First Day: The President´s Club and New Opportunities

It always seems like the beginning of adventures are magical. After 24 hours of flight and losing all my important papers in the process (minus my passport) I needed some. The night flight to Lima was wonderful: The turbulence of great updrafts of the equator, the low moon over the Andes, the outstretched clouds blanketing the desert from lima to the sierras. Even more wondrous was breaking through earth clinging clouds to discover the city´s industrial edge, along a river, whose banks were ablaze with a patchwork of fire.

The airport in Lima was less wonderful. It took two hours of waiting in labyrinthine lines to get past immigration. After 4 & 1/2 hrs of sleep and with gritted teeth I finally, at 1:30am I made it out to find Manolo, my professor´s brother in law, waiting for me.

We took a taxi through the empty streets of Lima, the dangerous edge of the airport, with blowing trash and occasional police lights flashing, into the safer barrios of San Isidro, and finally to Miraflores where my hostel was supposed to be. It was not. Fortunately, there was another down the street from where Manola was staying, and I didn´t feeling like searching anymore. At three in the morning I finally slept.

Not for long. Something told me I had to get up. Good thing I did! For those of you who don´t know I had been invited by my tio, Homero Oyarce, to a reunon (meeting) of expresidents of latin American countries. I had been told it was in the evening, and was looking forward to having a day to get ready (haircut, shower, shave, dressing.. etc) but lo! An email was waiting for me in my mail box. I opened it. ¨the event is at 1030 at the country club hotel, see you there¨

I had an hour to get dressed, shave, breakfast, and figure out where in the hell this lavish country club was in relation to my very modest hostel. Sweating (nervous) I left out the showering, the hair cut, and quickly rid myself of my facial scruff. Then I through on both of my cheap goodwill dress shirts, one on top of the other, and ran downstairs to ask the hostelera which one I should wear (she seemed like a woman who knows these things). I told her in my broken Spanish I was off to see the presidents, she smiled, picked a shirt, and with her approval I left the hostel.

I hailed a cab on the street, a dangerous thing to do. I had been warned by guidebooks, websites, hostels, friends, and the nice woman from Lima sitting next to me on the plane to be very careful. Apparently, there are many robberies executed by taxi cab drivers because taxi-ing is a wholly unregulated industry. It seems every third car has a half-arsed plastic taxi sign drilled into their roof. I had hailed the first one I saw. What luck - a portly and friendly peruano picked me up. He turned out to be from Chachapoyas and when I told him I´d be living there, his face lit. When he dropped me off at the country club he wrote me his number and told me to call him if I need to go anywhere ¨because catching taxi´s is dangerous¨

Homero, my tio met me at the door. After pleasantries we walked through the halls of the nicest hotel in Lima to a verdent and peaceful courtyard. I got my own pass that read ´agenda social para la democracia en America Latina´ - What was this all about?

There were maybe three hundred people seated in business suits, 20 camera crews, 10 expresidents seated on a stage, homero, and me in my untucked goodwill shirt and hand me down unkrinkleable pantalones. Fortunately, all eyes were on the presidents, who apparently, at the invitation and urging of former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo (Homero´s friend), had been meeting for years to promote their form of democracy in Latin America.

Knowing a little South American political and economic history, I was immediately skeptical of the gathering. My sketicism grew markedly after the keynote speaker, Francis Fukuyama, gave his address.

First, a couple of sentences on this guy, courtesy of Wikipedia: ¨As a key Reagan Administration contributor to the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine¨¨Fukuyama is an important figure in the rise of neoconservatism.¨ ¨He was active in the Project for the New American Century think tank starting in 1997¨ ¨he co-signed a letter recommending that President Bill Clinton support Iraqi insurgencies in the overthrow of then-President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.^{[2]
And the list goes on....}

And the list goes on....

Intresenting enough, and most interesting in this gathering, was that he had in fact in many ways changed his mind. No longer was he a neoconservative, a movement he played a strong role in. He wasn´t there to recommend severe austerity measures but rather make the point that democracy is dependant on eradicating poverty, and that the great mistake of the IMF and Latin American governments was to impose austerity measures while ignoring social problems. The ideas he´s articulated and pushed have been responsible for the death and impovershiment of people across latin america - it was incredible to hear him articulate the mistakes of his ideology (though I would still disagree with him probably on a great many things) and be arguing for progressive taxation and social programs. I sign of just how far things have swung since the bush disaster.

The tone of the whole gathering was that in order to prevent ´authoritarian´ leftism that ´gives the poor a free handout and leads to an entitlement mentality´ is to create social programs. To create workable justice systems. To tax the wealthy. To create peaceful neighborhoods. Keynes.

I could say more but I wish to bore none!

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Last update: After a lunch of green tamales, ceviche, checha (purple & white corn drink) fish, goat, yucca and corn with Homero and friends, I met with him two nice guys from the departmento (like State) of AMAZONAS, after laughing and talking I discover that one of the young men is the mayor of a small town in the bottom of a deep valley along the waters of one of the two great rivers that cross to form the beginning of Amazon. Homero tells me it is a place of great fruit: mango´s, oranges, papayas and others. The mayor invites me to visit. Then after talking about teaching, they have an idea: in exchange for food and a place to stay he will organize a english school for me to teach. There are other small cities in the amazon he thinks I could do the same.

The possibilities have just expanded - in one day!

Anyhow, Love you all so much!