Sunset

Lovely, lovely Carhuaz. Carhuaz, by the way, really is lovely, unlike Huaraz, which is kind of a dump, but in a nice place.

...it's good to be back on the road again...

So, I've about worn out my welcome here in the muni (That is, in the municipal building. In town, people are super-friendly), and I've pretty much gotten the story on the situation here in Carhuaz. Moving on tomorrow back to Huaraz, then on to Chavín de Huantar on Thursday, to continue with the interviews. I've gotten in about 15 interviews here, plus numerous informal conversations, a couple of hikes, a visit to Vicos, and about four hair-raising encounters with angry dogs.

All of the locals think I'm nuts to be carrying a cane, but what can I say? Los perros no les gustan los gringos. Especialmente ellos con bigotes.

The story on Carhuaz is pretty much as follows:

Most of the people I've talked to either think the mayor is (a) incompetent, (b) corrupt, or most likely, (c) both. He got voted in by taking strategic advantage of the nationalist/pro-indigenous tide that swept Peru in the last election, and hasn't done much since, except for print glossy brochures and hire a professional public relations guy.

Okay, I exaggerate, but let it suffice to say that the policy here has not impressed me.

On the other hand, the civil society actors are really on the ball. Which leads me to believe that he'll have a hard time of it the next time around. However, there are two problems:

1. No checks and balances. The Peruvian electoral laws say that the municipal council always consists of at least a majority of the party of which the mayor is a member. This is supposed to generate efficient policy making and less gridlock, but what it seems to do in Carhuaz is make sure that nobody's looking over the Mayor's shoulder.
2. Too many parties, no run off, etc... When the mayor is running against 15 others, he doesn't need a majority to win. In this case, he only needs about 25%. This makes it a lot easier to buy off your cronies and get them to vote for you.

Nevertheless, we'll see what happens. I haven't been impressed by the government here, but as I said, the citizens are quite well informed, at least about their local government, and they seem to be pretty well organized. I'm looking forward to following this municipality in the future!

Man oh man... You all should have seen the sunrise that I just watched out of my window. We'll see if the pictures come out.

New Pictures Up

Hi all,

I've put up some new pictures of lovely Carhuaz and environs. Click on the picture in the sidebar to get to the album. I'll write more about my adventures in getting these pictures tomorrow.

Civil Society and Rationality

In an interview today, one of my interview subjects talked a bit about the reasons for the decline of an important participatory forum here in Carhuaz. In between comments about "kids today" and questions about life in the states, she said that there were two reasons for this decline.

And as it turns out, this middle class Peruvian from a small town in the Andes is a rational choicer.

First, there is a cost associated with participating in such an organization, both in terms of time and in terms of money (in many cases, at least). These costs can deter many people from getting involved in the first place.

However, there are benefits to belonging to such an organization—among other things, there is the opportunity to press for policy change at the local level in a particular form that may be more advantageous to you. This is a real possibility in a small place like this, where you might be one of only a couple real movers and shakers in the political scene.

So basically, your probability of joining such an organization would be a function of the utility you were likely to receive from joining. But if your opportunity to shape policy is lower, than there is less of an incentive to join, because you lose that piece of the utility you would get from participating.

So broadly, if you have a mayor or local government uninterested in what your organization has to say, there will be fewer people interested in participating.

As such, one might argue that the presence of a strong civil society is contingent upon the existence of a fair degree of give and take between government and civil society. A democratic government might need a strong civil society to be effective, but a strong civil society also needs government.

This is a little different from my take on government in the rural areas, where there is no state presence, so your probability of participating in a “participatory forum” that resolves local problems might be much higher.

I’m an anarcho-communitarian again.

Notes

A couple of things:
1. Some more new pictures of Carhuaz are going up--you can get to them by clicking on the (same) picture in the sidebar.
2. I took some of the links to my older photo albums down, but you can still get to those albums by clicking on the one photo link, then looking at the new albums at the photo web site.
3. I love the pineapple soda, especially when it's not adulterated with rancid goat blood.
4. Aubrey, just because I want to rub it in--I want you to know, I'm staying at the most expensive hotel in town again (I didn't plan it that way--every other place was full), and although it's a little more expensive here in Peru, it's still only costing me $26/night. Breakfast's included. Breakfast includes homemade bread.

So, I got in a couple of more interviews in today--two or three, depending on what you call an "interview." The line gets pretty fuzzy sometimes. But I talked to two people in the muni, including the municipal public relations official.

Yeah, you read that right. This primarily agricultural rural Peruvian town, where 70% of the population lives below the (Peruvian) poverty line and 40% of the population is considered malnourished has a PR guy. And some glossy brochures to back him up. They also have a tourism official who only speaks Spanish. Go figure.

So, perhaps my new found Anarcho-Communitarian belief system is losing some of its luster. I kid, of course. I'm a revolutionary syndicalist.

Anyways, although the people at the muni. are plenty nice, they are also extremely vague. And their vagueness seems to correspond rather nicely to the story that all of the citizens and community leaders I've talked to so far have told me--that the mayor and his people aren't doing a good job.

