“The bank doesn’t pardon”: Climate crisis and economic loss

For the last three months, the lack of rain and extreme frosts have severely affected the plants and animals in Caylloma province, and farmers and herders are facing difficult times.

In the highlands, thousands of new-born alpacas have died of the extreme cold, and there is a lack of pasture because of the drought.

In the Colca Valley, 73,9 % of the potato harvest is ruined, and 65,3 % of the green peas and over half of the maize and beans are lost (according to numbers from the local office of the Agricultural Ministry in Caylloma).

Most of the farmers have taken up loans from micro-credit finance institutions to invest in seeds and fertilizers, and now they are left with no crops and a debt that has to be paid. “The bank doesn’t pardon” (el banco no perdona), the saying goes.

“The whole valley is in a crisis. We will feel it in 60 to 90 days” (Todo el valle estamos en crisis. En 60 o 90 días se va a sentir), the mayor of Lari district told me in an interview.

Yesterday, the 20 district mayors from Caylloma province travelled to the Peruvian capital Lima to present their demands to the central government. They demand that the province of Caylloma should be declared in a state of emergency because of the drought and the frost that have destroyed the mayor part of the crops. The total economic damage makes a total of 20 million soles (7,1 million USD), and they demand that the government cover this loss.

They also have other demands, like a agricultural insurance, and that they get back the money from the mining tax (canon minero) that has been cut, apparently because of the decreasing mineral prices on the world market.

This is a video-clip with a part of the interview that I did with the mayor of Lari, Guillermo Eloy Rojas García, in Lari on Saturday 15 March. It’s just roughly edited, in Spanish, and without subtexts yet. So I give you the explanation/translation here:

First, we see how he shows me the potato fields and explain that the potato plants are ruined, and the potatoes are tiny and deformed and cannot be eaten, sold or used as seeds. Then he shows some maize field down below and explains how some fields have been affected, while others are fine, because of the variations in microclimate in the area. The potatoes and maize are the most vulnerable plants, in addition to peas and beans, while the quinua and barley are more resistant.

Afterwards, we see the first part of a long interview in his office. He says that in Lari district, 50 – 60 % of the crops have suffered because of extreme cold, snow, but also extreme heat (up to 30 degrees Celsius) during the day. There has also been a lack of rain, but it is especially the frost that kills the plants. This affects the economy of the population; 98 % are farmers who cultivate potatoes, maize, beans, and peas and raise cattle. This frost is something unusual, it has never happened so drastically. We have had frosts before, but they were benign, mild, he says. Then we could make the plant react by irrigation or stimulation. But this time this has been impossible, because the frosts have been fulminant (fatal). The population is worried, people feel impotent, there are no remedy; ‘what do I do?’, people ask. And they all look to the municipality, but the municipality doesn’t have the resources to mitigate.

“So we have been obligated to unite with the other municipalities that have suffered from this frost, making force to present demands to the Ministries, the Regional Government and Presidency of the Ministers’ Council, that they give us some support to mitigate this. On Tuesday, we will travel to the capital Lima to make these demands in a formal way, and we hope that they will receive us. There should be some hope to be able to satisfy this vulnerable population, because these districts in Colca Valley live in poverty – we have overcome the extreme poverty, but still have poverty. Still, the basic needs of several families have not been satisfied. And another cause of this is also that there are no other jobs for them, so they all dedicate themselves to agricultural labour and this is their only income. I hope that this travel that we will make on Tuesday will be announced in the national news in the capital, and well, we hope for results.”

Here is a video made by the municipality of Caylloma, with an interview with the mayor of the province, Elmer Cáceres Llica (in Spanish):

“We are all strangers here”: Hope and chaos in an irrigated desert

My latest letter from the field, published at the Overheating webpage: http://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/research/projects/overheating/overheating-blog/we-are-all-strangers-here.html

From dry desert to prospering boomtown: Welcome to El Pedregral

Welcome to El Pedregal (Photo: Astrid Stensrud)

”It is a bad place, it’s a cosmopolis with people from all over, without any roots. You shouldn’t stay there long, you will be corrupted”. This was the reply from some friends in the highland town Chivay when I said that I wanted to go to El Pedregal, the urban centre of the Majes Irrigation Project in the coastal desert of Arequipa, Southern Peru. Obviously this spiked my curiosity even more. On the one hand, Majes is seen as a green paradise of opportunities, and on the other hand, as a chaotic place that is growing out of proportions at an accelerated speed. Some of the typical comments that I have heard from people living here are: “There is no culture here”, “We have no identity”, “We are all strangers here”, “There is a mixture of cultures”.

