richorozco wrote:Wow...... great discussions!!!
Let me give my 2 cents ( <eyes roll> ) .....
1. As for people not speaking Quechua when they leave the Provinces to go to Lima: Why would you want to speak Quechua? How does it help you? Should people from the ghettos of Chicago & New York speak in Ebonics when they become professionals or go to the suburbs? Should the Mexicans(legal or illegal) speak English when they are in the US?
I think one should assimilate to their environment, regardless of where they are at. A hillbilly who goes to the bug city no longer eats road kill such as racoons, squirrels, etc....right? How on earth is Quechua going to help you succeed in Lima, get a high paying job, work in a professional place, go to College where Spanish is spoken, etc....
2. As for Classism .... Yes, it exist today. Peruvians who are well off (de pinta or nombre) think that they are better than most and to feel better about themselves, they do not want the masses to come up and think nof themselves as equivalent.
You can go to College, but only the ones who go to the "good" (i.e. expensive/exclusive) Colleges, will get the jobs. As for Sales/Business, you better have the "look" to succeed in that arena.
In the US, it is the opposite. The engineers and MBAs are Indian (Hindu), Korean, Middle-Eastern, etc... and intelligence, work ethic, and credentials are highly valued. I wonder why the US comes out with so many innovative products. Could it be that the US has the best of the best (of the entire world)?
3. As for the Peruvian (in the US), who feels uncomfortable among illegal Peruvians. Its just another form of classism. The guy wants to feel better than "those" Peruvians .... he may think that they give Peruvians a bad name and wants people to associate Peru with educated people who get citizenship thru legal means.
The Peruvian guy in the US does not want to be thrown in to the bucket of "illegal mexican" and wants to distance himself from a Peruvian waiter, cook, or simpleton.
I love going to Peru because I look 100% Peruvian (mom and dad are Peruvian ... no other ethnicity from other countries) but was born in the US and educated in the US. I see all the crap where some guy (pobre diablo) thinks he is the best (his S&%t does not smell) because of his last name and lives off of the riches from his father, grand father, etc.... They are not Professionals, they can not compare to an American or European (same blue eyes and blonde hair ....but the American and European has cultural awareness and is educated (not formal education ....but knows how to deal with other culturals and is open to different things).
4. Last one .... Education and driving. I have Masters degree and all sorts of paper degrees....went to parochial school (i.e. Catholic grammar school), etc.... When you live in a big city, there is road rage. Period.
Now mix that with Latino blood (Yes, you have to stereo-type) and you will notice that people do not let themselves get pushed around (no se dejan) .... Now, you just have all sorts of testerone and classism thoughts flowing (i.e. ese Indio me va cortar? .... Carajo ....yo tengo mi mechita (benz) y soy blancon....etc)
There has been a lot of changes in the last fifteen years that most foreigners do not notice within
Peru because they always try to compare Peruvian society with the system that they have back home.
The composition of Peruvian society has changed a lot due to the culture of corruption with its maxim
of the survival of the most corrupt instead of the fittest. This has affected Peru in the worst possible
way and created the current social inertia that governs the country and makes it behave in an irrational
way that is quite stupid compared with other countries within the world. Society was dominated by whites
until the end of the 70s but not anymore. What dominates society is the current crop of corrupts and
incompetents that usually obtained their wealth through dubious means.
1970 to 1980 the Military was in charge of Peruvian society and divided the land and wealth of landowners
among the Communists (obviously the top members of the Peruvian Communist party received most of the
land). Consequence Peru lost most of its industry and farming capacity and became dependent on products
from abroad. Peru also lost many of its smartest and productive people, some died in poverty, others escaped to the United States to start over, and the few that were able to hide their money started over
in another business. The majority of landowners were white and all the communists were indian.
This created a justified resentment and hostility from Peruvian whites and criollos toward Peruvian indians.
