ambuvendores

Sort of in conjunction with my last post, I would like to highlight an unavoidable phenomenon in Lima: people wanting to sell you stuff. Everywhere!
Those studying micro-economics would have a ball here because of an almost absurd amount of people with small businesses or simply a backpack filled with candy that they sell on the buss. Today I took some time to jot down all the kinds of products sold by street vendors I've seen in my time here. The abridged version of this list only includes vendors who have no carts or trollies in which they display their merchandise.

Most commonly you will see people of all ages stepping on the bus, first introducing themselves with a very sad story about how fate has left them with many children, a sick mother, or jobless because of the government's vicious hand striking down on their previous place of employment. Afterwards they reach into their bags and produce some "turrones arequipeños" (candy bars), "caramelos de cafe" (coffee flavored toffees), or "chicles de varios sabores" (chewing gum of various flavors) for 50 or 10 centimos each. They will pass by each seat to ask for some support.

Similar types of vendors on the bus will offer peanuts and raisins, slices of homemade strawberry pie, churros, ice cream, sodas and water, newspapers or even highlighter pens. Some step on, dressed up as clowns and perform jokes and magic tricks, others carry their guitars, cajones, and/or flutes and will perform a few songs for the--most of the time annoyed-looking--passengers.

In places like Gamarra, individuals will stand on the side of the road holding cellphones and screaming "llamadas por un sol!" offering phone calls. If you walk around that place in sneakers, there is a high chance that a somebody will come by with a little sponge and polish to start cleaning one of your shoes. He will continue to do so even if you tell him no. If you don't pay him 50 centimos, you will walk around looking like a loser having one clean and one dirty shoe.

While walking around, I've come across andean women selling their hand-knit socks and scarves on the side of the road, old men selling knives, watches, sunglasses, table china, and home-made sandwiches out of a little hand cooler. On almost every block you will find a young man carrying a little shoe polish contraption, offering their shoe shine services to newspaper-reading businessmen.

When I am at home I hear the obnoxious haaaaaaaaaaaooooooonk quack sound coming from the bread man's tooting horn in the morning, and the high pitched pentatonic scale from the plastic pan flute of the "tio" with the knife sharpener that he rolls down the street in the afternoons. About once a week, a man will knock on our door asking if he can clean my housemates' car for them. He usually charges 3 soles and does a fine job.

And sometimes, when I'm lucky, I come across some really nifty business schemes:
Somebody may sit on the side of the road with a scale in front of her, charging you money to weigh yourself. My favorite find to this day, however, has to be this middle aged man I discovered standing on the corner of a busy intersection in Pueblo Libre, holding a body-sized mirror. As people walked by it, he would offer them a longer look at their reflection for fifty centimos. Now here's a man who understands the human mind!

Socialism Communism Terrorism. Rats tomorrow

I am taking a course entitled "Pensamiento social peruano" (Peruvian Social Thought) and although I'm certainly failing at understanding everything the professor is trying to teach me, I am still getting a glimpse of social theories pertaining to Peru during the last century. In conjunction with the course, I am reading a novel entitled Mañana, las Ratas (1984) "Tomorrow, the rats" by Jose B. Adolph: in the year 2034 the planet no longer knows countries and world politicians have been replaced with company executives. Lima finds itself in disturbing unrest as social classes have split into those living in the gated communities like las Casuarinas and the other 20 million people who live like rats in the run down slums of Lima. Heavy drugs, extra marital sex and manslaughter are all legal, socially accepted and even expected of people like Tony Tréveris, who is the CEO of EPESA, an incredibly powerful company that produces and sells marijuana cigarettes, exstacy, cocaine etc.

It is left up to Tony and the other CEOs and members of the Regional Directory, which acts as the local government for all of southwest America, to devise a plan to suppress the so called "Cat-ox" (católico ortodox) who have somehow come to power in the dilapidated slums, gaining control over the angry people. Outbursts of riots and violence emerge in Miraflores, Lince, and the Center of Lima at an even higher rate than usually and the hourly hologram news-updates and riot warnings reach the disturbed upper class families, nestled in their ultra-secure homes behind feet of cement walls. The rich families only hear about which streets to avoid and hear the distant explosions but are completely clueless when it comes to understanding the demands of the "rats," as it has become impossible for the upper class to even think of the others as human beings.

Tony and his new co-worker Linda, who recently arrived from Mobile, Alabama quickly hit it off both in bed, and in the downtrodden streets of Lima as the Supreme Directory from the United States eventually declares that it sides with the Cat-ox in stead of the Regional Directory of Southwest America. The Cat-ox demand a reconstruction of the regional universities (upper class students are sent abroad), total access to all modes of communication, to be allowed to practice their religion and spread their doctrines freely; carry weapons, and practice missionary works in Lima and abroad; access to the financial activities of the big companies and the regulation of harmful drugs. The Regional Directory has until now only reacted to the Cat-ox with napalm and bombs, trying to quiet them down by force while perpetuating the capitalist credo. The Supreme Directory (or as we see later, a set of computers) has decided it best to switch gears and allow the demands of the Cat-ox and thus diminishing the Regional Directory's power.

As the plot unfolds the reader finds glimpses of past events that lead up to this political state, for instance the fictional revolution of the street vendors in the 1990s, which gained so much momentum that the government had to use atomic weapons to quiet them down.

The anticlimactic end delivers the reader a saddened and torn Tony who decides to escape the catastrophic showdown in Lima to save his life, and head to Mobile with Linda, shortly followed by his wife and children. (The author states that romantic love is hard to come by in those day, so when Tony finds that he's in love with Linda, he tells his wife who is happy that her husband has actually found true love ...)

