

The rain season normally lasts from December to March, and it rained for a few days during the Celebration of the Virgin of Immaculate Conception in December, but now it hasn’t rained for more than two months and people are worried. The crops of potatoes, maize and beans suffer not only from the drought, but also from the frosts that have been attacking the region. Thousands of farmers in Colca Valley are directly affected; most of them have lost everything. The drought is not only causing distress in the highlands; now the farmers in the Majes irrigation project in the lower pampa are also starting to worry for their future water supply. The Condoroma dam in Callalli district is currently storing 50 % of its maximum capacity, and the volume of the water let out and into the Majes Canal has been reduced from 12,54 to 11 cubic metres per second.

In today’s newspaper “Correo” (which covers Arequipa region), the mayor of Sibayo – the neigbouring district of Callalli – expresses his concerns: “We know that this issue of global warming is affecting the water resources” [….] “The highlands have already been declared to be in a state of emergency, because the production of potatoes and maize is totally lost. All the production in Colca is totally lost. The people are very worried. It is also affecting the camelids [llamas and alpacas] and cattle.” (Raul Mamani quoted in Correo, 20 February 2014, page 15)

I left Chivay in January to do a field study in the Majes irrigation project, thinking that I would escape the heavy rains that usually come in the highlands in January and February. But it never came. Farmers have been desperately waiting, and ten days ago they even organized a church mass and took the Virgin Asunta out in a procession, begging God and the Virgin to send rain. Their prayers have not been heard yet.

Now I find myself among farmers in the lowlands who irrigate their crops with water stored in the Colca highlands, while the farmers in Colca suffer from drought. However, there is no easy solution. Majes has now approximately 120.000 inhabitants – more than in all the Colca Valley – and among them are migrants from Colca and other regions of Peru who have been attracted to the warm climate and thriving economy. However, as this is really a desert – they are all totally dependent on the Majes Canal bringing water from Colca.

Here is an interview that Lorenz Khazaleh made with me about my current fieldwork in Peru. It was published on the Overheating web page a month ago:

http://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/research/projects/overheating/news/stensrud-fieldwork.html

Here is the full text, but click the link above to see pictures.

Is commercial farming threatening food security?

People in Colca Valley are organizing forums to discuss climate change, food security and a controversial dam and irrigation project, says Astrid Bredholt Stensrud, currently on fieldwork in the Peruvian Andes.

– Where are you now? What are you seeing when you look around you and out of your window? And what sounds are you hearing?

– I’m in my room in Chivay, a small town and the capital of Caylloma province, Peru. Looking out the window, I see the teenagers of the family sweeping the backyard and talking. I also hear birds singing and the local radio in the kitchen. From the street, I hear a familiar, but annoying tune coming from the garbage truck, the advertising from a mango vendor’s loudspeaker, and a moto-taxi passing by.

– Has fieldwork been as expected so far?

– Mostly yes, I would even say things have gone better than I had hoped for in some ways. I am looking at a whole watershed called Camaná-Majes-Colca in the Peruvian Andes that goes from the poor highlands to the mid-valley and the more affluent desert area. The connections and relations between these three field sites (Callalli, Chivay and Pedregal) have been even more clearly articulated in conversations and practice than I had expected. A couple of days ago, I attended a meeting in the highlands where I met a friend from Callalli that I interviewed in 2011, who has now moved to Pedregal. I look forward to meeting him there and hear the rest of his story.

– What are some events/encounters from fieldwork that you have to think of more than others?

– The latest news is that the second stage of a huge dam- and irrigation project (Majes-Siguas II) will proceed as planned. I almost started to think that this would never happen, as the project was stopped in 2011 after massive protests from the neighbouring region Cusco. People there contend that the dam will leave them without water as the water will be destined for the export industry and the development of the coast in the Arequipa region. This project will lead to a massive expansion of the agricultural area in the desert pampas of Majes and Siguas, and will surely also imply that the town of Pedregal (the urban centre of the Majes irrigation project) will grow out of proportions.

New concerns about food security

– In your letter from the field you wrote "I am struck by a new concern that seems to be on everybody’s mind these days: food security"?

