Final Thoughts from Peru: Traditions and Resistance

It has been quite an interesting experience living in Peru these past several weeks. I have met many women and men, spent much time in the market, and traveled to many interesting areas that have shared their ways of life with me. I have learned a lot. As simplistic as that statement may be, it is the truth. I have seen, smelled, heard, and lived part of the Peruvian experience. I have laughed with people, learned about their lives, and read about their problems. The Andes are an incredibly beautiful place and the people amazingly friendly and giving. Their struggles for independence, freedom from poverty, and for food security are not so much different than people elsewhere in this world. This is why it is important to understand the connections between these things, between other worlds, and with ourselves. I believe that we have a lot to learn from Peru: government supported urban agriculture initiatives, creative market women, and an incredible sustainable, biodiverse food security program run by a collective of indigenous farmers, for starters. Yet, underneath all of this is the people's incredible persistence and will to survive in dignified ways. Ultimately, a true food secure system anywhere in this world rests on those principles: persistence and dignified survival. This is why it is so important to understand sustainability, to appreciate local cultures, and to live in contextualized ways.

For my final thoughts I have decided to discuss an article by Harriett Friedmann, "Remaking “Traditions”: How We Eat, What We Eat, and the Changing Political Economy of Food," (from one of my favorite books, Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain: Women, Food, and Globalization). Friedmann discusses the importance of really understanding what the word "tradition" entails. She claims that "People use the word “traditional” to name what they are used to. This word allows us to avoid thinking about how, when and why our patterns of work, trade, and family life came to be." Instead of understanding exactly how patterns of being unfolded, such as how gendered relationships in Peru stem from colonization, we instead label them "traditional" and try to adhere to them as we see culturally fit. She argues that “Every “tradition” was once constructed. Today we are experiencing rapid and comprehensive change. If we simply use the word “nontraditional” to name changes, we miss the opportunity to ask questions about the history of “traditions” that are changing." If we do not ask questions, if we do not see how traditions that were previously constructed can now change, then how can we ever shape the future for better? How can we actively create better traditions? The point is, we cannot. And a starting point for understanding what we need to do and what we need to change comes from understanding the complexity behind the notion of traditions. 


As far as the resistance part of this goes, it is simply that we can re-examine traditions and learn from them. Learn from our own, and learn from others, so that we may build successful resistance to the undermining of our food security. Such examples as the urban agriculture initiatives, Parque de la Papa, and market women's incredible craftiness at survival serve to show us how we can change and what types of alternatives we have available to us. It is important to learn from such initiatives and to be able to apply them in the local, contextualized ways that Desai has mentioned (discussed in the previous post). Scattered resistances, it seems, will be the ultimate tool in the creation of true, food security systems.

Parque de la Papa

As we prepare to embark on quite an epic trek to the renowned Machu Picchu (with its culturally constructed identity--as discussed in the previous post), we spent one of our last days in Cusco visiting Potato Park, or Parque de la Papa. This park is a sustainably based farming initiative, where six villages of indigenous people collaborate on how the park is organized and ran. The farm works to maintain Andean biodiversity, cultural heritage, and food security for greater Peru.

The park itself has over 2,000 different types of potatoes (of the 4,000 different types in the world, Peru hosts 3,000 of those). In addition to potatoes, farmers here also grow quinoa (also native to the Andes), hundreds of types of maize (once holy to the Incas), peppers, and other vegetables. I have been looking forward to this visit for the duration of our trip.

We left Cusco early in the morning and headed to Parque de la Papa with a man who was a friend of some of the villagers there. On our way he stopped and showed us holistic or medicinal plants that were native to the Andes, we ate at a local small restaurant which specialized in quinoa soup, and finally arrived at the park sometime in the afternoon. Upon our arrival we visited people who were working on building a house. They build the house out of Eucalyptus wood (brought here by the Spanish), to keep insects at bay. We stopped and talked with them for a few minutes and learned how they built their houses.

