Taking back the Street's with 30,000 Youth in Lima Peru

“When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?” 
Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

Taking back the street's with 30,000 peruvian youth– Law 30288 (Ley Pulpin)

Dec. 18, 2014, Lima, Perú

On December 16, a new Peruvian law was announced, Ley 30288, entitled (roughly) “Law to Promote Youth Access to the Labor Market and Social Protection.”   The law purportedly seeks to promote the integration of young people, ages 18-24, into the formal labor-market.  It subjects them to a special “labor regime,” where they are paid minimally, on the short-term, and excluded from basic labor protections (family allowances, fewer vacation days, no right to CTS).   In essence, it provides an institutional mechanism to create downward pressure on the wages of young Peruvians (regardless of education, qualifications, and experience) who already receive some of the lowest wages in the world (the minimum wage is 750 soles, about 255 USD).

The law provoked outrage amongst young people and sectors of the Peruvian left.  Some noted its commonalities with the youth labor regimes under the Fujimori dictatorship in the 1990s, where youth worked 12-hour days, Monday through Saturday.   

The day it announced, social media was on fire, and preparations for a march were underway.  30,000 youth confirmed that they would attend.

The youth seemed frustrated and upset, after all, Ley 30288 is being drafted by adults (now  arbitrarily defined as aged 25+) who will never be subjected to the "special regime."  (Perhaps their frustration approximates that felt by feminists, for example, when men legislate on abortion and other issues pertinent to women's health). 

I went with with Arturo, a 30 something-year old Peruvian who hasn’t  gone to the streets in protest since the Fujimori years. We ran, marched, clapped, and shouted in support of the young Peruvian workers, and I learned about the treatment of youth in society.  It seemed that they should and stay in their “proper places,” otherwise their actions will be met with state-sanctioned violence (tear gassed, pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, arrested, and one young person was even shot, and then deliberately run over by a police car).

We arrived at the Plaza San Martin along with some 30,000 others around 6:00 p.m.   The marchers planned to take the streets close to the government buildings in downtown Lima.  As the groups began to march, within 10 minutes their movements were blocked by cops on horses shooting tear gas.  We returned to the Plaza, a bit disoriented, and unsure what would happen next.  Soon, the youth started going in another direction, along Avenida Arequipa—in a seemingly strange direction for a protest/march:  Banned from occupying public spaces of public power, we were headed to the rich neighborhoods Miraflores, to occupy a shopping mall.   The march stretched and blocked off 12 blocks.  As we marched, the youth chanted endlessly—for an end to the dictatorship, against silence, a struggle for the people.  With their right hands raised, they urged others to come and join them.  People watching from office buildings or detained in traffic seemed to support them—they clapped along or waved to the peaceful marchers (that came from all walks of life—from the university students, the anarchists, and average teenagers).  

I was impressed by the youth—After all, weren’t they being “good citizens,” engaged in a wholesome activity (like a big, somewhat noisy, collective stroll on a Thursday evening) marching for their rights to respect, dignified work, and basic conditions? 

Aren't "walkathons" permitted? They weren’t involved in antisocial behaviors (crime, drugs, vandalism, or whatever).  

Based on their engaged behavior one might say that the Peruvian youth were exemplary, models even, of good (and proactive) citizenship, behaving as they theoretically should in a democratic society.  

This perspective was obviously not shared by those with the riot shields, horses, batons, and chemical weapons, or the politicians pulling the strings. 


As we neared the neighborhoods of the rich, the police decided to contain us, or attempt to deter the masses from reaching their destination.  Suddenly, we were enveloped in a cloud of tear gas.  Disoriented, yet again, this prompted a stampede on the part of the inexperienced teenagers.  Luckily, Arturito is amazingly calm and pulled me to safety, away from the chemical weaponry.  My lungs stung and there was nothing that could stop the tears.  Our scarves were in a backpack, since we had been peacefully marching/jogging for 10 kilometers already, and didn’t anticipate being attacked.

Many of the youth disbanded, and recongregated a few blocks from the scene.  Arturito and I, who were participating in a spirit of solidarity with the exploited youth, had had enough, and surrendered to a patch of grass to have a beer.  After all, it wasn't our battle.  After about 20 minutes, however, we saw the youth return, cross the line drawn by police with its chemical weaponry, and (albeit in much less numbers), they pushed the march forward, re-took the avenue, and headed towards their somewhat unlikely target, a shopping mall full of holiday shoppers and tourists.

They stayed there until, god knows when.  I am proud of the youth, who pushed forward, and stubbornly stayed put until they could no longer (due to hunger, fatigue, and police repression). 

Today, a prominent minister went to an important radio show and said that the Congress cannot be soft on the youth, cannot abandon this new law.  The state will take a harder approach to the dissidents on their next march, scheduled for Monday.   The president expressed his support for the legislation, arguing that youth would "age out" of it--that it was only temporary (as if growing up, finding decent work, and building an autonomous life isn't already difficult enough).  

