Peru’s rainbow barrio clings to its ideals as a nation drifts to the right
Peru’s rainbow barrio clings to its ideals as a nation drifts to the right
Villa El Salvador, founded by Andean refugees as a vision of co-operative living, faces a changing future as elections approac
Ed Vulliamy
Saturday 16 January 2016 19.04 EST
Bus number 8208 chugs towards the centre of the barrio, through the dust and past the Void Club and GANG$TA barber shop. On board sit inhabitants of the vast shanty sprawl, Villa El Salvador, climbing the desert hills above the Pan-American highway as the bus heads south from the Peruvian capital of Lima. There are women hauling bags of fruit, elderly men with faces like tanned leather, a cool dude with long hair, sunglasses on a cloudy day and a crash helmet.
On a wall there is a mural to remind people of the barrio’s singular history: a crowd beneath a rainbow, and the slogan “Join hands to multiply our dreams”. Dreams first realised when empty desert ground was broken here 45 years ago to build the first houses of bamboo and mud – the so-called invasión of the barren land. Villa El Salvador proclaimed itself a “self-governing urban community” of indigenous people arriving from the high Andes, in flight from the great Ancash earthquake that in 1970 killed 70,000 people and destroyed their mountain lives and homes – but not their ways.
The founding principle of Villa El Salvador was that of ayni, an Inca word meaning – explains journalism student Diego Olivas – “conviviality, co-operation, I help you and you help me”.
Peruvians vote next spring for a new president, choosing from a field that includes two past presidents and Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the most famous politicians in the country’s modern history – Alberto Fujimori and Susana Higuchi – who are credited with turning the colonised land of the Incas into Latin America’s most eager adherent to free-market capitalism. Peru’s best-known journalist, Gustavo Gorriti – who was “disappeared” for two days after Alberto Fujimori’s coup d’etat in 1992 – warns of “the return of Fujimorism, authoritarian capitalism”.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/17/peru-rainbow-barrio-ideals-nation-right-villa-el-salvador
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