La Primavera Chola

A couple of short topical posts coming up.

An interesting development in Peru in the last week is the widespread public disgust, and the protest action led by the young, educated middle classes, at the apparent collusion by parties in Parliament to appoint a series of party hacks to important public positions including the People's Defender (Defensoria del Pueblo), Constitutional Tribunal and Reserve Bank.

The appointments have been described as a repartija ("doling out).  The outgoing People's Defender expressed dismay at the perception that his office was being sold off and would thereby lose credibility and independence.

However, already the outcry and protests have caused President Ollanta Humala and other party leaders to express disappointment and dissatisfaction at Parliament's choices - despite the fact that they were all probably involved in stitching up the deal - and for many of the nominated individuals to indicate they will not accept their posts and suggest that a new nomination process be held.

 Protest action is of course extremely widespread in Peru; what is interesting about this movement is that it's not directly tied to resource or labour conflicts and there are no clear material interests at stake,. Rather, it is driven by a general sense of dissatisfaction with the corruption and manipulation of the political class.

These protests have already been semi-jokingly described as "La Primavera Chola", (the only short translation would be "Andean Spring", but this link provides some, though incomplete and not very well translated, context); and they have been linked with the huge protests in Brazil during the Confederations Cup and the ongoing student-led demands in Chile for improved public education.

What has happened in Peru is of course on a much tinier scale than those movements, but it does have significance. Along with the narrow defeat of the recall movement against social democratic Lima mayor Susana Villarán and the decision not to grant a pardon to imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori, it may be seen as representing the 'green shoots' of a more democratic and accountable politics in Peru.Time will tell.

Maiz Cabanita: El Solay/La Siembra (Planting Season) 2

The day of the solay doesn't start so early, around 7:30-8:00 (perhaps one reason why it was the aspect of the cultivation cycle I participated in most). The workers gather at the house of the person who is doing the planting, and everyone is served a bowl of caldo, thick soup, as well as a large glass of chicha, the first of many during the day.

The men then head off to the chacra. There needs to be enough hands to herd two teams of bulls, carry the pero or plough, lead the horse, mule or donkey that will be used to majonear, and take a porongo or 20-litre plastic container of chicha. I was responsible for all of these tasks on different days. The dense wood of the pero is carried balanced over the shoulder, and doesn't seem to weigh much at first, but after about 15 minutes it starts to become heavier (especially when heading uphill over uneven terrain), and when the chacra is a long way away it can feel like carrying one's own personal cross.

The work during the morning varies, depending on what kind of preparation there has been prior to the day of planting, and what condition the chacra has been left in after the previous year. If the chacra has not already been ploughed by a tractor, it's necessary to plough and majonear twice to prepare the earth for planting. Sometimes, if a small chacra is to be planted as well as another medium-sized one in the same day, the small one may be planted in the morning, somewhat guiltily, without ceremony. Often there's work to be done in filling in the gaps in the terrace walls where animals have been allowed to wander in and out during fallow season. If the chacra is in stony terrain, rocks and stones need to be gathered up. Usually, there's the tough job of fighting back the grass that has invaded the border of the chacra. If this hasn't been done thoroughly the previous year, and the grass has made its way into the centre of the chacra, this task can continue into the afternoon.   

Every half hour or so, someone will serve all his fellow workers a big glass of chicha. Coca leaves and sometimes jampi (herbal licor) will also be shared around. The chicha and the coca seem to gradually  banish pain and tiredness: there were several days when I barely managed to get out of bed to make it to the solay, but by mid-morning was feeling relaxed and relatively energetic.

Around 11:30-12:00 midday, the women arrive. This will be the owner of the chacra, or the owner's partner, plus her relatives or comadres. They have been cooking back in the village and will bring food for lunch as well as chicha for the rest of the day. Sometimes other friends will arrive around this time as well, bringing gifts, usually alcoholic: beer, wine, pisco, champagne and rum may be added to the chicha and jampi.

Lunch is served, the men and women sitting apart in different groups. Lunch during planting is usually sumptuous: the owner of the chacra will want to make sure that their workers and guests are well fed and happy.

After lunch is the centrepiece of the solay, the mocco tinkay,which could perhaps be translated as "seed blessing ceremony". Mocco is Quechua for seed, while the tinka, which in Cabanaconde has been hispanicized into the verb tinkar, is the act of splashing what one is drinking, generally onto the earth, although cattle or other objects can also receive a tinka.

For the mocco tinkay, the men gather in a semi-circle, always facing towards Hualca Hualca, the apu tutelar, or mountain god, of Cabanaconde. The owner of the chacra and/or those responsible for ploughing take pride of place at the left side of the semi-circle. The women sit or crouch in another loose semi-circle, facing the men, while the seeds that will be planted are placed on a lliclla (blanket) in front of them. One of the women, usually the youngest, will serve each of the men in turn with a glass of everything that has been brought. Obligatory are chicha, jampi and pito: chicha mixed with various cereals including barley, maca and kiwicha. Cigarettes and coca are also passed around. As each person is handed the glass, they will splash a little on the ground, perhaps making an invocation to the pachamama or to Hualca Hualca, and then drink the rest.There will be conversation and jokes, and in larger events, someone may be especially designated to play the clown.

The women then turn to face the seeds, and it's their turn to sample some of every drink. When this is done, the seeds will be organized into bundles and one of the women will deliver these to the men who will be doing the sowing. This is known as to levantar la semilla, literally to lift up the seeds.

Once the ceremony is completed, it's time to work. The two yuntas plough the chacra, while those responsible for sowing the seeds follow behind. In some cases, a further person will add natural fertiliser from sacks of guano de isla, ground up bird droppings from the Peruvian coast. Finally, others may continue to gramear, or clear the grass from the chacra. As described in the previous post, it's expected that both the ploughing and sowing will be done by men, while women and children can participate  in the remaining tasks. The gender division is fairly unique to Cabanaconde: in other parts of Peru, and even elsewhere in the Colca Valley, women scatter the seeds, but as many have commented, a peculiar kind of machismo predominates in Cabanaconde.

 The final act of the day is to serve the alsa. This is kind of a picnic that is spread out on llicllas, as in the photo above. The base ingredient is toasted maize, and to this are added olives, cheese, fried pastry, cold meat, and ideally, small dried fish sourced from the Laguna de Mucurca, a large lagoon in the mountains above Cabanaconde. The alsa is considered a great delicacy, and people who remain in the village will often ask you to bring them back some if you are going to the solay.

By the end of the day, most of the participants will be slightly drunk, especially if the owner has prepared a particularly strong batch of chicha, or if people have brought lots of additional beer and liquor. In the best cases, everyone will be relaxed and happy, and there will be lots of joking and ribaldry. This was the case in the solay of Javier and Angelica (also attended by a group of French tourists as part of the Cabanaconde Turismo project), pictured below in one of my favourite photos.

The Art of Adobe

Wherever you go in the rural villages of Peru's sierra you will see many or most houses made of adobe mud bricks. They are usually small, squat, with a couple of tiny windows and an unattractive roof of corrugated iron (calamina), sometimes held down by small rocks. They are practically a symbol of poverty and what is considered backwardness.

Yet, just preparing the basic materials for such a dwelling is a skilled and subtle task. The other week I had the opportunity to watch and assist with the making of adobe bricks. I was visiting an elderly couple who live in their little plot of land about 30 minutes walk from Cabanaconde.When I arrived I found them in the chacra above their house, with three other men who were helping make the adobes. There were already about 300 bricks laid out in rows. They needed to make a total of 900 to build a basic greenhouse where they would grow vegetables and herbs.

The first step in making adobes is to make the mud. This might sound simple, but apparently the mixture is quite hard to get right. Too much water and the adobe becomes brittle when dry, with cracks forming in the bricks. Too little, and it is "dead", not sticky enough to mould into bricks. To the mud mixture is added ichu, Andean straw grass, which will help hold together the bricks. The mixture needs to be turned over twice and then left to "mature" for one to two days.

