200 years of social and cultural change in a decade!
Remember the span of 16 years where we lived in the Peruvian North-central Highlands (1986-2002)?
Well the 90s was a decade of incredible change in Peru and we were smack-dab in the middle of it!
The country’s infrastructure was in great need of improvement (health, education, roadwork, etc.). Meanwhile the infrastructure of SIL-Peru in many ways kept us going. They sent us “encomiendas” of mail by the regional bus routes arriving at the provincial capital of Huari. They also provided group housing in Lima, Huaraz and in the jungle (Pucallpa) while we were there for government documentation and for linguistic planning sessions. This is where our boys were exposed to the rarified air of American kids and culture. Being from California I felt more-or-less comfortable in this group, whereas Linda (Canadian) and our German and Swiss co-workers learned to adjust to some pretty significant cultural differences. Nonetheless this climate was consistent and sustainable especially for the American families living there. They provided children’s American style education, play areas and interaction in English. These islands of English-speaking culture and the relationships afforded us assistance when we were in Lima and Huaraz.
But Peru’s society and economy went through tremendous upheaval in the 90s, much of this due to the various economic crises (including “Fuji-shock” instigated by the then President Alberto Fujimori), continual diseases (cholera, typhoid, malaria, etc.) as well as the rise-and-fall of two terrorist groups: Shining Path and MRTA (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru). While Peru’s military increased their public face, especially in the major cities via sporadic checkpoints across the country, weekly terrorist incursions (bridge/building explosions) caused greater stress, blackouts and need for increased security. Needless to say, travel across municipal and national highways were riskier. “Toques de queda” (curfews) were becoming a consistent pattern, in Lima especially. There were also the staged blackouts by Peru’s national power companies as a chessboard strategy to avoid transformer damage from terrorist attack (ie., to keep the terrorists guessing).
Actually Shining Path terrorists had begun using car bombs in the mid-80s. While we were in Lima on 17 July 1992 a bomb exploded on Av. Arequipa in Miraflores (Lima’s financial and tourist district) 18 people died and windows were shattered in skyscrapers for blocks. Auto and pedestrian traffic was locked down for several days. Over the next decade these terrorist activities increased in frequency and spread nationally dividing the country socially and economically. Hearing these explosions while close to the explosion site and seeing the glass and debris everywhere was unnerving!
Upper-middle class communities in Lima and other major cities maintained their lifestyle and jobs with increased security while the middle and lower classes struggled with a crippled public transportation system and daily military inspections. The country quickly tumbled into a recession and an increase in petty crime. Both Lima’s pharmacies and bread stores required armed guards for protection. The sad joke was “Si no estás en la coca estás en la cola” If you aren’t in to coca (drugs) you are in the line ups. At one time Lima actually had a shortage of insulin in the drugstores!
Cholera, endemic particularly in the shellfish off Peru’s coast, broke out across Peru’s major coastal cities (Piura, Trujillo, Chimbote, Lima) requiring a stronger filtration of potable water and improved standards in the canning of seafood. Some tuna cans from Peru arrived on the East seaboard of the USA infested with cholera. Money had been allocated for improved water treatment along the coast but it disappeared and the untreated water spread the endemic infections into an epidemic. At the same time Peru for the first time became an IMPORTER of sugar from Brazil. Prior to this period, Peru had always been a net food EXPORTER.
At one time the inflation rose to 2,000 %… per month!
All that being said, improvements in the national infrastrcture DID begin to occur mid-90s. Fujimori’s crew of engineers initiated a complete renewal of Peru’s Pan-American coastal Highway and then extended concrete paving work up into the Highlands into cities like Trujillo, Huaraz, and Arequipa. More freight and better bus lines arrived into the hinterlands, in both the mountains and the jungle. New international supermarkets like the Chilean “E. Wong” stores entered the major cities transforming daily shopping and challenging the national companies like the “Todos” supermarkets. The quality and variety of goods and produce was a whole new world for the Peruvian consumer and even the faraway mountain and jungle cities and towns reaped the benefits over long distances with more accessible shipping.
The mid-90s was remarkable transformation in Peru’s highland communities:
Previously our village of Cajay had no electricity. Instead we, along with everyone else, used a deep cell 12-volt car battery for light and basic radios. It required carting the battery each week to Huari for recharging where a diesel generator was powering that provincial town of 4,000 inhabitants. Peru’s electrical grid in the mid-90s finally installed a 14,000 volt power poll /transformer just outside our wall. It fell against our house the first year due to heavy rains and improper installation, but still it arrived! Fortunately the wires didn’t touch our roof and we were able to evacuate in the torrential rain to the safety of our neighbours’ house, until they could cross the valley and turn the power off at the power plant. Local community-based radio and TV stations sprouted up all over the valley!
Then the Peruvian government contracted the Spanish company Telefonica, S.A. to install cell-towers across the country (coast, mountains, and even jungle). This was huge: No longer was it necessary to install telephone polls and lines across the rugged mountains (an expensive venture for small towns!). Instead cellphone towers provided for the first time affordable communications! Where one year my phone call from Huari, our Conchucos Valley provincial capital, to San Jose, California cost me $9 USD per minute-- the next year a cellphone call was free! Wow!
In the mid-’90s, via municipal elections and public outcry, government projects in many parts of the highland worked to install a system of running water plumbed from house-to-house, as well as a public sewer system for decent sanitation. This transformed kitchens as every house now had a spigot and water inside the courtyard. This allowed us the use of on-demand propane hot water! Slowly the communities abandoned the crude latrines for water-plumbed toilets often installed in the old outhouse.
Cajay transformed from an 18th century agrarian society to a modern, electrified, running water, and cellphone connected community in 10 years. What a ROLLER COASTER ride that decade was!
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