Have I ever told you about my school? While Extreme isin itself an interesting place to work at, we work in line with a Catholic university called Universidad Catolica San Pablo. At UCSP, the rules ARE followed. Men don’t wear piercings and cant have tattoos, women only wear skirts that go below the knee. You must show up on time (students seem to ignore this), every website except for Google is blocked (unless you know the secret of hacking the security system at school and browsing facebook while waiting on your students to show (Accordingto the school, God is frowning upon this…by the way a figuring of the Crucifx hangs in every classroom), and absolutely NO public displays of affection.
So with that said, you would expect students to be proper andprofessional. However, my students are definitely cool…which is a bit contrasting to the persona that this conservative community portrays. People here are never on time, party like it’s the end of the world, snog in the streets, will drunkenly follow you home, steal things from your hands as you stroll the streets, drive you somewhere in a taxi and leave you after they have robbed you of your camera and phone (but they do leave the SIM card and memory card, and a beer if they have stolenyour alcohol…this happened to a friend of mine).
So, sometimes I ask myself, where are Peru’s priorities?
Are they within the Church or in projects such as building Starbucks and Pizza Huts rather than:
1. fixing the holes in the roads
2. bettering the security within the city
3. making advancements in the education
4. improving the sewage system so that we can drink the tap water and flush our toilet paper
5. putting proper roofs on homes
6. creating new jobs so that old ladies donot have to sit ata street cart all night selling chicken sandwiches for 3 soles
7. decreasing the amount of taxis and combies
8. doing something about the noise problem within the center
9. putting toilet seats on toilets so thatpeople don’thave to hover (although its great for girls thighs)
10. do I have to continue?
Peru is a developing nation but it is choosing to develop in anodd way. There are 4 new shopping centres here. But the toilets in the beautiful new malls cannot handle toilet paper. Outside the center, houses have sheets of metal as roofs, but there is a satellite dish to accompany it.
Students here in Arequipa will discuss with relative calmness the lack of quality public education and health care in their country. It's as though they believe that what they have is the norm, and they accept that. However, ask them how they feel about the changes in the country and they will talk with great enthusiasm about how they finally have a Starbucks here.It doesn't matter that to buy a cup of coffee there costs them the equivalent of about 4 hours work, and if they drink so much coffee that they have heart failure their doctors probably won't be able to help them because they can't pay for it. They are just happy to be a partof something they seein films. Like I said, strange priorities.
On the subject of developing, that leads me to think of the recent Peruvian national elections. My friend Claire did some research and wrote it bestso I will share with you..
A tale of drugs, military dictators and human sized guinea pigs
Recently there has been a new addition to the animals ofArequipa. As I was casually walking back home on a Sunday afternoon I stumbled upon this finecreature:
Yes, that is a human sized guinea pig. And what, pray tell, is a Peruvian person doing dressed as a rodent in 25 degree Celsius heat on the day of rest? Well obviously they are canvassing votes for one of the leading politicians in Peru's upcoming Presidential election.
Election fever has hit Peru with a big guinea pig squeal of excitement. The past few years have been a time of change for this fine country. The percentage of Peruvians living in poverty fell from 49% in 2004 to 35% in 2009, and between 2005 and 2010Peru jumped up an impressive 24 places in the United Nations Human Development Report, which ranks countries by income, life expectancy and education. In recent years it's GDP grew by over 5% a year, despite the recession, which is the highest rate within Latin America's bigger economies.
However, it doesn't all smell of roses.A lot of this growth is dueto the fact that Peru has a lot of natural resources which are currently in demand right now across the world. There are still many problems in Peru which need to be fixed. Almost one fifth of children are malnourished, Peru is the world's biggest cocaine exporter, a fifth ofPeruvians have no access to piped water and the murder rate hastripled between 2002 and 2008. The new President needs to make the right decisions in where to invest to run with the spell of economic growth, whilst fixing the internal problems. A couple of bad decisions could lead to economic decline, and further social unrest. A lot rests on this election.
So you would hope there would be somehigh quality candidates to choose from. There is certainly a high quantity, eleven candidates areregistered as potential presidents of the country. Of these eleven, four have emerged as the front runners. And naturally, because it's Peru, the candidates are slightly more colourful than your average politician. Betweenthe four candidates there are tales of drug abuse, fathers whowere dictators and self-help gurus. One of the following people is very likely to be President of Peru, come July:
Alejandro Toledo
If anything Toledo was more of a rock and roll star than a typical President. His time in power was rocked by tales of alcoholism, cocaine abuse and accusations ofrape. More recently he commented on that the fact that some former political leaders had suggested it could be a good idea to study whether some drugs could be legalized. The media, and his fellow candidates, twisted this into claiming Toledo wants to legalise drugs.Toledo has already been President of Peru, between 2001 and 2006. Compared to some other former presidents, his time in power was relatively scandal-free. He didn't propel Peru into greatness, but he also didn't violate human rights laws resulting in a military dictatorship. He did however finish his term as president with approval ratings of 8%, which made him the least popular elected leader of South America at the time. When he was first elected in he received a salary of USD $18,000per month. This resulted in mass outrage, as a comparative schoolteachers earn $100–$200 per month. Toledo later stated his salary had been lowered to $12,000, still an astronomical amount.
