The Reconquest

...gained from the community, their effectiveness as spokes- By working together, these women come to see their persons, and their sheer numbers, the women are eagerly oppression as a social ill and open up new horizons for pursued by political parties whenever elections draw themselves...

...If I have taken on this responsibility it is because I can carry it out...

...3 In this month's municipal elections, he is the IU candidate for vice mayor of the entire province of Lima...

...The Glass of Milk program fit right into this existing "survival strategy" network...

...A comedorpopular is formed when a group of women decides to cook together in order to distribute family rations at the lowest possible cost...

...This form of organizing has proven so successful that, by 1986, 800 comedores were represented on a National Commission of Comedores...

...Suddenly a man gets to his feet, gun in hand, demanding to know the whereabouts of Mayor Michel Azcueta, who is not present...

...4. Maruja Barrig and Amelia Fort, La ciudad de las mujeres: Pobladoras y servicios...

...That's a help for them...

...It was Velasco's government that changed the name and status for migrant settlements from "barriada" -which suggested a slum or rundown older section-to the more upbeat and accurate "pueblojoven," or "young town...

...There are now about a thousand such settlements in Lima, with over two million inhabitants-30% of the metropolitan population...

...They aren't city employees...

...Days earlier, three Andean departments had been forced to observe a similar "armed strike...

...Nevertheless, Vargas Llosa's efforts are one more indication of the political importance the organized poor of Lima have achieved...

...Every beneficiary is a full participant, sharing the work by turns...

...The senderistas beat a retreat to the sound of insults and jeers...

...Toward the end of 1988 construction was begun on an industrial park...

...The town's children study in 34 educational centers constructed by the community...

...He is a member of the United Left (IU), the coalition of Marxist and non-Marxist left-wing parties and independents that enjoys broad support in thepueblos j6venes...

...Organization is the natural barrier against Sendero," says Victor Abregd G6mez, who as president of the Coordinadora Metropolitana de Organizaciones Vecinales represents a majority of the organized settlers...

...Older ones like El Agustino have gradually been transformed into towns of brick and stone, while new shanty encampments keep springing up...

...Victor Abregti G6mez, whose parents migrated from Huancavelica in 1952 when he was a babe-in-arms, is Community soup-kitchens are a focus of organizing...

...They, in turn, supported the movement, but came to the elections advocating a Marxist hard line and divided by rivalries among party heads...

...The program, with 7,500 committees throughout Lima, has survived despite the hostility of the administration which succeeded Barrantes, reductions in the rations caused by the economic crisis, and conflicts among political parties trying to control the program...

...Thus women running presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa, who reform machismo in their homes...

...Despite these obstacles, we kept on working...

...Ten years earlier, when the economic crisis was only beginning, the women of the pueblosjdvenes had already begun devising what sociologists call "survival strategies," including nurseries, workshops, and-an original contribution which has since been copied elsewhere-comedores populares...

...These ideas are drawn from economist Hernando de Soto, who sees the emergence of the popular movement as the expression of these businesses struggling to become part of the system...

...4 (NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1989) 15RThe Homeless A ers The Homeless nity government as they are practiced in Villa El Salvador, almost without state support, constitute a process unique in the world that should serve as an example to the other Third World nations...

...The women like to talk about them appealing takeover targets for all political groups, the time one leader arrived at a meeting barefoot because including the Right...

...His administration also introduced pobladores-residents of the young towns-to such concepts as "oligarchy," "social classes" and "imperialism," and promoted a model of neighborhood organization based on representative committees, or "delegaciones...

...On the local level, community decisions are made by an efficient system of delegations from the many neighborhood women's, sports, cultural, youth and Christian organizations...

...Lima is becoming the crucible of all the bloodlines," says urbanist Carlos Ivdn Degregori, echoing the theme of Jos6 Maria Arguedas' classic novel, Todas las sangres...

...4 T HROUGH A SERIES OF STRUGGLES IN THE late 1970s, the urban neighborhood movement became more autonomous, political and centralized and began looking for ways to make its impact felt in national politics...