The process I saw to make the bricks involved the following. First, an area of mixed mud had to be loosened a little with a pick. This was then shovelled into a wheelbarrow,which was wheeled over to the row of existing adobes. The mud was dolloped into a double-sided mould, where one of the workers compressed, smoothed, and added more mud until the mould was packed full. After the worker ensured that there was a little space on each side of the divider in the middle of the mould, this was pulled away to reveal two fresh adobe bricks. The bricks would then dry and harden in the sun over a number of days.

What I've always found interesting and ironic is that the poorest and most humble people are often masters of a range of arts and crafts. Just for example, saddling and securing a load to a donkey or mule, ploughing and sowing, expanding and maintaining agricultural terraces, are all practices that have many subtleties, often require precision combined with considerable strength, and are best learnt from an early age. The average farmer or agricultural labourer will be master of most or all of these tasks, and will often have a greater range of skills - you could even say greater total skills - than many people with specialized roles in the modern economy. This is why I think it's misleading to talk about  them as having "unskilled" or "unqualified" occupations.

The difference that leads to "higher productivity" in the modern economy, is the system or machine, that pulls together the disparate tasks of individuals. In an economy based on small-scale household production, there's not much point in having specialists, say, someone who just builds and repairs agricultural terraces - there wouldn't be enough work. To make this worthwhile you need some kind of organization to scale things up - I imagine that the Incan Empire, for example, did have workers highly specialised in shaping and fitting stonework.

The other difference is the use of technology. I don't think it's correct to say that the traditional peasant economy uses little technology, because all of the practices I've described above are technologies, in the sense of being practical applications of human knowledge. Rather, the difference is in the kind of technologies used. "Modern" production practices tend to make more use of systematic measurements and explicitly-defined techniques, instead of or complementary to personal skill and judgement. There's a lot of potential for such"scientific" approaches to strengthen and improve traditional practices, as long as this is done with understanding and respect for the existing strengths of those practices. Again, I'm pretty sure the Incas and their predecessors did take these approaches.

The other thing which makes modern technologies so much more productive than their traditional counterparts is the intensity which which they, directly or indirectly, make use of the energy provided by fossil fuels.

Maiz Cabanita: El Solay/La Siembra (Planting Time) 1

The highlight of the agricultural calendar in Cabanaconde is El Solay or La Siembra, the planting season. The expression solay is unique to Cabanaconde and I understand it to be some kind of linguistic hybrid (it's neither Spanish nor Quechua). The classical Quechua expression would be sara tarpuy (literally, maize planting), and this is also used in Cabanaconde, albeit within parentheses.

The solay starts in early August. Each chacra is planted around a week to 10 days after receiving its last round of irrigation water. For planting, the earth must be turned over  and smoothed down (majoneado) twice, before in the third ploughing cycle the seeds are scattered into the furrows, which are then smoothed over for the final time. The traditional practice is to do all this in a single day with teams of bulls. However, nowadays in most cases where the chacra is accessible, people will have the first two rounds of ploughing done by tractor 1-2 days before planting. The tractor isn't considered precise enough for planting itself, but provides an efficent and less labour-intensive way of preparing the earth.

A related task during planting time is to gramear, to clear the grama or grass away from the edge of the chacra. The wiry local grass that forms the borders of the chacra is tough and invasive, and if left alone will work its roots into the soil and compete with the maize. Depending on how well the borders have been cleaned the previous year, this can be tough work: some work with pick, shovel and bareta to cleanly redefine the borders of the chacra, while others follow behind, gathering up the uprooted grass and tossing it away. In some places it is also necessary to rebuild the walls of the terraces with stones and clods of earth, a task known as to pircar. Gaps that have allowed animals to wander in and out (desirable during the fallow season) must be closed over during cultivation.

Planting is very labour-intensive: for a medium or large chacra or several smaller ones, you generally need two teams of bulls, plus a donkey, mule or horse to majonear. Each team of bulls requires someone to guide the bulls, someone to plough, someone to scatter the seed, and sometimes someone to scatter natural fertiliser (usually guano de ave, made from bird droppings sourced from the Peruvian south coast). You also need someone to lead the donkey/horse/mule and someone to ride the majona. To make best use of time, it's preferable to start the majoneando while the bulls are still ploughing, which means that someone other than the ploughing team needs to do this. Therefore, a regular day's planting can require at least eight workers.

This is complicated by a fairly strict gender role division in Cabanaconde. The two most skill-intensive tasks - ploughing and scattering the seed - traditionally must be performed by males. To be fair, ploughing requires considerable strength. However, scattering the seed could technically be performed as well or better by women, but according to local custom this would be inappropriate and could bring bad luck. Guiding the bull should also be done by a male, although it's quite common for a (male) child to do this.

No one really cares who scatters the fertiliser or does the majoneando, although a child or someone of lighter body weight is often the preferred choice for the latter task if a donkey is the only animal available. Meanwhile, the main role of the women is to prepare food and chicha for all the workers and bring it out to the chacra in time for lunch (although the men will usually take a supply of chicha when they head out in the morning). All and sundry will help with clearing the grass.

Traditionally, the large number people required at planting time wasn't a problem, as this was resolved through ayni, the reciprocal exchange of labour. People would help out their family and neighbours, and then when it was time for them to plant, the favour would be returned. People will tell you that ayni has largely disappeared from Cabanaconde, but it is still practised a bit at planting time. I estimated that at least a third of the people I worked with during the solay last year were doing it as a favour, to their family members or their compadres. Of course, they and others who pitched in were also incentivised by the plentiful food, chicha and liquor on offer.

The balance needs to be made up by paid labour. In some cases, this means hiring a team of bulls and their owner. The bulls cost S/.30, the owner gets S/. 20 himself for a day's work, and the bulls must also be provided with a large bundle of chala, or maize stalks, which is valued at around S/. 15. When people have small plots of land scattered around the countryside, and similar inputs are required for each one, it's easy to see how the costs of cultivation can escalate.

Even with a day's wage being paid, during last season's solay there were complaints that it was difficult to get people to work in the chacra, given the competing offers of non-farm work in various construction and local government projects, which paid from S/. 45 to S/. 70 per day. No hay gente! was a phrase I heard more than once.  The labour shortage, along with the fairly strict gender roles, were among the reasons why I, despite being an almost complete incompetent, was able to take such an active part in the solay last year.

There's so much to say about the solay that I'm going to split it across two posts. The next post will describe the actual course of events during a day of planting.

What I Miss: New Zealand vs. Peru

Over the past five or six years, I've divided my time between New Zealand and Peru. I've generally made a lot of effort to get back to Peru, and when I'm there I don't really feel homesick. This might be because I've always been there on a fixed term - if it became permanent I might feel differently. However,there are always a few things about New Zealand I miss when I'm away. Conversely, when I'm back in New Zealand there are specific things I miss about Peru, apart from the general reasons for wanting to go back.

As will be seen, there are specific foods I miss about both places when I'm in the other place. Peruvian cuisine is varied and often delicious, but there are a few things you just can't get.

What I miss about New Zealand when I'm in Peru

Fish and chips - terribly unhealthy and you can't have them too often, but there's nothing like a serving of serving of greasy fish and chips, and I occasionally get a craving for them. Ironically, chips (papas fritas) are very popular in Peru, but they're just not the same.

Asian cuisine - New Zealand's cities are full of Indian, Malaysian, Thai, Cambodian, Japanese and Korean restaurants - often cheap, and generally good to excellent. It's not just Peru, but Latin America as a whole, where it's near impossible to find good Asian food (Peru at least has chifa, its version of Chinese food, and there are some reputable Japanese places in Lima).

English breakfasts - there's nothing like a big plate of eggs, bacon, mushrooms, hash browns, tomatoes and toast with butter, especially after a night out. Most cafes in New Zealand do something like this, and some do it brilliantly (Kelburn Cafe in Wellington springs to mind). In Peru, the closest thing is what they call 'American breakfast', but almost everything is not quite right. The eggs are dry and scrambled without milk, 'ham' is something that has barely made the acquaintance of a pig, and the toast is from aerated pan de molde that crumbles at first touch. Having said that, my mouth waters at the thought of a 'German breakfast' from El Turco in Arequipa!

