[We have blog post assignments for my Peruvian Social Reality class; my last post was one of these, and was in Spanish. I'm going to translate it for you all... hopefully it goes ok, because I'm just translating what I wrote in Spanish, which is probably not exactly how I would have written it if I'd been writing in English. Sometimes you say things slightly differently, in a way that sounds better in that particular language.]
Peru is a country that has great cultural diversity, with different geographic and ecological zones and a mix of influences from diverse ethnic groups. It seems to me that there is a connection beween the geography of a region and the culture of the people that inhabit it. This depends on how the land challenges its inhabitants and how they interact with it. In Peru, there are three major regions: the coast, the sierra (mountains/highlands), and the jungle/rainforest (la selva). To find out a bit about the cultural diversity between these zones, I interviewed my Peruvian host mom, who has lived in each of these areas. She was born in the sierra and her family moved to Lima, but she returned to live in the sierra when she was 10 to 15 years old before returning to the coast. After she got married, she moved to Iquitos and lived in the jungle for 16 years, until returning to live in Lima again. And this is what my host mom has to say about the cultural diversity of her country, and what she has experienced during her life.
The first point she made, which I think is a good one to make, is that the cultural diversity of Peru is like that of any other country- each region has its own idiosyncrasies and specific customs. But here, the regional differences are more marked and less similar than they may be in other countries. The geography and the climate of the coast, the sierra, and the jungle are very different, and their respective cultures are different as well. In the sierra, the terrain is difficult and the climate is cold; according to my host mom, the people are hard-working and a little more quiet or introverted. On the other hand, the people of the jungle are more extroverted and not as hard-working, because the climate is so hot. It also seemed to her that the women in the jungle are more hard-working than the men. But she said that there's a lot of happiness and entertainment there, with lots of music and dancing. And the people are always smiling and laughing. "Everyone tells their problems laughing," she told me. Finally, life on the coast is more fast-paced and the people have a lot of responsability. She also said that the people of the coast look down on the others a little, and there's especially discrimination against the indigenous people, despite the fact that it is (or at least it was) their land.
My host mom classifies her own culture as more coastal, but a little of all three. She loves the sierra for its landscape and nature and the tranquility of life there, where she could play as a kid without worrying about dangers. She likes the happiness of the jungle, although at the beginning she clashed with it. It was difficult for her to adapt culturally in Iquitos. The characteristics of the culture were completely different from those that she was accustomed to. The people drank a good amount, and it seemed strange to her that they didn't want to work on Saturdays and Sundays. And she also had to get used to the slowness of life a little. When she returned to Lima, she thought, how worried, sad, and stressed the people looked! But she likes living in Lima, because "everyone comes to Lima", plus it's "her place". I think that wherever you may go, there will always be something special about the place you consider your own.
I asked her if it seemed to her that there was a general culture of the whole country, but my host mom said no. Peru is very diverse, with a lot of diversity within Lima itself as well because of all the immigrants that come to live in the city. And furthermore you can define "culture" in various ways, as it's something very complex and there are many facets of culture, including manners of dress, speech, and thought, food, language, customs, attitudes, etc. In the U.S., and especially in the universities today, diversity is seen as something desirable and beneficial. American universities strive to attain more diversity- culturally, ethnically, in thought patterns, in majors, etc. The train of thought is that diversity enriches the experience of everyone. (Well, I think that in general it's like that, thought is a much deeper matter.) I asked my host mom if the cultural diversity of Peru seemed like a good thing, a kind of richness for the country, or something not as good. She answered in a soft voice that it didn't seem like a good thing to her, because the different forms of thought don't unite. She said the government doesn't try to satisfy everyone, in general only those with money that helped them win the campaign and not the poor. So there's resentment towards the government and the country remains divided.
I find Peru's cultural diversity very interesting and I enjoy learning about different cultures, and this answer didn't sit well with me and made me think a lot about cultural diversity in general and the pros and cons of it. This is a very complicated and complex matter. I think it will be very interesting to see what the future holds for a country with so much cultural diversity like Peru.
[Ha, I really don't like how a rather direct translation of this sounds in English. Too bad. Qué piña.]
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