When we arrived at the park center we performed a ritual to the earth to show our respect. Our guide provided each of us with three coca leaves--each leaf symbolizing a different aspect of the offering, and we gave the earth or respects, prayers, and hopes, and then cast the leaves off to the wind. We walked around a central museum to speak with some young girls who were working on their family farm nearby. The girls only spoke Quechua, so they communicated only with our guide. However, we did help them thrash grain by walking two burros around in a small circle on top of it. The young girl who was doing this said she did this all day long (early morning to dark) for a week or so before the work was complete.

Afterwards, we met with a man who had been working farther up in the mountains. He came down on a small motorbike and opened the museum for us, where he explained (in very fast Spanish) about the structure of the community, the layout of the land, the types of foods grown, and the other organizations that the park works with. As it turns out, the park is part of the International Potato Center, and works with this organization to help create food security initiatives for all of Peru by providing sustainably, locally grown fresh foods to rural and urban poor.

This organization is a type of direct resistance to imperialism, colonialism, poverty, Westernized development, and the many other problems that plague Peru and other similar nations. The park bring together the collective work of people--they assist each other in housebuilding, cooking, farming, etc---and creates a locally based, sustainable alternative to the modern international food system. Peru, at this time, relies largely on food imports because it is cheaper to purchase imported food than food locally produced. This creates risks of food shortages, price controls outside of the government's ability to manage, and a quality and quantity of food that is in the hands of the international market and transnational corporations. Many of Peru's food insecurity problems stem from this dependency upon international imports. However, Parque de la Papa resists this and creates a viable, successful alternative.


This type of resistance reminds me of Manisha Desai's article “Transnational Solidarity: Women’s Agency, Structural Adjustment, and Globalization” (from the book Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics). In this article she discusses the concept of contextualized activism, or activism that is specific to the needs of local peoples, rather than activism that is based on abstract morals, principles, or global needs. Furthermore, Desai argues that resistance can also be multidirectional, or that it can take on many fronts at once in many different ways. Desai terms this contextualized and multidirectional type of resistance as "scattered resistance," meaning that it can take on new forms as it needs--similar to Krogel's assertion about identity construction (discussed in the previous post). Parque de la Papa is addressing multiple fronts simultaneously: food security, poverty alleviation, imperialism, etc. while working in culturally relative and localized, contextualized ways to provide solutions to these problems. It involves many people, who otherwise may have found themselves as rural migrants to urban cities without adequate employment, and it focuses on culturally grounded sources of food, thus reclaiming cultural food heritage, all while working to create a more stable food security system across Peru through its networking with other organizations. This is an impressive and successful alternative solution that could be learned from around the world.

Andean Islands

This past weekend we left to visit Lake Titicaca, which is in Puno. This lake is the highest commercially navigable lake in the world and features several islands that are upwards of 13,000 feet in altitude. Interestingly, we are some of the first visitors to these islands since Puno has been reopened due to political unrest. I will begin with the story of Puno. A Canadian mining company, Canadian Bear Creek Mining, was given governmental authority to mine the area. This authority comes as a Presidential veto after the Peruvian congress had passed a law giving the right of these lands to the indigenous peoples of Puno. The people of Puno, dependent upon tourism as an economic resource, see this mining company as a threat to not only their land rights (capable of displacing communities), but also as an environmental hazard that will damage Lake Titicaca and ruin future tourism. After the government ignored their desire to negotiate, thousands of protestors literally shut down the city of Puno--preventing people from arriving or leaving. This, of course, stopped all tourism to Lake Titicaca and forced the government to respond. After the protestors tried to take over Puno's international airport, five were killed by government police, creating scandal on top of unrest. After this, exiting President Garcia decided to give all land rights back to the indigenous peoples of Puno and force the mining company to leave. It was a mere few days after the resolution of this crisis that we visited Puno.

Walking the tourist strip found the doors of international banks shattered, but otherwise, the city seems to have returned to normal. We saw no remaining protestors, signs of struggle, or any other indicators of unrest.

