Illegal tamales

Last month, I was drawn to the window of our 9th-floor apartment in Lima, Peru, by a loud commotion outside. I saw about 30 police running alongside a couple flatbed trucks that slowly made their way along the streets of our well-to-do neighborhood. The vendors who sit for 12 hours a day with the Miraflores Municipality candy and fruit carts did not appear flustered. Meanwhile a policeman grabbed and threw onto a flatbed the plaid plastic bag of an independent vendor of modest means selling tamales for S/. 1 (approximately US$0.30) each. The police parade then slowly snaked its way out of my view. On my way out that morning, I asked our doorman why the police had confiscated the tamale vendor’s goods. “Because it’s illegal to sell things on the streets.”

Twenty years ago, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto published El Otro Sendero (The Other Path), a then-groundbreaking study of Peru’s black-market phenomenon. The book argues the country’s thriving informal economy to be a response to the economic needs (business, housing, transport, etc.) of a disenfranchised majority without the economic or political means to brave the bureaucratic mountains standing between them and formal entry into the legal market. Yet their activities are defined as illegal competition for law-abiding, tax-paying companies and industries. The real problem, Mario Vargas Llosa explains in a New York Times Magazine article adapted from the book’s preface, “is the state, whose byzantine legal system seems designed to favor those already favored and to punish the rest by making them permanent outlaws.”

Twenty years later, Alan Garcia is once again president, and legal hurdles for small businesses are, if not quite as nightmarish, still priced out of the reach for many. In addition, some informal entrepreneurs, such as the tamale vendor on our street, continue as outlaws.

While Peru’s economy has shown remarkable growth over the past five years, more than half of the population is considered to live in poverty (on less than $2 per day) and has not seen the benefits of the consistent rises in GDP.

The realities behind Lima’s 49.5% underemployment rate are ugly. At major intersections throughout the city, adult men and women weave through traffic during every red light, trying to sell chocolate, pens, or peanuts. Newspaper headlines read, “200 Thousand Taxi Drivers Without Work,” and it’s common to count more taxis than private cars on Lima’s polluted streets.

My shock over the difficulty faced by the average person in Lima trying to make a living makes me want to learn more about economics. I’m not sure what a solution looks like, but I suspect it has more to do with the work of Hernando de Soto’s NGO that advises governments on how to incorporate the informal economy into legal markets, and less with a parade of police bullying off the sidewalks of our well-to-do neighborhood those trying to make an honest living.

Jasmine in Lima

Walking home from a party tonight, the humid summer air of Lima smelled of jasmine. Very nice.

A morning in Comas

Some images endure such as when I saw, last week, a very old, sick man not able to disembark independently from a combi in Comas. He was accompanied by a middle age woman, probably his daughter. He sat in the first row in the back of the public transportation minivan and she lifted his head from where it rested on the back of their seat as they neared their stop. His head immediately went back down. She lifted it again and back down it went. Now, combis and micros are in a rush in Lima and people are already trying to stand before it comes to a stop so that they can jump off and the rest can be on their way. Well, this elderly man’s daughter did just that but he made no pretense of moving. He simply could not.

Some of the men on the combi took note. Four people and his daughter were needed to lower this sick man from the vehicle. It was hot and as we drove away, he just stood there holding her arm so as to keep standing. The street we were on was one of commerce and they certainly had a journey from where the combi left them. That man should have a wheelchair and, when a journey is necessary, he should have door-to-door service on a ride intended just for him and during which he sits in the front seat. Life should be more fair for those further on in years.

I was traveling with my colleague, Manolo, to interview an adolescent who recently gave birth and might have been affected by a law I am researching. Manolo, in his early 50s and involved in organizing trans groups in Comas, had also accompanied me the last time I’d been up that way as it probably isn’t the most safe place for una gringa to be traveling alone when she doesn’t know where she’s going.

As I describe in Getting more involved, the last Congress passed a stupid law that criminalizes all sexual activity with and between people under 18 years of age. Despite that Peru’s civil code says that people ages 16 and older can wed, the penal code states that sex with or between minors is rape. If one of the two happens to be over 18, that person faces no more than 25 and no less than 30 years in prison. The first three to be incarcerated under this law to promote more protection for sexual violence victims were—surprise, surprise—women. They were 18 or older and their partners under 18 years of age.

