you buy a hacienda for a few soles down

7/17

The song Managua Nicaragua has been in my head since or visit to the hacienda. We went down to the village of Huaran, actually through it to the smaller town of Cancha Cancha (awesome to hear that said by Mrs. Paddington) with Sonia and two of her volunteers from Florida, David and Elwood, both white beard seasoned travellers in their fifties, and met the leaders of the cooperative that runs the town. They change presidents every year. We interviewed the president, past president and manager of the massive construction project.

Sonia´s lived there for two years and has tried to convince them to start all these programs, some to bring in tourists, others to provide medicines, educational materials, etc - most of the time the men have refused her help or sold the medicines, like I mentioned. Yesterday they were very eager to talk about their collaboration with her, but she´s ready to leave. Two sides - who is she to tell them how to run their town? or - why can´t they accept her help when it´s clear all the people there need it?

There are women there with cancer and no medicines, women having babies with no help, the water´s been shut off for two weeks bc of a pipe being built - they´re converting the hacienda into a big hotel. Sonia hopes to buy a plot of land there to build her NGO headquarters on. It´s a beautiful spot, where two valleys meet.

We then went to the town of Calca where we met a lady named Rita, a doctor working to educate women about contraception and sexual issues - there´s a big AIDS problem, and in the late 90´s, the former president Fujimori had over 200,000 Quechuan women sterilized to reduce the burden on the state - so they´re wary of any kind of contraception. He´s been accused of genocide and is in exile in Chile - but he´s running for Senate in Japan. He has dual citizenship. He was president for 10 years, the whole 90´s decade, and most people love him bc he got rid of the Shining Path, the Maoists who completely terrorized the Andes in the late 80´s and early 90´s, and made tourism and foreign investment possible. But he also did things like that.

After Rita´s interview, we met the other Sonia, who sells textiles at a shop outside Cancha Cancha. She showed us two movies on how the textiles were made, all the natural dying processes, and then unfortunately we had to leave, so no interview - but we´ll see her again Thursday, when there´s a big textile market in Calca.

We also went to a small school run by the cooperative and delivered educational materials - that was really cool, the kids and teacher loved it, and we saw a charged confrontation bw Sonia and the men - she was trying to talk to them about water and management issues, and they stared at her blankly and were ultimately dismissive - then David, the volunteer, brought up the same issues and they had a great conversation about it - and she yelled at them for only talking to men and stormed out of the courtyard. We filmed the whole day, about three tapes worth. Excited to log it and translate the Spanish.

Today we were at the museum all day, reading the books they have on OTT and Peru, and reading a book I got from NYU called Is the Sacred for Sale? Tourism and Indigenous Peoples. They quote The Corporation a lot. We also interviewed a few tourists that came in. Tomorrow we learn to work the museum store down the road, all free-traded out, and translate footage with Kennedy´s sister Joanie. Very busy, but it´s all a nice headrush - definitely going better than expected.