One simple example, lets just say that your last name was "De la Piedra" in 1972, your family has a 20 acre
farm which is confiscated by the military government of Velasco and given to the huaman, casahualca, and
puman poma families. All your family had everything invested in the farm because they love their country and believe that eventually everything will improve. The current family has 20 people as members, of which 6 are minor children. Suddenly, all of them broke with the loans still pending have to survive in Lima at the
beginning of the crisis created by this supposed fair Military government. By the time that this family reach
the 80s. 4 of the 6 children died. The other 2 were able to finish college but are sick. Of the adults, the 7 oldest were not able to make it due to starvation. The other 7 married and started to rebuild the family
wealth. By the year 1984, the family is back to where they started but they had to experience a level of
mortality similar to the second world war. By the year 2012, this same family has 60 members and they
all have vowed never to forget what happened to them during the 1970s and whos fault is it.
What I have mentioned was a very common story for the average middle class white family in the 70s.
If the same thing happened to your family, how would you react towards Indians? how would any of the
members of that family would react towards any indian that tries to address them. Their hostility and
violence will be totally justified.
1980 to 1984 Belaunde was in charge. The Peruvian communists using the money given to them by
the Peruvian Army financed the MRTA and Sendero Luminoso, besides crippling the productive capacity
of the country in the 70s. Now they crippled the administrative capacity of the government.
Which in turn created more resentment from everybody on the whole coast of Peru towards all the
people in the highlands. It was not a social movement, even MRTA and Sendero Luminoso clarified
that on their mail to government palace. The called themselves terrorist movements at the time.
Half of the highlands were controlled by the terrorists and the government always had a list that
was memorized by the police and members of the armed forces so they could spot the leanings
of every person that came from the highlands.
1985 to 1989 Alan Garcia first presidency. Alan Garcia was actually selected by the APRA because
he was one of the smartest student of his generation. He had finished college by the time he was
16 and had a natural knack to convince people through discourses. Alan Garcia was aware that the
problems of Peru came from the highlands but in order not to alienate the votes he blamed every
problem in Peru to the US and the United Nations. Alan stopped paying the national debt and started
the biggest inflation.
Still in the 80s, even with the publicity nobody was fooled and everyone was aware that the people
in the highlands were the ones who created the problems through terrorism and communism.
A lot of people also died during these times, most of them the productive ones with small, medium sized
and big businesses. Few of them escaped to the US. All of them blamed Alan Garcia and
the Terrorists with good reason.
1990 Alberto Fujimori was selected. The only good thing that he did during his government was
that he started targeting family members from the terrorists. Mothers, children, cousins, brothers;
even if they were not involved, they were immediately disposed of by the death squads. The
approval of the President was extremely high due to this. Still to this day, the terrorist claim
the deaths of many of its relatives, fortunately Fujimoris death squads were quite good and were
only caught in a couple of incidents called Barrio Altos and la Cantuta. The training for all the
anti terrorist operations was provided by our ally the US. Then he screwed everyone by making
his family and some associates the wealthiest in Peru by confiscating many businesses like the
channel 2 from Baruch Ivcher.
2000-2010 We had Toledo, who increased the indian presence in Lima ten fold and also created
many government positions that employed people that were strictly indian or black. Political
Correctness appeared in Peru. Toledo was a good president, but unfortunately he is also responsible
for the Reconciliation Commission where all the terrorist confessed everything that they did in
the last 10 years and how they perceived Peruvians in Lima "they are not human because they are white"
(Peruvian Commission of Reconciliation website). This open confession obviously increased the
resentment of everybody affected by the terrorism in the Peruvian coast.
Now with all the incidents that happened in the last 40 years, property lost, lives lost, wealth lost.
Do you really think that is wrong for a Peruvian from the coast to mistreat somebody from the highlands.
The problem is that Peruvians as a group are passive and have weak memories.
But if something like this happened in the United States, with the same amount of deaths, loss
of wealth and properties, Americans would be killing each other instead of mistreating like Peruvians.