The coffee. Peru is a notable coffee exporter, and a blend from Sandia in the Puno region recently won an international prize for best organic coffee. However, it's hard to find a decent espresso coffee (there's a couple of places in Arequipa that I haunt) and strong espresso with milk (flat white, latte or cappucino) doesn't really exist. Every so often, I really miss this aspect of Wellington!

Clean and green spaces - Peru is full of wonderful natural spaces. Unfortunately, wherever people live or anywhere near main roads there is usually significant litter scattered about - the exceptions being tourist sites and some upper middle class neighbourhoods. It's a serious and growing problem, especially as economic growth occurs and consumption of plastics and other durable materials increases. New Zealand also has environmental problems and is nowhere near as pristine as the tourism campaigns make out. However, most urban and rural areas are free of actual litter.

What I miss about Peru when I'm in New Zealand

Cebiche: my mouth just waters every time I think about it. Slices of raw fish or shellfish marinated in a little lemon juice and chili, served with red onion,  canchita (toasted corn kernels), camote (flat sweet potato), perhaps with some seaweed, and ideally washed down with beer. In New Zealand, at parties and potlucks people sometimes offer something they call 'cevish' (pronounced as if the correctly spelled word were French). This tends to be chunks of lightly boiled fish floating in coconut milk On these occasions I have to resist the temptation to be a boor.

Menus: in Peru, all but the finest restaurants will offer a menu or set meal, at least for almuerzo, the main meal in the middle of the day. This is usually extremely cheap, and will incude a soup or starter, main course, drink and sometimes dessert. As an example, there's a place around the corner from where I stay in Lima where you can get a starter of a stuffed avocado, followed by a main course of seco (meat stewed with coriander) and beans in a hearty sauce, served with rice and complementary chili and lemon. All for S/. 8 (around $4 NZD).

Pisco: in my view, there's no mixed drink anywhere better than a good pisco sour. With a good quality pisco and a skilful bartender, it simultaneously dances all over your taste buds, loosens your tongue and gives you a warm, happy feeling, In New Zealand, the only accessible pisco most of the time is what I bring back.

General knowledge crossworld puzzles: I'm addicted to the crossword in La Republica,which is based on a mixture of clues and pictures: you have to recognise the people or places in the images, and fill in the clues based on a mixture of synonyms, general knowledge, geography, actors, artists, musicians, politicians, sportspeople, Greek and Roman mythology and alphabets, and common words from English, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Russian and Quechua. The lower brow papers also have these kind of puzzles, useful for when La Republica isn't accessible.

The unpredictability: when people have asked me why I keep coming back, I think about it for a while and come up with this. Strange and surprising things happen continuously, and it's often a bit of a puzzle exactly what has happened, let alone why. These can be unfortunate or upsetting things, but they're almost always interesting. You truly learn something new every day. My perspective is of course biased, and in many ways this is a good thing, but New Zealand often seems to be running on autopilot.

Cabanaconde: Making Chicha

Previous posts on Cabanaconde and maíz cabanita: first, second, third, fourth, fifth

An absolutely vital ingredient in the agricultural cycle is chicha, the maize beer that is drunk before, during and after work in the chacras, especially during large collective efforts such as the solay/planting.

Here's a description of how it is produced. Note that this refers only to chicha made in Cabanaconde. In other parts of  Peru, it may be done differently and even use different ingredients.

The principal ingredient is yellow maize. First, the grains are taken off the cob and put to soak for two days in a bucket. Then, the water is drained off with a sieve and the kernels are put in plastic bags for seven days until they begin to sprout. During this time they have to be kept in a warm place. Little holes are made in the bags to allow some air out.

After seven days, the sprouted kernels are taken out of the bags and left to dry. This is now wiñapo, which will be used to make the chicha.

The wiñapo is dried for three days. Then it is ground up in a mill or with a mortar and pestle. Water is put on to boil in a big pot, ideally using a wood fire. The wiñapo can be added directly or soaked separately in a bucket before being added. It is boiled for half an hour to an hour.

The liquid is then strained through a white tablecloth held between two people. The sediment is captured by the cloth and the liquid passed to another container. It is left to cool overnight. The next day begins the process of decanting the liquid, usually into ceramic pots called chombas. The upper part of the liquid is clear and yellowy and is called chuyan. The lower, thicker part is called pipo.

The chicha is left to ferment for three to four more days, according to taste, and how drunk you want to make the people who are working with you.

Each litre of chicha requires about 2 kilos of dry grain*. The more maize is included, the tastier the chicha. During the preparation, some people will add fruit juice or even sugar. This can make the chicha more flavoursome, and it certainly increases the alcohol content. A froth on the surface of the liquid generally indicates a more potent batch of chicha.

I drank large quantities of chicha while working in the fields in Cabanaconde. If you work during planting, you will be given a large 500ml beer glass of chicha every 20 or 30 minutes,starting around 8:00 am with breakfast, and continuing until it's all gone (usually around sunset). Some people warn you to be careful with it, and there does seem to be the occasional adverse reaction - I saw several people become extremely drunk or rather unwell in the chacra, though these were mostly women who arrived around midday after spending the morning drinking while sitting around cooking. Drunk as part of a working rthythm, I found it to be pleasant and refreshing. It both quenched my thirst and, as the day wore on, gradually produced a warm, convivial feeling while erasing pain and tiredness (although the coca leaves we chewed might have had something to do with that too).

The only obvious drawback of chicha is that it seems to be an anti-diuretic and can make you bloated. During my first solay, I noticed about mid-afternoon that I had drunken significant quantites of liquid but hadn't felt a need to pee for more than two hours, and my stomach was gradually becoming more and more distended. Fortunately, there's a straightforward solution. Also served in the chacra is jampi, a homemade high-proof liquor. A couple of thimblefuls of this will generally restore one's natural functions.

*This is from only one source, but referring to discussion in a previous post, you can see that at market rates this equates to about S/.8 ($4 NZD) per litre, just for the principal ingredient.

El Maíz Cabanita: El Arado (The Art of the Plough)

Previous posts on Cabanaconde and maíz cabanita: first, second, third, fourth

Once the land is irrigated, it is time for the barbecho, which refers to the process of turning over and resting the soil before the next planting begins.  This post describes el arado (ploughing), which is an important part of both this stage and the planting season.

The traditional way to plough is with a yunta (a team of two bulls joined by a wooden yoke). However, over the previous decade, tractors have increasingly been used, particularly for this step of the cycle. Ploughing with bulls is more technically precise, and for this reason they are still used by the majority for planting, but the barbecho just requires the earth to be turned over.  Hiring a tractor costs about S/. 60 per hour, which is enough  time to plough a medium-sized chacra. By contrast, a team of bulls costs S/. 30 per day, they also require feed, and if their owner works at ploughing he needs to be paid as well. So the costs come out about the same, and using a tractor is significantly quicker. Some chacras are too steep or inaccessible to use a tractor, so even the barbecho is done with a yunta; also, for those who have their own bulls the relative costs may be different.

Ploughing with bulls is an activity steeped in tradition and surrounded by a fair amount of machismo. Objects and practices have special names: some of them are neither Spanish nor standard Quechua, and some of them may be unique to Cabanaconde. For example, the long wooden pole which is dragged by the bulls is called la pero (note, not perro) and the stick of dense wood which the person steering the plough uses to poke the bulls and keep them straight is called el allejón.

The bulls used in work in the chacras are mostly serrano cattle, small and lean, curious like all cattle, and easily spooked or distracted by their peers, but mostly tame and obedient. This is fortunate, because the first step involves them standing still while they are tied by the horns to the yunta (and thus to each other).

The plough consists of a long pole of dense wood (la pero) which is placed in a loop of rope hanging from the yunta. At the end of the pole is a roughly v-shaped piece of wood (see photo below). At one end is a sort of tiller which is held by the person ploughing. To the other end a steel furrow is attached with an extremely strong and supple leather tie (what is being done in the photo).