So, with this as the background, we boarded a boat and set off for a few days of living on islands. The first islands we visited are the floating reed islands, which were constructed by indigenous people hundreds of years ago as a way to escape the Inca, and then later the Spanish. Today these islands are mostly reserved for tourists, but many indigenous Aymara live there. Women from these reed islands are known especially for their handicraft work, large textile banners of intricately woven art, and their incredibly colorful dress. We were invited to the home of one of the women--Olga--where she showed us how she lived and made her clothes. In the group that visited Olga, I was the only woman, and interestingly, she would only say my name when addressing all of us. After sitting in Olga's house and conversing with her for some time, we then were invited to purchase her wares which had already been set up in a makeshift market outside. This was very reminiscent of Chinchero, where the women encouraged foreign participation in their cultural activities and then used this closeness to encourage purchases of their wares. We of course bought some of Olga's amazingly beautiful art, and she thanked us profusely, throwing in small gifts as if we were loyal customers.

The next island we visited is Amantani Island. Here we actually stayed the night with the villagers and learned more about their way of life and customs. Our host family was comprised of two sisters. Their parents had left that day to make the two day trip to Puno to purchase cheese and rice, which was not made on their island. Aside from that, however, people from Amantani grow almost all of their own food and make their own clothes. Tourism here operates interestingly, because they want to share the economic benefits of tourists with all citizens of the island, while giving each other breaks from hosting. Supposedly (it doesn't always work this way) tourist groups are rotated to different villages around the island, with each village getting at least one to three tourist groups per month.

Anyway, we were given a small dorm to stay in, but as it was cold, we chose to stay in the kitchen aiding the sisters to stay warm. The kitchen was removed from the main part of the house, it was made of mud walls, a dirt floor, with a clay oven that was constantly heated with a sage-smelling wood. On top of the oven sat a large cast iron pot that Gladys (the older sister, apparently in charge) constantly had water boiling in. She spent most of the day making rice, and then for dinner we had a scrambled egg with fresh vegetables along with cheese and the rice. As is custom throughout the Andes we also had a quinoa and vegetable soup. Before dinner we spent an hour or so helping her peel the most impossibly tiny purple potatoes I had ever seen. Afterwards, we washed dishes by pouring the hot boiling water into a large clay pot. We then shared muna tea (muna being the same herb that we were given in tea during our time in Chinchero--it is a very valued herb throughout the Andes, even here).

That night Gladys and her sister (who only spoke Quechua, so we did not learn her name), dressed us up in their traditional wear--thick wool skirts, a heavy woven belt, and a heavy wool shirt--and took us to their town hall to participate in local dances and festivities. This entire experience was a much more involved version of both the experiences with Olga and the Quechua women from Chinchero. Here we lived with, helped, and participated directly in the culture of the villagers from Amantani. We sat in their sage scented earthen kitchens, not only watching them prepare food that had come from hard, long hours in the fields, but we also helped prepare it. We not only saw their clothes, but wore them too. During the day we took a tour of their farms and fields, up to the top of the island where we visited the Father Earth temple, which was used as a holy place to bring good harvests during harvest season. This whole situation was, by far, one of the greatest examples of creative resistance, as espoused by Krogel, that I had experienced directly. These people were maintaining their traditional, indigenous ways of life while also generating profit at the expense of foreigners.

Author Alison Krogel articulates the concept of traditional identities, or any cultural identity, as not stable or static. Rather, identities are constantly in construction or reshaping. Krogel states that the "concept of identity as a process echoes Stuart Hall’s formulation of the cultural identity as “becoming” and it undergoes constant transformation. Instead of conceiving of identity as an “already accomplished fact,” he suggests that cultural identity should be thought of as “a ‘production,’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside representation." It was clear that on this island these identities were constructed, even if they were based on cultural norms and traditional behaviors. The people maintained an image that was most conducive to tourism, even as they lived their lives and survived in practical, culturally relevant ways. Tourism, even though the islanders try to maintain its influences by spreading tourists across different villages, has clearly shaped the culture and identity of many islanders who live on Amantani. Yet, at the same time, the islanders of Amantani retain their own connections to their culture and work to teach tourists about traditional indigenous ways of living. It is a tension that creates identities in constant flux, forging new paths as old ones are forgotten and emphasizing cultural norms in ways that they may have never previously been explored.

