barriers and divides

Saturday, December 6: Lima to Huancayo, via La Oroyo

I have never traveled with such a large group before. All in all, there were about 25 of us from the US, between national staff, our "ModeRADA" of the General Assembly and his wife, people from the mission co-workers' supporting Presbytery, and a random assortment of us from all over elsewhere. We were joined on the ground by aforementioned mission co-workers, the amazing Jed and Jenny, as well as a current YAV, Kyle, as well as mission co-workers from Bolivia and Colombia and some of their young adults. It was a great group, just very large.

In fact, at first, I found the group too large to step out of my comfort zone, or perhaps our collective comfort zone, and experience the new place I was in. There were plenty of pale-skinned English speakers around me at all times. I didn't have to work too hard to understand our hosts, because someone could always translate. I didn't have to think too hard about where we were going, because someone else was always in charge.

At first, this felt to me like a hindrance to our purpose in Peru. It's hard to truly dive into and experience deeply a new place with such a large group acting as a buffer, though unintentionally. This concern of mine quickly dissolved; such a large group provided a lot of thoughtful conversation about the issues at hand.

I'd like to credit some of our primary translators for making these discussions possible: Jed, Kyle, Sarah, and Valdir were four of the strongest interpreters I've ever witnessed. I relied heavily on each of them, as my Spanish background is limited to Sesame Street vocabulary and my time in Mexico, where Spanish was just a mediator between English and the local Mayan language. It was a beautiful experience to have complete thoughts carried between Spanish and English, while preserving the emotional charge of each precious idea. This made for incredibly productive conversations, and I am grateful to each of them (and many others who helped along the way).

So on this day, as I settled into the large group and language barriers, we took a very long, winding bus ride through the Andes, across the continental divide, stopping in a town called La Oroyo. Here, as we sipped coca tea to soothe my altitude sickness, we learned about some of the problems that have lead to ridiculous economic and environmental hardship.

(There are a lot of arrows pointing everywhere on this page in my journal, so bear with me.)

Historically, this was a mining region, with some smaller scale herding and gardening. Through the 60s and 70s, agriculture and livestock became mainstays in this region of Peru. Unfortunately, so did guerilla movements and internal terrorism. Violence was addressed with more violence, and communities in this part of the Andes were too isolated to help or be helped. Many people fled to Lima, leaving behind unskilled people to work the farms. This lead to an unbalanced economic system and a lot of land sales, which lead to...

• few rich families, many poor families, and a host of social problems in between
• aggregation of land and mining businesses through the 80s, which makes access to land and resources more difficult for locals
• talings and other mining waste contaminate lagoons and rivers-- you know, their source of water, of life, and the source of water for all those downstream in the desert coastal region

Mines were largely privatized by the early 2000s. It seems a lot of sketchy things are happening with contracts and deals between companies and individual families who might be desperate for something, anything at this point, since what little resources they have access to are contaminated. This becomes even more difficult and divisive because of that few wealthy families/many impoverished families detail. The rich have control of the contracts, the land, the access to resources, which only further divides them from their poor neighbors economically and socially. 

So these are local problems, but they start to spiral out of control into a much larger scale, only exacerbated by large, international companies like the Chinese mining group Chinalco. The company offer work to local residents, bringing in miners as well as supporting businesses like food and transportation, ruining all local economic activity with monopoly and corruption.

This isn't even to mention the environmental issues at hand. High production of minerals like copper around the clock has lead to respiratory, skin and eye issues for the people living here. Environmental impact studies ignore indirect consequences. Over 99% of the children in La Oroyo have lead poisoning, just from living there and drinking the water.

These are problems seem nearly impossible to overcome because of the discord within the communities, as well as between the communities, as well as between the communities and the government. These broken relationships make it difficult to come together to combat such powerful companies that are destroying everything here.

These were hard lessons to learn. I found myself grateful for the camaraderie of the large group I was traveling with and the hospitality at each stop. These things helped me to process these awful stories, and although I can't say I came away with any impressive solutions to these major problems, it gave me hope that there is a community that cares. Even more hopeful is the knowledge that this community extended far beyond our delegation.

Tomorrow, Sunday, December 7: village visits to "healthy homes", and an incredible tropical glacier.

social-environmental context

These are still notes from my first day in Peru, but it is interesting and important to consider these issues in our own local contexts.