...Countless women have been treated roughly by the police Political bosses, looking for followers, granted plots of during a demonstration, only to be beaten by their hus- land, property titles and food...

...Velasco granted the settlers property titles and encouraged them to develop a self-managing community...

...In 1971, after an earthquake destroyed the highland city of Huaraz, 4,000 survivors moved onto the desert plains to the south of Lima...

...Suddenly, four armed and hooded senderistas interrupted the meeting shouting slogans...

...The government of President Francisco Morales Bermddez (1975-1980), the conservative general who ousted Velasco, attacked the independence of the neighborhoods through a series of repressive measures, culminating in a 1979 decree "municipalizing" them...

...It was an impressive display of the energy of the urban people's movement...

...They deal with internal security in general...

...participate...

...It appeals to the disorganized and looks down on any organization that is not affiliated with the party: "The leadership of the party is indispensable...

...Sendero offers hope to the desperate, a single, absolute and total truth to the disillusioned, and an extremely effective organization-a "war machine" as they call it-which holds the promise of total power...

...The threats against Azcueta, who is the United Left's vice-mayoral candidate for Metropolitan Lima, followed a rash of assassinations by Sendero Luminoso of union and grass-roots leaders last May, including the massacre of a dozen community leaders in Junin, the assassination of five labor leaders of the combative and radicalized Federaci6n Minera and of the provincial mayor of Azfngaro (Puno), also a member of the United Left...

...Not all groups do-it is voluntary...

...As such, with the respect they have society, in the neighborhoods and in each home...

...There are streets, sidewalks and community centers, and, in spite of water shortages, gardens flower and 500,000 trees have been planted in the desert...

...The police forcibly evicted them, but then President Juan Velasco Alvarado (19681975), a reformist military officer, took an interest in the case and relocated them in the "southern cone" of this triangular metropolis...

...In general, they have re- were never anything but authoritarian and racist...

...Most of the houses are brick and nearly 80% have running water, sewer connections and electricity...

...In Lima there are more than 6,000 associations of people from the same department, province or district, and thousands more representing Andean towns, communities and neighborhoods...

...They begin two hours before noon, every day, plate and spoon in hand...

...During the campaign Barrantes had promised to deliver a million glasses of milk a day to the children of Lima...

...They beg and shout in hopes of getting a free portion from the mothers who organized this communal kitchen...

...They are elected in the group assembly and if they do not work out the community can remove them from office and name another...

...The coordinating body, CUAVES (Comunidad Urbana Autogestionaria de Villa El Salvador), makes decisions on issues affecting the entire district...

...When people have clear objectives and a development plan, the alternative of Sendero, which is the alternative of desperation, does not take hold...

...Milk distribution is coordinated by the Metropolitan Coordinator of the Glass of Milk Committees-an indepehdent agency which at present co-manages and finances the program (with the municipal government), but which hopes to take it over completely...

...Recently, Sendero declared an "armed strike," that is, a compulsory work stoppage in the district of Chosica, 50 kilometers east of Lima...

...They notify the Civil Guard immediately...

...De Soto argues that by eliminating bureaucratic red tape this multitude of small "informal" companies can be incorporated into the system and Peru's economy will take off...

...That event, according to sociologist Federico Arnillas, set the pattern for what has grown into a massive urban people's movement.' Other campesinos soon followed, in overnight invasions of rocky wastelands and sandpits on the edges of the city, quickly erecting neat rows of straw-mat huts to establish their claim...

...Not in the popular organizations, nor in the feminist organizations...

...She knows that at seven the children will begin lining up at the door of her house waiting for the hot milk...

...The intensity of the economic crisis has caused a marked growth in the number of comedores since September 1988...

...Although they believe participation "is good not only for filling the stomach but for filling the head with good things," and that it is socially useful, they view it as "ajob" that should be remunerated by the government in some way...

...Then the system of urban rondas does not have anything to do with terrorism, only with common crime...

...Formerly taboo subjects are now discussed...

...Movimientos socialesy democracia: lafundaci6n de un nuevo orden (Lima: DESCO, 1986...