To begin ploughing, one person walks in front of the bulls, who obediently follow. This is known as to guide or guiar. There's some skill involved, as you need to need to make sure the bulls follow the line the furrow needs to enter. This has been described to me as 'like driving a car', but it's a rather skittish and mechanically unpredictable car. It's particularly tricky when the chacra is oddly shaped  or the terrain is uneven around the edges. Sometimes in order to ensure that the furrow gets all the way to the end of the chacra you need to jump up on the wall or terrace at the end of the chacra so the bulls will follow you. To make tight turns you may need to tap one of the bulls on the nose with a small stick, or even grab it by the horn and physically drag it around. I acted as guia quite a lot during the planting season, and became reasonably adept at the task.

Doing the ploughing itself requires real skill. It doesn't look so hard but there is strength and dexterity required to hold the plough straight, ensure the furrow is deep and true, make the turns accurately and encourage the bulls while poking them with the allejón to keep them in line.  I had several attempts but never mastered it.

When the earth has been ploughed, it has to be smoothed over. This process is to majonear, named for the majona, a flat wooden board that is tied to a horse, mule or donkey. Someone leads the animal around the chacra while another person stands on the board, effectively skiing along and closing over the furrows (as in the picture below). Quite often a child will be used to majonear, since a donkey (the easiest animal to get hold of) finds it difficult to drag a full-grown adult, and the weight of a child may be sufficient to smooth over the earth. In other cases, someone will stand on the board with only one foot, more like skating than skiing, and quite quite physically challenging. Where the earth is heavier, an adult standing with both feet on the board towed by horse or mule will be required.

After the barbecho, there is one more irrigation cycle, and then in August the planting season begins. This is the centrepiece of the agricultural cycle in Cabanaconde.

Cabanaconde: A Day in the Life

A typical day during my time in Cabanaconde as an example of the mixture of things I was doing and the routines of village life.  This is from the 2nd of July.

After breakfast, at around 8:30, I went to look for Ruth, as we had agreed to go together to see the mayor to show him the brochure for the experiential tourism project. The municipality had funded the brochure and the mayor - a keen amateur photographer - had provided photographs and helped design it. Ruth wasn't in her store so I went alone to the municipal building. Outside, I ran into Ruth, who had been buying potatoes from a neighbour. She told me cheerily that she'd found out that the mayor wasn't in town so we were wasting our time.

As we walked back across the plaza, I was hailed by Patricio, and then Edison ('Chiqui') also appeared. Both of them have worked as local tourist guides. I showed both of them the brochure and we talked for a while about the tourism project. We went through a list of names of other local guides who could work with the project. I headed back to my side of the village and when I went past Lili's shop she asked me if I wanted to accompany her to the chacra. She had to take food to the guys who were ploughing in one of the family's fields, and then to her mother who was down with the sheep that were sleeping on the chacras in the Ccollcca sector.

While Lili was cooking, I used the time to wash my clothes. All washing in Cabanaconde is done by hand: I used a bucket and a concrete laundry fixture with a tap. I normally do one soak-and-wash with detergent and then two rinses. It's tricky to balance getting the dirt out and being able to rinse away the detergent. I've got better, but it's not ideal, and whenever I'm in Arequipa it's good to get a machine wash done.

I went with Lili to Lihuay to take lunch to the two men who had already finished ploughing the small chacra. From there, we walked down the main pathway towards CCollcca and while we walked we discussed the new urban development in San Miguel (20 minutes walk uphill on the main road out of Cabanaconde), where the Peasant Community has subdivided the land and is allocating lots to those who register fo a fee. Some see it as a necessary development to give more living space to the community, where many extended families share very restricted space in the small properties within the main village.

Lili hadn't registered for a lot in San Miguel and wasn't in agreement with the process. There were two main reasons why. First, she doubted that it would actually go ahead. The National Cultural Institute has registered the San Miguel pampa as a site of archeological interest (although they've never investigated anything there) and has indicated it will take legal action against any development. This seems perverse, given that Cabanaconde already built a small football stadium on the same land and now the Province of Caylloma is financing a new museum, supposedly to evenutally house the Mummy Juanita. I can't see the building in San Miguel being stopped, but Lili was dubious. She and Ruth had supported an "invasion" there last year, but the president of Peasant Community opposed it and ordered the rudimentary structures that people had built to be torn down. The president had then done an about-face and thrown his weight behind the development, which Ruth and Lili thought was suspicious.

The other reason was that Lili didn't agree with how the land was being divided up. She thought that new land should be reserved for younger people who didn't necessarily have their own families -  partly because there's little space to raise a family. And she didn't think it was fair that multiple people from the same family - many of whom don't live in Cabanaconde - should each be allocated a lot. Instead, the system was based on differential fees: S/. 500 to register if you didn't already have land in the ampliaciones (the formerly dry areas that received irrigation water from the Majes project in the 1990s), S/. 1,000 if you already had a lot, and S/. 1,500 if you weren't originally from Cabanaconde.

We were not far from the chacra and could see Lili's mother, Señora Prudencia, down with the sheep and goats, but we couldn't spot the shepherd. Lili called out to a woman who was working on the left side of the path, "Hey, have you seen [name redacted]". "Oh, I think he's dead already" was the reply. When we got down to meet Lili's mother, she explained that the shepherd was not actually dead, but was lying immobile by a bush, two chacras away. He had refused any food and wouldn't even move the short distance to the shade to be out of the burning sun. He simply groaned occasionally and asked for water.

Apparently the shepherd was meant to look after the animals all night, but had returned to the village around 8:00 pm and started drinking aguardiente with some friends. The drinking session had gone on all night, and he had stumbled back towards his post in the early morning, only to fall a couple of fields short. In his absence, the animals he was supposed to be watching had taken the opportunity to go their own way. The docile sheep hadn't gone far, but the goats had dispersed themselves through the countryside. Señora Prudencia had taken a couple of hours to round them all up.

I helped Lili and her mother muster up the sheep and the goats from where they had been grazing back to their enclosure in the chacra, where their nightly droppings and urine would provide organic fertiliser. An amusing thing in Cabanaconde is that, although gringos are considered to be ignorant about a lot of things, no one considers the possibility that anyone would not know how to herd animals. So it is that on a number of occasions I've been the closest person to, say, someone's escaping bull, and have had to respond to urgent waves and shouts of "arrea, arrea!!".

Among the sheep were a number of very young lambs, which struggled to cross a couple of canals on the way back to their enclosure. On several occasions I had to grab hold of a nervous lamb and carry it gently across the canal while its mother watched warily from the opposite bank. I found this rather touching, but it's a normal part of everyday life in the countryside.

Lili had finally convinced the shepherd to have a little soup and he was on his feet, stumbling back to where his blankets and provisions where, just before a hot afternoon turned into a feezing night - which would have been truly dangerous. Lili , Señora Prudencia and I began to 30 minute walk back to Cabanaconde, arriving there just as it got dark.

El Maiz Cabanita: Riego y Barbecho (Preparing the Land)

(Previous posts on maiz cabanita: first, second. )

Once the harvest has been completed, and while the activities of de-leaving, de-graining and using or selling the maize are still occurring, the cultivation moves into its next phase. During June and July, the land will be prepared for the the next planting, which starts in early August.

In Cabanaconde most land does not have a regular fallow period and it is possible to plant maize in the same chacra, year after year. I understand this is due to the natural volcanic richness of the soil as well as the organic fertilisation methods that are used.

The first thing to do after the harvest is over is to clear the crop stubble and fertilise the soil. The most systematic way to do this is by placing a flock of sheep and goats on one's chacras. The animals eat up the crop stubble, while their droppings and urine nourish the earth. In general, during the post-harvest period, all animals are allowed to roam free through the countryside, where their eating and defecating provides a general public service. However, those who are able will gather together as many as several hundred sheep and make them sleep several nights on their land. Most people own a few sheep: the large numbers are accumulated by renting or borrowing from others. In the day the animals are allowed to wander and eat freely; in the night they are herded together onto the chacra. Those who can afford it will employ a shepherd to sleep there; others may stay themselves.

