What is rich? – Peru’s economy

According to Wikipedia, “Peru today is classified as upper middle income by the World Bank^[8] and is the 40th largest in the world by total GDP.^[9]Peru is one of the world's fastest-growing economies with a 2012 GDP growth rate of 6.3%.^[10] Poverty has decreased dramatically in the past decade, from nearly 60% in 2004 to 25.8% in 2012.

Before I begin to explain to you my personal journey into Peru’s social economy, please understand that the 60% figure of poverty would have been a gross understatement during our Andean experience in the 1990s. Fujishock was a set of extreme national economic measures which President Fujimori set into play during that time. The currency was not only in a continual tailspin compared with the US Dollar; the government actually reset the currency twice: From Soles to Intis then to Nuevo Soles de Oro. The impact and inflation was severe, very similar to that in pre-World War II Germany, where pictures were taken at that time of people pushing “wheelbarrows” of Deutschmarks to buy a few loaves of bread. Statistics in the mid-90s in Perú measured the inflation rate a 400%.... PER MONTH! This rivalled Brazil’s economic crisis at that time.

Meanwhile anyone like us, with access to relatively consistent monthly salaries, especially tied to US Dollars, were receiving 2.5 times more value for our money. Looking back on it, we were very well off for several years. Our rent in the mountains was “a bag of rice” per month (no utility bills because, well, there WEREN’T any… utilities, that is!).

So what does it mean to be rich? I’m a middle class suburb kid raised in a hard-working carpenter’s home, for which he paid $17,000 in 1966 [of course after my dad’s death last year, it sold for $640,000]. So I, like my cultural contemporaries, grew up comparing myself, always scurring my way up the social/educational ladder. “Well-off” was always described as the next guy who made more than I did: Owned a better house in a better neighbourhood, driving a better car to a better job. Image was important. But I claimed to be different, an iconoclast who wanted an altruistic way of impacting a nation for the better. Therefore I justified my cultural slant and disdain for anything corporate.

My time in Perú only convinced me further of the righteousness of my stand: I was a closet-liberal working with a religious non-profit organization, typically conservative politically and morally, and living in a culture shaken and shaped by extreme socio-political upheaval….  And the next shake was just over the hill.

Being a gringo (which generally refers to all light-skinned foreigners in Latin America, but specifically to US Caucasians), I was at the ‘top of the economic food chain’ and my face, to all Quechuas around me, was practically a billboard advertisement to that conservative political, high-economic agenda (I personally didn’t think so and had often done my best to argue and deny it). We chose to live on the backside of the Andes Mountains among a people who were at the bottom of that same chain.  Why? Why indeed. It took years before, not only my neighbours, but I myself discovered this purpose.

Now that you understand a bit about my ignorance and ineptitude to comprehend the overwhelming circumstances occurring around me, let’s turn to … those around me—those to whom I was assigned to help.

CONCHUCOS: I will always be grateful for those 15 years living in the Quechua village of Cajay. For one thing, I learned from them the value of GENEROSITY. “The widow’s mite” is an occurrence in Jesus’ life (cf., Luke 21 and Mark 12) where Jesus is dumbfounded that “even in her poverty she gave more than the rich man next to her.”  I have travelled from community to community on those rocky-muddy footpaths of Conchucos, often arriving after dark and often as not, received, with fear and great suspicion, but generously. I later realized that the greatest thing I could give in a relationship, is my need.

I also had to admit, that I WAS rich. If by rich I mean, “selectivity.” I always had a choice. “Contingency plans” were always required of us by our organization and rightly so.  But because we chose NOT to leave when the economy deteriorated, when roads were washing out, when terrorists or the military threatened the valley… my neighbours slowly began to look at us in a different way. I then made a life-changing discovery, which ultimately united my heart permanently to these people. It was the following: “I was rich, SPECIFICALLY because I experienced, accepted, and was protected by the relationships of these dear people… from community to community.” Unfortunately this didn’t hit me as hard as when I left that valley and returned to Canada. Oh the strains of reverse culture shock!

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