Nature and Society:
The 1997-1998 El Niño in Peru
Antonio Zapata
Executive Secretary, Net for the Social Sciences Development in Peru
Introduction
Six months before the big rains associated to El Niño, we Peruvians knew that the flood
was coming. Thanks to it, the last El Niño is a unique case in the history since for the first
time international meteorological agencies had advanced this great alteration of nature.
This presage was assumed in diverse ways by both Peruvian society and government,
which took different measures to mitigate its effects. The major purpose of this essay is to
show these answers, understanding at the same time its causation and dynamics.
In the Peruvian case, since June 6, 1997, the official institutions related with the weather
issued forecasts about El Niño. Thus, beginning with the National Meteorological Service,
Senamhi (in Spanish), the other agencies, as the Sea Institute, Imarpe (in Spanish), and
the Geophysical Institute, IGP (in Spanish), warned of the coming occurrence of the warm
and extremely humid event called El Niño. By then, the concern of the press and civil
society was evident.
For example in Piura, as early as May 24, 1997, the CIPCA, a
renowned local NGO, organized a first forum to discuss the possibility of El Niño.
In
addition, on May 28, the newspaper El Tiempo de Piura gathered a group of experts to
converse about the phenomenon and published a booklet with their interventions. This
early restlessness of the northern society expressed the logical concerns of those who had
suffered intensely during the previous Mega Niño of 19831.
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1
El Niño has been subject of several bibliographical publications. A specialized
compilation in social sciences was prepared as chapter of the monumental work “Piura:
región y sociedad, derrotero bibliográfico para el desarrollo” (Piura: region and society,
bibliographical course for the development), by Bruno Revesz, Susana Aldana, Laura
Hurtado and Jorge Requena, Piura: Cipca, 1996. Another bibliography, somewhat older
Beginning the autumn of 1997, Peruvian meteorologists began to consider the modification
25
of the habitual climatic indicators, perceiving that the heat characteristic of the summer
continued. As well, in that same moment, biologists from the Net of Biological Verification
of El Niño, Riben (in Spanish), perceived significant changes in the population of benthonic
mollusks. They say that the benthonic populations sense the heating first because the
ocean connects quicker at the depths and only later do shallow changes in the sea
temperature manifest. So, according to the Riben, the first populations that experience
modifications are the bethonic that live in the sea bottom.
A conference of experts
gathered in the University of Piura, UdP (in Spanish), would confirm this point of view, since
according to Norma Ordinola, meteorologist at the UdP, this Niño advanced inside the sea,
making deeper and deeper the first layer of relatively hotter water, denominated
thermocline2.
The scientific community wondered about the magnitude of the coming changes. How
strong would the next Niño be? This question opened a polemic that was followed with
interest by public opinion. Memories of 1983 were indeed present. On the north coast
people feared a flood and wanted to know how much rain would fall and when it would
begin. On the south highland, the 1983 event had been accompanied by a severe drought;
people there wanted to know if this was going to happen again. On the other hand, the
coast people were also interested to know how far southern the phenomenon would
extend. That is to say, assuming that the most northern coastal regions until Chimbote
would for sure be affected, people were interested to know whether there would be big
rains, avalanches and overflows in Lima, Ica, Arequipa, Moquegua and Tacna.
In all the previous Niños of modern time, the governments reacted facing the emergency,
amid the flood, when the situation was already beyond control. This time, much to the
contrary, the government had time to act before the facts. The prevention was not only the
central government's doing, but also other political and social actors participated, such as
50
municipalities, unions and institutions, universities, international cooperation organizations
and specialized in natural sciences was gathered by Jorge Mariátegui, Aurora Ch. De
Vildoso and Juan Vélez, “Bibliografía sobre el fenómeno del Niño desde 1891 a 1985”
(Bibliography on El Niño's phenomenon from 1891 to 1985, El Callao: Imarpe, 1985.
2
Cipca’s web site. Section El Niño, regional events. Newspaper El Tiempo de Piura.
and ordinary people. All of them have acted to the forecast by carrying out a first stage of
prevention. That phase is extraordinarily rich and interesting because it is unique. In fact,
it is the first time that such phase takes place, but announces that the following Niños will
have a first moment of early alert and following mitigation plans. The Niños of the future,
just as the 1998 event will be object of similar forecast3.