...Perhaps because the community work of the women is an extension of their reproductive responsibilities, it too seems invisible...

...Such people are now in new kinds of neighborhood associations, more concerned with the urban present than the highland past, that settle disputes, look after the neediest, and lobby the government for land titles, electricity, water and sewers...

...In his place is the informal marketeer, the tough guy, astute, iconoclastic, arrogant, mocking and streetwise...

...When they don't send the milk because of problems with the supply or with imports, I still prepare oatmeal with bits of apple for the children...

...HOW CAN THE EXPERIENCE OF THE URBAN grassroots movement be used to form a political alternative...

...The mere fact that they are no longer shut up in T HE CAPACITY OF THE ORGANIZATIONS IN their houses cooking for their husbands transforms rela- T the pueblosjdvenes to mobilize their members makes tionships within the home...

...There is mutual respect...

...Former president and traditional center-right politician Fernando Belatinde Terry won that election handily, and moved REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16A squatter settlement near the Lima airport: Huts of straw mats are the first structures to appear on invaded land quickly to defuse the anti-municipalization campaign by instituting democratic elections for municipal government...

...Neither Sendero Luminoso nor the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) have a presence in the neighborhood organizations...

...El caso de El Agustino (Lima: CentroSumbi, 1987...

...But they have been growing, and a large number of blocks do have them...

...He razed 90% of the existing housing stock and constructed 950 new homes, while pressuring the city for additional land for the remaining families...

...Neighborhood music halls are packed on Sunday afternoons, where the Andean huayno has combined with the Colombian cumbia to produce a new rhythm called chicha, a word also used to describe the style of the provincial immigrants-rough, vulgar, unrefined...

...7 Waiting to eat in Comas: 1200 community-run comedores populares nation-wide keep starvation at bay REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20The thrust of Vargas Llosa's appeal to poor voters is his claim that the countless, small, independent businesses where the poor struggle to survive are the heart of Peruvian capitalism...

...In the courses where the ronderos are trained, we invite the mayor's office and the Civil Guard [police] to give talks...

...The voice of the women, before silent, is near...

...When it is her turn, she gets up at five in the morning, turns on her stove and begins to heat a huge pot of milk, oatmeal, some sugar, cloves and cinnamon...

...For example, when her husband was unemployed, Candia Riveros and her four children, of the pueblojoven El Planeta, worked both at the comedor and in the milk program...

...18 REPORT ON THE AMERICASRosario de Mel6ndez, recently laid off from a stocking factory, is a new member of the Glass of Milk committee of the neighborhood of El Carcamo...

...Neighborhood protests against this decree accelerated a centralizing process already underway in the movement...

...A municipal Exhibition Center opened on May 31...

...There are also popular inspectors in charge of the internal security for a group, which is made up of 384 families...

...Gone is the gullible cholo who could be sold the statue in the Plaza San Martin...

...then, with the husbands...

...They have done little political work in these poor neighborhoods, and the ethnic-cultural gap between their leaders and the pobladores is immense...

...It is a public system...

...I believe that this way at least some of the problems that the communities bring to our attention can be resolved...

...Today, "some of the compafieros on IU's district level value the work that women do," she says, "but what we want is for the committee, the IU, the people, our husbands, our children, and the state to recognize the value of our work...

...4 (NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1989) 17The Homeless pressured the central government, successfully, to implement and finance the program nation-wide, and by 1985 had achieved the goal of distributing a million glasses of milk a day to children and breast-feeding mothers...

...Women with organizing experience, who were sensitive to daily problems, and who felt excluded from leadership positions by the men of the neighborhood organizations, took the program in hand...

...There were 150 women in attendance, ten of them feminists...

...Forty mothers cook 400 portions a day, half for member families and half for the hungry children...

...The council promotes food distribution and other projects to meet the needs of poor families who must scrape by on one or two minimum wages (less than $40 per month...

...According to Arnillas, they grow out of "selfish solidarity," an awareness that survival depends on united effort...

...7. Besides Vargas Llosa's new Movimiento Libertad, FREDEMO includes the traditional Acci6n Popular (AP) and Partido Popular Cristiano (PPC), as well as the newer Libertad y Democracia (SODE) led by Silva Ruete...