– Yes, it is mainly related to the increased use of chemicals and “hormones” in commercial farming, and the fear that these chemicals may trigger new illnesses (like cancer) in humans. The question of food security does not necessarily mean a lack of food in terms of quantity, but that the quality is worsening and that the food may turn into a threat to people's health.

– This is related to climate change and the economy; small-scale farming is not profitable; it’s practically impossible to make a living out of it. So many farmers find alternative incomes (temporary work in the cities, tourist-related businesses etc), and rent their land to farmers who make more large-scale investments, and who try to combat the climatic challenges with the use of chemicals. The ideal for many people in Chivay would be to have a business to rely on, and at the same time to cultivate your own food in your own field, and some people do this as well.

– This concern with food security is also related to GMO seeds. There are no GMO seeds yet in Colca, I have been told. But villagers are worried that if they are introduced, they will eradicate the local varieties of maize and other local products.

– Peru passed a law in 2011 that prohibits the import of GMOs during a moratorium period of ten years. The intention is to protect the biodiversity in the country and allow more research on the topic. However, critical voices claim that the law is not respected, and I have heard rumours about GMOs in Majes/Pedregal. In 2005, Monsanto bought the Peruvian seed company Seminis, so they are already an actor in the Peruvian market.

– How are you going to follow up on this?

– I will continue to talk to farmers in Chivay and other villages in Colca, in addition to interviewing persons in the local office of the Ministry of Agriculture. I know that there are a couple of NGO-funded projects on organic farming in two villages. I will also go to Pedregal to interview the farmers in the Majes irrigation project, and the engineers in the Agricultural office there. I’ll try to find out where the different kinds of seeds come from, and also investigate more into what these pesticides and the “hormones” or “vitamins” consist of.

– With all this focus on crises, have you also encountered signs of the opposite, something that gives hope etc?

– Well, there are attempts at getting better organized and united in the highlands. A couple of days ago I attended a meeting on water resources organized by the highland districts in Caylloma, where 120 people showed up. They are planning a Water Congress where they will discuss important topics such as climate change, contamination and the local benefits of the Majes-Siguas II project. They will invite the authorities and present their demands.

Terrible drawbacks of economic growth

– What are the most interesting/important things you have learned about overheating in your fieldsite so far?

– Reading the Peruvian newspapers, there is still a lot of optimism due to economic growth in the country and a general decrease in poverty. But this optimism is based on projections of growth that has a terrible drawback, namely environmental degradation from the extractive industries and increased social inequality. In Caylloma province, people in local communities protest against mines because they fear contamination, but at the same time they desire the material benefits they can get from the mining companies, like new roads, schools and other social projects. There seems to be a thin line between “corporate responsibility” and attempts to “buy people off”.

– The Majes-Siguas II project (which includes the Angostura dam in the highlands of Caylloma) that is starting this year, makes people hope for job opportunities in the construction process, compensation for the ones who are affected by the dam, more irrigation water for the communities along the canal, and a piece of cultivable land or other work in the Siguas pampa. But the project is only designed for the big agro-industry and export-business, and no particular promises have yet been made to the small-scale farmers and people in the highlands of Caylloma province.

– You have been doing simultaneous fieldwork with your Overheating colleagues. How has this experience been so far?

– We use a common web-based platform where we post experiences from our fields, notes, pictures and video-clips, and where we can compare and discuss observations, methods, and ideas.

– I think it is very good and useful, although sometimes it is hard to engage in the details of other people’s research when you are immersed in your own field. It’s a question of finding a balance between a kind of analytical distance and the closeness to the life of the place you find yourself in. But all in all, I think it’s a very good experience to be connected with other researchers in a team, instead of being alone with the thoughts and doubts that fieldwork always implies.

– What connections do you see with the other projects?

– The field sites are very different, but the main connection is the ambivalence arising from hoping for job opportunities and benefits from different industries, and at the same time not approving of the environmental impact or the fact that it is the big capital that mainly benefits from these industrial projects. I think that Pedregal has a lot in common with what I hear from Gladstone (Thomas Hylland Eriksen's project), Lac La Biche (Lena Gross' project) and Subic Bay (Elisabeth Schober's project) - places with a lot of migrant workers - and I'm curious to explore this more. Issues of land ownership can be compared and contrasted to Robert Pijper's project in Sierra Leone, and the food issue - which I hadn't really anticipated to focus on to such degree - has an obvious link to Wim Van Daele's project in Sri Lanka, which I also look forward to hear more from in the future.