• Most countries along the equator have a tropical climate, but the Andes, Amazon jungle, and cold Humboldt current moderating the desert climate of Lima and much of the coast makes for incredibly diverse climates and environments. 
• 65% of the population of Peru lives in urban places, which requires more energy, has a more consumption-focused culture, becoming a "cancer for nature". Ack. Who said that? Why did I write that? That is really, really depressing. But if you think about how cities and suburbs sprawl out...
• Economy grows by selling natural resources.
• This brings me to the big reflection question for my week in Haiti, which I can't wait to tell you about: What is the value of soil?

• There are, in fact, laws about consulting with indigenous communities before granting extractive rights to international companies, but these are rarely, if ever, enforced. 
• Environmental standards are lowered in the name of commerce, to ensure that impact studies don't impede business.
• Two words: eminent domain. Ok, eight words. A government that often uses eminent domain irresponsibly.
• Peru has over 70% of tropical glaciers in the world; these melt into mountaintop lagoons that run down as a very important water source for most Peruvians.
• After Cairo, Egypt, Lima is the second biggest desert city.

Ok, so some of those are incredibly specific and local, but stop and consider some of these themes in your own region. What makes your environment vulnerable to climate change? Is it an economic issue (threatened resources and livelihoods) or a public health issue (extreme heat/cold, affected agricultural rhythms, reduced access to important resources like water)? How does the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Peru affect us, so far away? (Hint: it does, and not just because we feel sad about these struggles.)

So in the context of a place like rural Peru, or even in busy, bustling Lima, consider that people can't just turn up the A/C or the heat, and can't just go out and buy water if anything happens to the source. Same goes for many people and places in Haiti, both rural and urban. Many of these places still rely heavily on local food sources, too, which are also affected by changing climate and environmental problems.

And while we may not feel the effects of climate change and environmental injustice as strongly in the United States, it's here. New Jersey can be broken into 5 climate zones, moderated by the wee little mountains and the great big ocean, among other factors*. To me, Virginia is just a bigger, slightly warmer version of that environment. It also has 5 climate zones, which don't exactly parallel New Jersey's, but there are some similar environmental modifiers. Peru, just a little smaller than Alaska, has 28 climate zones. (You could fit almost 76 New Jerseys in the area of Alaska. Alaska has 4 climate zones.) Long story short, Peru has a lot of different things going on with its climate, which means if some of it is changing, then it's going to snowball and affect a lot of different systems all so close together. I do not mean to be ironic talking about snow when Huaytapallana glacier has lost over half of its mass in my lifetime.

All of these systems are connected. All of these systems affect each other. Air affects soil affects water and so on and on and on. We are all connected. Or, as this mural I found in Itta Bena, Mississippi reads, we're from the same soil.



Which brings me back to that same question... what is the value of soil?

*Northwest, northeast corridor, southwest, Pine Barrens, and coast. I hope somewhere, Dave the State Climatologist is very proud of me.

Joining Hands! pilgrimmage, prayer, reflection

That's the first thing I wrote in my Peru journal. I think that's how the trip was introduced to us when we woke up in Peru on Friday, December 5. December 4 felt like a lot of hurry up and wait, ordering an early cab to get to Richmond airport to make sure if anything went wrong I'd have time to call another one, sprinting across Atlanta airport to meet my team and make the connecting flight, sitting on said flight for seven hours...

But we made it. We began the week staying at San Jose de Cluny, a lovely convent near the ocean. I was thrilled to smell the salty air as we settled into our wonderfully small, simple rooms well after midnight. As soon as we left the airport, everything slowed down.

We started Friday morning reflecting on the following:

• ¿Qué pasa? What's happening?
• ¿Por qué pasa? Why is this happening?
• ¿Qué hacemos? What do we do? 

Even the short answers are convoluted. What is happening in Peru? Extractive industries and climate change are leading to all sorts of natural resource and agricultural problems, which certainly leads to conflict-- and this is hardly exclusive to Peru. Why is this happening? Well... greed. But demand comes from somewhere, doesn't it.

So what do we do?

You ask such good questions.

The week of witness in Peru certainly provided some ideas, compounded by the week in Haiti. The Joining Hands program is "committed to justice, restoration of the Earth and the abundant life promised by God for all people." We spent a lot of the first day setting the stage for the social and economic issues that would permeate the environmental conversation for the entire journey, from Lima to Huancayo to the mountain villages to Huaytapallana glacier and back. We definitely live in a broken world. So what do we do? I wish I had the answer. In the meantime, I will keep learning, keep trying, and keep inviting you along for the ride.

One thing I know for sure out of all of this: peace and environmental justice kind of need each other. It's so, so complicated but very important.