This law is dangerous for adolescent sexual and reproductive health in Peru. In conjunction with another law obliging medical providers to report to law enforcement authorities any evidence of violence—from bullet wounds to rape—on their patients, this law means that doctors must denounce the supposed rape that got a pregnant adolescent pregnant, even if she consented and even if, for example, the father is her husband. One Lima public hospital was going beyond that stated in the law and retaining adolescents for days after they should have been discharged. The pretense was to wait for the prosecutor to come and register her—fill out a form. One was retained 15 days after she was medically fit to be discharged. These retentions were problematic for, in addition to violating their right to liberty and security of person, many of these adolescents were not giving birth for the first time and had to get back to their other children.

Manolo waited for me in the nearby house of a community organizer while I walked over to interview the adolescent. Her grandmother-in-law greeted me at the door and invited me through the front room that is a store with soda for sale, and into a room with some chairs, a table, and a bed with an infant on it. Rocio, 15 years old, had just given birth two months before. Her grandmother-in-law proudly stated that Rocio doesn’t let anyone wash and care for the baby, only her. I explained why I was there and started to ask her questions: what hospital she went to; when did she arrive and when did she leave; what was her experience; was she retained; was her partner there; did anyone say anything to him; what is the word on the street about this law amongst adolescents? Five or six other children who are Rocio’s husband’s siblings and cousins, as well as Rocio’s pregnant 19-year-old sister-in-law, sat with us as I interviewed her.

Rocio had heard about this law from adolescent-mother peers of hers, and it made her and her “husband” (as she referred to him but any marriage between them cannot be legal in Peru until she turns 16) nervous about giving birth in the hospital because they didn’t want their baby taken away. The fear generated by this law presumably generated this false rumor, as the law does not serve for the State to gain guardianship of the newborn. “Just because we’re young doesn’t mean we don’t want to raise our own babies,” Rocio said. Her friend had escaped from the hospital after she’d given birth for fear she’d be put in a home without her child. But Rocio and her 21-year-old husband thought a hospital the safest route to go so went anyway. A social worker spoke with him at some point but, as is the case in the majority of hospitals, their hospital was not strictly implementing this law. They discharged Rocio only after her mother came and pledged that Rocio and the baby are under her guardianship. But Rocio lives with her husband and his family.

Rocio confirmed our suspicions that that this law can drive pregnant adolescents away from safe, supervised birthing conditions and perinatal care. Such an effect doesn’t indicate smart legislation for a country with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Latin America.

“We didn’t learn anything about sex in school,” Rocio continued. “When someone would try to bring it up with the teacher, they would get in trouble.” And now she is a fifteen-year-old fulltime mom.

Manolo and I descended down from Collique and back towards Comas where we disembarked from a combi once again. In a beat up 1980s Oldsmobile, we ascended towards the house of China, one of the founders of Comas’ LGBT group. Manolo had a box of condoms to deliver to her. The Collique community organizer had asked for them, saying she desperately needed them, but Manolo explained they were already promised to someone else, but to call him and he’d get her a box soon.

Sitting in her living room, China expressed contentment about the condom brand. There are three kinds—with white, black, or green wrappers. The white, which Manolo had brought her, are from the U.S. and are the best, she said. The condoms with black wrappers are distributed by the Ministry of Health at monthly or bi-monthly check-ups. I assumed the check-ups to which she referred were those that I believe are required for sex workers so as to be periodically tested for STDs.

Peruvian trans sex workers sometimes make their way to Italy to work temporarily or permanently. I would have thought Spain a more likely choice due to common language. But Italians are apparently more open than Spaniards to transactional sex with transgender persons from Peru. Manolo and China spoke about someone they know about to make the trip overseas.

China told Manolo about the most recent of their periodic hair dressing events in the neighborhood, to offer free haircuts and, in the meantime, tell community members about their work. These events are very popular and there is a steady line of clients for the entire duration. February is the month of carnival, when people throw water balloons and the like at one another. Some people, however, went overboard with the hairdressers and used Carnival as a pretense to be flat out violent.

Don’t drink and vote

So tomorrow are regional and municipal elections and the city of Lima is dry—no alcohol in the bars, bodegas, casinos this Saturday night. A friend said that the beer cooler at Vivanda, a grocery store, had a lock on it with a sign that read: “don’t drink and vote.”

Many voters have to travel tomorrow to vote, so I guess the formula is don’t drink and drive, need to drive to vote, so don’t drink and vote. Nonetheless, I am amused.

