21/10/2008

Pics are up, check em out:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2043207&l=86412&id=8701459

My new name at home is “Mate-ito,” which basically means “Little Mateo.” Use of the diminutive like that is widespread in Peruvian Spanish, and it’s unmistakably a sign of endearment (for example, calling a girl a gordita – “chubby,” more or less – is in no way a rude remark. Quite the opposite, usually). But it’s pretty damn funny when the toddlers in your house start referring to you as a “little” brother.

Also, please note: my sister’s name is spelled Rocio, not Rosillo. My bad.

20/10/2008

Yesterday I went to a meeting of the Chacrasana Asamblea General (general assembly), which had been advertised on the big chalkboard just as you come into town as a meeting to discuss the collection of payments for the town’s water system. This is exactly the kind of stuff we’re going to be getting into beginning in about five weeks out in our sites, so I was excited to see how things went down. As it turns out it could have been right out of the Peace Corps Peru training manual: “The way things work, or don’t work, in Peru” or “All I ever needed to know about my community I learned in the first four minutes of a water meeting.”

I walked down to the local, or community center, a little before the alleged start time of four PM. I was pretty lethargic after having had starches and chicken in various forms pumped into me all day (pretty standard for a Sunday), as well as a few beers with my crazy uncle from Callao who was in town again. But after my first shower in a couple days I was feeling pretty good. As I had anticipated, no one actually showed up for the meeting until around four-thirty, the first two there being one of my aunts and another older woman. It took us a good fifteen minutes just to get into the place because none of their keys seemed to work. Finally someone found the guy with the key, who was a few doors down having some beers outside one of the many little storefront/residence combos in town.

By five there were about twelve of us in attendance, seated in plastic chairs that the men had procured from one of the rooms on the second story of the building. The actual meeting took place not in a room but rather in an open-air landing at the top of the stairs (the lack of rain this time of year sort of blends the line between inside and out). At first things felt pretty empty, considering only about a quarter of the chairs was occupied. But one-by-one people trickled in, and by about six the place was mostly full, split pretty evenly between men and women. One dog, too.

It was not a particularly lighthearted affair. The meeting lasted an hour-and-a-half or so, and basically alternated between a whole bunch of people talking at once, and long-winded monologues by some of the older men in the group. I was genuinely surprised at not only the number of women in attendance, but even more at the active roles many of them took. I can safely say my impression of some of some of the older Chacrasana women has changed in a dramatic way. Male or female, no one seemed particularly happy about the state of affairs, with dramatic, fiery language like lamentablemente (“regrettably”) and gran irresponsibilidad (“great irresponsibility”) punctuating the discussion every few minutes. I definitely didn’t pick up everything being shouted out, but I got the basic jist.

The issue at hand is the organization – or more accurately, lack thereof – with respect to the collection of water deudas or monthly dues. Water is incredibly cheap in Chacrasana (ten soles a month for all the water you can use), but freeriding remains a serious problem. I didn’t get the impression that the elected town leaders had the leverage to just cut off a household’s water if it hadn’t paid (this was just one of the discrepancies I noticed as far as what we’re being taught in training about rural water management). Either that isn’t part of their responsibility, or – more likely – they don’t want to start a civil war. As I found out from two of my aunts after the meeting, the town is already split into opposing factions, each of which apparently has its own junta directiva or board of directors. Why the fissure exists or how long it’s gone on I’m not sure yet, but I do know that it doesn’t make dues collections any easier. I think it has something to do with legal land ownership vs. squatters who have sort-of become permanent residents after sticking around long enough. What I did pick up on was that the one side is not opposed to the other cleaning the system and conducting regular maintenance on it. Not an earth-shattering revelation.

I wish there had been some way to take a picture without offending everyone in the room. If National Geographic ever did one of those zip-code features about Chacrasana, Lima, Peru, that shot would be a full-page blowup. Probably on the second page. One of those photos where the subjects’ faces tell you everything you need to know about them, where the tough lives they’ve lived come through in the lines in their faces, their unwavering pride reflected in the women’s dyed hair and jingly earrings and the men’s folded arms and intense gazes. Where you can almost smell that odd combination of body odor and old-lady-perfume that town meetings have an uncanny tendency to bring out, regardless of culture, language, or economic status. Every so often a laugh would trickle through the group, mostly, I think, to remind everyone that they were on the same team. It was those who didn’t bother to show up who were the problem. I had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last time I witnessed the “blaming ‘se’ ” phenomenon. Se can be translated as “them,” “the man,” or anyone else you want to point a finger at.

Much of the first hour revolved around the absence of a certain “Senor de la Torre,” who I later found out is the current president of the water directiva but is nearing the end of his three-year stint. I figured he probably didn’t bear any relation to the only other Peruvian de la Torre I know – in the mid-twentieth century Victor Raul Haya de la Torre founded the revolutionary party APRA, to which the current president Alan Garcia belongs (never mind the fact that since his first term in the eighties he’s pretty much completed a political about-face and has brought the party with him) – but I did wonder what the father of modern Peruvian socialism would have to say about the country today with its astronomical poverty rates, wealth disparity, and lack of basic health services in much of the country. Not to mention the inherent difficulties in the concept of communal resource ownership (as my aunt put it, “Todos consumimos el agua!” – “We all consume the water!”), even in small towns with excellent infrastructure, like ours. When the president did finally show up, it was only after one of the women left the meeting and tracked him down. He had been at a friend’s house meeting with the priest. If Norman Rockwell ever had a few drinks and then ran into Che Guevara, I bet they could have created a pretty accurate depiction of the whole thing.

In the end the meeting never got past the informal open forum that it began as. Eventually it was determined that not enough of the town was represented and that the real meeting would have to take place the following Friday (except this time downstairs where there’s more room, to accommodate the anticipated fifty to seventy-five community members who will be in attendance). Or they hope.

The chalkboard advertisement had yet to be changed when I got home today.