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| Enrique Krauze |
Something
extraordinary is happening in Peru.
There has
been considerable improvement in the economy and in the stability of political
life. And the country is experiencing strong -- though still limited --
progress in its social programs. But above and beyond these achievements,
Peruvians are changing the painful perception they have long had of themselves
and their country’s place in the world; they are altering the country’s
mentality, that set of conceptions and practices known as its “customs” (las
costumbres).
“Time has
created customs with the same patience and slow pace as the growth of
mountains,” wrote the great Spanish novelist Benito Perez Galdos.
If there is
a country that confirms this aphorism, it is the mountainous and hierarchically
traditional Peru. When I first went there in 1979, I noticed how Peruvians
ridiculed themselves: “The modern Inca is inca-pable,” they would pun. They
displayed a nostalgia for an archaic Inca Eden destroyed by the Spanish
Conquest. They also despaired at the backwardness of the Andean region compared
with the coast, the poverty and submissiveness of the Indian majority, the
omnipresence (in language, social treatment, political disputes) of fierce
ethnic rancor, and even their geographic remoteness from Europe and the U.S.,
the true centers of power and development.
Bloody
Conquest
I remember
walking in Cuzco, past the colonial churches whose beautifully fitted masonry
was built on the visible foundations of Inca temples; clear architectural
emblems of the bloody conquest of Peru. It was a golden twilight and I heard an
Indian melody being played on an Andean flute. It was probably a Quechua love
song, but it seemed the saddest music I had ever heard.
I next
visited in 1990. The country had passed through various military regimes and
was now mired in a careless populism that had almost destroyed the economy. And
it was wracked by the savage uprising of the Shining Path, the Maoist guerrilla
group that inflicted a parade of horrors. I saw an army of child beggars
flooding the commercial zones of Lima, soldiers patrolling the streets -- alert
to the next terrorist outrage, kidnapping or assassination -- and speculators
in the streets waving handfuls of devalued currency. The Peruvian central bank
had exhausted its reserves. In 1989, inflation had risen to 2,600 percent and
gross national product had fallen 15 percent.
The
novelist Mario Vargas Llosa was running for president. He advocated a program
of economic modernization to open the frontiers to trade and expand the free
market. In a bitter campaign, the future Nobel laureate was defeated by Alberto
Fujimori (a loss that would wind up being greatly to the benefit of world
literature.) Many (especially poorer) Peruvians were convinced that Vargas
Llosa’s social proposals were harmful, but Fujimori incorporated a number of
them into his economic program. Fujimori had a measure of success in the early
years of his first term. Then his presidency, besieged and degraded by the
brutal struggle against the Shining Path, degenerated into internal violence
and rampant corruption. He defeated the guerrillas, yet the many abuses of his
dictatorial government eventually led to his conviction by a Peruvian court and
imprisonment.
But the
movement toward economic modernization (and the defeat of the Shining Path)
seems, in retrospect, to mark the beginning of Peru’s ascent. Good omens
appeared amid the country’s troubles. First, there was the election of
President Alejandro Toledo, of Indian origins and a graduate of Stanford
University, whose biography in itself seems to represent the beginning of
reconciliation between the past, violently divided factions of Peruvian
history.
‘State of
Law’
Then, there
was a populist president (Alan Garcia) who, in his second term, recognized his
previous economic errors and chose the road of modernization. He was followed
by the current president, Ollanta Humala, who had once led an abortive attempt
at a leftist military coup but now considers “the divisions of left and right
to be obsolete,” defends the “state of law” and is following not the path of
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez but the highly successful Brazilian road of democracy
championed by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his presidential successor, Dilma
Rousseff, combining a modernized economy with strong social commitment.
Peru’s
problems continue to be immense, but they are being actively confronted. There
is, of course, the menace of the drug trade, which hangs like a dark cloud over
much of Latin America. And the country has a long backlog of deficits in
infrastructure, housing, basic services, education and fair competition. But
focused programs of social aid now exist, and the Humala government has created
a Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion meant to supervise, coordinate
and maintain their integrity. According to the Peruvian Ministry of Economy and
Finance, the absolute poverty rate is being reduced and has already been
shrinking over the past 10 years (to 31 percent from 53 percent -- though it
still stands at 54 percent in rural areas). The objective is to reduce this
rate to 15 percent by 2020.
At the same
time, a modernizing economy and business- friendly environment is being
maintained, and only Chile is considered a more hospitable environment for
investment in the region.
Globalization
has transformed the economic geography of Peru. “We’re a China in miniature,”
said the intellectual Alfredo Barnechea, noting the impressive migration from
the poverty-plagued Andean regions to the coastal cities, where employment has
grown 37 percent, due to an expansion of construction and consumption. China
has become a major market for Peruvian raw materials, receiving 15 percent of
total exports. With an inflation rate forecast to be only 2.4 percent to 2.6
percent this year, the country is now growing by about 6 percent per year, has
quintupled its external investments and boosted its exports sixfold. Its
economic growth has been favorably compared to Singapore, China and South
Korea.
A few weeks
ago, I visited the Sacred Valley near the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu and
stood by the crystal-clear waters of the Vilcanota River. The streets of its
villages were clean and well-kept. The signs of economic improvement were
everywhere. I looked at the striking array of ancient agricultural terraces on
the mountain slopes. They were sculpted into the mountains six centuries ago by
Inca peasants and engineers, along with astronomical observatories and temples
to their gods.
Today, the
modern Peruvians, the new Incas, are performing their own miracles of national
construction, moving new mountains for the benefit of the present and the
future.
By Enrique Krauze
(Enrique
Krauze, the author of “Mexico: Biography of Power” and “Redeemers: Ideas and
Power in Latin America,” is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed
are his own. This article was translated from the Spanish by Hank Heifetz.)
To contact
the writer of this article: Enrique Krauze at ekrauze@prodigy.net.mx
To contact
the editor responsible for this article: Max Berley at mberley@bloomberg.net
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