A Student's Perspective on Peru
Samuel Huber, a senior majoring in Religion and in Biology, participated in the 1998 summer program in Peru. He published the following essay about his experience in the Rochester, NY, Democrat and Chronicle on September 18, 1998.
Until recently, poverty for me was only something that existed in pictures or thoughts, something that lived far away in other places. It was something to be seen if I ventured out beyond my comfortable suburban American or collegiate lifestyle. My friends weren't homeless or hungry or poor. But this summer I witnessed astonishing poverty, hunger, and injustice. What I didn't see every day still exists, and it reflects on us personally and as a country.
As part of a summer Study Abroad program through the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester, nine undergraduates and I had the opportunity to spend three weeks traveling and living in Peru. The course was not designed to be a sightseeing class or tourist trip for smiling young backpackers; instead, it's an in-depth immersion into the economic, social, political, and human realities of life in Peru. I learned that not only does poverty have a name and a face, but it also has smells, tastes, sensations, and love. Poverty and its companion, hunger, are fully human entities, and are realities to all of the senses. In one of the many barrios that cover the hillsides around Lima, the moist air carried the mixture of animal and human waste smells, starchy cooking, and dirty, dusty living to my nose and mouth, and held it close against my skin.
Each day tired parents struggle to find any menial work that will ensure survival. They live in homes that are cardboard and metal shacks squatting precariously on the dusty hills, on sloping streets which for me were barely navigable in sturdy shoes but which were traversed with ease by small children wearing little more than dirt for clothes. Those who live at the bottom of the hill are better off than newer residents who set up hovels in still-open spaces higher up the slopes, but they all work hard and long, and without security of any nature.
Visiting the barrios of Lima, the capital city of eight million people, was an exercise in jarring juxtapositions. Inside a reasonably comfortable home by Peruvian standards there is little running water, but outside fancy cars speed through crowded streets. A birthday party in this same home at the bottom of the hill honored the matriarch and enveloped my companions and me with the warmth of love and family while orphans, single mothers, and abandoned or unloved children sat in darkness at the top.
Not only in Lima, but in many small towns in the Northern jungle as well as in the Southern cities and villages of the Andean Mountains, millions of people live day-to-day, and hand-to-mouth. Many are unemployed, or work when they can find short-term jobs, and most live without insurance or benefits of any kind. But these are not just people, they are friends. Throughout my travels, I was welcomed into homes, families, and places of business, and was allowed to share in the love and vision of the people who became my friends. I saw a subtle undercurrent of popular hope for the future, and people organizing themselves and their communities for economic viability and grassroots social change. Women are forming groups to make and sell products like peanut butter and grape juice, and even bake and sell bread to neighborhood schools.
The Peruvian condition speaks to a reevaluation of conditions in the developed world. When visiting those with less, one is forced to question priorities and the importance of individual possessions and necessities in industrialized nations. The current social, economic, and cultural state of Peruvian society asks the economic leaders of the world: "What have you done to make things this way?" It suggests that there are causal ripples from what may have appeared to be a one-way supply and demand relationship. It also questions the meaning and price of success. To a large degree, many of the hardships that abound in Peru are directly or indirectly the product of the economics and self-centeredness of the developed world in a time when actions have global consequences. When multi-national corporations take advantage of the cheaper labor market in Peru, they stunt the development of home-grown companies which could support a middle class; when the Peruvian government pays astronomical interest rates on loans from other countries, it loses funds for its own economic development.
The fragmented and dynamic nature of Peruvian realities challenges a Western or First World tendency to generalize. In a culture that to some degree eschews any single specific identity, label, or characteristic, people engage one another on the level of personal realities, lives, and self-concepts. It is a challenge to look beyond labels and to formulate ideas regarding the entire human condition, First World as well as Third. To me, individuals are similar regardless of their economic condition, and worthy of global respect and fair, humane treatment.
In Peru, as in many places, the situation is complex, and without an easy or general solution. There are many different and disparate groups of people, situations, and problems, and it does not benefit them to be generalized or reduced to a single, faceless entity. To simplify and dehumanize is only a way to hide from reality, and that is not an appropriate way to treat friends. The people I met in Peru taught me that friendship is about loving individually and unconditionally. Friends are people we take care of, and look after, and help in times of need. They always have a face. It is our responsibility to be aware of the condition and realities of our friends in the Americas, and to recognize the global impact of our actions.
Last modified: Tuesday, 09-Sep-2008 14:21:56 EDT