PERU Refugees Rebuild Communities
Kirk, Robin
The walk to Chincho is hot and long, through the sprawl of buildings, food stands and open lots fringing Lima's busy Central Highway. Further outside the city, the road is empty. Land spreads out,...
...Their tactic has become to simply stop it...
...On August 18, members of the Army detained Teofilo Orozco Tinco, a member of the National Human Rights Commission and translator for an Amnesty International delegation...
...Either you attack it or you simply stop it...
...A Title Won In 1986, Chinchefios applied for municipal title to the bare patch of desert they now inhabit...
...Immediately after his swearing-in, del Castillo rerouted milk distributions from "Glass of Milk" committees, usually with strong IU representation, to new APRA groups...
...others turn to begging...
...If [the residents'] claim was filed correctly, the gravelmaker shouldn't be able to win...
...Mayor Jorge del Castillo, an APRA leader and close ally of President Alan Garcia, cleared the city payroll of IU members, many of whom lived in new settlements and were responsible for pushing through land titles...
...There was nothing left to work the land with...
...Much of Ayacucho is depopulated, and though the government has allocated large sums of money to stimulate production in some areas, observers maintain there is little coordination or criteria directing investment...
...Orphans are extra mouths, but surviving adults accept the responsibility as a matter of course...
...In response, security forces round up suspected subversives, including peasants, union leaders and students...
...Protected from the wind by a ridge, dust nevertheless covers everything, even the scrawny dogs...
...Three vital bridges were blown up during the summer of 1987 in an effort to isolate the region, and municipal authorities have had to either resign, leave or risk assassination...
...But finally, we can sleep at night...
...A medical post was being built...
...land is held in common, and cannot be sold or rented without community approval...
...Homes in Chincho are built with estera, woven sheets of straw, and scavenged wood...
...Over 35,000 Refugees Since December 1982, when 13 SEPTEMBER/DECEMBER 9provinces in the department of Ayacucho were declared an Emergency Zone, over 35,000 people have fled the war between Sendero Luminoso guerrillas and government forces...
...When there is little food, we must all eat from the same plate...
...Still not Secured But with Barrantes' upset in last November's municipal elections, Chincho's hard-won stability is now threatened...
...A similar community is fighting a brick factory, whose owners claim they have a right to the dirt...
...Another has been looking for a job for months...
...There was a permanent police station...
...With an elementary school and a plaza, it was a shade grander than a hamlet...
...In cities, Sendero is pursuing a campaign of car-bombing and selective assassination...
...Though a city curfew imposed to curb nightly guerrilla attacks was lifted in July, tanquetas still prowl the roads...
...Many sell cigarettes and telephone tokens...
...The Chincho outside Lima is named after a place in a high valley three hours from Ayacucho in Peru's southern Andes...
...But the patrols were in Huanta as well, and in Ayacucho...
...An elected council of Chincho residents now issues building permits and controls land distribution...
...We feel safer here, though we don't eat well," said one mother...
...Estimates vary widely as few willingly admit they come from regions of conflict for fear of being ostracized or persecuted...
...At least we still have the village," says Victor...
...In only three years, over 100 received legal titles...
...Peru's tangled and often overlapping laws on land insure that both court battles will drag on for months...
...Some people lose their will to live, but we must stay alive, no...
...All relief and development groups have suspended projects outside the city because of a similar ban...
...One community worker familiar with the cases explained that titles issued are often based on dubious ownership history...
...They come here with practically nothing--the clothes on their back, a bundle-and have to find a way to survive, not just as communities or as families, but as individuals, one by one...
...Almost all have since left the old Chincho...
...In late August, a Sendero band shot Rodrigo Franco Montes, 30, executive president of the state-owned milk distributor and rising APRA star, as he was leaving his home...
...Having lost one home, they are not about to let another slip away...
...Historically Peru's poorest and most neglected region, Ayacucho now threatens to fall off the charts in terms of infant mortality, nutrition, life expectancy, wages and medical care...
...Those who have relocated in the new Chincho know they are lucky to have preserved at least part of their community...
...At 24, Victor is a prime target for both military and Sendero recruitment and one of the few young men in the village...
...It's a question of killing a program in two ways," commented one relief worker...
...Desplazados search for employment as gardeners, maids or occasionally unskilled factory workers...
...Chincheios still walk the narrow line between antiterrorist and antigovernment forces...
...But after angry demonstrators filled the streets, the milk went back to the original committees...
...Although several witnesses observed the detention, official spokesmen did not announce it until Orozco's release several days later...
...Now Chincho is in court with an area gravelmaker, who is contesting the deed...
...Cardboard squares patch joints, or fill in where the money to buy estera ran out...
...Garrido, who works with a privately funded deRobin Kirk is an associate editor of Pacific News Service...