The story comes to a close when the author reveals that the separation between social classes has reached its ultimate climax: the highest leaders of the Supreme Directory have populated a satellite in space (equipped with golf course and swimming pools) and have even found that Pluto can support human life. Tony will be in charge of mobilizing the most "important" people to live on the planetoid while the Cat-ox are gaining back control over the political sphere. Meanwhile the rest of the "inferior" humans populating planet earth will be governed by nothing less than a set of super computers who calculate human behavior and, based on statistical analysis, decide on the most rational political decisions. Strangely reminiscent of Space Odyssey:2001, the Supreme Directors are merely figure heads who in reality haven't made any decisions in years and computers are assuming the most important roles on the planet.

While it lacks some refining in the plot and narrative, this dystopian novel actually seems pretty representative of some social thought current in Peru in the 80s and 90s. The post WWII years marked the revival of social theory and critical thought in Peru. With the rise of the social sciences and especially sociology, the 50s, 60s and 70s gave way to many essays, articles, and eventually books that attempted to first diagnose Peru's current social problems, and later prescribe a solution to those problems that would lead the country into social and economical development. As with, I imagine, many other developing countries, the natural question arose: are we going to take the North American route and become a capitalist society, or should we try what some of our fellow Latin American nations have attempted, communism?

From a purely economic point of view, capitalism focuses on international trade, exports and privatization, and while it has proven to work for many countries in the past, it requires much more time than its red friend. Communism would allow for much faster economic development as the products come from and stay within the nation and more focus can be placed on raising the socio-economic statuses of the lower class.

As this country is ruled by an elite upper class that has vested much interest in all things America, the decision to stick with Capitalism came as no surprise. Nor were the subsequent terrorist uprisings too uncalled for. Yes, they turned much more violent than was expected, but I would imagine that some reluctance to accept this type of system imposed onto this vast country by such a small minority, was to be anticipated.

It also comes to no surprise that a book like Mañana, las ratas was written in the midst of social uproar and fear as terrorists infiltrated into Lima, leaving behind not only many dead people, but also a big uncertainty when it came to the future of the country.

What José Adolph depicted in his novel, was an image of a world in which there is no middle class and where Capitalism has transgressed its roll as an economic/social system, and permeated the political realm.

In light of a foreign petroleum company that can, without legal consequences, disregard orders by U.S. government organizations in the Gulf of Mexico; and when we could be facing the possibility of CocaCola Co. becoming president of the United States in 2016, Adolph really demonstrated some pretty sharp foresight.

But putting current politics in the United States aside, he also showed that during his time, there was a threat to the still newly emerging middle class in Lima. Adolph is essentially predicting that those few professionals and intellectuals who through hard work managed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps would eventually fall back into the dark masses of lower class society.

The extreme segregation and divorce between rich and poor that he predicted is also merely a projection of the current regional segregation of the city. Not unlike places like Long Island, you can see extreme poverty and wealth in close proximity to each other. And although they might live relatively close, the upper classes do a pretty good job at never having to confront lower class society. They can go from their home to Larco Mar (ritzy shopping mall), to the spa, the University and back in their nice car, without ever having to come face to face with "normal" life here.

And while this is certainly a dangerous trend, I an also understand the thought process behind parents who are bringing their children up in Lima. If I had kids, I would only want the best for them. A certain level of security is necessary and Lima really can be a scary place for some who aren't used to it. But there is obviously a limit that is being breeched, at least according to Adolph.

While I'm pretty confident with understanding his general social message, I'm still trying to tackle the author's obsession with the Catholic church. Peru, of course is very catholic and I've sort of gotten in trouble already professing that I do not ascribe to any organized religion. But I don't quite understand why he thinks that capitalism necessarily takes over religious dogma, and why the two would be standing face to face at one point. Perhaps a Peruvian might have some insight to that...

On a slightly different note:

In general, I would consider Peru to be very "book-unfriendly." Finding this novel in particular almost drove me into desperation. Bookstores have a very limited selection; specialty bookstores carried very few works by this author; and the National Library lets you only look at the book--you are not allowed to take it with you nor take photocopies of the book, so I was very close to going back and taking a photograph of each page. I rand around Lima and spent a day in the center, going to this place called "Amazonas," which is the craziest used book market I've ever come across:

These little book cubbies just stretch on forever and you can find anything from cookbooks to school books, to obscure language dictionaries. I even found a 1940s copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, but of course this book (by a limenian author!) was nowhere to be found.

Furthermore, if you actually do find your desired reading material in a real store, be prepared to dig deep into your wallet because books do not come cheap here, unless, of course, you are willing to go to Amazonas. It turned out that my professor's neighbor had this book lying in his library so all my agony was for nothing in the end, but at least I got some sociological insight.

Peru's literacy rate is roughly 90% (check out the UN's Human Development indexes, it's wicked cool to see how countries compare: http://hdr.undp.org/en/) and for those who can read, buying books is probably not a very common occurrence. Even at the University, all of our readings come from photocopies. Each building has a team of "photocopy experts" standing in a tiny room in the basement, surrounded by machines, photocopying all day long. Students come either with books from the library that need to be photocopied, or ask for a copy of the readings their professor had left for them earlier. For 10 cents ($0.03) a page, this can get "costly," but not nearly as costly as actually having to buy the books.

And the library is an interesting place too: Not only does the University have a very small selection (3 floors), but until this year, students weren't allowed into the stacks. They had to find the dewey decimal code of the book, hope that it was the right one, then send a "professional book finder" off to get the book for them. This year marks the great revolution and students are permitted to find their own books and browse through the stacks. But still, you can only take out up to three books at a time, and only have them for a three day period until you get bombarded with really angry emails, threatening to charge you a lot of money! To make a long story short, books really are a commodity here.