Those who don't have the time or resources to have their plots of land cleared and fertilised by animals will sometimes just burn off the crop stubble.

 

The next step is irrigation. Rain usually only falls in Cabanaconde between December and March, so for the rest of the year farming relies on irrigation water. For more than 1,000 years, this has been provided by the Hualca Hualca river, flowing down from the snows of the eponymous 6,025-metre mountain (see picture above), although since the 1990s this has been supplemented by additional water from the Majes irrigation canal.

For anyone interested in these posts, or in Andean agriculture and livelihoods in general, I highly recommend getting hold of a book by US anthropologist Paul Gelles called Water and Power in Highland Peru. Gelles spent years living in Cabanaconde and today is remembered by almost everybody there as having become 'just another cabaneño' (a high compliment). He wrote in detail about the highly ritualistic traditional irrigation system in which a 'water mayor' allotted the water to individual fields in complex patterns based on the Incan division of the village into hanansaya and urinsaya partialities. The role of water mayor was an arduous one, as it involved controlling the flow of water, day and night, during a whole agricultural cycle. It was a customary office which most adult men were expected to hold at some stage in their lifetime.

Nowadays, that system has disappeared and water is distributed in a straightforward geographical pattern which Gelles' describes in his book as the 'State system' and which in the past was only used when emergency irrigation had to be undertaken in dry periods during the rainy season. A water mayor oversees the process, but this is now a paid role and held only for a single irrigation cycle.

The water follows something like a half-moon shape around the village: it starts in the sectors of Seccana and Ishicc, on the canyon side of Cabanaconde; moves up to Cabra above the village cemetery, across to Cutirca and Lihuay; then down the lower-lying southern side of the village through Ayrampo, Ccollcca, Cushqui and all the way to Auki. In each sector it flows down a principal canal, into smaller canals and is then diverted by individual farmers onto their own chacras. This is done by moving large stones and clods of earth in and out of the canals which run around the chacras.

Each farmer has to take their allotted turn to irrigate when the water has reached their chacra. The water flows 24 hours a day; there is no system of holding it in reservoirs during the night. Thus, many people have to irrigate at night time. I have only been to do this once (perhaps will describe in another post) but that was enough to gain an idea of just how cold and taxing this is. It's not even possible to be sure exactly what time the water will arrive, which means that people might have to wait around in the cold and dark for several hours.  

About a week to 10 days after the first irrigation cycle begins the barbecho, which involves turning over the newly softened earth with a plough. Ploughing is a central part of both the post-harvest and planting periods. I'll talk about that in the next post.

El Maiz Cabanita: La Cosecha (The Harvest), Part II

This is part 2 of my series on maize cultivation in Cabanaconde.

As I explained in the previous post, the main objective of the harvest is to bring the maize back into the 'corrals' which are dotted around the village, often between houses. It is transported as entire plants, in bundles of varying size, depending on whether it is carried back by truck or by donkey.

The next step is to deshojar -- literally 'remove the leaves'. Each plant will have one to three choclos or corn cobs. You extract them by peeling off the leaves -- often a nail or some other sharpish object will be used to make an initial break in the leaves near the top of the cob -- then twisting the cob to remove it. This is might seem like easy work in comparison to some of the other tasks, but it involves long hours of repetitive work, in the hot sun, with lots of bending or squatting. This task is usually done by women: as with the harvest itself, many migrant labourers come from Puno or parts of Cuzco such as Espinar looking for work. At this time of the year in Cabanaconde you will see many of these women, with their distinctive dress of a bowler hat, sweater, knee-length skirt and long woollen pants (NB: not the woman in the picture, who is very much a cabaneña).

The choclos are then laid out on sacks or blankets to dry. How long this takes depends on the level of moisture remaining in the corn, although a week in the sun is usually sufficient. The next step is to desgranar or de-grain. The grains can be worked off the cob with the fingers: once the choclo is properly dried, they come off very easily. You now have grano seco, the primary form in which the maize is stored, used or sold. People in a hurry to sell some of their maize will sometimes remove the grains and leave them to dry loose, although this makes them even more accessible to the mice and birds which are a constant menace to the stored maize.

The maize can be white, yellow, purple or multi-coloured. Although they are all mixed and matched to a certain extent, each type has its principal uses:

• White maize is the staple type used for cancha (toasted kernels), which is easily the most common way in which maiz cabanita is consumed
• Yellow maize is the principal ingredient for chicha, although other kinds of maize are also used
• Purple maize is used for cancha and also in chicha morada, which is a non-alcoholic refreshment common throughout Peru

A certain proportion of the grains are retained for use as seeds. These are usually selected from the largest, most well-formed choclos and are taken from the centre of the cob.

The maize plant minus the choclo is called chala. Although the dry, spiky stalks and leaves look pretty unappealing, they are useful as animal feed during the dry season.For example, during planting season, if someone has to hire a team of  bulls to plough their fields, they're usually also required to provide a bundle of chala,which can be worth S/. 15 ($7.50 NZD). Little goes to waste.

How the maize is used will depend on the family, and can depend on the total size of their crop, where family members are living, etc. The family of a friend of mine is not untypical: they have a significant amount of land spread across many different plots throughout the campiña around Cabanaconde. She told me that approximately 5 to 10 percent was kept for seed, 10 to 20 percent was consumed, and 70 to 80 percent sold.

Many people told me that cultivating maize wasn't very profitable. "You get back about what you put in" was a frequent comment. The price for much of 2012 was S/. 4 per kilo, which is relatively good by historical standards. However, there's only one harvest per year, most people have small plots of land spread through different sectors of the countryside, and there are high fixed costs for activities like harvesting and planting. From what I was told, a one of the smaller chacras would deliver perhaps 200 kilos of dry grain, while a decent-sized one might produce 1,000 kilos. Meanwhile, some estimated that planting alone might cost  S/. 300-400. You can do the sums.

However, it wouldn't be quite correct to call it a 'subsistence' activity. First, the maize is not primarily destined for self-consumption but is largely traded and sold in the market. It is a source of security for families in that, when needed, it can provide not just food but also cash.   Second, although revenue may not exceed expenditure by any great degree, production interacts with and dynamizes other parts of the economy. Certain stages of the cultivation cycle use a considerable amount of wage labour, especially now the practice of ayni (reciprocal labour obligations) has largely disappeared.

There's lots more to write about the economy of maize in Cabanaconde: the extent to which it's consumed, traded and sold; where and for how much; and how distribtion or accumulation occur. These topics are for future posts, and perhaps for further investigation.

El Maiz Cabanita: La Cosecha (The Harvest)

I'm going to try to do a series of posts on what I've learned about the maize cultivation cycle in Cabanaconde. Hopefully it will be a little more interesting than it sounds. One the one hand, the cultivation of maize is thoroughly linked with local customs and life, and one can't really be understood without the other. On the other, it provides an insight into the reality of organic production in difficult terrain, something that is worth understanding for anyone who advocates this as a way of life.

I'm going to have to begin at the end of the cycle, since that's where I came in.

La cosecha (the harvest) occurs in May. It is one of the busiest times of the year in Cabanaconde and, according to some, involves the hardest sustained work of the year. But it's also exciting and joyous since it's the culmination of all the effort that's gone before.

There are several distinct stages to the harvest. The first is to cut the maize, or calchar, which I believe is hispanicized Quechua. This is done by hand with a serrucho (sickle) and is a relatively straightforward task, barring the intense sun which makes everything more difficult. The whole plant is cut; the choclo or corn will be separated later. The trick is to cut the plants to more or less the same length, so they will be easier to pile up and carry. You work in rows, forming small piles of cut plants with all the stalks pointing the same way. There is something of  a technique to cutting, since the maize stalks are weak at some points but very tough at others. If you do it right, you can cut with one swipe of the sickle and don't have to bend over too much.

