Beyond the Vapour Trail Read online

  So the urban poor keep an eye out. If they see an empty space that looks promising, they quietly conduct title and record searches to determine if the land is eligible. They form complex networks in advance to negotiate who will live there and who will live where. Once people have their plots assigned, they begin to gather building materials and maybe some relatives to support the initial squat until everything is established. A conspiracy of thousands of people is organised. Then the day arrives. The sun goes down. And everyone moves in at once. They literally put up their structures overnight.

  I visited one newly occupied area on the edge of the city and was amazed at the scale of these settlements. It has meant housing for millions of people, their own small patches of something. Three and a half million people out of Lima’s total population of about eight to nine million now live in one these neighbourhoods, the pueblos jóvenes (young towns). Before that they owned nothing. The settlers arrive seemingly from nowhere, with the suddenness and speed of a tear-gas canister. But they burst onto those hills in the night spring-loaded by a desire of years, of generations, waiting powerlessly to break free from poverty, for just some space where they can try to build their lives.

  Yet, seen up close, it didn’t amount to much, the hardfought little piece of land that I visited. Makeshift dwellings on a rocky, dusty hillside. There were no amenities. I noticed water trucks – because even the water had to be shipped in, usually for many years. It takes decades for these pueblos jóvenes to move towards full legal recognition as municipalities with the beginnings of services. Homes only progress as families find a little extra to purchase materials. So life in these areas is really pretty tough. Not the place you want to bring up kids.

  But kids there are. Lots of them. Bright faces, big eyes and enthusiastic smiles. We met with some of these children as well as families and community leaders in Villa El Salvador, which is one of the oldest of these pueblo jóvenes in Peru. Parts of Villa El Salvador had already achieved formal recognition and proper services, but the more recent neighbourhoods of piledup garden sheds high in the cold misty hills were still quite underdeveloped. Between the buildings the steep hillsides were bare, hardly a plant in the ground.

  The process as they explained it fascinated me. The people began clinging to the side of the hill, with scraps of timber and tin and other stuff cobbled together on a small plot of dust and rocks. And then they all worked together to turn it into a viable community. Families used whatever was at hand to improve their little homes, and since the area here was mostly dust and rock, they built all kinds of things with local stone. In places where the hill was too steep, they would build a terrace into the hillside like the Incas did, a beautiful stonework retaining wall that gave them more horizontal space to extend their home. Many of the houses themselves incorporated this superbly intricate jigsaw-puzzle stonework, using the skills drawn from ancestral memory. Most of it was beautifully done, and occasionally I saw walls that were so perfectly fitted together you would swear a single block had been shattered and they’d simply reconstructed it. No spaces between the stones.

  We met one group of children in a tin shack. We played a game, getting them to draw or act out a role-play so we could see their thoughts beyond their limited vocabulary. Through this they shared with us insights about their world. I handed my expensive camera to the children and let them take pictures, because children capture each other with glorious spontaneity. They told us they had to go elsewhere for their education – anywhere they could get into a school. It seems that everywhere in the world, the poor children have to walk a long way. Our local program manager confirmed that children from this neighbourhood went to sixty-six schools in different locations, some a little nearer and some a little too far.

  Among the many things we were doing with the community was establishing community-based child protection. This is a way of organising local people and organisations – and even the children – to identify any child in difficulty and respond in an organised way. We were also building children’s participation, and children were learning a myriad of life skills and discovering that they could act and help to shape their own world. Participation and protection were elements of a whole set of reforms that I had introduced to child sponsorship as part of my work, affecting millions of children and their siblings and neighbours. In the project here each child received a sticker for every skill they learnt – anything from basic health care, sanitation, emotional management, cooking, diagnosing anaemia, leadership skills, forum theatre … and they loved them! The local team used a phrase with the community I really liked and started using elsewhere: ‘the more your children participate, the more opportunities it gives them in life’. What does it mean when a ten-year-old boy is standing in school, clenching his fists in rage, the son of a violent man who was the son of a violent man – and then this boy learns how to deal with his anger? What does it mean when a girl who is not loved at home or clever at school – simply overlooked – and then she enters a space where an adult looks her in the eye and she is listened to, because she exists and matters … and she discovers when she picks up a camera that she has an eye, a gift, for capturing beauty? Or the boy who goes to bed at night with one prayer: Make him stop drinking, make him stop drinking, make him stop drinking … and someone notices and steps in to help the family?

  But social change like this doesn’t come without resistance. The powerful families of Peru didn’t gain control through meritocracy, through working harder on a level playing field. Their power came through violence and injustice, control by law, access to more resources, with police and military support. This kind of power doesn’t relax its cold grip easily. Religion and education are often co-opted to teach passive acceptance of the status quo. But religion played a different role in this place. It was in these very slum neighbourhoods of Lima that liberation theology was born, where the church throughout Latin America began to teach that the gospel demands social justice, that unjust political and social structures must be opposed. This wasn’t a popular message with the powerful. As one priest put it, ‘When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.’ But it’s a simple desire, really. These people wake every day, breathing, dreaming, hoping as we do for a better future for their children. This cry for social change in Peru was to get me tear-gassed the next day.