...Settling first in the pueblos jovenes surrounding cities like Ayacucho and Huancayo, many eventually make their way to Lima...
...The 150 families that have made their way to the capital consider themselves lucky to have survived with at least some of their family intact...
...And everyone knows, said one resident, who the Sendero cabezones, or leaders, are...
...Since 1982, an estimated 10,000 peasants have died as a result of violence...
...Other IU-sponsored programs have not fared so well...
...She returned from a six-month stay in Peru in February...
...Although the military claims to have eradicated most Sendero activity in the zone, observers note that troops REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10Ayacucho: Few Hope to Return have not been withdrawn...
...And in 1986 alone, 21 engineers were killed by Sendero, bringing most government projects to a standstill...
...Falling off the Charts But Ayacucho, where students were first recruited into Sendero in the 1960s by philosophy professor Abimael Guzmdn, remains the heart of their strength...
...From 90-year-old patriarchs to orphaned newborns, they have become desplazados, displaced persons, and are struggling to recreate their community outside Lima...
...We had a house," says Rosa, a mother of eight, "but at night we had to sleep in the hills...
...It's a totally different life for the people of Chincho," explains social worker Nilda Garrido...
...We have always been united, and we don't want to lose that...
...There is nothing left to go back to...
...Along the Apurimac River, where much of Peru's coca (the plant from which cocaine is derived) is grown, Sendero has been able to establish definite areas of control, called "red zones" by the military...
...One man earns $12 a week in a factory, when there is work...
...In June, the French medical aid group Doctors Without Borders was prohibited from working in the Emergency Zone, "for their own safety," according to officials...
...Little Hope of Return Despite Garcia's plans to put the Ayacucho Emergency Zone under civilian control, few Chinchehios plan to return...
...It's better here, because at least they can sleep in their houses, not outside in the gullies...
...Del Castillo has also come under fire for attempting to discontinue other Barrantes initiatives such as the popular "Glass of Milk" program...
...It's a complicated process and often boils down to a question of who has more influence with the judge," the worker explains...
...The field was full of brush, and the animals were gone...
...They even killed the donkeys...
...The patrols would come and take people, and you would never hear of them again...
...According to the Ayacucho Agrarian League, agricultural production, already one of the lowest in Latin America, is down more than 20% since 1980...
...For the first ten months of this year, no journalists were allowed outside Ayacucho city limits...
...Some days I can get work for a day-sometimes I can't...
...I work in a textile factory, but we are on strike now...
...Yet the desire to stay together keeps most from leaving the new Chincho...
...A family wishing to live in Chincho must first be approved by community vote...
...A chronic lack of water plagues many refugee settlements, and it often takes over three hours for workers to reach jobs by public transportation...
...He explains that even with a job, it is hard to support his wife and baby...
...At least, if something happened to me or my husband, my children would not be left alone...
...No state or private agency is monitoring migration on a national or local basis...
...A Quechua speaker, she helps distribute food and medicine to Chincho families, and is usually the first to hear the stories of newcomers...
...Other displaced people are not so lucky...
...The shacks form a ring, giving each family a doorstep on the plaza of gravel and sand...
...We thought it might be better in Huanta...
...Under Peruvian law, municipal or state-owned land can be deeded directly to new communities...
...But you have to acknowledge that judges get bribed, and people get paid off...
...Time and again, Chincho residents describe the desperation that led them to the new Chincho...
...Water comes from a canal, bathrooms are in scattered hollows...
...Land spreads out, rocky and threaded with narrow canals...
...Evidence of the exodus is hard to miss...
...We would spend days in the hills, afraid of returning to our houses...
...City health services are permanently in crisis and provide only the most basic support such as inoculations and emergency care for dehydration and malnutrition...
...I went back in 1986 to see about the animals I had let loose in the hills," says Wilmer, 50...
...No one holds individual title...
...The house was empty, and the door was broken...
...They have little control over where they live, and must often squeeze into overpriced and dilapidated buildings...
...Then-mayor of Lima Alfonso Barrantes Lingdn, leader of the United Left (IU) party, did "a remarkable job," according to relief workers, in gaining titles to land for communities like Chincho...
...Ironically, the site overlooks a training center for Peru's investigative police...
...In 1980, approximately 600 families, mostly artisans, small merchants and farmers, lived there...
...The village of Chincho, a spot against the forbidding grey foothills, glows warmly in the afternoon sun...
...All names of Chincho workers and residents have been changed at their request...
...When we are on strike, there is no pay...
...With Garcia's push to nationalize private banks, the latest wave of terror prompted the conservative magazine Caretas to describe the convening of Peru's fall session of Congress as "a Greek tragedy, in which all the characters lose the power to be masters of their fate...
...remarked Lorenza, who was born in the old Chincho but moved away as a child...
...velopment project, makes the trek to Chincho twice a week...
Vol. 21 • September 1987 • No. 5