The next stage is to amontonar or pile up the maize. An example of this is in the photo above. You have to gather together three or four of the cut piles and then carry the load to the edge of the chacra where the plants are deposited, again with all the stalks pointing the same way. The pile is generally about ten metres wide and several layers high. This is generally done when the maize will be carried back to the village by donkey; when it will be carried by truck it is sometimes left in individual cut piles (see following section for explanation). As a complete novice, I found this somewhat harder work than cutting, since there is a technique to carrying, and you have to negotatiate uneven ground and sometimes climb up a couple of terraces to get to the place where you leave the bundle.

Traditionally, the labour to cut the maize has been provided at least in part by migrants from outside the district, particularly from the upper part of the Colca Valley and the province of Espinar in Cuzco. I worked with a couple of guys from Espinar. The older guy said he had his cattle in Espinar and also worked as a bus driver: typical of many people in rural Peru who must work in multiple occupations to make ends meet. By preference, they were getting paid in maize -- 100-120 choclos (corn cobs) per day. This was equivalent to around S/.50, a reasonable day's wage by Peruvian standards. Rather than selling or trading the maize back in Espinar, they would use it for personal consumption. Five or six days work would provide enough canchita (dried, toasted corn kernels) to last them until December.

The next step is to cargar or carry the maize back to the village. There are two ways of doing this: by truck and by donkey. These days, trucks are preferred for most areas where the vehicle can park within a reasonable distance of the chacra.  The first step is to liar or bundle up the maize plants in the chacra where they have been cut -- the idea is to make bundles about as big as a person will be able to carry. You need to lay out a large number of ropes (about 50 per chacra), and the bundles are placed on top of the ropes. These are then tied up tightly, a task which requires two people.

From there, the maize has to be carried to the truck, which may be several hundred metres away, and then carried up a ramp made from a wooden board into the truck. This I found to be the most brutally hard task of any I have experienced so far.  I estimate that the maize bundles weigh an average of 25-30 kg, but the weight is dispersed, which makes it much harder to lift and carry. Sometimes even an experienced worker needs the help of another to lift the bundle onto his back. To then carry this weight the distance to the truck, including across rough ground and terraces, requires considerable strength. In the chacra where I worked, each trip to the truck required stepping up onto a terrace that was above my waist level. With the weight of the maize on my back, it was all I could do to lift my other leg up on to the terrace and continue the journey towards the truck. Note that the 3,300 metres of altitude also has to be factored into the physical effort required.

The day I went to cargar by truck, it was with a group of young local guys, who seem to be more involved in this phase of the harvest. They get paid (in cash) per "trip", which involves riding in the back of the truck to a particular chacra, bundling up and carrying the maize, and then unloading it in the corrals back in the village. The average trip is worth S/.20, and around three trips will fit in a day, so workers earn a decent wage. When trips are longer they may make S/. 80 or even S/.100. The owner of the chacra will also provide lunch and some beer or licor at day's end. This was given to me as evidence that, although maize cultivation hardly renders above subsistence level taken as a whole, it pays well at each stage (for example, compared to potato production, where apparently a day's work may only pay S/.20) and thus gives some dynamism to the local economy.

Nevertheless, the wages are certainly well earned. The young guys are accustomed to the work and take it in their stride, but the recognition that it's intense work creates a fair amount of machismo. When I went to cargar with the truck, the chacra's owner Liliana (about my age) tried to insist that I should just watch or should help with some peripheral task. However, when they saw I wanted to work, the young guys egged me on, as did Liliana's mother Señora Prudencia (who has spent most of her life in the chacra, unlike Liliana who is mostly dedicated to her shop in the village). Sweating profusely and breathing heavily, I managed to carry six loads to the truck, while in the same time the young guys -- who had already made two earlier trips -- carried ten.  Another factor is that the maize stalks and leaves are rather sharp and thorny and can shred skin. My hands had not yet become accustomed to farm work, and I had neglected to obtain some appropriate gloves, so by the end of the day I was bleeding from several points, and was actually dripping blood over the bundles of maize, inspiring further admonishments from Liliana that I should stop working and take a rest.

The other, traditional, way to carry is by donkey. These days, donkeys are only used for chacras that are very close to the village or that are too far away from the road for the maize to be carried there manually. The advantage of donkeys is that they can be brought right to the chacra and loaded there. This means less human labour is required, although there is still quite a bit of effort required to tie up the maize (in larger bundles) and lift and tie them on to the donkey. The disadvantage is that even with 10 donkeys, it takes several trips to and from the village to clear an entire chacra. The men have to run back and forth to the village with the donkeys, so the process can be just as tiring as with the truck and, importantly, takes significantly longer .

Large groups of donkeys carrying loads back into the village creates the potential for chaos, and for this reason it's important to have a system of traffic control. The photo below shows the order set down for when animals can be used to carry the harvest into the village from each sector of the countryside. Interestingly, it is imposed by the Municipality (local government) rather than by the Peasant Community, the autonomous organization of community members. In contrast, loads can be brought back by truck from almost anywhere at any time, which is another advantage of using motorised transport.

That covers the harvest itself, up to the point of getting the cut maize back to the village. In the following post I'll describe what happens next.

Little Blogging Gets Done in the Peruvian Sierra

I've just arrived back in Arequipa after more than two weeks in Cabanaconde and am suffering from mild culture shock, mainly in the sense of having to remember that in the city you do not salute every person you pass in the street with a "buenos días" or "buenas tardes".

So far, I 've managed to post even less frequently than I thought I would during this trip. It's a combination of a lack of adequate internet access in Cabanaconde and being extremely busy   I'm going to have to make do with a brief summary of what I've done so far.

I've spent quite a lot of time just soaking up the daily life in Cabanaconde and  I've participated in a number of aspects of village life, from a baptism and a syncretic ceremony involving tying flowers to a cross on top of a hill to working in the chacras (fields) in several different activities. The latter is incredibly hard work, partly owing to the nature of the work itself and partly to the fierceness of the sun. So far, I've observed and participated in the harvest, cutting the maize transporting it both by truck and by donkey (the former harder work, details in another post); I've also learnt something about the irrigation system and the barbecho (ploughing or tilling). The next big phase is the siembra (planting), which begins in August. I will aim to provide a more detailed description of the maize cultivation cycle in another post. For now, a gratuitous picture below.

I've made some quite good progress with a project to link tourism more closely with local people/local life through an alternative where tourists can make a visit to the countryside with local farmers and a local guide. I've made several appearances at community meetings to explain the concept, have organised my own meeting, and have established a "support committee" of two local people who will hopefully take over and run the whole thing when I leave. We've signed up about 25 people to participate and have obtained the support of the local mayor to develop a pamphlet and other publicity. I've set up a dedicated email address, web page and facebook page. Will post the links when they're a little further advanced.

At the other end of the spectrum , I spent a few days in Lima with a Peruvian colleague interviewing some functionaries from the Viceministry of Tourism for a book chapter we are (supposed to be) writing. I also attended a regional workshop in Arequipa run by the Viceministry of Tourism to update and revise the PENTUR (national tourism strategy).

Finally, with some local contacts in the regional government and a local NGO, we've developed some ideas for a couple of research projects that I'm quite excited about

Paro en la Panamericana Sur

For the third day running, transport and communications in the south of Peru have been paralized owing to a blockade of the Panamerican highway between Lima and Arequipa by approximately 6,000 "informal" miners protesting against government decrees declaring their activities illegal.

My personal stake in this issue is that I was supposed to travel to Lima tonight and had already bought my ticket. This can be postponed and is no big deal, supposing the strike is lifted in the next couple of days. Over time and repeated visits to Peru, I've come to understand that holding strikes and blocking roads can be an understandable, even necessary, response to the inability of groups of citizens to have their legitimate issues considered through normal institutional, democratic channels. However, such strikes and the way they are resolved also represent the inability of the State to exert authority (except in disastrously heavy-handed ways; viz, the tragedy at Bagua in 2009) and to act as a just, independent guarantor of the "public good". Rather, it seems that the State is merely a passive conduit for conflicting private interest, with the most powerful at any one time prevailing. While the government gave the Conga mining project conditional approval in spite of what seems to be the opposition of most of Cajamarca, here the Prime Minister hurriedly offered to modify its edicts to give the miners two more years to "formalize" their activities -- still not good enough for the miners to lift their strike.

