Observations on Peru

Observations, thoughts, impressions, and experiences from my trip to Peru in 2008

These are not in any particular order, just as they came to mind, as I was thinking about them.

1. There are always the relatively ubiquitous and iconic pictures of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. These have been in Latin America for decades and very little has changed economically over this same time period. I suggest that an iconic picture of Sam Walton be created and distributed as a replacement for Che. Sam knew about economics; Che was an ignoramus on the subject. He has nothing teach the people about improving their lot. Latin America (Peru) is starting to see some globalization with big retailers like Metro, Tottus, Sodimac. Their prices seem to be about half that of the corner stores on some of the items that we bought. I hope that the standard of living continues to improve.

2. I would really like to fly a small plane over the entirety of Lima enough times to really see and know the city and at a low enough altitude to see the ground well. A good ultralight would do fine. PS. I only saw 3 general aviation aircraft flying in entire time I was there. All three were over the beaches at Punta Negra, south of Lima. All were towing banners, two for beer and one for a school, if memory serves.

3. At least they wet down the dirt in Mirones. I guess that the neighbors complained enough over the years to finally get the city (municipalidad) to make the trucking company keep the dirt wet down to control the dust on the other side of the train tracks. Does Brigham City do anything to get Staker Parson to control the dust from their enormous gravel mine? (Actually Staker did a little a few years ago to buffer the city from the mine and dust. More on this in another blog.) This just goes to show you that the US isn’t the most enlightened place in the universe.

4. I think one of the greatest impediments to material and social progress in Peru (and Latin America in general) is the astounding rate of unwed mothers. This is difficult for me to understand. There are so many women who have children by men who have legal wives and children. Most of the illegitimate children never receive support of any kind from the fathers. (I don’t know what makes the children illegitimate, but that is the way they are referred to. Maybe fatherless would be a better description.) I might suggest much stronger anti-bigamy laws, but what would be the punishment and how would that solve the problem? Some women are partially responsible for the problem, since they seem to be willing to believe the lies of the philanderers that they will divorce their wives and marry them. This never happens. The men tell the lies and the women believe them. I suppose they prefer wishful thinking to no relationship. The children are stuck in a never ending cycle of poverty and unwed motherhood, generation after generation. The whole society has to have a change in the non-acceptance of philandering. Isabel Allende says Latin men act like the conquistadores did that used the women as they saw fit. Following the gospel of Jesus Christ would solve this.

5. This leads to the next question, instead of an observation. Are there lots of men that have no wife because there are lots of philanderers with two or three? Or is it more of a serial philandering?

6. That leads to a thought that has been developing over the years. I suspect that the biggest export from Peru for the last 500 years has been people.

7. Maybe biodegradable plastic sacks would be a good thing in Peru. I saw hundreds of square miles of desert covered with trash, mostly the ubiquitous plastic sack. Maybe a good municipal incinerator/powerplant would clean up the place and provide some electrical power. Heck, for that matter, a good incinerator could burn the mostly combustible municipal waste of Brigham City, recycling it into electricity. Aren’t most plastics that the earth crowd complains about just petroleum in another form? Burn it!


8. Why go to the moon, if you haven’t yet been to Lima; a city of 8 or 10 million? There is enough to explore in Lima for a decade and enough in Peru to explore for a lifetime – and you don’t need oxygen and life support.


9. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step; isn't that a Chinese proverb?. This is the thought that I first had when we arrived at the SLC airport at an unholy early hour to catch our 6:45 AM flight and found out that Houston was closed indefinitely for severe weather. We were not even moving in line to the check-in counter when we found out. Boy, did that Chinese guy ever have it right. We didn’t go home, we didn’t call Grandpa who had given us a ride to the airport. We persevered and eventually got to Residencial Sori in Lima at 4 AM the next morning. The connecting flight out of Houston to Lima was delayed 4 hours, from 4 PM to 8 PM.

10. I just had another thought. Peru was conquered during the little ice age (1400 – 1850) that was happening in Europe. I wonder what the effects were in the Americas and whether anyone has ever studied this as a potential contributing factor for the decline of the Incas.

11. Vapid and banal US TV shows are still vapid and banal with subtitles, especially “Married with Children”.


12. Fran Tongo, our taxi driver in Chilayo was complaining about the lack of stop lights in the city. Since the traffic is always a sort of loosely controlled chaos, it didn’t occur to me that there could indeed be stop lights. He blamed the city government. Some things seem to be universal. Governments are incompetent everywhere. Some are just less incompetent than others. He also mentioned that the mayor and the former mayor of Chiclayo had a disagreement and one of them set fire to the city offices, which have been under repair for 2 years since the fire. No one was charged with arson. Maybe city government gridlock is like when Clinton was being impeached – a vacation for the entire world. Maybe Chiclayo is having a brief interlude from incompetence and malfeasance.


13. The pre-Columbian cultures in Peru were extensive and widespread. Unfortunately, they left no writing. I’m sure that Hugh Nibley would have something to say about that – and probably did. The ruins seem to show that the civilizations were violent and bloodthirsty – human sacrifice, etc. But who am I to judge the past, when today so many elite opinion makers and hangers-on want to sacrifice half of humanity to stop global warming and institute their ideas of sustainability! Not me.