  CHAPTER 19

  Sudden Appearances of Tear Gas

  Finding myself with a spare day in Lima, I left the glossy tour pamphlets behind on the bedside table when I left my hotel. I kept only a map, and set off down the stairs to search for Pizarro’s treasure, or at least the Centro Histórico, the old town founded by the conquistador in 1535.

  The receptionist at the hotel front desk gave me directions. Somewhere between my broken Spanish and her broken English, I translated it to mean that I must walk a couple of blocks in the direction she was vaguely pointing. There I would take one of a series of buses heading leftwards, as long as they had certain numbers on them. But I must be back by midnight, before the buses stopped running. Something like that.

  Local buses. One Peruvian sol would get me there, which is about forty cents. Local transport is always more interesting, well worth my forty-cent investment. A local bus isn’t about getting there, you are there as soon as you begin waiting for one. It’s part of the magical experience, being immersed in moments that local people consider routine, beneath thinking about, but to you are filled with distinctive nuances.

  Wonderfully, no-one spoke English so I had to rely on my meagre Spanish. The fear of getting it wrong seems to make you alive to an experience. On the bus it crossed my mind that transport can take you anywhere, but I needed to go somewhere specific. And back again. So getting the details right meant double-checking and discovering the generosity of strangers who went out of their way to help. In fact, one woman got off her bus, walked me to the correct bus stop and made sure I was on before she left me. People can
be just lovely.

  I stopped well short of the Centro Histórico to walk my way in through Lima city. Street art always catches my eye, and it was interesting here, full of colour and protest. The souls of cities are sprayed upon their walls. There were police out in significant numbers this particular morning, sometimes standing before the street art, almost tense, as though they were watching for something to burst open on what seemed to be an ordinary day. I walked through the Plaza San Martín, an open courtyard beneath a giant statue, which had a few police at the edges in some serious riot gear. But they were just part of the city’s unique make-up. The shops, the people. Buskers, with traditional instruments or modern. A few blocks further on I stopped beside a young blind man playing guitar, like the Picasso painting, and for a while I sat with him. We talked about our shared love of music. He politely asked me to play him something, but I kept it short as I wasn’t going to earn him any tips.

  When I finally reached the Centro Histórico I couldn’t enter. The street was barricaded with free-standing metal bars, with free-standing police behind them, most in full riot gear. No-one was being allowed in. So I walked to the next street and the next, and realised the entire historical centre was barricaded – a massive city area of maybe thirty or forty blocks.

  OK. Adjust. We are goal-driven creatures, but travel is the experience you have, not the prescribed list of must-see items. So this became my morning: the shut-out. One of the oldest cities in the Americas, with its apparently stunning architecture, was completely blocked off because of the wrestle for power that had commenced here with Francisco Pizarro. The first Spanish buildings had been planted just there, behind today’s barricades, five hundred years earlier. Unrest was the theatre playing in the streets today. It was living history I could feel, and power I could sense in the surprisingly high numbers of police blocking every street, an over-reaction to peaceful demonstrations, the heavy-handed way democracy was being managed in Peru.

  So I took photos of the riot police instead. The barricades and batons and riot shields. Then gradually I started to see the eyes and faces of men, people wearing a uniform. They were looking back at me under their helmets. Someone’s husband. A son. Papá, Daddy who went to work today. Just another day at work, but a day that might lead to confrontation, anger, violence … who knows? Most responded to a smile and a greeting. Some didn’t smile at all.

  A pisco sour at a bar – ah! a surprising delight of a drink. Then a meal at a restaurant beside the barricades that meant, once I was inside the restaurant, I was technically on the other side and could watch the police through the side window. I could even see the people looking in from behind the barricades. I realised I had no idea what the planned demonstration was about, just inklings from conversations during the week. I decided to find out later.

  With the Centro Histórico off my list, I started the walk home, exploring as I went. When I arrived back at Plaza San Martín with the big statue, about six or seven blocks away, I discovered the demonstrators. They had obviously decided to move their demonstration here.

  And it was like Carnaval!

  The towering statue of Peru’s liberator from Spain, José de San Martín, was staring into the distance at nothing in particular – victory, perhaps. But beneath him, the massive concrete plinth his bronze horse stood upon was bedecked with banners. The people filled the plaza with an air of occupation. There were loudspeakers, although the people taking turns at the microphone sounded more like angry headmasters and headmistresses. Despite the irritating volume, they didn’t seem to be where the action was.

