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PERU:
Guinea Pigs Spell Independence for Women
By Milagros Salazar
PUCYURA, Peru (IPS) - In a rural village in
the Peruvian Andes, very near yet so far
from the popular tourist destination of
Cuzco, the guinea pig, a rodent native to
the region, has become "woman’s best friend"
– an important means for women to earn money
to support their families, as well as to
learn how to defend their rights.
Pucyura is just 15 km from the famous
southern Peruvian city of Cuzco, formerly
the capital of the Inca empire and later of
the Spanish colonial viceroyalty. In this
small town, it is the women who head up the
local associations of guinea pig producers.
The organisational experience they have
gained eventually led to the formation of a
women’s rights group.
Teófila Anchahua, 58, is one of these women.
She currently has over 100 guinea pigs
housed in a number of sheds, separated
according to breed, age and size. "The
newborn guinea pigs have to be alone with
their mothers, because if you put them with
the rest, they won’t be able to feed
properly. You have to give them a
nutritional supplement, not just alfalfa,"
she explained.
Anchahua travelled to a number of different
areas in southern Peru to learn about guinea
pig breeding as part of the Puno-Cuzco
Corridor project, which was financed by the
International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD) until the end of 2008 to
promote initiatives for women small farmers
and microentrepreneurs in the 380-km
corridor between the two cities.
"Raising these little animals has made it
possible for me to feed my children and
grandchildren, while still taking care of my
family, since I can run my business without
leaving the house," Anchahua told IPS, while
her eight-year-old granddaughter, Milagros,
helped her feed the guinea pigs alfalfa,
their main source of food.
Pucyura is situated at an altitude of 3,300
metres above sea level, more than 1,550 km
south of Lima. The majority of its 3,500
people are indigenous, and 65.7 percent live
in poverty, and 32.2 percent in extreme
poverty, according to the National Institute
of Statistics and Informatics (INEI).
It started out as a business
Things began to change in Pucyura four years
ago, when the raising of guinea pigs, once
destined solely for individual household
consumption, was transformed into a business
based on commercial production and sale on a
medium scale.
The guinea pig (Cavia porcellus) is native
to the Andean region, where it has been
raised in captivity since time immemorial.
While it is popular as a pet in many parts
of the world, it is a source of food
throughout western South America, from
Colombia to northern Argentina.
In Peru, however, the guinea pig also has
symbolic and social significance above and
beyond its nutritional value, especially in
rural areas, where it serves to strengthen
social and family ties and enhance prestige,
and even offers medicinal qualities, in
addition to being kept as a pet, explained
animal health specialist Ernando Castro.
Its high nutritional value and low
production costs have made the guinea pig -
a highly prized delicacy throughout Peru,
the world’s largest guinea pig consumer - an
important source of food security for
low-income families in rural areas.
Today there are seven guinea pig farming
organisations in Pucyura made up of over 500
women altogether. The seven organisations
are also members of the Central Association
of Women of Pucyura, the group’s president,
Indira Núñez, told IPS.
"Since we were already organised through the
guinea pig farming business, we decided to
form an association to defend our rights in
the home and in the community, where women
have not always been very highly valued,"
said the 34-year-old women’s leader.
"In our town there is a lot of financial
need, and it is important for us to be able
to help our husbands and to have access to
employment that places us in a better
position. Selling guinea pigs has helped me
to get ahead," said Núñez.
Thanks to the guinea pig business, she can
earn the equivalent of around 200 dollars a
month, slightly more than what is estimated
as the minimum living wage. "It’s a big help
to us considering the few opportunities we
have to increase our income, since the
authorities do so little to promote women’s
development," she commented.
According to INEI, microenterprises are the
main source of income for 83 percent of the
population of Pucyura. The town is supported
primarily by agriculture, cattle farming and
the raising of other animals such as guinea
pigs and pigs.
The establishment of a Commercial
Information Centre, as part of the
Puno-Cuzco Corridor project, has also
provided the town’s residents with internet
access to vital information ranging from
guinea pig farming techniques to new recipes
based on guinea pig meat.
These culinary innovations have helped to
promote guinea pig consumption at food fairs
where its nutritional benefits are
emphasised. Guinea pig meat is practically
fat-free, and has a higher proportion of
protein than chicken, beef, lamb or pork.
Guinea pig farmers united against violence
"The women are really good at business, they
know how to sell our products better than
anyone," said Raúl Nolasco, the president of
an association of pig farmers in which women
make up 40 percent of the members.
Nolasco told IPS that all of his group’s
members, both men and women, would benefit
from training in marketing, but the
authorities do not put a priority on the
issue when making budgetary allocations.
Through the Puno-Cuzco Corridor project,
local women were trained in the breeding and
sale of guinea pigs, which reproduce rapidly
and are in high demand throughout the world,
as pets, for their fur, and as test animals
in scientific experiments. Peruvian breeds
of guinea pig are also the largest in the
world.
But when the funding from IFAD came to an
end this year, production and sales
declined.
"We have to recognise that not all of the
women are organised and united. Some of them
want to get ahead on their own, and others
lose interest. We don’t all move forward at
the same pace," guinea pig farmer Elbertina
Santoyo, 42, commented to IPS.
Combined with this was the decline in the
production of alfalfa, which the women grow
to feed the guinea pigs, because it is too
expensive to buy. An 11.5 kg bundle of
alfalfa costs the equivalent of five
dollars, and guinea pigs fetch only three
dollars each.
"The weather has been bad for growing
alfalfa, almost the whole crop was lost.
That’s why I sold my guinea pigs and just
kept a few, because otherwise I would end up
working just to feed them and it wouldn’t be
profitable anymore," explained Julia Quispe,
42.
Several of the women interviewed reported
that their husbands were initially opposed
when they started to spend more time away
from home to attend meetings.
"As long as we were taking care of the
guinea pigs at home, or when we were working
on the farm, everything was fine. But when
we started meeting to organise ourselves to
defend our rights, the men started to
protest, because of machismo," said Quispe.
"They have always thought that they have
more right to speak than we do. But that has
to change," she added.
As they grew more skilled at the commercial
production and sale of guinea pigs, "we
women learned that we were capable of taking
on projects of our own and contributing
significantly to the family economy," said
Quispe.
More importantly, however, the women
realised that by joining together they could
better defend their rights and demand to be
heard. This is what led them to create the
Central Association of Women of Pucyura,
which was initially aimed at fighting the
high rates of domestic violence in the town,
explained Núñez, the group’s president.
The mayor of Pucyura, Tomy Loayza, admitted
to the troubling rate of domestic violence,
and told IPS it was largely linked to
alcoholism, which is a major health problem
in the region.
As a result of this situation, the women
themselves pushed for the creation of
institutions to protect women and children
from violence, with the support of foreign
development aid and state funding.
"We are working with the whole community to
combat violence against women, but it
continues to be a challenge," Loayza
acknowledged.
"It is important for the women to organise
and make a contribution, because equity is
valuable. We are doing a few things to help
them, although we recognise that they still
need more support," he said.
Núñez reported on a new project to promote
the marketing of guinea pigs that is being
implemented by a non-governmental
organisation and could help to boost
production again.
Nevertheless, she stressed, "we don’t want
to have to always depend on help from
others. If the authorities provided us with
information and trained us to take advantage
of different alternative sources of
employment, maybe things would be
different," she said.
"But here’s something you can write: there’s
no going back for us, we have learned to do
things and to think differently, and that
won’t change," she declared, as she cleaned
out the sheds that house her guinea pigs,
her allies - her best friends. |
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