A bit about Peruvian politics

Not that I know or really care to know a whole lot about politics, in the States or in Peru, nor do I claim to know a lot about the history of Peruvian politics and government, but...

One month from today, June 5th, will be a very interesting day. 

In early April, Peru held elections for its president, congress, and representatives to the Andean Parliament.  There were campaign signs and posters everywhere.

There really aren't political parties in Peru the way there are in the U.S.  There, we have well-established parties who put forth candidates.  Here, it's more like a candidate decides they want to run and then they form a party of supporters around themselves.  For example, in the orange sign above, the parliamentary candidates are aligning themselves with presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori- I think the party's name is Fuerza 2011- and you can see the party's symbol is an orange circle with a big K in it, for Keiko.  The symbol for Toledo's Perú Posible party was a big T.  I think there were 11 or 14 or some such number of presidential candidates on the ballot.

It seemed to me that there were 5 major presidential candidates- Alejandro Toledo, Keiko Fujimori, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK), Luis Castañeda, and Ollanta Humala.  I feel like I personally saw a lot of support for PPK, who indeed won Lima in the elections.  Overall, though, it turned out Ollanta Humala first, then Keiko Fujimori, PPK, Toledo... I was a little surprised it was Keiko in second instead of PPK or Toledo, just from what I'd seen.

I don't know the story behind this, but somehow PPK became PPKuy (cuy = guinea pig), and some of his supporters would go around in guinea pig mascot suits.  I particularly enjoyed this, especially when I'd see them dancing near busy intersections.
 I think U.S. candidates should have mascots. :-)

We're all about the right to vote in the US- but we also have the right not to vote, I suppose you could say.  Voting is obligatory in Peru.  I was impressed by the television and radio commercials I heard explaining exactly how to fill out the ballots.  The way the Peruvian governmental system works is that each president serves a 5-year term and can be re-elected, though not for a consecutive term.  Also, the candidate has to win a straight-up majority- 50% plus one vote.  If no one gets that majority in the first vote- which I think would be rare- there's a second, run-off vote between the two top presidential candidates.

So right now, there will be a second round of voting on June 5th between Ollanta and Keiko.  Keiko Fujimori is the daughter of a former Peruvian president (Alberto Fujimori, 1990-2000.  Note they're only supposed to be in office for 5 years at a time... he was a dictator who's currently in jail for things like human rights violations.  But he's kind of controversial because he also helped the economy start to improve and stomped out the Shining Path terrorist group.)  Keiko would likely continue things in the way they've been going, as the past few presidents (at least 25 years I think) have been right-wing.  Ollanta is left-wing, and is more socialist and nationalist.  He's been compared to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, though that's become a controversial topic too.  Peru is still a third-world country, and a large percentage of the population lives below the poverty line.  So Ollanta has a lot of appeal.  He lost in the second round of voting in 2006 to current president Alan Garcia.  I personally think he'll be the winner... People are looking for a change, though whether or not it'll be a change for the better overall is hard to say yet. 

People who didn't vote for either of these two top candidates in the first round may now have a difficult choice to make.  Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian author who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, put this choice between Ollanta and Keiko as "choosing between AIDS and cancer".  Some people don't like Ollanta but will by no means vote for Keiko, and vice versa.  In these cases it's more voting against someone than voting for someone.  The third option, if you really don't like either candidate, is purposely mis-marking your ballot and having it discounted- because you have to go vote or get fined. 

It's been really interesting to be here in Peru during their elections.  This is a pretty big deal, I think.  It's a bit surprising how much we (me and the other students in my program) care about their elections- we live here now, and we want to see this country continue to move forward along a good path, whatever that may be exactly.  So we'll see what happens June 5th, especially when the preliminary results start to come in.  The new president will take office after I leave- July 28, Peru's Independence Day (from Spain).  Apparently half the country will be celebrating, the other half crying.  You'll hear more from me on this topic around June 5th.

A taste of home...?

McDonald's, Starbucks, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, Domino's, Little Caesar's, Chile's, TGI Friday's...

American food chains are very present here.  I'm possibly missing a few too.

I heard Coca-Cola had a long fight to become the #1 soda company in the country, but the national soft drink of Peru, Inca Kola, kept coming out on top.  So they ended up buying Inca Kola.  Some Americans don't like it and think it kind of tastes like bubble gum, but I like it.

I have yet to try McDonald's and see if it tastes the same.  I rarely eat this kind of fast food in the U.S. anyways.  But my first night here we were free to go find our own dinner, and ended up getting KFC.  Very Peruvian fare.  We did go to Pizza Hut once, and I'm not sure pepperoni existed at this particular one. 