Later on came the so-called emergency stage, which extends over the summer of 1998,
January to March, when all the variations precipitated onto the national territory. This is a
classic stage that occurs in all the Niños. What was special about this last event is that we
were prepared for it.
Theoretically at least, the food had been distributed to the
warehouses, the heavy machinery to assist with the roads had been equally distributed
ahead of time and people had had time to take protective measures in their houses.
However, time had not been enough. The emergency showed that the lack of prevision
rate had been very high and that many works had been badly executed or not been made
at all. However, above everything, the emergency showed that the country’s vulnerability
was increasing.
Six months of advance are not enough to solve risks that have accumulated during
decades. For example, the development El Chilcal de Piura is located over a land that
flooded both during 1983 and during the previous Mega El Niño of 1925. After 1983 it did
not only stay in the same place but another neighboring development denominated Ignacio
Merino was built onto an even lower floor. No appropriate drainage system was planned
and consequently the whole area was submerged during the emergency.
Well then,
Ignacio Merino received municipal permission for construction and diverse public offices
completed the urbanization. The end of the story is well known: Ignacio Merino and El
Chilcal stagnated to the degree that the damaged neighbors had 1.5 meters of water in
75
their houses for almost four months. The prevention measures taken before this Niño's
rains were insufficient because the problem is of a great dimension. It has to do with the
structural design of our cities and it cannot be corrected with a few months advance. This
3
A group of bouys with scientific instrumental and satellite interconnection with modern
computers are installed all along the Pacific up to the height of Ecuador. Those bouys are
the ones that detect the heating of the ocean from the beginning of the process, which
happens many months before the arrival of the event to the Peruvian coasts.
Piuran example is nothing else than one of many points that illustrate how vulnerability is
the bottom issue, and that an early alert is useful, but only partially, being insufficient to
solve structural problems that respond to the long run of social organization in the country.
Following we have had the reconstruction stage. This in fact is not over and continues
ahead. This fact hinders the interpretation task because we still lack definitive results.
Nevertheless, something ought to be said in advance, since this reconstruction phase
should have been, precisely, the most organic, in order to avoid the accumulation of
structural problems for the future. However, it is being the laxest stage, it lacks defined
plans and, has not the great difficulties and definitions that featured the two previous
phases. There is not goal, no schedule and even less definitive budgets. Much to the
contrary, works are announced suddenly without consensus with the beneficiaries or
presentation of structured plans to the Congress. Regrettably, in Peru we have a quite
negative last experience, since most of the works performed after the Mega El Niño of 1983
have collapsed again during the last event.
For example, in the department of
Lambayeque, four of the five bridges that collapsed during the event of 1998 had been
reconstructed after 19834.
There have been many actors in this story.
As we saw, it was the State scientific
institutions’s task to issue the forecast announcing El Niño's arrival. The early alert allowed
the society and the government to react with certain advance, applying plans dedicated to
mitigate the effects of the natural event. In the first place, the executive power took the
initiative by executing most of the forecast actions, using of 94% of the Republic’s budget,
which it manages, and engaging 450 million dollars of international credit 5. We will be
Luis Rocca Torres, “Impactos del Niño en el sector rural: Lambayeque siglo
XX”.(Impacts of El Niño in the rural sector: Lambayeque XX century). Monograph
presented in Sepia VIII, Round Table, Climatic change and disaster prevention: El
Niño's Phenomenon (Mesa Redonda, Cambio climático y prevención de desastres: el
Fenómeno del Niño), P. 15.
4
5
Peruvian government has contracted foreign debt for $450 million dollars. One hundred
and fifty millions with each one of the three following institutions: Eximbanc from Japan,
the World Bank, and the Interamerican Bank of Development, IDB. Cepes’s web site.
There are also other not very high loans on which there is no precise information. Among
these stands out a credit of the Andean Corporation of Development, CAF, for 20 million
dollars.
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seeing the plans elaborated by the executive. Our interest is to present their explicit goals
and to meditate on their objectives. As well, we will review how and why the executive
carries out its work in an isolated way, ignoring both the municipalities and the civil society
institutions. We will also review the internal structure of the executive and its efficiency
before the emergencies; the number of central power institutions that intervene in the
emergencies and the coordination degree among them.
