PERU:
Little Help for
Slum-Dwellers Left
Homeless by Quake
By Ángel Páez
PISCO, Peru, (IPS) - "We
have come here because
God sent us," says
pastor Pedro Leyva Díaz.
He looks tired after
distributing food,
clothes and sweets in
dozens of poor
communities devastated
by the earthquake in
southern Peru.
"God told us to go where
the suffering was
greatest, and here we
are," he tells local
residents who approach
the truck laden with
aid.
Leyva Díaz has visited
all the main population
centres in Túpac Amaru
Inca, a conglomeration
of irregular settlements
in Pisco province that
has experienced such
growth that it was
itself made a district,
the smallest
administrative
subdivision in Peru, in
1986.
It is still expanding,
in an unplanned and
disorderly fashion, and
is already home to
nearly 18,000 people.
The newest and poorest
of Pisco’s eight
districts is where this
pastor of the "Peniel
Good News" evangelical
church in the district
of San Martín de Porres,
Lima has arrived.
The upper areas of San
Clemente, another
district where most of
the irregular
settlements in Pisco
province are situated
just five kilometres
from the city of Pisco,
look like they have been
stamped on by giants.
The Aug. 15 earthquake,
which marked 7.0 on the
Richter scale, was most
destructive of the
weakest buildings, like
homes built out of adobe
bricks, the building
material widely used in
Peru’s irregular
settlements where
virtually all the
residents are poor, and
half of them are
extremely poor.
Official figures
released on Aug. 30
indicated that the
earthquake with its
epicentre in the Pacific
ocean, off the coasts of
the southwestern
provinces of Pisco, Ica
and Chincha, killed 519
people, injured nearly
1,400, left 45,000
homeless and caused
millions of dollars
worth of damage.
Non-governmental
organisations say that
there are still 40
people missing.
San Clemente grew
considerably in size
with the influx of
thousands of people
displaced from their
homes by the armed
conflict between
guerrillas and state
security forces between
1980 and 2000. The
displaced people came
particularly from
Ayacucho, Apurimac and
Huancavelica.
Maximiliana Curi, from
Vinchos in Ayacucho, and
Bernardina Azcona, from
Castrovirreyna in
Huancavelica, were
attending a funeral mass
in San Clemente church
on the day of the
earthquake. When the
church collapsed, they
lost seven relatives.
Now the two women
between them are caring
for nine orphans. They
built a shelter on the
rubble of what was a
precarious adobe house,
and the families share
whatever they are able
to get.
"Here they have only
distributed a little
water," complained Curi,
dressed in full
mourning. "My husband
and I escaped from the
war, and by bad luck we
came to grief here,
where we had started a
new life. The earthquake
killed my husband, and I
have been left alone. No
one has even come to ask
us what we need," she
told IPS.
The children of San
Clemente come down from
the town’s hillsides to
the Southern Panamerican
highway, where hundreds
of vehicles loaded with
food are passing by.
The trucks and cars have
to slow down and crawl
along a detour because
of earthquake damage to
the Huamaní bridge, so
the children can
approach drivers and bus
passengers to beg for a
few coins.
Since they cannot reach
up to the windows of
trucks and buses, they
have invented a kind of
collection basket, made
by tying half a plastic
bottle of mineral water
to a stick.
Neither the dark, cold
nights nor the "paracas"
(strong winds from the
Pacific ocean) deter
them. They stay by the
road, chasing the lights
of the vehicles with
their long arms of wood
and plastic, and do not
rejoin their families
until the following day.
In Chincha, the
earthquake also sowed
destruction in Pueblo
Nuevo, a district made
up of about 20 irregular
settlements home to over
half of the 60,000
people in the province.
"We campaigned for Lucio
Juárez Ochoa, and he
became mayor of Pueblo
Nuevo," says María
Salguero de Paypay,
showing campaign
literature for the
candidate that she had
kept in her house, which
was home to 10 people
until the earthquake
destroyed it.
"But now that Juárez is
mayor, he hasn’t even
shown his face around
here where everything
has been razed to the
ground. That’s how he
repays us. I’ll never
support a candidate
again," she said
angrily.
Chincha, in the region
of Ica, is in a border
dispute with the
province of Cañete, in
the Lima region, over a
grey sand desert called
Pampa Larga. That is
where the Peru LNG
consortium has built its
plant to liquefy natural
gas piped from reserves
in Camisea, at a cost of
two billion dollars.
Both provinces are
claiming sovereignty
over the area between
kilometres 167 and 170
of the Southern
Panamerican highway,
where the modern plant,
called La Melchorita, is
located. An icon of the
country’s future, the
plant is due to begin
exporting gas in 2008,
and will earn millions
of dollars in the
process.
But that is only one
part of the country. A
few metres away, just
across the highway, over
700 families displaced
in the past by political
violence in the Andes
founded the settlement
of Nuevo Ayacucho, and
now they have lost
everything to the
earthquake.
"We received nothing for
a week after the
earthquake. Then they
sent us some food and
water, but it was only
enough for a small
proportion of the 2,000
people who live here,"
Sabino Tapahuasco, the
mayor of Nuevo Ayacucho,
told IPS.
"I’m from Huamanga, the
capital of Ayacucho, and
I came to this community
because I believed that
we could have a better
future here. But the
earthquake has shown
that the poor in Peru
will go on being poor
for a very long time,"
he said, with a touch of
resignation.
"If that’s the case,
then it would be better
to die in the place
where one was born. Why
die here, so far away?"
he concluded. |
