Fujimori nunca más

Students from my university

As I was lying in my bed Thursday night trying to sleep, I could still hear the echoes of the thousands of protesters as they marched through the streets of Lima. "Con justicia y dignidad, Fujimori nunca más." "La juventud consciente. No elije un delicuente." "Chino, chino, chino. Corrupto y asesino." ... Earlier that day, the National Coordinator of Human Rights organized the "With Justice and Dignity, Fujimori No More" march to remember the victims of the government of former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori and to protest the candidacy of his daughter, Keiko Fujimori.

Paper maché Fuji-rata

As I have been involved with part of the campaign against Fujimori, I eagerly attended the march. It was perhaps one of the most unforgettable experiences I've had in Peru so far. I will not forget the sound of thousands of footsteps marching through the street, the passionate, perpetual chants of the activists, the angry horns of the taxis and combis caught in the middle of the mobilization, and the buzz of the spray cans as the protesters inundated the streets in graffiti as we walked. An estimated 10,000-15,000 people attended the march from all sectors of society- lawyers, human rights activists, students, family members of the victims, religious groups, doctors, victims of forced sterilization... Regardless of the their background, everyone present was united by their sincerity and passion to remember the injustices of the Fujimori dictatorship and to prevent it from being resurrected. People of all ages held handmade signs and banners and paraded through the streets with paper maché caricatures of the fujimoristas.

Some crucial background info:

My friend Dorita

Alberto Fujimori was elected president of Peru in 1990, a time in which Peru was struggling with a developing economy and combating two left-wing terrorist groups, Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA. Although he explicitly opposed an economic shock doctrine in his campaign, he instituted a policy of economic shock shortly after assuming power, augmenting already high poverty levels (which had fomented the terrorism in the first place). In 1993, he suspended congress and issued a new constitution to give himself and his party more control over the state apparatus. In 2000, Fujimori was re-reelected president of Peru through fraudulent elections, though public protests eventually forced him to resign (via a fax message) and flee to Japan, where he claimed citizenship. 

Korrupción.

During his regime, it is estimated that Fujimori stole $6 billion from the state, making him the most corrupt Peruvian president and the seventh most corrupt president in the world of all time. In 2009, he was extradited to Peru and found culpable of crimes against humanity because of the assassinations and tortures he authorized. In the two most famous examples, Fujimori's death squad, Grupo Colina, masascred innocent Peruvians (including a child) in Barrios Altos and disappeared, tortured, and murdered 9 students and a professor at La Cantuta University. Fujimori is also guilty for his population control plan which forcibilly sterilized thousands of rural, peasant women. He was also found guilty of embezzlement and bribery. After the trails, Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison, where he now resides and receives hundreds of visits per day. The campaign trucks of his daughter are regularly spotted outside the prison, and some speculate that he is running her campaign.

Catolica University remembers
the victims at La Cantuta.

Despite the fujimoristas legacy of corruption, fear, and massacres, Keiko Fujimori is the frontrunner in the second round of national elections. Keiko has done little to distance her self from her father's dictatorship. She repeatedly refers to his government as "el mejor gobierno de todos los tiempos" (''the best government of all time") and her Plan de Gobierno (Government plan) frequently references her father's government. While her father was president, Keiko essentially became the Primera Dama (First Lady) after her mother separated from her father. Keiko's mother denounced the corruption of Fujimori's regime, and was supposedly tortured in the notorious Sotonos SIE for doing so. Additionally, taxpayers payed hundreds of thousands of dollars for Keiko (and her three siblings) to attend university at expensive schools in the US. Aside from all this, Keiko has done very little in her political career besides skipping an alarming amount of congressional sessions and only authoring 6 marginally important bills in her entire career. 

Why then, are people supporting Keiko? In Lima, many members of the middle and upper class see her as the lesser of two evils. Her opponent, left-wing military strongman Ollanta Humala, is consistently branded by the right-wing press as a Hugo-Chavez figure who would undo all of the economic development Peru has experienced. In rural areas, the fujimoristas operate a sort of political machine or patron-clientilism where they build (poor quality) schools and give handouts for votes that the constituents have now become dependent on.

Who will win on July 5th? Protests all throughout Peru, culminating in the protest in Lima on Thursday, have shown that the legacy of Alberto Fujimori will not be forgotten. However, the majority of the press has backed Keiko, and some news stations have even fired commentators for supporting Ollanta, overshadowing the voice of these people. If Keiko wins, I have no doubt that the protesters will once again hit the streets, but this times with their cries even louder than before... that is, if Keiko doesn't have her own death squad in place by then to stop them.

External costs, protests in Peru, and ecological debt

Litter in Huaraz (not quite an external cost, but still carelessness)

Last semester in an anthropology class I first learned of the concept of external costs, or the costs of production that aren't included in the price that the consumer pays. For example, when you buy a good in most cases you aren't paying for the environmental and human cost involved in the production of the good. Inevitably, the production of the good impacts the environment in some way (waste dumping, fossil fuel emission, deforestation, etc) and probably human health by extension. However, the producer and the consumer don't pay that cost.The local community does. In many cases an unaccountable multinational cooperation causes the damage abroad and the local communities (which are often poor) are forced to incur them. As a consequence, the community suffers from a debilitated environment and poor human health (external costs) AND, if it has the resources, must use its own money to attempt to correct for the damages. I wish that I had learned about this consequence of manufacturing in Econ 201 OR 202. I guess it didn't fit the (blatantly obvious) neoliberal agenda of my hotshot professors.