However, the executive power was not the only to act. The second great actor of the
process has been the municipal governments, which by being elected constitute the only
other power independent from the executive. Their economic accomplishment power is
very modest because they hardly receive 3.5% of the budget of the republic. Nevertheless,
beyond the reduced municipal revenues issue, it happens to be the only other local power
elected by citizen vote. Therefore, the source of its genuineness is electoral, just the same
source that supports the executive, unless otherwise expressed exclusively at base level.
Besides, the municipal power registers historical antiquity in Peru, since the institution was
founded by the Spaniards when the Iberian conquest. Nevertheless, few times has it had
real independence from the executive. Most of their republican history, municipalities have
been designated by the central power and the mayors have been subordinate authorities.
However, since 1980 municipalities enjoy free elections and a level of mayor house
institutionality has been settled.
As well, we will enter into the analysis of civil society. We will wonder about the type of the
involved institutions, attempting to watch the differentiated dynamics of the producers
associations regarding those of the professional boards, universities and NGOs. To begin
with, it seems that the producer social organizations, starting with the Boards of Irrigation
Water Users and the Irrigation Water User Commissions, were very close to the prevention
plan applied by the executive. Meanwhile, professionals and academic institutions headed
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together, along with some municipalities, an open concertation posture between the central
power and the local forces that the executive ignored. The conflict between the centralism
and the decentralization forces was very intense during El Niño and it is this work’s
intention to take it to the light.
The fundamental questions of this study are: how do the state and the society react before
a natural threat, what type of plans are executed, who makes the decisions, what are their
approaches, what long term perspectives are glimpsed?
The analysis’ comparative
advantage lies in that natural catastrophes - just like wars - bring quickly to light political
tendencies that would usually take half a decade in being revealed.
1. - Prevention
The Executive
The first outstanding characteristic of public action was its dynamism. It is not usual in the
Peruvian state to carry out quick and sustained efforts. Hence, the first question is the
reasons of such velocity. The political class still happens to remember El Niño of 1983’s
consequences. That year, a very intense El Niño inclemently punished the north coast with
a huge flood, accompanied by a severe drought in the south highland, outlining a scenario
of national catastrophe. Since El Niño, architect Fernando Belaunde’s second government
was seriously damaged.
It never recovered neither the prestige nor the legitimacy it
previously had. This topic was still present in the Peruvian state.
The memory of the nightmare during Belaunde’s government was an incentive for the
president to show the efficiency and authority of his government style. Alberto Fujimori is a
major character in this story because he decided to lead the ship of the state directly. He
took advantage of the occasion to advertise his image, for the sake of the possibility to
attempt a third term.
He appeared in all unimaginable dimensions; he was heavy
machinery driver, government spokesman, great strategist and resource manager, carrying
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out one of those activity rushes to which he has made us used to. Their partisans have
seen his performance as superior to a postgraduate degree course in the best university
abroad6. His critics have denounced his political intentions and the unduly use of both the
funds and the anguishes arised by El Niño to prepare his presidential candidacy for year
2000.
6
Alberto Pandolfi, Congress Pro El Niño Roads, organized by the Ministry of
Transports in August 1998.
Nevertheless, these are situational factors; it is also necessary to consider other structural
elements that are related to the essential functions of the entire state. Indeed, one of the
government political roles is to offer security to the citizens.
Initially there was an
exclusively military notion of security, but later on the concept was elaborated. Since the
thirties, there exists the concept of the civil defense in the country. This conception has
suffered a difficult evolution on its way through the institutional scope of the state, including
some advances and more than one setback. Finally, in 1972 the Decree Law creating the
civil defense system in the country was sanctioned. This was modified in the eighties and
again in the nineties, but it remains as the state’s permanent policy base facing disasters7.
The civil defense system was created as a part of the national defense, with the purpose of
protecting the population in the event of disasters by providing opportune help and assuring
their rehabilitation. Its mission defines its virtues and limits, since its option is assistance
rather than prevention. The system must get to the place of the events and help, but it
does not assume that it should be ahead of the facts. If the word prevention takes part in
its conception, it is as a part of the logistics, as part of the storage and cellar functions.
Within this conception frame, the population's education in risk reduction prevention is a
task of the Ministry of Education. Thus conceived, the national civil defense system has
not had a very prominent role within the executive power.
The transformations undertaken by the state during the nineties did not change
meaningfully either the role or the position of the National Institute of Civil Defense, Indeci
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(in Spanish).