Fieldwork in several places at once

– What are your plans for the coming days?

– I’m moving to another town – Villa El Pedregal – in the Majes irrigation project in the lower pampa (a former desert area) and plan to stay there for a couple of months. The farmers in Majes receive water from the Colca highlands, and I want to investigate the relations between the highlands and the lowlands of Caylloma province. I have been to Pedregal several times to do interviews, as the office of the local water administration of the state is located there, but now I want to live there and get to know the people and their lives in a deeper way.

– What should I have asked you that I haven't?

– Many things come to mind, for example the methodological challenge of doing fieldwork in several places at once. This implies a lot of travelling back and forth, which can be a bit tiresome, and there are always events in one of the places that I miss out of. But I wouldn’t call it multi-sited fieldwork, as all of these places are part of the same field; the villages and towns are intrinsically inter-connected, and people here travel constantly because of family relations, job opportunities, trade and administrative paperwork. So basically I try to do the same as the local people.

– Another challenge is to make filming a natural part of fieldwork. It has been a great help to have my boyfriend visit for a month, as he has taken care of filming and photography while I have concentrated on asking questions, observing and taking notes. I really like to film, but multi-tasking is not always easy.

I haven't been updating my blog the last three months, although (or because) I have been very busy doing fieldwork. Here is the link to a letter from the field that I wrote from Chivay in December:

http://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/research/projects/overheating/overheating-blog/world-upside-down.html

(Click the link above to see more photos.)

The letter:

“The world is upside-down”: Concerns about climate, food, and money in Chivay

Many things have changed in Chivay, but at the same time, it feels like it have just been a couple of days since I left.

After two years’ absence, I returned to Chivay in the beginning of November with a feeling of anticipation – to seeing friends again, finding out what had changed in two years, and to be doing fieldwork again, this time as part of Overheating’s global team. When I descended the zig-zag road from the high plateau of 4000 meters above sea level and down towards the small town of Chivay, located at 3600 meters, I recognized all the surrounding nevados, literally “snow-covered mountains”, which looked like old friends. However, they were all barren, without their white ponchos of snow that used to characterize them. A commonly accepted explanation in Chivay is “global warming”, which causes glaciers to melt and seasons to destabilize. During November, the farmers were anxiously waiting for the rain, which would also bring snowfall on the mountaintops.

Many things have changed in Chivay, but at the same time, it feels like it have just been a couple of days since I left. I was received by my compadres who had prepared a special welcome dish of fried guinea pig. The family owns a hostel that used to be a small and cosy with some rooms around a sunny backyard. It is still cosy, but they have worked hard and “modernized”, by making a bigger construction with the help of a bank loan. They are one of a few families in Chivay who have succeeded because they have invested in tourism early on. The first tourists arrived in the 1980s, and today, the tourist industry is booming – it is calculated that 270.000 tourists have visited Colca Valley in 2013. However, it mostly benefits a few big agencies and hotels owned by foreigners and Peruvians living in the city of Arequipa or Lima. Most of Chivay’s inhabitants benefit indirectly by getting employment opportunities in hotels and restaurants, by selling traditional embroidered handicraft and souvenirs, and the owners of local hostels and shops earn money on the handful of tourist who are adventurous enough to travel on their own, without a prepaid agency tour. There is certainly a process of social mobility going on, and at the same time increasing inequalities between those who have succeeded in establishing themselves in the tourist market and/or have sons and daughters who have migrated to Lima or the USA, and those from the higher –and poorer – provinces, who have moved to Chivay and who work as day labourers in agriculture or as street sellers.

The money from the tourist ticket that foreigners have to pay to get into the Valley are mainly used to improve the roads along the Colca Canyon, where hundreds of tourists go every day to watch the flight of the condors. Moreover, the municipality of the province – with its slogan “constructing the best province of Peru” – has rebuilt the plaza to make it more attractive, with lots of references to the cultural traditions of Colca. At its inauguration, the mayor emphasized the importance of not forgetting the cultural roots of the province. While most people seem to be content with the final result of the plaza, not everyone agrees with the priorities, and several have mentioned that it would have been better to invest in the schools and a hospital.