I'd rather go to a small restaurant and have a huge lemonade (technically lime-ade) and a delicious sandwich of shredded chicken, avocado, and shoe-string potato chips.  I'd have had a nice picture of it if my camera hadn't died.  So good. 

This was actually in Arequipa.  Here in Lima, I'd rather go to La Lucha sandwich place for their classic chicken sandwich.  Soooo good!

Dancing with scissors

You know how you were always told not to run with scissors? 

As a cultural activity, last night my program went to a dinner show featuring various types of dances native to Peru.  Sierran dances (highlands), Afro-peruvian dances, Marinera... though there weren't any from the jungle (which might not have been usual).  It was neat to see the different forms and styles.  Occasionally they pulled an audience member onto stage too, which was particularly amusing during the one that involves candles and trying to set each other on fire and dancing to avoid getting set on fire.  That sounds more dangerous than it is, really.  And the finale was la Danza de las Tijeras.  This is a traditional Andean dance (originated in Ayacucho, I think), where the dancers carry two (separate) pieces of metal which they manipulate to make sound as they dance.  The metallic, bell-like sounds in the video below are made by the scissors. 



This was just at the beginning; they did more complex moves- some more acrobatic, some while on their heads... my camera wasn't doing very well with the low lighting and moving dancers, but you can see in the photo below that they're upside down.  It was pretty impressive.

It was neat to be able to see this because I'd heard about it in my literature class- we read a short story that was about a dancer like this.

D'onofrio: "Close to you"

We have an inside joke about the slogan of an ice cream company called D'onofrio- "Cerca de ti" (near/close to you).  But close to us, D'onofrio is dangerous, because then we want ice cream, especially when it's warm and sunny.  It's pretty common to see the yellow D'onofrio carts with their sellers, also dressed in yellow, near La Católica and elsewhere.  Today when I came home from school, there was one outside my building... cerca de mí... dun dun dunn!!

So I decided I wanted an ice cream.  They're very good.  I like the flavor called "Princesa" (Princess)- the center is peanut-flavored ice cream with a thinner layer of chocolate ice cream surrounding it, covered on the outside by a thin layer of chocolate.  I asked the D'onofrio man if he had Princesa, and he said, "Una Princesa para la princesa," (A "Princess" for the princess), to which I smiled shyly, of course. (He wasn't being creepy at all, by the way.)  Another guy came up to buy ice cream, and the seller was like, "Just a minute, a Princess for the princess!" as he was getting it out.  And the other guy jokingly said, "I want a Princess for the princess (referring to himself) too."  Except he wasn't a princess.  I almost told him that, but I'm too shy to joke with random strangers in a language I'm not fluent in.

Deliciousness.  Though it wasn't until after I happened to see some commercials for D'onofrio that I realized it wasn't D'anafria; as you can see above, it's hard to tell which vowel that is.

Classes at La Católica

Since it's almost time for midterms, I should probably tell you which classes I'm taking.  But first a short word from our sponsors:

My host mom came into my room this afternoon and offered me some gummies.  I'm fairly certain they were Listerine-flavored (as in the mouthwash).  My mouth felt quite fresh afterwards... maybe she's trying to tell me something??

I already talked a bit about the 2-week intensive Spanish class I had before the official semester started.  Then we got to pick our university semester classes.  The foreign students didn't officially register until the second week, so we basically had the first week of classes to check out ones we were interested in- did it look interesting?  How was the workload?  Can you understand the professor?  I was looking at taking chorus, but it wasn't quite how I'd expected it to be, so I didn't.  I needed a literature class, so I'm taking Comtemporary Peruvian Narrative; I'm taking Quechua (an Andean indigenous language); and two CIEE program courses- Peruvian Social Reality and a writing course.

Peruvian Social Reality is the class I've been posting blog assignments for.  This class aims to look at social and cultural issues facing Peru today.  Juan Carlos is a good professor; I've found the class interesting so far.  The writing class is meant to help us improve our writing and grammar skills, and help us with whatever we might have to do for our classes.  Jorge, the professor I had for the 2-week course, teaches it... which means, between the group of students and the professor, it can be a very entertaining class.  It's been a fairly easy class- which is what I was looking for, though this kind of material is always good to review and work more with (like the subjunctive tense).

In my literature class, we're focusing on works by two well-known Peruvian authors:  José María Arguedas and Mario Vargas Llosa (who was the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature winner).  We'll be reading four novels (two by each), plus a lot of supplementary material (critiques and commentaries of the works we're reading).  This packet of supplementary materials- just for the first half of the class- was huge and daunting at the beginning, earning it the title of "Packet of Doom, Death, and Destruction, Complete with Wrath and Pestilence".  It's just a lot of reading, especially because it takes me so much longer to read things in Spanish than in English.  We've finished the first novel, Los ríos profundos ("Deep Rivers") by Arguedas and are now starting the second one, called El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (something like "The Fox from Above and the Fox from Below").