The arguments behind the current miners' strike are considerably more dubious than in some other cases where citizen groups have opposed the (perceived) loss of their territory or livelihoods. Informal mining is undertaken by between 500,000 (official sources) and 1 millon (the miners' estimate) Peruvians, so is a significant source of employment and income. However, the uncontrolled use of mercury is severely damaging to the environment and has resulted in significant pollution of waterways in the areas where it is prevalent, including some leading into Lake Titicaca. It's likely that the majority of the population in districts affected by informal mining would not support its continuation. In addition, the untaxed income from informal mining is rather high, with a gram of gold (a conservative minimum collected per day) worth S/. 70, more than what is earned by the majority of workers in farming, commerce or services whose livelihoods are currently being put on hold.

The surprise manner in which the highways were seized meant that many vehicles were on the road and have been trapped at the various blockade points. Around 2,500 bus passengers are stuck between Kilometres 590 and 640 on the Panamericana and are suffering hunger, thirst, heat and cold. Already one elderly man has died from a heart attack due to the long distance he had to walk from the blockade in the sun. La Republica reports that the mayor of the district of Ocoña has declared a state of emergency, with agriculture and commerce paralized and a growing shortage of food, medicines, gas and petrol.

With tensions running high on all sides, tomorrow will surely produce some kind of (hopefully peaceful) solution.

Brief Notes from Peru

The weather has again taken a strange turn, perhaps even more extreme than in 2010. Lima should be starting to cloud over by now, but until my last day there it continued hot and sunny. The afternoon we went to the coast, you could see the sea fog trying to come in but burning up before it got on shore. Meanwhile, by April, skies above Arequipa should be cloudless but there's still a lot of cloud and haze around the mountains, with big cumulonimbus puffing up in the afternoons. The January to March period apparently saw the heaviest rains for many a year, so intense they damaged some of the streets in the city centre. Rain and even snow continues in the sierra and there is apparently likely to make some crop harvests late or significantly reduced.

Both Lima and Arequipa, especially the former, have seen rapid and significant modernisation of their vehicle fleet, which seems to have had a notable impact on pollution levels.

The issues of great debate in the national media continue to relate to exploitation of natural resources. The most prominent controversy at the moment relates to plans for a mine known as Conga in the northern department of Cajamarca, part of the mining project Yanacocha. This project was approved by the previous government but is opposed by the majority of locals in Cajamarca -- including the regional government -- because of fears of the impact it will have on water sources (four highland lagoons are slated to be used for depositing tailings from the mine). The current government ordered a review by a panel of international experts, which has recently been completed. Barely three days later, President Ollanta Humala announced that the project would go ahead, but with stronger conditions related to direct generation of employment, water storage and protection of the environment, as recommended in the international expert report. Early indications are that many in Cajamarca are not happy with this compromise, so debate and protest are likely to continue.

Impressions of El Metropolitano

I'm a minor conossieur of urban transport issues, and, as I've written on a number of occasions before, one of Lima's greatest problems has been the lack of the mass transit system that is enjoyed by pretty much every other Latin American city of a similar size, as well as by several that are smaller.

 Therefore, it's great to have an opportunity to finally try out El Metropolitano, Lima's new guided busway system. Similar in conception to Bogotá's Transmilenio, it at present has a single line running through the city centre from Independencia in the north to Chorrillos in the south.

On Thursday I  and a friend rode El Metropolitano from the central city to the end of the line at Chorrillos, from where we found our way to the beach to eat cebiche, and then doubled back to Barranco to pick up El Metropolitano back into the centre. On Friday I took a couple more rides around rush hour. On the strength of my experience so far, I'm giving El Metropolitano a B/B+.

 In making an evaluation, I'm not including any consideration of the extent or coverage of El Metropolitano, which is obviously inadequate at the moment but will hopefully be improved over time. I'm only taking into account the features of the service that currently exist. Details below.

The Good

• The buses are modern, clean, quiet and internally uncluttered with seats that are comfortable enough and leave enough space for those standing; there are also plenty of grips to hold onto if you're standing.
• Although I haven't tested how it handles the peak of a Lima summer, the bus was comfortable enough in Thursday's 25 degrees.
• The payment system is straightforward: you purchase a single card and load money on to it at the same machines, which are available at all stops. These are easy to use, although I would recommend having coins to pay with.
• It's good value: a single journey is S/. 1.50 (about $0.75 NZD) regardless of where you get off.
• The platforms are simple and unobtrusive. The barriers are easy to negotiate with your card: the single price allows the added benefit that you only have to zap in when you enter and not when you get off. When you zap through the barrier it shows how much money you have remaining on your card.  The boarding and getting off processes are relatively efficient, through electronic doors in the platform barrier that align with the bus doors.
• Although there's only one line, there are some minor variations through the centre of the city and three different express services.
• It's clear that the infrastructure and investment required for this service has been much less than for a train or metro. Expansion along existing road networks is feasible without prohibitively grand public works. Yet El Metropolitano moves with similar speed and smoothness to a metro. If Tony Randall reads this, I'd say it provides support for consideration of guided busways as a serious public transport alternative.

The Bad

• The buses are crowded, with standing room only in the central section of the route even during the middle of the day. At rush hour they're packed like sardines. I'll acknowledge that many metros around the world can also be very crowded, but this is usually only in the central four or five stations of a line and only during rush hours. From my experience, I'd say that around a third of the entire route is standing-only for most of the day. I wonder whether this is due to a deliberate trade-off to keep prices low in return for a level of discomfort assumed to be tolerated by Peruvians. If so, I think this is short-sighted.
• Unlike trains or metros, El Metropolitano has to stop at traffic lights, although this is not much of an impediment on the stretch immediately south of the centre, where it runs through its own bus tunnel for a while (similar to Brisbane!), then follows the expressway.
• The ticket machines don't give change. You can understand that this keeps things simpler, but beware of trying to buy a card or top it up with a large-denomination note.
• There is an almost amusing paucity of information, including some of the easiest things to get right. On Wednesday I wandered down to the central station to see if I could find out something about the service in general. I asked in vain if anyone had a pocket map or pamphlet that explained the services. "Hmm, I think there used to be something like that but not any more" was the general reply. El Metropolitano has a website that does explain many aspects of the service, but nowhere does it tell you the pricing system! (I had to ask at the station to find this out).
• Unlike almost all metros, there is no stylized map in the interior of the buses that helps you map your progress, and, importantly, realize very early if you're going in the wrong direction. On the station platforms, there are helpful stylized maps of the different route variations (eg, showing the stations that the express services stop at). But unlike most metros, there are no street maps of the area surrounding the station. It's assumed you'll just know where to go. Therefore, although El Metropolitano is an improvement to public transport in Lima, it does not yet provide the more intangible services of security and orientation to the stranger and citizen, which are offered by the best mass transit systems

Back to South America

In the tradition of this blog I have to announce without any warning that I'm back in South America and am writing this from Lima, Peru. I arrived yesterday afternoon and am currently battling to overcome jet lag. It's the end of summer and still very pleasantly warm, although the low cloud drifting in from the ocean is starting to win its annual battle with the sun.

There's been a bit of a blog hiatus as I've been very busy with academic work and all the practical things related to getting this trip underway -- including moving out of my Wellington flat, storing my things, and cleaning the place from top to bottom.