This week, the 4 day long celebration of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception has attracted thousands of visitors to Chivay: among them chivayeños living in Arequipa, Lima or in other countries. The fiesta involves the dancing of wititi, the traditional “love dance” around the plaza, where women and men, young and old, put on their finest pollera-skirts colourfully embroidered in the latest Colca-fashion. In addition, the municipality organized a wititi competition, where more than 20 groups participated, in order to “rescue and disseminate the cultural and artistic patrimony of the province, foster the identity and the local, national and international tourism.”

Although the cultural identity is being strongly promoted and the tourism is booming, there are other voices that raise concerns about the very basis for life in the province: water and food production. The engineer working in the Water Users Organization of Colca Valley JUVC (Junta de Usuarios Valle del Colca), who sees the farmers’ daily struggle every day, said, ”there is no growth here.” The growth seen in the mining and construction sector elsewhere in Peru cannot be noticed here in Chivay, and tourism “is only for a few.” Agriculture is still the main economic activity in Chivay, but while earlier most families produced food for their own consumption, today most of the production is for the market. However, it is getting increasingly harder to earn a living as a small-scale peasant farmer (average land holding size is 1,2 HA, and many families own just the third of a hectare); “it is not profitable”. There are several reasons for this: new climatic uncertainties, like seasonal instability, sudden frosts, and less water, in addition to low product prices and increased costs of labour. Earlier people helped each other in a form of reciprocal labour exchange called ayni, but now they hire day labourers. Hence, less people bother to sow, and many fields lie abandoned. People find other income strategies replacing or in addition to farming: shops, artisan handicraft, restaurants, tourist hostels, mines, or temporary work in the construction sector in the cities. It’s a common complaint that all that matter nowadays is money.

When I explain what my research project is about, and the Overheating project in general, people tend to relate it to food production, money and new illnesses.

“The world is “upside-down”, a woman told me, because this year it rained in the dry season, and the frost continued into (the supposed) rainy season.  She also said that “the sun seem to be closer to the earth” because the sun burns during the day, while it is freezing cold at night. Other farmers complain that they must irrigate more often because the heat make the earth dry sooner than usual. Climate change and water issues are still topics that most people are keen to talk about (as it was during my fieldwork in 2011), but I am struck by a new concern that seems to be on everybody’s mind these days: food security. When I explain what my research project is about, and the Overheating project in general, people tend to relate it to food production, money and new illnesses.

Those farmers, who continue to produce for the market, rent land from others and use a lot of chemicals, insecticide, pesticide, and “hormones” or “vitamins”, as it is called, in order to get bigger crops faster. The chemicals destroy the soil and make it unproductive for 3 or 4 years, I have been told by people who are critical to this practice and who refuse to rent their land to commercial farming. The “hormones” are mostly used on potatoes, to make them bigger and more attractive. There have also been introduced new varieties of potatoes, more standardized, based on scientific experiments in the National Institute for Agrarian Research, which have replaced the local, smaller, varieties. However, most people are getting worried about this tendency. The new big potatoes are “not natural”, they take a long time to cook, are hollow inside, and don’t taste well. The new illnesses that people are getting – like cancer – are attributed to the food people eat, and to the chemicals and hormones used in food production.

Another food-issue is about quinoa: I’ve been told that the grandparent generation didn’t know about osteoporosis, because they ate nutritious food like quinoa, which later was replaced by white rice and bread. Today, quinoa is gaining popularity again, mainly because of the international demand from Europeans and Americans who have discovered its positive health effects. As a woman said, “the scientists have found out that it is the best food in the whole world”. Therefore, the price of quinoa has soared from 3 to 18 soles per kilo. So now the problem is that most people cannot afford it very often. But what about the farmers cultivating quinoa? Do they now have the chance to get rich? The president of JUVC told me that he doesn’t trust the private institutions that are buying quinoa. They promise you 20 soles per kilo, but in the end might just pay you 5 soles, he said. The NGO Desco try to offer some hope to farmers: they finance projects of organic farming where they also help farmers to find new markets for their products, like in the capital Lima, where the boom of organic food is gaining popularity among the middle classes. But there is still a long way from Chivay to Lima, and food – which for hundreds of years has been a marker of sociocultural difference in Peru – is becoming an even stronger indicator of social inequality.