According to the National Office for Electoral Processing (Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electores, ONPE), 480,888 citizens will vote tomorrow for the first time. And if any one of these or the other registered voters does not show, s/he will be fined 17, 34, or 68 Peruvian nuevo soles, depending on the socioeconomic profile of her/his district. Those from districts “not poor” (no pobres) are fined S/. 68; those from districts “not extremely poor” (pobres no extremos) are fined S/. 34; and those from districts of “extreme poverty” (pobres extremos) will be fined S/. 17.

A friend of mine lives in La Victoria, a district with a lot of poverty and crime. But the area where she lives is residential, calm, and not dangerous. The voting site in La Victoria is located in an area where she and her family do not feel safe to travel, so they register to vote in other districts with voting sites situated in locals where they feel safe.

Maybe they have even more reason not to feel safe because if you are qualified to vote in Peru, they cannot detain or incarcerate you during the 24 hours before and the day of the election, unless they find that you have committed a "flagrant" crime—caught red-handed, as it were. I understand where this rule could come from given the depths of corruption this or any country is capable of—but I still think it is funny and could form the basis of a modern day comedy of errors. But any such musings should wait until Monday as tomorrow it is prohibited to put on popular/folk shows in the outdoors as well as enclosed spaces (cinema, theater, etc).

But most importantly, remember not to drink and vote. You wouldn’t want to wake up on Monday morning regretting (or not remembering) which candidate got your vote!

An afternoon with Montesinos

It is always exciting to see, in person, a living part of history. I’ve had the opportunity to do so in attending concerts of jazz legends such as Horace Silver, Benny Carter, and Sonny Rollins. I have sat in an auditorium in Havana listening to Fidel Castro speak for hours. This summer in Dublin Airport my father and I exchanged a few words with John Hume. But today was the first day that I have ever been so close (less than 10 feet behind) someone with 74 judicial processes open against him. I certainly don’t mean to place Vladimiro Montesinos in the same category as a jazz great or a Noble Peace Prize winner—but he certainly is a notable, albeit infamous, figure of Peru’s recent political history.

“Despite his questionable connections, Montesinos had played an influential, often malign role in almost every area of Peruvian life: for the last ten years of the 20th century, unelected, he co-governed the country. All those who care about Peru’s future—and that indeed of any other small country—need to ask themselves how this could have been allowed to happen.”
— Sally Bowen and Jane Holligan, The Imperfect Spy: The Many Lives of Vladimiro Montesinos (Lima: Peisa, 2003).

Democracy, rule of law, and human rights in Peru were shelved while Montesinos was both advisor to former President Alberto Fujimori and the de facto chief of the SIN, el Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (the National Intelligence Service). The Fujimori/Montesinos era was marked by corruption, extortion, and blackmail, not to mention instances of extrajudicial killings and “disappearances” of suspected subversives. For more information about Peru under Fujimori, I suggest reading the second chapter of Human Rights Watch’s Probable Cause: Evidence Implicating Fujimori. For more information about Montesinos, I suggest The Imperfect Spy (which is unfortunately out of print) or transcriptions of the Vladivideos.

Today Montesinos is incarcerated at the Callao Naval Base. Just last week he received 20 years for selling arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo, or FARC-EP). This afternoon, I heard a judge sentence him to 6 years in prison and a civil repatriation fine of S/. 1,500,000.00 ($461,254.61) for corruption. This was the first sentencing and Montesinos and his lawyers are appealing. A list of his sentences to date can be found here.

The man reading the 40-minute-long sentence spoke faster than the Micro Machine Man, but this is my understanding of the case: Sometime back in the 1990s, some members of congress publicly claimed that the taxes Montesinos had paid didn’t correspond with the actual balance in his accounts. Montesinos obliged some auditors of SUNAT, Superintendencia Nacional de Administración Tributaria, to fix the imbalance and make his accounts appear legal. A handful of people, including the then director of SUNAT and an ambassador, ended up getting involved and they are all on trial for this case. Montesinos is the only one of the group who is currently incarcerated. The argument of the others is that they were coerced into fixing the books / aiding in the cover-up. For instance, one of the auditors was either pregnant or had a child at the time. She’d heard about disappearances and didn’t want to risk not following orders, even if she broke the law in doing so. This case raises interesting considerations such as: if someone is coerced into breaking the law by governmental authorities, is there or is there not a point after which s/he is no longer responsible for her/his actions and, if so, what is that point?

I plan on seeking out more afternoon visits with Montesinos for the public trials of the La Cantuta/Barrios Altos cases.