This trip is going to be more than six months -- my longest since 2004/05. What I'm hoping to achieve are several vague but related things. It will help a future evaluation if I list them here:

• Tie off some of the extra details related to my research on tourism in the Colca Valley, mixed in with co-authoring a possible book chapter with a Peruvian colleague
• Work with one or more of the local NGOs to carry through some ideas for a couple of small projects that ocurred to me when I was doing my Master's research
• Spend some sustained time in small rural villages and the countryside, learning more about agriculture, herding and how people deal with day-to-day life
• Visit some different parts of Peru (I'm thinking Huaraz and the northern sierra) as well as spending some more time on one or two of the other Andean countries
• Come away with some concrete and describable ideas for PhD research

The Chinese Factory

One of the interesting things that appeared early in the new year was this report from the New York Times on the reasons Apple makes its products in China. (Some further background: this long report on working conditions in the factories of Apple's suppliers, and this follow-up report).

The NYT article and some discussions of it have concluded that making things in China is not about worker wages, but about workforce flexibility, readiness and 'appropriate' skill levels:

“[Foxconn] could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?” 

This is disingenuous. The reason you can have an army of workers practically on site ready to leap out of bed at midnight and start making i-Pads is because they'll put up with it for what they get paid. In the end, this comes back to cost.  There are actually plenty of Americans prepared to live in barracks and jump to attention when needed. However, I'm guessing that Apple or other companies wouldn't be prepared to offer the same pay, benefits and pensions that one receives in the military.

It's also worth deconstructing the ahistorical statement that "if it weren't for the factory jobs, they'd all be unemployed and even poorer" This [long] piece by John Bellamy Foster and Robert W McChesney on  global stagnation and China argues that the "floating population" which does the majority of the most menial and hazardous work in Chinese factories was created by a complex process of proletarianisation during the post-Mao reform period, including the disestablishment of state-owned enterprises and (sometimes illegal) land privatization. The authors argue that this has created a reserve army of labour and enabled superexplotation. They cite figures showing rapidly increasing inequality in China and a steep drop in consumption, and particularly wages, as a share of GDP.

Then, just to complicate matters, you can read this news item on an announced wage rise by Foxconn and evolving labour market dynamics in China, with people now apparently more reluctant to migrate to the coast, forcing factories to relocate to the interior; and the Chinese administration desperate to increase the GDP share of consumption to counteract depressed export markets.

Could it be that the theorised capitalist development pathway of modernisation, labour absorbtion, and Kuznet's U-shaped curves is actually happening in China?  Will the contradictions of capitalist production necessitate a Fordist solution? It's worth noting that the Foxconn factory workers' reported new wage of $400 per month is about 50 percent more than the minimum wage in Peru, which for many workers in the formal economy is the standard wage. Will China become a middle class country even more rapidly than its southeast Asian neighbours? Will low-wage manufacturing eventually move to non-oil producing African countries, repeating the cycle?

Of course, no one knows. But one thing is for sure: in earlier cycles of capitalist development, improvement n wages, working conditions and labour rights didn't just happen automatically: they had to be fought for in distinct political struggles. So, it's always relevant to do what is possible to support these struggles, even if it is just putting consumer pressure on companies like Apple.

Aconcagua Gear by Category #3 Feet

This is the third post discussing the gear needed on Aconcagua. Here are the first and second posts.

Trekking footwear

You need some robust footwear for the 3-day trek to base camp, over dry but often rather rocky terrain. I wore my reliable Asolo leather tramping boots, which for long walks are just as comfortable as shoes. A couple of people struggled with blisters. For me, they can be completely avoided by having boots that fit properly, combined with the right socks. A couple of the people in the group wore running shoes all the way to base camp. They got away with it, but I personally wouldn't recommend this. Given the terrain, running shoes aren't great either for keeping your feet and ankles protected or for security of footing.

 Double plastic boots

 These are quite possibly the most important single item of gear. Keeping your feet warm and dry is essential high up on the mountain. The gear list insisted on double plastic boots as obligatory. Literally getting cold feet is one of the main reasons for failing to summit Aconcagua.

 The main options presented by the gear list were the Asolo 8000 and Scarpa Inverno (known as the Vega in the UK). I ended up getting the Scarpa boots since they were the only ones the local gear importer could get in an appropriate size (andI'd like to thank Bivouac for all their help with this). They were perfectly adequate: robust, plenty warm enough with the factory liners, and easy enough to get on and off. However, the Invernos were very large and clunky. They made a duck-like gait basically inevitable, and they were so broad they created some problems for fitting gaiters and strapping crampons. Thanks to some advice from a local ski store, I inserted some silicon wedges into the heels, which notably reduced the duck-like gait. If I had my time again, I'd like to try the Asolos. A couple of team members had these and they seemed to be smaller and less clunky while being just as warm. On the other hand, some of the reviews suggest they aren't great for wide feet (like mine).

 It's worth noting that I ended up getting a pair of the Invernos at least 1 1/2 sizes bigger than my usual boot size, which was not due to wearing thicker socks. Boots are one of the things that you really must try before you buy (or have the option and time to exchange if you buy online).

The gear list specifically advised people on the Aconcagua expedition not to bring Himalayan-style boots with integrated gaiters such as the Millet Everest, since it's thought that they may suffer damage on the sharp scree of Aconcagua. As it happened, several expedition members did bring these boots, and they turned out to be ideal in the heavy snow we experienced. So, they can work out well, and might be an option if you're planning to use them on further expeditions to the Himalayas or Alaska. But you can risk damage if conditions are dry.

A piece of advice: don't try to delay wearing your plastic boots by continuing from Base Camp up to Camp 1 in your trekking boots. This will simply mean that you will have to carry your plastic boots at some point and you'll put off getting used to them. At the speed you will be walking up the mountain, plastics are perfectly acceptable.  

Special liners Adventure Consultants recommended getting some Intuition liners to wear instead of the factory liners in our plastic boots. These are specialist liners made by a small Canadian company using an innovative foam developed in New Zealand. They can be heat molded to better fit your boots and feet. The liner made for climbing boots is called the Denali. They are said to be warmer, lighter and quicker-drying than factory liners. I took the advice and sent away for some Intuition liners, based on my foot measurements. When they arrived, they turned out to be too small, even after heat molding. The company very kindly (and quickly) agreed to replace them with the next size up. However, even these were a bit tight around my toes, even after more heat molding. In the end, I took them to Argentina but at base camp decided to go with the factory liners, which fit perfectly and were plenty warm enough. There are people, including a couple of our guides, who swear by the Intuition liners. If you decide to get these, make sure you have the ability and time to get the right size and ensure they fit your feet and boots.

 Regardless of which liners you end up using, when you are at the high camps you need to sleep with them in your sleeping bag to help them dry out.  

Socks

For almost any long trekking or climbing expedition, I wear liner socks. I find that by wicking away sweat to the outer sock layer, they keep my feet drier, warmer (and, paradoxically, also cooler in hot conditions). I find that cheap, synthetic liners from the Cool Max brand work best. For outer layers I usually wear Icebreaker merino socks, of varying weights depending on the conditions. However, for Aconcagua summit day I got the thicket, warmest synthetic mountaineering socks I could find. These were reserved, unworn, for the day itself, along with a clean pair of liner socks.

 In a previous post, I suggested that you could get away with fewer base layers, maybe only one set, on the high mountain. However, I do not recommend skimping on socks. Having something clean and dry on your feet makes a big difference, and I did not regret taking 5 full sets of socks with me. Above 5,000 metres, where it's freezing cold and doing anything saps precious oxygen and energy, your priorities become clear. I think I only managed to clean my teeth 2 or 3 times after we left base camp. But on a snowy afternoon at camp 1, I made a special effort to trudge down to a mostly-frozen stream. Using a small lump of soap and numbing water that gushed beneath a hole in the ice, I washed my dirty liner socks (to be dried by being hung up inside the tent and then joining the growing collection of items inside my sleeping bag).  

Footwear around camp

The gear list advised us to take some old running shoes for river crossings and wearing around camp, and some down booties for wearing in the tent and around camp. I used the running shoes for the one river crossing and then left them at base camp. The booties turned out to be redundant inside the tent, and useless in the deep snow we had at all our camps. As I've suggested previously, I would replace both of these with a pair of sandals, or maybe some old tennis-style shoes that can be really squashed up.