  The action was in the crowd. It was reported later that there were eight thousand people there. In the midst of the throng and colourful signs were people in distinctive dress – not traditional costume, but little flourishes that were quietly evocative of the culture – and all was swirling with the breathy music of panpipes and drums, big drums that thumped into your chest, and with dancing, evoking the sounds, movement and the soul of an indigenous past. I found it impossible not to be drawn in. Some were wearing cardboard Guy Fawkes masks with the words somos memoria – we are memory. They were even selling food. These folk knew how to run a demonstration. And within the inner circle of that indigenous expression of music and movement, some people were giving out coca leaves, which they shared with me, along with a subtle sense of being on the inside for accepting some. The numbing effect of the coca leaves, the music, the dance, all hummed inside me; the deep sense of non-verbal solidarity called to something inside me much more than the louder voices on the big megaphone. Those carrying drums thumped out an irresistible rhythm and moved their circle inwards, and then outwards, forcing the crowd to adjust and follow, like a creature that had come to life and was breathing. Others played their panpipes and danced in a line, weaving their way around and through the group, and every person that went past – older, younger, male and female – held the familiar pan flutes in their hands, seemingly unconsciously playing the melody or harmonies.

  The painted signs and pamphlets gave me sufficient clues to realise that many felt let down by the government of Presidente Humala, who had promised so much reform, so much for the poor and, in their view, had failed to deliver. They felt that the people’s government they had fought to elect had sold out to business interests. I had spoken to others during the week who saw the government policy as common sense: that without a strong economy you can’t fulfil the social reform agenda; the country will go broke. Both sides had reasons. The themes that divided them sounded all too familiar.

  But being in the midst of this demonstration felt like an immersion among the people, an anger translated into peaceful solidarity, celebration of identity, a single voice of concern in a larger-than-life, colourful bean salad of an event.

  ‘Debe salir de aquí.’ You had better get out of here.

  A young guy said this directly to me as he was moving away with his girlfriend. He indicated with a gesture at something behind him.

  Suddenly there was frantic movement. About a dozen police in riot gear had moved into the square, and like a chemical reaction came an instant friction of angry voices. The police clearly had thought better of this move and decided on a hasty retreat. They were running. I followed to catch it with my phone. A young guy picked up a plastic bottle of water and hurled it at the police. It tumbled in a high arc through the air, spinning and spilling water as it went, until it crashed on the perspex riot shields held over the heads of the police. It was followed by a volley of plastic bottles in their direction which mostly fell well short, crashing on the concrete just metres behind their retreating feet. Then I saw what was behind them. One of the streets leading to the square was now completely filled with riot police in formation: riot shields, helmets, batons, face masks. No more eyes. These men had become a phalanx, standing in front of armoured vehicles ready to roll in.

  There were several loud booms.

  I immediately scanned the square. Smoky trails arced up much higher than the trajectory of the water bottles and landed in the midst of the crowd, coming from several different directions but mostly from behind the main group of riot police. Some landed not far from me, with their long tails of tear gas pouring out and trailing among the people. The crowd immediately began dissolving, kerchiefs or hands over faces. Others moved towards the police line in defiance, hurling plastic bottles that fell well short on the road. I moved up to the edge of the square, taking photos, but away to the side so I could watch the confrontation. I knew where my line of retreat was. The entire scene was now bathed in tear gas, with the same grim riot police planted in firm formation beyond the smoke. A photographer wearing a gas mask wandered out alone on the road towards the police, a tear-gas canister maybe five metres in front of him. He took a photo of the riot police through the smoke. Shot of the day, I thought to myself. A few minutes later I decided I had a better photo.

  More tear gas followed. I realised I was almost the only one without any breathing protection.
The people remaining had either gas masks or scarves around their faces. Although I was off to the side, I now began to realise why people retreat. My eyes started stinging and my throat began to feel dry and irritated. So that’s what tear gas feels like, I remember thinking. Time to move.

  Deep in the midst of the square, a new canister hit the ground not far from me and skidded to a halt. As everyone backed quickly away from it, a young guy attempted to kick the canister towards the police. The tear gas canister didn’t move, it simply exploded into flames around his feet and shins. I caught it with my camera, the flames rising around his legs as he kicked, with the faces of tear-gas-distressed people watching him as they ran through the haze. Undismayed, he kept kicking it until he had moved it about two or three metres towards the police, who were probably eighty metres away. A wonderfully futile piece of defiance.

  OK. But that’s the shot of the day, I thought.

  The irritation of my eyes and throat was deepening, and I wasn’t sure what the next move of the police would be. I withdrew quickly; the crowd, once a unified throng, now dissolved into backstreets like sugar into black coffee, into individuals or pairs or smallish groups, a disintegration that felt like a camouflage trick. I felt like one of them, but it was just the illusion of a stranger’s solidarity. The issues that angered them, that drew them together historically and to express their resistance to being ignored – these things were not my life. Just the shared experience of being in the moment. Without a tour guide.