"Yes to agriculture/ No to mining" Foto from CNR

For the past few months protesters in Islay, Peru have been protesting the Tía María mining project because of anticipated external costs of the project. Mexican transnational Southern Copper Corporation was scheduled to mine in the area and even "cared enough" to do a Study of the Environmental Impact of it's proposed project. However, the protesters did not trust the authenticity of the results of the study, claiming that it underestimated the costs- specifically that the project would contaminate the water of the agricultural town. For 17 days, protesters striked. During the protests 3 people were killed by the riot police and 50 were injured. However, the protesters were successful in the end and on April 4th the Ministry of Energy and Mining cancelled the project (right before the first round of national elections on the 10th).

In the case of Tía María, extensive external costs were prevented thanks to a successful social movement. However, that is not the norm. In Martínez Alier and Roca Jusmet's article "Economía ecológica y política ambiental" they introduce the concept of ecological debt (dueda ecologica)- or the idea that the unpaid external costs of production have built up and, like all debt, must be paid back. In the context of Latin America, this ecological debt is largely a consequence of multinational corporations and policies by the IMF and the World Bank. They tell how Latin American incurred massive amounts of external debt in the '70s and '80s which summed up to $700 billion by 1999, and then explain how the IMF and World Bank intervened with economic programs to "help" Latin America pay back the debt. These programs depended on increasing the number of exports from Latin America to the West- a rapid acceleration of manufacturing that simultaneously created vast environmental external costs. The authors argue that while Latin America paid off it's external debt, it build up ecological debt. Or rather, the demand by the West for cheap resources from Latin America built off a ecological debt that they now owe Latin America.

Some of these costs materialized last February in a court case in Ecuador. Ecuadorian court recently ordered oil company Chevron to pay $9 billion in damages and to issue a public apology for the environmental costs of its projects in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Of course, Chevron is rapidly protesting the decisions (and did some ethically questionably things during the trial), but this is a huge step in realizing ecological debt. Yet as I am typing this I commercial came on TV touting all the "good" that Chevron is doing for the economy (which is much more important than the environment, right?).

However, the Chevron case is only one of the few instances where the external costs have materialized into a debt that must be paid off. Imagine if all companies were taken to court to be held accountable for the external costs of their business. Better, imagine if the external costs were already included in the price of an item (something fair trade is on the way to addressing). One thing that has struck me most about Peru is it's ecological beauty. I have never seen a place so I beautiful and inspiring in the world. I hope that the demand for cheap technology and pretty things doesn't destroy it.

El ritmo

Long time no post. I guess I'm starting to get in the rhythm of things here.

Around 7 in the morning I start fighting the sounds of the city- the perpetual car alarms, honking, and chatter from the surrounding apartments- until I finally get up around 8. Then I catch a crazy combi (bus) to go to school, my internship at Aprodeh (a human rights organization), or the children's hospital to volunteer, depending on the day. Afterwards, I take another combi to Ruiz to eat lunch with my friends under the same tree in the courtyard, and then I try to work on homework but inevitably get pulled into a conversation or a game of volleyball. Then I sit in class, counting down the minutes until I can leave to go home. Another combi. Home. Shower. Eat (by now it's usually 9 or 10). Talk to friends. Homework. Fall asleep on Skype with Chris. Repeat. Though I admit that this routine was broken by Semana Santa and Parciales (mid-terms!) this week.

It's the weekends that I look forward to most... to playing guitar facing the expanse of the sea and to hanging out with my causas (buddies) until the sun comes up. Yet everything speeds by and I find myself sitting on my bed on Sunday afternoon reliving flashbacks from the weekend wondering where time went.

Two Sundays ago we went to an archeological site just outside Lima called Pachacámac. Perhaps it was because of the heat and the fact that I didn't really sleep before going, but the whole time I felt like a ghost haunting what once was a great civilization. Although Peru is famous for the Incas, I am constantly surprised by the number of grand civilizations that existed before the Incans (like the ones that inhabited Pachacámac). It was a beautiful site, from the carefully constructed puzzle-piece walls made of stones of different sizes to the pyramids with gorgeous views of the desert and the ocean.

After lunch we visited a ceramic workshop in the artesian district. The shop was modest, but full of thousands of colorful ceramics illuminated by a soft, natural light that peeked through the roof. I noticed that the shop had a few signs posted about fair trade and ecological issues, and it turns out that the artesian collective is partnered with Ten Thousand Villages, a fair trade craft store in the US (with a store that just opened in Charlottesville)! What a small world. I am a huge advocate of fair trade and happy to see it functioning and in action. While we were at the workshop, we each got to make our own miniature ceramic using the molds from the shop too. The owner was elated and proud to share his craft with us.

And Easter weekend I traveled to Huaraz with the girls and some friends from school. That was an amazing experience too. Check back later for the whole story, though I have no idea how I am going to be able to condense 4 days and 700 pictures into one blogpost....

*credit goes to Johanna for the fotos since I forgot my SD card at home.