Urban Lives

While the Andes is considered a rural area it is important to note that the informal economy and food security are enormous issues to urban residents. Cusco, while called a "small" city by residents (the city has about half a million citizens), still faces many issues that other larger urban areas do. However, to truly get a glimpse of how women are impacted due to migration and other issues affecting urban areas, I will be examining Lima in this entry. Yet, as I have not really been to Lima (aside from the exhausting wait for the flight to Cusco), I'm going to illustrate urban problems as I have seen them in Cusco.


As discussed previously here, at this blog, Structural Adjustment Programs have had harsh effects on many Peruvians. In the countryside cuts to small farmers and social services have left many people without land (as they can no longer afford it) and no money. This, in turn, has forced many rural people (especially from the Andes and especially women), to migrate to urban centers. Lima's population, for instance, has increased incredibly over the past several years due to constant rural-to-urban migration. In one of the municipalities of Lima, Villa Maria del Triunfo, out of a survey of urban agricultural producers only 18% were originally from Lima, the rest were migrants from rural areas. Out of the entirety of this urban agricultural program, 86% of producers or participants were women. Villa Maria del Triunfo is one of the incredibly poor outskirt neighborhoods of Lima, where infrastructure is failing or has yet to be installed, and most people are unemployed without access to basic services. However, as part of the government's new food security initiatives, Villa Maria del Triunfo participates in an urban agricultural program, where mostly women farm and garden on abandoned or government land. (Statistics and information come from the article Urban Agriculture, Poverty Alleviation, and Gender in Villa Maria del Triunfo, Peru” by Noemi Soto, Gunther Merzthal, Maribel Ordonez, and Milagros Touzet from the book Women Feeding Cities: Mainstreaming Gender in Urban Agriculture and Food Security). 


The statistics above show just how incredible the rates of migration are and how women migrants are more likely to be centered in these poor, urban regions than men. Men tend to find higher wage jobs in manufacturing or industry inside of the city, women, however, are often unable to acquire such jobs. This is due to decades of gendered norms, women's lack of access to education, and often women's inability to speak Spanish (if they are Quechua from the rural Andean highlands). Thus, it is quite clear that women are disproportionately affected by issues of poverty and food security--even though men are also exploited by these same systems. 


Sitting at the hostal that hosts our Spanish classes, at the top of Cusco, I am able to look down into the city, and often into the courtyards of the houses around me. In almost every courtyard there are small garden plots, chickens, and guinea pigs all being tended by women. Laundry is strung up overhead and grandmothers, mothers, and daughters are constantly at work--doing dishes, cooking, gardening, or feeding their small farm animals. 


In my host family's house, Doris rises early (4 or 5 am) to begin cooking (poor water quality, no hot water, and high altitude make it quite difficult to prepare food--even in a middle class neighborhood with a gas stove and oven). She visits the market several times a day, works in a chocolate shop, and cares for her aging mother, along with making extra income taking in students and tourists, whom she feeds breakfast, lunch and dinner. The lack of basic services here amplify the work she has to get done on a daily basis and leaves her little time for leisure or relaxation. In poor households, this work is tripled, as they do not even have gas stoves or running water. 


However, urban agriculture has shown to be an empowering experience for many women living in these conditions. They are able to have stable access to food for their families, thus giving them some form of value and independence. Additionally, they work with many other women and build support networks that aid them in many aspects of life and work. Child care can be shared, along with other daily responsibilities. When urban agriculture is really successful, these women may even have extra produce that they can sell in the market to earn some income. 


This film, "From the Earth to the Pot" showcases just how incredible urban agricultural initiatives have been, especially for women, in Lima, despite the disastrous conditions of urban life as a rural migrant. 

Women of Chinchero and Quechua Creative Resistance

This past weekend we visited the Sacred Valley, or the area surrounding Cusco that provided the Incas with most of their agricultural products. We visited several villages, markets, and surrounding Incan ruins. Interestingly, many people of this valley still utilize Incan terraces to farm in the same ways that the Inca did hundreds of years ago.

One of the stops we made was a village called Chinchero, that is about an hour and a half outside of Cusco. Unlike the other villages, there were no skyscraping Incan ruins here, rather, the city was flat (Andean flat), quiet, and peaceful. Potatoes were left drying out in the fields, in order to save seeds for the coming year, the sun shone brilliantly across the evening mountains, and the men and women sat around in their traditional Quechua dress having beers and grilling cuy (guinea pig) to celebrate one of their festivals. Here, most people are Quechua and still speak the language and wear traditional indigenous clothing. They practice traditional agricultural practices and are most renowned for their weaving and textiles.

