The Other Path - Chapter 1
Introduction
In the period since the Second World War, Peru has undergone the most far-reaching change in its history as a republic. This change has not been an isolated or planned event, but a succession of millions of incidents which have gradually transformed a seemingly immutable order.
Peru's cities have ceased to be small familiar places and become impersonal, heavily populated metropolises with new, unfamiliar neighborhoods.
In the past forty years, indigenous migration has quintupled the urban population and forced cities to reorganize. New activities have emerged and gradually replaced traditional ones. Modest homes cramped together on city perimeters, a myriad of workshops in their midst, armies of vendors hawking their wares on the streets, and countless minibus lines crisscrossing them—all seem to have sprung from nowhere, pushing the city's boundaries ever outward. Daily, a medley of smoke and odors from the fried food cooking on the streets blends with strains of Andean music. A steady stream of small craftsworkers, tools under their arms, expand the range of activities carried out in the city. Ingenious local adaptations add to the production of essential goods and services, dramatically transforming certain areas of manufacturing, retail distribution, building, and transportation. The surrounding desert and hills have ceased to be a passive landscape and themselves become part of the city, and the city's European style has yielded to a noisy, tawny skinned personality.
But the cities have also conferred individuality on their inhabitants. Individual effort has come to predominate over collective effort. New business owners have emerged who, unlike their predecessors, are of popular origin. Upward mobility has increased. The patterns of consumption and exclusive luxuries of the old urban society have been displaced by other, more widespread, ones. In entertainment, for instance, opera, theater, and zarzuela have been replaced over the years by the cinema, soccer, folk festivals and, most recently, television. Likewise, consumer goods such as beer, rice, and table salt have been brought within everyone's reach, while consumption of the more expensive items, such as wine and meat, has declined over the decades.
There have been significant changes in the Peruvians' religious habits, too. Catholicism, identified with the traditional order, has lost ground to newer religious movements such as Protestantism, the Charismatics and, more recently, such vernacular and syncretic expressions as the Asociación Evangélica de la Misión Israelita del Nuevo Pacto Universal. Popular saints like la Melchorita or Sarita Colonia, who are not recognized by the Church, are replacing Santa Rosa de Lima and other traditional saints in local devotions.
The result is a new cultural identity which needs to be portrayed in social terms. The emergence of chicha music, which is replacing Andean folk music and Creole music, and the success of certain forms of communication—radio programs and television soap operas which refer to or reflect definite elements of this new identity—are clear examples of this change. Society pages and television programs devoted to the life-style of the upper classes have gradually disappeared, and crime series and programs featuring popular entertainment, which the nostalgic dismiss as vulgar, are now preferred viewing.
People have also begun to invest more in their education. The proportion of students of popular origin in secondary schools and schools of higher education has increased significantly, and in the former mansions of the aristocracy all kinds of academies and institutes offer cheap, practical training in an endless variety of subjects.
The upper classes have discovered that they must henceforth rub shoulders with people of popular origin in restaurants and airplanes, on beaches, on boards of directors, and even in the government. Many of them have chosen to retreat into their own, steadily shrinking, world and console themselves with memories of a bygone age. There are those who entrench themselves in exclusive residential neighborhoods, frequent clubs where time seems to have stood still, drive whenever possible only on tree-lined avenues, and preserve customs which consign them to de facto social and racial segregation.
New organizations have emerged in an attempt to restore or reformulate some of the values and attachments that were being lost. Over the years, regional, church, and sports clubs, neighborhood committees, street vendors' associations, and even transport operators' committees have tried to secure the well-being of their members. In the cities, the extended family has been transformed into a network of commercial or productive relations: economic activities conducted among "cousins" and "uncles" are now commonplace.
As the economic activities with which they are associated have grown, these organizations have also begun to play a dominant role in relation to the state. Thus, the provision of such basic infrastructures as roads, water supply, sewage systems, and electricity, the construction of markets, the provision of transport services, and even the administration of justice and the maintenance of law and order have, to varying degrees, ceased to be the exclusive responsibility of the state and are now also offered by these new organizations. And as the state's role has diminished, so too has that of traditional society. With new organizations gradually gaining ascendancy, the old unions have lost ground and membership in trade unions has dropped steadily, today accounting for only 4.8 percent of the economically active population.
What is disturbing is that only part of the ground relinquished by the state has been occupied by these new organizations. The rest appears to have been taken over by violence. Attacks, kidnappings, rapes, and murders have coincided with increasingly aggressive driving habits and unsafe streets. The police have gradually lost control of the situation and some of their members have been involved in scandals and become seasoned criminals. Overcrowding and promiscuity in the prisons foster bloodshed and increased criminality which spreads throughout the city when prisoners escape, sometimes with the complicity of their guards. The resulting violence has forced people to defend themselves as best they can: all kinds of weapons, including machine guns and automatic shotguns, watchmen in various uniforms, and even inscrutable bodyguards, are now commonplace. With each day that passes, we come closer to resembling the offensive movie stereotype of the banana republic.
People have gradually grown used to living outside the law. Theft, illegal seizure, and factory takeovers have become everyday occurrences and do not greatly disturb people's consciences. Thanks to constant whitewashing, some criminals have become public figures.
A complete subversion of means and ends has turned the life of Peruvian society upside down, to the point that there are acts which, although officially criminal, are no longer condemned by the collective consciousness. Smuggling is a case in point. Everyone, from the aristocratic lady to the humblest man, acquires smuggled goods. No one has any scruples about it; on the contrary, it is viewed as a kind of challenge to individual ingenuity or as revenge against the state.
This infiltration of violence and criminality into everyday life has been accompanied by increasing poverty and deprivation. In general terms, Peruvians' real average income had declined steadily over the last ten years and is now at the level of twenty years ago. Mountains of garbage pile up on all sides. Night and day, legions of beggars, car washers, and scavengers besiege passersby, asking for money. The mentally ill swarm naked in the streets, stinking of urine. Children, single mothers, and cripples beg for alms on every street corner.
Civilian interest in public matters has also begun to grow. Such issues as inflation, devaluation, and the external debt are no longer mysteries to which certain members of the elite hold the key, but have become topics of discussion on which everyone has something to say. Governments must now submit their actions to public opinion and the public's acceptance or rejection has become a political force which can affect government stability.
In this situation, more Peruvians have learned to negotiate with the state for all manner of privileges which will enable them to overcome their difficulties, something which has led to an increasing politicization of our society. Small interest groups fight among themselves, cause bankruptcies, implicate public officials. Governments hand out privileges. The law is used to give and take away far more than morality permits. Many media of information are dependent on state assistance or state banks and therefore bow to the powers-that-be, surrendering their ability to denounce abuses or even describe events objectively. Increasingly, more than one source of information is needed to obtain a true idea of the facts.
This state of affairs has brought about a sharp change of attitude toward society. Terrorism has emerged as a violent alternative to the present situation, but a new attitude to things Peruvian has also emerged. It is as though the country's intelligentsia were seeking refuge in the idyllic innocence of the Andean people, a people uncorrupted by all this decadence. The terrorist movement itself proposes to wage "popular warfare from the countryside to the cities," as if the regenerative force for change has to come from Peru's inner depths.
Things have changed in Peru. Although life goes on as it has for centuries in some parts of the country, it is in the cities that today's history is being written. It is there, rather than in the countryside, that we must look for the meaning of, or the answer to, the changes that have taken place. The present has finally prevailed. Nothing will be as it was; the past will not return.