When the first settlers came to the pampa of Majes in 1983, there was nothing there, just arid desert land. Determined to work hard, they started to pick stones and prepare the soil. Then came the water, seeds and new technology; the desert was transformed into fertile green fields and more people came with dreams of money and hopes for a better future. 30 years after, people keep coming. People from all over Peru, with different cultural backgrounds, but with one thing in common: a hope for new opportunities to make money. Here is enough work for everyone: manual labour in the fields, jobs in the agro-export industry, commerce and business opportunities.

Irrigation of alfalfa Fields (Photo: Astrid Stensrud)

Yet, this prospering boomtown is extremely vulnerable: it is totally dependent on the irrigation canal – also called “the umbilical cord” – that brings water from a highland dam. If this canal breaks down, it will lead to a total crisis for the thousands of persons and cows living in Majes. The Condoroma Dam and the 100 kilometres long Majes Irrigation Canal was constructed in the 1970s, as a gigantic state development project under the reformist Velasco government. The international consortium Macón – consisting of companies from Sweden, England, Spain, Italy, South Africa, and Canada– constructed the Canal with engineers from Europe and local labour. The Condoroma dam has a capacity of 285 million cubic meters of water, but today it contains less than 50 per cent – 130 million – due to the lack of rain in the highlands.

When the infrastructure was finished, people could apply to buy fields of 5 hectares, and today there are around 2600 farmers with square fields of this size. Later, land was also sold to export companies, like Pampa Baja, which owns 1200 hectares. All the farmers started out with alfalfa cultivation (to nourish the barren soil) and dairy cows. Most of them sell the milk to two big companies – Gloria and Laive – while a few local cooperatives make artisanal cheese and yogurt. The Gloria company, which earlier had foreign owners, is now owned by a couple of brothers from Arequipa, who have expanded to several other countries and are now among the richest men in Peru and have also made it to the Forbes lists of the world’s billionaires. They are not only dominant in the Peruvian and South American market, but also export milk products to the Middle East and Africa.

Today, farmers in Majes are also growing artichokes, which they sell to DANPER, a Danish-Peruvian company exporting to USA and Europe, and other products, like avocado and quinoa, for national and international markets. Quinoa has become especially popular the last year because of the high demand and good prices, and the farmers hope that these prices will stay high. People talk enthusiastically about “the quinoa boom”, and everyone wants to have a piece of the cake before it’s too late. They remember the paprika boom some years ago, when everyone earned a lot of money growing paprika for export, until the prices plummeted because of the competition from China. The problem, they say, is that there is no planning. Because of the free market based on supply and demand and the free trade agreements with various countries, agriculture is “like a lottery” where you can win a lot of money or risk losing it all. Many farmers have become indebted and lost their farms after having taken up bank loans to sow and then lost it all when the prices have dropped due to overproduction.

Quinoa harvesting in Majes (Photo: Astrid Stensrud)

This is the downside of the bright picture that the local authorities paint when they talk about the dynamic economy and all the financial institutions that have established themselves in El Pedregal. That agriculture has made the basis for a thriving economy of industry and commerce is very true, however. Thousands of people have moved here to start a business or find a job; “here is work for everyone”. According to the last official census in 2007, there were 70.000 inhabitants in Majes. In 2014, the political authorities calculate that there are approximately 120.000 people living here; the annual population growth is around 12 per cent. The neighbourhoods grow at an accelerated speed and it’s hard for the municipality to follow up with projects of water and electricity to everyone.

Since Majes became an independent district 14 years ago, land invasions, property conflicts, land trafficking, and violent encounters have been escalating. On 25 February, two persons died and six were injured in a confrontation between land invaders and police during an eviction of an illegal settlement. The main problem is that land traffickers sell pieces of land that are not theirs to sell, and one lot can suddenly have two or three owners, leading in some cases to violent fights. There are rumours about mafias, hired gunmen and corruption, which lead to a lot of insecurity. 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. Many of the victims are migrants from the highlands who have been fooled into buying a piece of land from someone who is not the legal owner, and afterwards they have to go through a lot of trouble with the municipality to formalize the property. These properties are desert land with no water and electricity, where people live in precarious houses made of straw until they can afford to buy bricks. The municipality provide them with free potable water that is delivered in trucks once a week. There are plans to supply the whole population with water pipes and electricity, but these projects are not implemented in a neighbourhood until it is populated with people actually living there (and not only “on paper”).