...4 (NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1989) 19R"4or o..h4 Ame44cA4 The Homeless the central and municipal governments as well as other abandon patriarchal structures, they do manage to get development groups rely on the mothers to be the unpaid recognition for the right to work in public and to be treated promoters for community welfare programs...

...At the end of last year, the "town that is building its future," as Azcueta likes to call it, was recognized by the United Nations as the City-Messenger of Peace, and Spain awarded the town its Prince of Asturias Prize for Concordance for its fight against hunger and for life...

...To make good, his administration asked the organizations in the pueblos j6venes for help...

...6 making itself heard...

...If they do not entirely is actively campaigning for the pueblo joven vote...

...E L AGUSTINO, THE HIGH PEAK THAT WAS the site of the 1946 invasion, has experienced nearly 20 invasions since...

...If you say that you are the friends of the people, put your arms away and show your faces, and if you want to talk, ask permission and then wait your turn...

...At the time few women were active in neighborhood organizations, and she had to overcome the resistance of male activists...

...5. For more on the strikes of the late 1970s and Beladnde's use of the municipalization issue, see Carol Andreas, When Women Rebel: The Rise of Popular Feminism in Peru (Westport, CT: Laurence Hill & Co., 1985), ch...

...While not for delicate ears, chicha music draws crowds of youth who join in on the rollicking choruses...

...The people didn't follow them, and the terrorists were arrested...

...They continue to work together through democratic community participation to build a better life for themselves...

...In Chosica the day began with a march of defiance led by neighborhood children...

...They have the power to authorize public festivals, maintain internal order, and to control the prices, quality, measures and weights in grocery stores, corner stores and markets...

...Barrantes looked and talked like the people of the pueblos j6venes and his program expressed many of their dreams...

...Will it be able to find ways of sharing power and benefits...

...In 1975, at age 23, he was elected secretary general of El Agustino's Sixth Zone and began rehabilitation of its 1,700 shanties...

...But in the last six months they've received 20% of the fines that they collect for infractions in the markets...

...The economic and political violence that grips the country has produced a dangerous sense of distrust, not only toward the present government and the United Left, but toward the democratic system itself...

...The practice became widespread in about 1979 when the United States Agency for International Development increased food donations through the Church and the central government...

...3. The major parties in IU are PUM, UNIR, FOCEP, Convergencia Socialista, PCR and PCP...

...Initially we had a lot of problems," say the women of AFEDEPROM (Feminine Grouping in Defense and Promotion of Women), which serves as the central organization for several communal kitchens in the district of Comas in Lima's northern cone...

...This of course was in addition to her housework, which is "invisible...

...For more on early invasions, see Federico Amillas, El movimiento popular urbano: Algunos puntos para el debate (Lima: Cidap...

...T HE MOST IMPRESSIVE AND SUCCESSFUL development of a migrant settlement is Villa El Salvador...

...The community has also decided to farm the 300 hectares of adjoining sand dunes--nearly half of them are already under cultivation using alternative methods...

...They build schools and local institutions and pressure state agencies to staff them...

...At first, organizers had to overcome fears of some pobladores that IU would serve Russian milk to brainwash them, but soon milk distribution committees sprang up in all thepueblosjfvenes...

...most depend on donated food president of the Metropolitan Coordinator of Neighborhood Organizations, with 1,800 member organizations...

...Many comedores are still not properly outfitted and all are having difficulty in acquiring foodstuffs, 40% of which are donated...

...VOLUME XXIII, NO...

...The program was then extended to the elderly and the sick...

...CUAVES's president is the district's first and only mayor, Michel Azcueta, 40, a Spaniard who came to Peru as a theology student and has lived in Villa since it was founded...

...Their juridical status as pueblos jrvenes was abolished, along with recognition of their governing organizations...

...Whenever she was scheduled for both in one day, she would be busy from four o'clock in the morning until two in the afternoon...

...The leftist city government encouraged centralization of the urban grass-roots movement, sponsoring a September 1986 conference that brought locally based and broader community-service organizations together to share and discuss problems...