This institution heads the whole civil defense system and is part of the
Presidency of the Minister Council. Its chiefs have always been generals of the Peruvian
Army, sometimes in activity and many times retired officers.
A permanent small civil
bureaucracy has its headquarters in the Lima district of San Borja, where a group of
colonels has the responsibility of directing the departments and offices of Indeci. In the
provinces, a similar structure depends of the respective Transitory Council of Regional
Eduardo Franco and Linda Zilbart Soto, “El sistema nacional de defensa civil en el Perú
o el problema de la definición del campo de los desastres” (The national civil defense
system in Peru or the problem of the disasters field definition), in Allan Lavell and Eduardo
Franco (editors) “State, Society and Disasters Management in Latin America: in search of
the lost paradigm” (Estado, Sociedad y Gestión de los desastres en América Latina: en
busca del paradigma perdido), Lima: La Red, 1996.
7
Management, Ctar (in Spanish), which is in control of the executive power in the
departments of Peru, for the regional elections contemplated in the 1993constitution have
not taken place.
This central structure dependent of the diverse Ctars is not the only one contemplated in
the civil defense law for Peru provinces. At the same time, a regulation for the law issued
in 1988 establishes that local governments should constitute civil defense offices for their
corresponding jurisdictions. This is one of the greatest incongruities of the system. On one
hand, there is the central bureaucracy composed of military chiefs. In the provinces, this
sector depends on the Ctars.
On the other hand, there are offices that depend of
democratically elected mayors.
The first ones are the very representatives of the
executive, while the second ones often stand for the local powers. The habit of common
work is scarce between these two power components in Peru. Consequently, a system
based on the passive and subordinate collaboration of majors with military officers cannot
run smoothly. This explains why their operative inefficiency is high and why by the eve of
El Niño, less than 50% of its offices were at least formally settled.
On the other hand, it is regrettable that the army would not have a specialty in civil defense.
This is why the officers that come to Indeci have no specific preparation for their new tasks.
Two years later, these officers are changed to new destinations and a new unprepared
personnel comes in.
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The chiefs’ scarce experience in the matter generates a high
institutional instability, which has become a structural characteristic of Indeci, in spite of the
long continuity of the army in its control - being the Army one of the most solid institutions
of Peruvian state. Thus, Indeci is a not very visible, low profile institution within the alwaysflowing institutional panorama of the Peruvian state.
As we had advanced, Alberto Fujimori's government has produced state meaningful
modifications during the nineties. In the first place, its resources have multiplied. The 1992
budget was of five thousand million Soles, while the 1999 budget exceeds the thirty-two
thousand million Soles. In mathematical terms, the state has triplicated its revenues during
the nineties, happy goal that most of its citizens have not been able to achieve. So, the
state continues being a great economic agent; it ceased to work through public companies,
as it was usual during the previous decades, and has returned to the condition of great
contractor, whose requirements energize quite some group of companies and sectors
leaders of the national economic activity.
As well, the executive power has undergone a process of internal restructuring.
New
organisms that control most of the investment resources have been conformed. Several of
these state new institutions group under the Ministry of the Presidency, Mipre (in Spanish),
although some of them are also in other ministries.
However, the point is that the
investment money is given to new agencies, while the old and traditional ministries are
rather diminished. For example, the Industry Ministry managed 0.2% of the budget in 1998
while that same year the Fishery Ministry had 0.4%, both minimum quantities that hardly
allow a quite reduced activity. On the other side, the Mipre appears as a super ministry
since 1999 it controlled one third of the public budget. That is why the Mipre intervenes in
all functions of the state and its works overlap the specialized areas of intervention of the
other ministries. For example, the Mipre pays the payrolls of all the public employees in
provinces, thus carrying out a greater centralized control of the executive's dependences
225
through the Ctars. Consequently, inside the central power the key actor of this story is the
Mipre and, behind it, the new institutions that manage the greatest part of the investment
public budget. Next come the diverse Ctars, which carry out a very visible role of state
conduction in the provinces.