Planting trees is a way of marking ownership to a piece of land (Photo: Astrid Stensrud)

Today, people are lured to move to Majes because of future prospects of more water when the second stage of the project – “Majes-Siguas II” – becomes a reality. On 6 February this year, I attended the opening ceremony of the Majes-Siguas II, which includes the construction of the new Angostura dam and the irrigation of 38.500 hectares of desert land in the pampa of Siguas. This land will be sold in units of minimum 200 hectares each, which means that big business will be a dominant presence here. The ceremony was moved from highland Angostura to Siguas, to avoid the protesters from Espinar province who contend that the new dam will leave them without water. The constitutional court has overruled these protests, however, and the 400 million USD project will proceed as planned. The concession has been awarded to a Spanish-Peruvian private consortium called Angostura-Siguas. At the ceremony, the president of Peru gave a flaming speech where he promised “a modern agriculture, an agriculture that can be exported and which will generate 200.000 work places”. He also promised that “the water will not be privatized”, a statement that received big applause. However, the new infrastructure will be administered by the private consortium, and the farmers in Majes fear increased water tariffs. “We call this privatization”, a farmer told me. No matter how strongly the government argues that the water is still public property, the farmers know that the operator who manages the infrastructure also controls the water flow. If the infrastructure and the operator are privatized, it will affect the small farmers’ livelihood, and they will probably not accept it silently.

Peru's president Ollanta Humala spoke about modernity and development at the opening ceremony of the Majes-Siguas II Project (Photo: Astrid Stensrud)

"Dammit, my maid will ask for a break": Peruvian Cumbia and Twitter Racism

Yesterday, a popular cumbia singer – Edita Guerrero – died of brain aneurysm, only 31 years old. She was the lead singer in the group Corazon Serrano (“Highland Heart”), a group that she founded with her siblings and that became famous through their romantic lyrics and catchy dance rhythms of “cumbia andina”.

Video of one of their most popular songs: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErD9wzEraWE&feature=share

The genre Cumbia Andina is a fusion of cumbia from the Caribbean coast of Colombia and the huayno rhythm from the Andean highlands, and it has become increasingly popular in Peru in the first decade of this century. With a huge numbers of groups all over the country, you can hear this music almost anywhere you go in Peru; on the buses and taxis, in the shops, in people’s homes, at parties and in "video pubs". It's the music of “the people”; i.e. the majority of people in Peru.

Not everyone is fond of this music, however, and some people, especially the middle classes in the capital Lima, do their best to distance themselves from it, as they also make sure to make a distance between themselves and everything associated with the working class or the precariat, like the domestic servants working in their houses, or the drivers of buses and taxis and market vendors.

In Peru, the despise and discrimination against the ”popular culture” of “the lower classes” is permeated with racism. Classism and racism are often inseparable; their articulations are identical.

After the death of Edita Guerrero, several despicable utterances against her fans appeared on Twitter and Facebook. These utterances were soon denounced as being racist. However, in more homogenous societies, like Norway, they might be interpreted as more “snobbish” or referring to issues of taste and what in Norwegian would be called “harry” (bad taste, tacky, vulgar, “hillbilly”).

A few examples:

“Edita Guerrero from Corazon Serrano is dead. Dammit, my maid/housekeeper will ask for a break.”

“Those who listens to Corazon Serrano are poor and live in the hills”

 “Today there are too many cholos, serranos and poor who have Twitter”

“Will the rest of the week be all about Corazon serrano? Because of these groups all of Latin America see us as an indigenous country.”

“Corazon Serrano pronounce themselves about the death of Edita Guerrero! HAHAHA pronounce? In what, in quechua hahaha”

“All of those emerging cholos who listened to Edita Guerrero in Corazon Serrano should go home to their land, to continue their poor life there”

(more can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiRkTnH8Kpc)

In Peru, there is sadly still a lot of racism against the indigenous quechua-speaking population of the highlands (and also against the natives of the the Amazon). The highlanders have been migrating to Lima and other coastal cities in increasing numbers since the 1960s, to work in whatever blue-collar jobs available or making a living in the informal economy as itinerant vendors, household employees and drivers. As they have been taking the highland cultural traditions and customs to the coast – and as these cultural expressions have been constantly changing, fusioning, remade, recreated – they have also been associated with the poor migrants and the working class.

Luckily, these racist utterances have been met with a lot of criticism and disgust. The former Women’s Minister Ana Jara wrote in her personal Twitter that “these racist commentaries are inacceptable” and that “En el Perú, el que no tiene de Inga tiene de Mandinga!”, meaning that those who have not indigenous/Inca ancestry, have African ancestry (from the African slaves on the coast). In other words, that Peru is a cultural melting pot, and that everyone should respect each other.

“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.