...What they have in common are people who organize themselves to obtain city services...

...PEOPLE FROM THE SAME FAMILY, VILLAGE or highland district tend to settle together, in some cases all plying the same trade...

...The state, the central government and public businesses need to respect and support this grass-roots democracy...

...Every victory over these problems has served to strengthen the program's autonomy...

...And, aware that national political change will be necessary to solve local problems, REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 14the movement has thrown its weight behind responsive candidates-most often of the United Left (IU) coalition-while fighting to remain independent of the parties...

...The women work together for months, sometimes years, looking for a site, equipment and materials...

...First, to get the women out of their homes...

...Their parents refused to be cowed by Sendero's threats, and carried on with their usual activities...

...Is a popular inspector paid...

...They are also demanding that the government contribute basic foodstuffs directly to the network of popular organizations...

...Not among the youth groups, nor in the teachers' organization...

...The United Nations pledged $3 million to the project and there is also funding from private foundations for small community enterprises...

...Will it be capable of solving the problems of the inhabitants of the pueblos j6venes, almost half of whom are still without adequate services...

...I've told him that I wasn't elected to be a wallflower...

...It was during the rebuilding of the Sixth Zone, in 1977, that Zenaida Ztfiiga Medina began her career as an organizer...

...The day before, ElDiario, generally acknowledged to be the voice of the Partido Comunista del Perd (Sendero Luminoso), had denounced Azcueta as a "calloused opportunist and traitor" who, against the will of the people had imposed "revisionist monstrosities" such as comedores populares, Glass of Milk Committees, citizens' patrols and self-management...

...The hierarchical party-like structure that emerged prevented a fully spontaneous interchange of experiences, but the event was nevertheless an important advance for the social forces grouped around the Peruvian Left...

...The mayor belongs to the Partido Unificado Mariateguista, one of the parties that make up the IU...

...Despite the scant attention they receive, Do all the blocks have rondas...

...In the absence of funds from the nearly bankrupt national and provincial governments, the district is using its powers to issue bonds, borrow, and seek grants from foreign institutions for local development...

...Several of these parties have joined in the Calquisto Saravia, the 33-year-old secretary general of Democratic Front (FREDEMO), led by writer and frontthe Glass of Milk Committee of El Agustino...

...At the settlement M.rquez del Callao, hundreds of children line up in front of the dining hall...

...discrimination, including mestizo university and high school students from the provinces...

...One possibility is through independent organizations such as the National People's Assembly (ANP...

...The district recently held the first book fair ever in a pueblo joven, and there is a network of people's libraries...

...See also Cecilia Blondet, Carlos Ivan Degregori, NicolAs Lynch, Conquistadores de un nuevo mundo: De invasores a ciudadanos en San Martin de Porres (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1986...

...After their visit last year, Carlos Andr6s P6rez, since elected to a second term as president of Venezuela, and Tanzanian ex-president Julius Nyerere, patriarch of African independence, declared that, "'Self-management and commuVOLUME XXIII, NO...

...Neighborhood leaders also won district mayoralties and city council seats, and then had to juggle the demands of their electorate and the problems of local government...

...ROM THEIR TRADITIONAL ROLE OF MOTHers responsible for the life and health of their children, these women have learned to challenge the bureaucracy and apathy of the state, going far beyond anything the parties have said or done...

...Nobody from the district can recall having seen that face before...

...The neighborhood organizations cooperated with trade unions and other social sectors during the national strikes of 1977, 1978, and 1979, gaining a wider political perspective and practical experience in coordination...

...SECURITY IN VILLA EL SALVADOR The following interview with Michel Azcueta, mayor of Villa El Salvador, by Jaime de Althaus,first appeared in the Lima daily Expreso (May 19, 1989).* Do you have problems with terrorism...

...The movement then entered national politics, lending strong support to the newly formed United Left in the 1980 Constituent Assembly elections...

...What do the rondas do with criminals they capture...

...When the right-wing parties were in her husband had hidden her shoes to keep her from going...