I have found Quechua interesting so far, though I find languages in general very interesting.  Quechua was the language of the Incan empire and is spoken by 8-10 million people today in South America, with the highest numbers in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.  Whereas learning Spanish was a little easier because, in many ways, it is structurally and grammatically similar to English, as both have Latin roots.  Quechua, on the other hand, is a language of suffixes and is structured differently (and sounds very different).  I think you can add up to 10 suffixes to one root.  For example, to say "I have a professor", it's Ñuqa yachachiqniyuqmi kani, literally "I am the one who has the one who makes know."  (Though this looks complicated mostly because there's no direct way to say "I have".)  And sentence order is Subject-Object-Verb, like Japanese or kind of like Yoda, though he might put the object first...  Why take Quechua?  Why not?

Both of these direct enrollment courses (quechua and lit.) are four credit courses and meet two days a week, two hours each.  I'm not used to the 2-hour time blocks, so these can be tough to sit through and focus in for the entire time, especially without a break.  Most courses at UW-L are one hour or one and a half. 

I should go to sleep, I decided to take the quechua section that meets at 8am Tuesday and Thursday.  The theory is that after the class, I'm up and awake and can be more productive than I would be if I didn't have something to get up for.  I should to leave around 7:15 to ensure I get there on time- my micros are packed at this time in the morning and a lot don't even stop.  I had to wait 15-20 minutes and 6 or 7 micros once before one stopped.  My rule is that if it stops, I'll get on because I need to get to class... even though we're usually packed like sardines standing in this little bus.

Lima Transportation- Micros

Getting around in a city of 9 million people can sometimes be tough.  I would not want to drive in Lima- traffic is rather chaotic.  Depending where you are and the time of day, there can be a lot of it.  Sometimes you have to take the initiative- "I'm going now, so you need to stop."  Crossing uncontrolled intersections is a test of wills- will oncoming traffic defer to you as you nose out into the intersection, or will they refuse to stop and let you through, forcing you to wait?  Sometimes you have to take the initiative- "I'm going now, so you need to stop."  It can lead to interesting traffic situations.  But the drivers have skills- I haven't seen a lot of accidents (minor or major).

 Both taken from my bus ("micro") on a large main street called La Marina.  In the left one, you'll notice three taxis- there are lots of taxis in Lima.  Not all of them look that nice.

The main system of "public" transportation is the micros (pronounced like "me"-"crow").  These buses come in various sizes and run various routes; I've heard there are over 600 different routes.  There are no set time schedules and no maps.  The lack of maps can make it tough to figure out how to get somewhere, but the main streets are written on the side of the vehicle and you can always ask if a particular micro goes a particular place.  The also tend to be color-coded by route.  When I first heard there weren't set times, I was a little uneasy, but I actually like this a lot.  What it means is that you can go at almost any time- no need to wait until only a certain time or worry about missing the bus.  Another one will come at some point, though some are more frequent than others.  There must be dozens of separate micros that run the route I take to school.  If one's full, I know that within a few minutes another will come.  The next one may be full too if it's before 8am, but that's besides the point.  I think there were three at once this morning (all full, haha... though I got on one anyways).

The buses range in size from really big ones (left) to small ones (right).  The smallest ones, called combis, are what I take most of the time.  A combi can more or less comfortably seat about 16 people... I'm been on combis that have 22, possibly 23 passengers, the extras standing.  Some of them have high enough roofs for me (as a short person) to be able to stand up straight, but some don't, and then even I have to bend over.  And sometimes sitting in the seats, they're close enough together that my back is flat against the seatback and my knees are pressed against the seat in front of me.  Combis are usually not incredibly comfortable for tall people, but I don't mind them.  I kind of like them, actuallly. Unless I'm one of 6 people standing.  It's possible there are sometimes 7 people standing, but I'm never in a position to be able to see to count.

Micros are usually operated by two people- the chofer (driver) and the cobrador.  The cobrador's job is to help watch for people who want to get on, open and close the door, handle route questions, advertise their route by calling out street names, and take fares and give change if needed.  I would never be able to do it.  It's a little demanding physically- up and down, opening and closing the door, sometimes not having a seat- plus, you have to know your routes well and all the streets and major destinations, as well as know how much it costs to go from any Point A to any Point B along the route.  The chofers are pretty skilled drivers- they tend to weave in and out of traffic, having to switch lanes quickly to let someone on or off or just to get around slower vehicles.  Sometimes they drive and turn fast and it's a little scary, but my micros have never hit another vehicle, though occasionally the driver seems to like to see how close he can get.  Yesterday my micro driver didn't want to wait in line at the stoplight, so he moved into the empty left turn lane and just slipped back into the straight lane in front of the other cars once the light turned.

