More on Pucallpa

Pucallpa is hot. But I guess I'll get used to it.

Slept a little bit late to catch up on what I missed the other night--felt good to sleep in a bed. Got up and got the desayuno Americano up on the Plaza de Armas--apparently, Americans eat fried eggs and french bread. All in all, not the best I've had. Much more entertaining when they get it completely wrong.

In general, breakfast options in Guatemala tend to be better.

After breakfast, got in an interview with the folks at the provincial office. I was surprised to find that the huge provincial capitol building holds only two people involved in agriculture--surprising, since this municipality is right on the regression line for the provision of agricultural services. They described a number of types of training the province sponsors for agricultural producers, but admitted to me that, basically, the province isn't as heavily involved in agriculture as the region.

So I went out this afternoon to the regional government's ministry of agriculture compound. It's on the outskirts of the city, out on a dirt road. Wasn't able to interview the director, but did meet with the head of the local farmers' union (does that make him the representative of the Peruvian grange?) He gave me his spiel for about an hour, which was great. It does really sound as though the region has gotten into agriculture, big time, and maybe the result is that the regional government satisfies these demands, while the local governments play other roles in this region(?)

In general, agriculture here appears to be much larger-scale. Producers down here seem to produce one or a small number of crops in large quantities, and many of them seem to have very large farms. Rice, palm oil, and other staples are produced in great quantities.

Going to try back tomorrow, to try to catch the director. And tomorrow morning, think I'm going to go to the province again, to try to catch the participatory budget guy.

Globalization, migration, and the peasant economy.

I've often wondered if the great urban in-migration you see around Latin America is a result of free trade and other pieces of economic globalization. While the shantytowns around Lima grow, in some places in rural Peru, the female to male ratio is eight to one, as all the men have moved away to get better paying jobs in the city.

The optimistic explanation for this is that, although life in the shantytowns of Lima is very hard, insecure, and unhealthy, it's a damn sight better than the life of the rural peasant, tilling the fields out in the sun, rain, and wind all year. Thus, people get away to find a better life.

On the other hand, if you're or a pessimist (or a hippie) you probably think it's ol' man globalization rearing his pasty white head--low-priced agricultural imports driving local agriculture out of business, and forcing the producers to the city to support their families. Though city life is terrible, it's the only option many people have to keep from starving. In the second scenario, globalization may be a strong countervailing force against human and economic development.

Although the second scenario is kind of attractive because it's slightly counter-intuitive yet compelling, I've come to believe more strongly in the first story. Although many rural Peruvians are market-oriented, most peasants in the most rural (and poorest) parts of the country--the places where there has been a large amount of migration to the cities--mostly produce only for their families. Basically, they exist in a subsistence economy.

If this is true, it's awful hard for global economic forces to have any impact on these people at all. Hence, my optimism that rural out-migration is really a desirable phenomenon.