...The next year, the nation-wide General Confederation of City-Dwellers of Peru (GCPP) was founded...

...With its vast web of mutual aid and community improvement associations, social and cultural clubs and self-governing councils, and with its capacity to mobilize people, the movement is immensely attractive to any political party...

...At its founding in November 1987, 2,500 delegates from grass-roots organizations throughout the country came together on the bare sandy hills of Villa El Salvador...

...The rondas keep watch over the blocks at night...

...power, their relationship with the early immigrants to the But sometimes the confrontations are far more violent...

...Yes, but I can count them on the fingers of my hand...

...Some are independent while others may be funded by the Church, the state, political parties or development agencies...

...Even should IU win the coming election, will it be able to incorporate neighborhood organizing efforts into its own political project...

...There is only one police station in Villa El Salvador...

...SENDERO'S FAVORITE TARGET T HE FIRST OF JUNE: THE RESIDENTS OF VILLA El Salvador's First Sector are holding an assembly...

...86.4% have not completed high school...

...Nonetheless, -taking political initiative and not just reacting to com- the ways in which they organize have had an impact on munity problems...

...Perhaps that is why the organized poor are among Sendero's favorite targets...

...its cadre are youth suffering poverty and racial These organizations depend on donations of oil, oatmeal and flour, and on their own purchases...

...Tell him his days are numbered," the man shouts and disappears into the night before the mayor's assistants can react...

...There are now over 1,200 nation-wide...

...One little Aymara-speaking town has generated more than 25 organizations...

...their attitudes, however, bands upon arriving home...

...women continue to sacrifice themselves for others, espe- Today these women and their organizations have cially since they hardly get to use the services they fight demonstrated efficiency, dynamism, and independence for-health care, libraries, transportation...

...The United Left has managed to accomplish a great deal from within the limits of city government, as has the ANP...

...In Lima, the 1984 mayoral campaign of Alfonso Barrantes Lingdn, a lawyer and immigrant from the northern highland city of Cajamarca, brought the IU together...

...nothing but the party," states one of its recent directives, adding that "with the people we use persuasion, but anybody who dares to violate the law will be sanctioned and even annihilated...

...Its president, Teresa Aparcana, 35, says, "We are studying the possibility of taking advantage of the organization already in place to develop health and housing programs...

...The rondas are organized by block...

...Today Villa El Salvador has 300,000 people...

...When the politicians learn to follow their example, we Peruvians may yet find a world ofjustice and peace in which to raise our children...

...Such organizations are more than a continuance of Andean village traditions...

...2. Author's interview...

...It was here, behind the former wholesale market on the eastern edge of old Lima, that Andean peasants organized one of the first major land occupations in 1946...

...After a lot of infighting I have begun to do my job, although with certain limitations...

...She has since founded a "people's dining hall" or comedorpopular,joined one of the left parties and is today a council member for the United Left...

...They tell you, 'you are a woman, the councilwoman in charge of health and nutrition, that's your job,' but then the mayor makes all the decisions...

...They VOLUME XXIII, NO...

...Like Villa El Salvador, it is a district with its own mayor and council...

...Stimulated by the "municipalization" issue and other grievances, many organizations throughout the metropolitan area of Lima-Callao came together in 1979, forming the Federation of "Pueblos J6venes" and People's Settlements (FEDEPJUP...

...How do these function...

...They sponded to the closed attitudes of their husbands with viewed the immigrants as cholos-ignorant Indians-and dialogue, trying to convince them and inviting them to blamed them for having ruined the cities...

...Portocarrero answered them, "Only our enemies come here armed and hooded...

...In their search for better prices the women will frequently contact the producers directly...

...Though it is not in and of itself political, its sheer numbers give it clout...

...they were incorporated into municipalities, whose administrations were appointed by the government...

...Sendero Luminoso is still viewed by many outside the country as an indigenous messianic movement that expresses the will of a more radical and better organized sector of the people...

...IU took large majorities in the city's poor districts, and Barrantes became Lima's first leftist mayor...

...From Latinamerica Press (Lima) June 1, 1989...