Many of his fellow candidates have done public drug tests to prove they are clean to manipulate Toledo into doing the same. He eventually caved, went to a private clinic for tests, and showed a certificate during a live television debate which stated hewas free of drugs. The other candidates are calling for him to redo the test in a more public forum.
His policies are largely fairly standard, if he is elected president in Peru there will be no hugely noticeable changes. As always though, Toledo has managed to stir up some controversy with one of his manifestos. If elected he will fight for the legalisation of gay and lesbian civil unions. 80% of the population of Peru are catholic, and the Archbishop of Lima has openly attacked Toledo's proposal, calling it an error and stating, "It is a proposal made by a political party and we will see what the population says. The Church teaches something else, but I think politicians present topics that I don’t know if thepopulation accepts or not."
Ollanta Humala
Humala is good mates with Hugo Chavaz, the president of Venezuela. Chavaz describes Humala as, "a good lad, a good soldier." Humala says that he sees Venezuela and Cuba as the ideal political modals for Peru, with, "appropriate local adjustments." To give this some context, Chavaz is abusing his power to rule over Venezuela’s courts meaninghe can disqualify or send a rising number of his opponents to prison.In class recently I was asking my students to provide examples of sentences using the word will. One student stated, "If Ollanta Humala is elected president I will leave the country." This is not an exclusive opinion, many Peruvians are genuinely concerned that this man may potentially be running the country.
Prior to running for President, Humala, a former army comandante and mutineer, was accused of human rights violations. His brother Ulysses has publicly described him as, "a little Hitler dictator." Another of his brothers, Antauro, an army major, has spent the last six years in prison because he was responsible for killing four unarmed policeman in a paramilitary gang attack. Humala was the organiser of the attack.
However, what Peruvians fear most about Humala is not what he has done in the past, it's his policies for the future of Peru. He is an extreme nationalist, with a specific vendeta against Chile. If elected it is likely he would nationalise as much as he could about the country, including banks, newspapers, TV, and aviation. International contracts connected with energy, mining and retail would be abandoned. When campaigning Humala has managed to convinve of lot the people living poverty here that this is what Peru needs in order for them to stop living in poverty, and has now emerged as the front runner for the election, much to the distress of everyone else who realises his policies will probably result in the decline of the country.
Keiko Fujimori
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Fujimori sounds great on paper. By the age of 25 she was reponsible for the building of several orphanges in Peru. She also created the first pediatric cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit in Peru, which has enabled more than one thousand children with heart problems to get surgery. Her humanitarian work resulted in her being awarded the Orden Bernardo O'Higgins, the highest honour a foreigner can receive from theChilean government.
However. She has another unique selling point which isn't quite as noble as the aforementioned details. Her father was once president of Peru. During his time as president he worked towards defeating the Maoist terrorists of the Shining Path. Most Peruvians would agree this is a good thing. Unfortunately his means of doing this was by violating many human rights. He is now serving a long term prison sentence, which Keiko will dropif she is made president. Many believe this is her sole motivation for running for president as her policies don't disclose any radical changes in social or economic policy.
A Peruvian author, has described having to choose between Keiko and Humala as having to choose between cancer and aids. It is likely though that they will be the final two candidates in the running for the title of President.
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski
He was Toledo's finance minister and was partly responsible for developing the economy into the success it is now, dealing with problems such as high inflation and low income. If elected he has promised eliminate extreme poverty within ten years.As you can see, Kuczynski, or PPK as he is more commonly known, is the President for the people in his bright pink shirt with disco dance moves. PPK is also the candidate who is using human sized guinea pigs as his promotional representatives.
However, many Peruvians don't trust him to do this. PPK represents the rich in a poor country. He has an American passport and many believe he doesn't have Peru's best interests at heart. He is an accomplished flautist and is often accompanied by a Mexican self-help guru. In short, he is a little bit bonkers. So much so he claims to be a politician who speaks the truth; he was quoted as saying, "I am used to saying the truth. That is why I promise very little because I am sure of what I can fulfill.
And that, in a nutshell, is the potential future of Peru. Either a drug addict, a Latin American Hitler, a woman who is gentically told to go against human rights or a man who consults a self-help guru and chooses to represent himself with guinea pigs. The government tries to bring some sense of normality to the election proceedings by banning the sale of alcohol for 3 days before voting, so Peruvians can make a sober and wise decision about who they cast their vote for. Candidates are allowed to distribute free gifts in order to win votes, but all opinion polls are banned a week before voting so Peruvians can't be influenced by what each other thinks, which seems a little bit contradictory.
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