I like the micros though, and am particularly fond of the combis, since I take them all the time.  You can pretty much get anywhere you want to go (as long as you know the routes), at any time, and can more or less get on or off at any point.  It's a little chance for adventure every day- you never know what might happen.  Maybe nothing, maybe you'll get on one that doesn't go where you want it to, maybe you're trying to get somewhere new and don't know the route, maybe the driver or cobrador will be crazy, maybe you'll meet someone (though mostly people don't talk), maybe the cobrador will accidently get left behind, maybe they'll randomly turn down a different street than usual, maybe your friend will happen to get on the same one... the possibilities are endless! :-)  I can't think of any good stories personally right now though...

It usually takes me about half an hour to get to the university from my house.  I take one combi from near my house to the street La Católica is on, then a second one (any size, depends on what's there) to the campus itself.  This is my micro, the "S" Ate-Callao:

There are actually different groups that run this route- they all say "S- Ate-Callao", but the Star group takes a different route through San Isidro.  It took me a few weeks to figure this out- why does it sometimes go a different route??  It doesn't matter to me, but I wanted to know if there was a way to tell beforehand where it would go.  It was really confusing at first.  But routes are for the most part fixed, unless it's Sunday...

I can actually take that same S micro to the church I'm going to here on Sundays, just in the opposite direction from school.  However, I learned that I need to ask if it's going the full route, because sometimes it doesn't on Sundays.  Once I ended up taking two micros and then walking the last two blocks.  "Yes, thank you for dropping me off here, I have a vague idea of where I am..."  The other thing I can't figure out is the flexibility of fares on Sunday.  It might cost me S./ 1.50 (Peruvian currency = sol) to get there but S./ 2.00 to get back, or vice versa.  I think it depends on the cobrador.

Whew, that's enough for now... Sorry that I fail at blogging consistently.  There's so much I haven't blogged about yet.

About advertisements...

Instead of trying to translate my last post, which was in Spanish and for my class, I'm just going to give a more informal overview... or short rant.  Our topic was "Race and Ethnicity", and I think almost all of us wrote about the advertisements, billboards, commercials, etc. that we've seen here in Peru.

WHY IS EVERYONE WHITE??

That's pretty much how we feel about it.  It's true, the vast majority of the people seen on billboards or in commercials is white, or lighter skinned.  Another student and I were walking from the university to the street where we get on the micro, and as we neared the big commercial center, Plaza San Miguel, we noticed this.  We pointed to one advertisement after another, "There's another one!  They're all white!"  A good number of billboard models, particularly for some of the bigger companies or department stores, are blond as well. 

Why does this bother me?  It's not at all representative of the majority of the population of Peru, or of the people it's trying to sell products to.  According to the CIA World Factbook, the demographics of Peru are as follows: 45% indigenous (Amerindian), 37% mestizo (of mixed Spanish and indigenous blood), 15% white, and 3% black, Chinese, Japanese, or other.  That is, 85% of the population is not white.  And people belonging to this 85% majority rarely appear in commercials, on billboards, etc.  It doesn't make sense to me.  (Well... unless you're looking at the history of Europeans in the Americas and how racism still affects the world today... complicated social/economic/ethnic stuff.)

Peru has a long history of ethnic diversity with a great variety of ethnic groups, reflected in the number of languages spoken in Peru today (I believe my professor said 68 languages).  And things got a lot more complicated once the Spanish arrived and conquered in the 16th century.  You know how in the U.S. there's a question on certain kinds of forms about ethnicity, where you mark "Caucasian/white", etc.?  I think my professor said they did away with that a long time ago here... people tended to lie.  Mestizos said they were white and indigenous people said they were mestizo...  And anyways, very few of us "caucasians" are actually from the Caucas region in Georgia (the country), nor are we "white" when compared with, say, a blank piece of paper. 

This is just from my perspective as a foreigner.  Maybe in the U.S. today we're trained to be sensitive to issues like this- we have to represent our diversity (and be politically correct), can't exclude anyone.  Besides, how exactly do you define who's "white" and who isn't- where's the dividing line?  I think it can depend on a lot of individual factors.  Before I came here, I thought to myself, "Maybe I'll learn to speak Spanish so well they'll think I'm Peruvian."  Well, first, I really don't look Peruvian at all.  I'm even a little bit whiter than most white Peruvians, and sometimes people assume I don't speak any Spanish.  Now I wonder if it would be better to be taken as a foreigner or as a white Peruvian.  It probably depends, but I don't know the answer.

Ok... I could talk more, but I think I'm done, for now at least.