After our tour of the town, local churches (which featured original art from the Cusquena School), we were sent off to Chinchero's small local market to have a workshop on they cleaning, dying, and weaving processes of wool. Here we met many Quechua women, from very young to elderly, that led the workshop and demonstrated their brilliant expertise with textile making. They showed us freshly shorn wool (from one of the many alpacas that constantly wandered the land). The wool was dirty, matted and pretty gruesome. However, they easily cleaned and combed it with alpaca-bone combs and a bowl of boiling water. Afterwards, they showed us how the wool was then spun into thread. The young girl in charge of this task was amazingly adept at it and looked almost bored with the assignment. Afterward, the women showed us the various plants and bugs that they use to make the dyes for their clothes. Peru is known for its very vibrantly colored textiles and patterns, yet, most of these colors are made entirely naturally. Deep aquamarine blues, crimson reds, carnation pinks, etc. are all made from the natural environment of the Andes. It was almost like magic watching this happen. Finally, the women showed us how they weave. They pulled out a hand loom, and using the same alpaca bone combs as before, they quickly created detailed, intricate patterns of many colors as they created a shawl. I have never seen such artistry in my life. These women had clearly been doing this for quite some time, and often didn't have to look at the loom as they spoke to us about their techniques.

After the workshop, a man came and offered us deals from the market, where we could buy freshly made scarves, shawls, chompas, chullas, and more. This was an interesting and quite profitable display. Most of us, including myself, did spend quite a few soles purchasing up these beautiful goods.

This brings me to Alison Krogel's book Food, Power, and Resistance in the Andes: Exploring Quechua Verbal and Visual Narratives. This book details how Quechua women have created intricate networks through their cultural and social traditions that give them power through narrative form. They are storytellers, through their intricate and eloquent language that is full of hidden meanings. From this they are able to pass down cultural norms and warnings to those who do not respect the importance of women. Furthermore, their narratives and cultural behaviors also present the importance of food as a cultural tool. For instance, as the women of Chinchero told us their stories and showed us their work, they served us muna tea (an important Andean herb often used by Quechua peoples), and small snacks. If anyone would have refused these items it would have been a sign of complete disrespect and it is possible that they would have been asked to leave the demonstration. Furthermore, right outside of the workshop potatoes were drying in the fields, along with the wandering alpacas who had been recently shorn for wool to use in the demonstration. Krogel states that "An entire “world” is present in and signified in food…[it] transforms itself into situation and performs a social function, it is not just physical nourishment." This is precisely what we were experiencing as guests of these women in their weaving workshop. Food surrounded us both as nourishment and as a cultural element. Additionally, it determined our levels of respect for the women and their culture and thus, determined how we would be treated as outsiders. Food discretely shaped our entire experience with the women of Chinchero. 


Krogel also articulates the concept of creative resistance. This is "cases in which the oppressed need to adapt and accommodate to the demands of their oppressors; this adaptation and accommodation may serve as both a tactic toward the path of future, active resistance and as a tool for immediate survival."  Thus, even though oppressed peoples may appear to be working with their oppressors, in reality they are using small tactics and active strategies to ensure their survival and ultimately, to forge stronger resistance. In Chinchero, these women are using the exploitative practices of tour companies who bus foreigners in daily to see the sites and the traditional culture to create a meaningful sharing experience and to ensure their access to income and survival. Instead of allowing foreigners to merely look at the color and spectacle of their indigenous culture, these women have created an interactive workshop that makes visitors interact with people of Chinchero and truly consider their culture. Additionally, food is used as a tool to blur the boundaries between foreign and native. With their offerings of traditional Quechua foods and teas, the women are bringing the foreigners closer to their culture and giving them an offering of respect and sharing, while simultaneously enforcing respect and sharing on the part of the foreigner. At the end of these sessions, these women inevitably make a good deal of money, thus ensuring their continued survival. It is a brilliant program and emphasizes Krogel's notion of "creative resistance."