There is, however, a possible explanation for this that might be a little bit more optimistic. Maybe he's doing works out in the rural areas. And maybe this is an interest group story--maybe his constituency is the rural population. That certainly is what he's claiming. Of course, the muni's glossy brochure is also taking credit for the ATM installed in the Plaza de Armas by the Banco Comercial de Peru. Hmm...

Anyways, I need to get out into the boonies here, anyways, including possibly making a trip to nearby Vicos, Peru, of Ron Brunner fame. Time to see what a Laswellian paradise really looks like. In theory, there should also be a Peace Corps volunteer wandering around out there somewhere as well, working in agriculture. I should look him up. Just what I need.

Some new pictures up

Hi all,

Putting some pictures up now, including some older photos of Cusco from January, and some new pictures of Huaraz (terrible pictures, those) and some initial pictures of Carhuaz, which aren't that great but are a start. I'll try to get more up as I go. Hopefully, the weather will clear off in a bit so that you can see the beautiful snow-covered peaks here. The link will be in the sidebar.

Stephen Walt: Love Doctor

Stephen Walt writes about the similarities between romance and realist theories of international relations in Foreign Policy. This is awesome. It also would be a pretty good introduction to some of these concepts for undergraduate students in IR courses.

Venezuela vs. Bolivia

I don't understand why today's story on the vote in Venezuela which describes Uncle Hugo's victory--the voting was 55% in his favor for an end to presidential term limits--is described as a "decisive victory" by the New York Times, while Evo Morales' victory of last month, which was about 10 percentage points greater in favor of an even greater change, was described as "divisive" and "demonstrating how divided Bolivia really is." Perhaps this is just unclear writing--I haven't been in Bolivia, so I don't know how divided the country really feels to an insider--but my suspicion is that the article about Bolivia was really written to play up the same kinds of sensationalism that often plagues Latin American journalism. And I wonder (hopefully unjustifiably) about how "inside" the NYT correspondent in Bolivia really is.

Natural Foods and Creepy Inka Kola

First off, ignore the fact that the "Kola" in Inka Kola starts with a "K." Which is vaguely white separatist and kind of creepy in and of itself.

So, I was in the market in Huaraz yesterday, and I bought two bottles of Inka Kola "light". As many of you know, I'm a fan of the diet soda, when I can get it.

Anyways, one bottle was fine. The other one had a strange odor that kind of smelled like some combination of the butcher section of your average developing-world market and the chicha (home-brewed corn beer) that you can buy on the street here. It also had some kind of purple or red substance in the threads under the cap.

I hope this was because it had been dropped in a bucket of chicha. I'm afraid it's because it was dropped into a pile of cow stomachs. I really afraid it's because it was manufactured from a pile of cow stomachs.

Long story short, I took a drink before I noticed the smell etc. So far, I'm okay. Hope I stay that way. Especially hope I don't wind up with any Mike Touchton-esque diseases like liver fluke, cholera, or tapeworm.

Which brings me to my second point.

Peruvians (and Estadounidenses) that I meet in Peru often seem to have the idea that the food consumed in Peru is healthier than the food we get in the states--"It's natural," they say. Well, first off, those people haven't walked down the main street in Carhuaz (or any other Latin American agricultural town) on market day, when all the locals come into town, sell their goods, then use the proceeds to buy pesticides and chemical fertilizers. There is probably some organic farming going down here, but there's no way to know what products are organic and what products arent (I suppose that technically, since they're all carbon-based, their all organic, but you know what I mean.)

Also, there isn't a lot of regulation in terms of health and sanitation. So the endshot is, nobody can really justify any assumptions about how healthy the food is here, because there isn't any system to verify anything.

One example:

Before I left Cusco, there was a major story in the news about how some counterfeit bottling company in Lima was putting tap water in bottles and slapping a label on. This, of course, defeats the purpose of bottled water down here, which isn't because it tastes better or because you get to show off your pricey fiji water, but because the water out of the tap can make you sick with Giardiasis, Cryptosporidium, Amoebic Dysentery, etc...

But because the water going on the market isn't regulated in any significant way, there's no way to stop this funny business.

Just another example of how the market fundamentalists--who believe that regulation can never work--are wrong. We don't have these problems in the states, and it isn't because our "market" for bottled water works so well. It's because of regulation. It's also difficult to argue that these regulations aren't more efficient than the alternative (cholera outbreaks are not efficient), and it's hard to argue that the market finds solutions for these problems (it clearly has not.)

That is all.

In Huaraz

Though I don't suspect that many of you are exactly sitting on the edge of your chairs, hitting the "reload" button on the browser to see if I've gotten a new blog posting up, I feel like I've been too lazy recently. Or, more precisely, I guess I just haven't felt like I've had much of interest to say.

Though I'm dog-tired here tonight, after taking a night bus last night, I wanted to post and let you all know that I'm in Huaraz, Peru, and ready to head out to the district of Carhuaz to start my interviews again (finally!)

Huaraz is a welcome change from Lima, as it's rainy, cool, and comfortable. Also, there's a place here that sells Belgian waffles.

I'll keep you all posted when I come up with something interesting to write about. I'll get some pictures up, too, when I can take some good ones.