As a whole, Peruvian authorities seem set on sending a strong message--that youth should know and keep to their "proper" (submissive) places.  

As for me, as the night went on, I was bothered by how uneven "the game" was--and the way security forces managed the protest perfectly mirrored the law's unfairness.  A mass of 30,000 noisy teens and adults, all their movements were shadowed by security forces.  When they threatened to take over elite spaces (of rich neighborhoods or get close to government buildings), they were promptly put in line by chemical weaponry.  It is a fundamentally undemocratic situation.  More seriously still, what does such excessive force communicate to young people?  Their powerlessness.  That is certainly true for the estimated 30 who were arrested last night, and are now being held without right to legal counsel. Based on examples in the international context (Brazil's June 2013, USA Occupy, and so on), the poor treatment of young people is not terribly surprising...but it is still disappointing. 

Given their already vulnerable positions, what youth deserve is probably more legal protections, more opportunities, more avenues for voice and recourse.  What does it mean for Peruvian youth and the future if, as their graffiti suggested, they "been sold out?" 

However unfairly the odds are stacked against them--youth can be powerful opponents, organized and with time and healthy bodies on their sides. Viva la luventud!  

See Also:

12/16/2014 “Ley 30288 de trabajo juvenil: faenón que entrega los jóvenes a la voracidad de grandes empresas”

http://www.connuestroperu.com/consumidor/44688-ley-30288-de-trabajo-juvenil-faenon-que-entrega-los-jovenes-a-la-voracidad-de-grandes-empresash

Ica, Peru.

ICA VALLEY

After a month and a half in the Peruvian highlands, I was viscerally reminded of how bad agribusiness is—the smells, the poverty, that it entails.  We were riding along the coast, headed to Ica—I had been warned that it wasn’t a beautiful or marvelous place, but we went to see the dunes.

As we drove, I remembered Ceará: the real estate speculation that is threatening to displace traditional and indigenous communities.  Where it seemed to be a hanging threat along the Northeast, which prompted such groups to band together and for TCUM (a communitarian tourism association), I didn’t see any signs of this occurring here. 

 

One side of the freeway was reserved for the concrete boxes and luxury apartments that would be seasonal homes for the wealthy from Lima—the other, were shanties and improvised squatter communities.  Dilapidating from time, or already wrecked/being rebuilt in the earthquake cycle…

Every half hour or so, there was a horrendous odor—from the chicken farms that fill the plates of the eager folks who line up to the places that sell massive polla ala brasa: the seeming secret to any Peruvians happiness (they eat so much chicken). 

But as we rocked into Chincha, then Pisco, and finally Ica, I really thought about agribusiness, and its grim, depressing truth.  It is heinous, aesthetically.  As you drive down the Pan-American Freeway, you can just see what happened.  The details are fuzzy, but the general gist is somewhat clear.  The emphasis on agroexport investment has created a small group of transnationally connected winners, and the rejects and displaced casualties, squeezed out of the game. 

The asparagus fields were truly bizarre.  The place is literally a massive sand dune, one of the driest places on earth.  Just desert and sand, lifeless… beautiful, empty, psychedelic, expansive…

And then, there are these asparagus oases, bright green artificial atrocities, headed for (mostly) British tables.  Once and awhile, you see the shacks, that don’t seem fit for the habitation of animals—plastic, improvised things.  They are probably only lived in occasionally, on a seasonal basis by workers.  Unlike the encampments organized by the MST, however, while they look similar, I don’t see hope at the end of this.  These are just hovels for the seasonal worker, who toils under the caustic sunshine.  There were groups of people lined up at corners, heads covered in t-shirts, waiting, presumably for work.  I saw women planting asparagus, with sticks, supervised by men who didn’t work, just followed them along the rows. 

The point being: sure, one can grow just about anything, just about anywhere, with the right chemical perscriptions (of fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, and spring water).  But it can’t be good to be one of the seasonal laborers there, under the sun, on what was once a sand dune.  Again, visually speaking, the contrasts are bizarre.    

I sort of remembered the sertão—which was once a multi-use, communal-ish agropastoral community, low-intensive sort of agriculture/fishing.  In the 1990s, such patterns were fixed by land settlements, and they became agronegocinhos—producing monocultures for export for the most part.  Chemicals, irrigation, and there you have it—mangos and goiaba, and grapes for wine and export. But, the work is miserable.  It is too hot. But there, families there have decent, or concrete homes.  They own their lands.  They are rich people, or so they tell me.

Bizarre.

For more, see:

http://www.yale.edu/agrarianstudies/foodsovereignty/pprs/30_Lynch_2013.pdf

How Peru's wells are being sucked dry by British love of asparagus

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/sep/15/peru-asparagus-british-wells