...CUAVES gives preference to labor-intensive industries producing for the local market and requiring a low initial investment (about $2,000 per job created) and little foreign currency...

...Above all, Sendero has proved seductive to young people with no grass-roots organizing experience...

...Unfortunately, neither present a coherent and efficient alternative...

...Both the Metropolitan Coordinator for the milk committees and the National Commission of "Comedores" have proposed that the government stop subsidizing food imports and support national food production instead...

...The neighborhood movement began to lose momentum, continuing to act as a pressure group, but without initiating programmatic proposals of its own.' T HE ELECTORAL DEFEAT OF IU REVEALED the weakness of the urban grass-roots movement...

...Lacking a leadership capable of rallying its vast constituency around a common national program, it had turned to the politicians of the IU...

...You also have a system of urban defense groups called rondas...

...But the atmosphere of security and development that we have achieved is effective against terrorism....The key is to foster grassroots democracy, to encourage the democratization of popular organizations, in order to plan development at the local level...

...There was an attack on the police station, another at the local offices of the APRA party, and a third against a justice of the peace, between 1984 and 1985...

...They guard the criminals, call the police station and then turn them over...

...it initiated a national dialogue and included, for the first time, women's organizations...

...The job is only for one year but they can be re-elected...

...Sendero Luminoso-the Shining Path-is announcing its presence, taking credit for blowing up electric towers in the mountains and for dynamite blasts heard around the city...

...Each member of her committee contributes 200 intis (less than 10 cents) a week for the purchase of kerosene, cocoa and cloves...

...In the process, they develop the power to question the state even as they wrangle concessions, to escape party strictures and to transcend the limits of Peru's official system of representative democracy...

...They maintain their village ties, returning for festivals or celebrating them with countrymen in the city...

...Instead of the naive and ignorant cholita housemaid, people see a woman active in the organizations of her community...

...Today these same right-wing parties have updated "He promised to respect my position as a leader and I their rhetoric and present themselves as modern, egalitar- promised not to neglect the house," says Victoriana ian and liberal...

...4. 6. Teresa Tovar, Barrios, ciudad, democracia ypolitica...

...The phenomenon continues to this day, in what amounts to a reconquest of Peru's capital by its indigenous people...

...Sendero's leaders are from the provincial, mestizo, intellectual elite...

...Although Barrantes was defeated by the ruling APRA party in 1987, both the comedores populares and the Glass of Milk program have survived...

...cities was paternalistic and based on public assistance...

...The most recent one was an attempt to attack a local market last year which the people blocked...

...As a district of the province of Lima, Villa El Salvador elects its own mayor and council, who are represented on the provincial (all-Lima) council...

...Although the argument may be sound, especially in that the "informal" worker has received little or nothing from the State, it is hard to believe that the right-wing parties are using it for anything more than propagandistic purposes...

...The terrorists started to agitate and told the people to ransack the market...

...Against the drift of Peruvian society as a whole, and despite poverty, pain and violence, the men and women of the pueblos j6venes stand out as examples of tough-minded and pragmatic cooperation...

...Recently, Julio Portocarrero, a union leader of many years, was invited to chair a workers assembly in one of Lima's oldest industrial districts...

...The issue was no longer water for a specific district but for the entire city...

...But in fact this group developed outside of and in opposition to the main social organizations of Peru's poor, which it considers to be "contaminated" by revisionism, pacifism, economism and other vices...

...And the with somewhat less repression...

...Most of the IU is supporting Alfonso Barrantes' independent candidacy for president...

...Villa El Salvador is organized by blocks of 24 families, and groups of 16 blocks...

...and finally, the neighbors, who acted as if we were lazy for being in this program...

...They are recognized by the mayor's office and the Civil Guard...

...Eight of the 14 members of the town council also belong to IU parties, five are in APRA-the center-left party now in power in the national government-and one is a member of the right-wing Partido Popular Cristiano (PPC...

...References The Reconquest 1. This article was translated by Anne Archer...

...Not in any...

...For two and a half years they worked for free...

...2 A new limehfo is emerging, as the barrier between Creoles and Indians disappears...