During the first days of September 1997, the by then Minister of the Presidency, Daniel
Hokama, informed the Congress about the prevention measures adopted by the executive
since June of that year. The minister declared that the government had gotten ready for
the worst possible scenario, discarding optimistic visions that claimed that El Niño would be
light or, at the most, moderate8. That scenario was a repetition of the 1983 Niño. As we
saw, the government assumed that it would be identical to the previous one and that
simplism had disastrous consequences for certain Peruvian provinces, which were hardly
affected by the previous Niño but were indeed strongly hit with the current one. As well, the
8
This opinion about a moderate Niño of benefical effects was assumed by a group of
Peruvian scientists headed by Dr. Ronald Woodman, executive president of the IGP.
Among many others of his interventions on this topic, a press conference in Piura can
be reviewed under the suggestive title of “The 1998 El Niño's will be as that of 1973
and not as that of 1983". El Tiempo, 2-Aug-97.
minister informed to the national representation one of the government's slogans during
those days: for each dollar invested in prevention, ten dollars would be saved in
reconstruction. That calculation would turn out to be too optimistic and deceiving9.
The goal of the government plan was to facilitate the drainage protecting the cities to avoid
its flooding. The logic was simple: if one expects an extraordinary increase of the rivers,
their evacuation should be facilitated in order to make it get to the sea. It may seem too
simple, but it was precisely its simplicity which made it an effective goal.
It granted
coherence and direction to the government plan. In this outline, a first priority was the
cleaning and clearing of the watering and drainage systems, which had been neglected for
years and bore great accumulations of trunks and mud.
The construction of riverside
defenses that would avoid the flooding of the cities was also undertaken. Finally, the
government bought pumping cameras to evacuate the waters that would inevitably
accumulate in the lower parts of the cities. All these priorities were correct, although when
250
being executed some of the works were very deficient.
On the other hand, the government plan recorded a sad gap. The government faced its
responsibility by carrying out a great work of civil engineering that would protect the
population. However, it did not see for the people's economic conditions. Every sign of
direct support to the producers was found as synonym of stale populism. It was for this that
many economic opportunities were lost. For example in the fishing, it was a known fact
that the anchovies would disappear and that they would be replaced by other species of
warmer waters. To extract those new species massively new apparels, including new nets
were required. Obviously, the fishermen needed special credits for that purpose. However
only thirty thousand dollars were destined for them. That is to say, almost a drop of water
in the desert. Thirty thousand dollars is a very scanty amount for a part of a prevention
program that by September 1997 had spent 421 million Soles. In general, the government
was very reluctant to manage extensively the taxes and credits to favor producers of the
affected areas.
Ministry of the Presidency, “Minister of the Presidency’s Exposition before the
Congress of the Republic", 15-Sept-97. Xerocopied.
9
The government’s priority was not in the production sector but in the civil engineering one.
This is not a very solid program, since it lacks one of their fundamental support points.
Nobody has anything against civil engineering, much less by then. However, the support to
production was indispensable to avoid economic recession and generalization of poverty.
The very United States of America confronts every natural disaster with packages of
economic help to the citizens. The difference in the policies is not due to the contrast
between a rich country’s economic capacities as opposed to a poor one’s as ours. It is a
problem of concept, actually.
What the citizen and producer's position is within the
government's plans. In the USA the government’s objective during the emergencies is that
the economic machinery does not stop, that it keeps working and that people are not
unoccupied but earning, saving and investing. Among us, all there was absolutely no
275
concern to stimulate the good pace of business, what would have saved the ordinary
producer from the ruin10.
Now then, moving on from the what to do to the how the works were executed, there is a
set of failures that were source of great tensions. Many works began late and such delay
was the reason for its practical inefficiency. The president set himself on foot very quickly,
but even for him it is difficult to start the gears of the executive. For example, in Piura the
works for the new drainages that were built for this Niño did not begin until August 9, when
the Ctar president, general ® Alberto Rios, prepared its immediate start attacking five fronts
simultaneously. Seven weeks had already gone by since the beginning of the emergency
and the high-priority works had not yet been initiated in the department that was known to
be the El Niño focus. Other works conceived as part of the drainage system were not
finished until the rains began and consequently they became dikes that dammed the water
causing big overflows. So happened in La Libertad, where the Mampuesto canal was remade by the Ctar late and badly. The work was eventually what caused the river entrance
to Trujillo’s Plaza de Armas11.
“The great absentee was the producer". Based in this statement, Eduardo Franco has
written an important monograph, “El Niño en el Perú, hacia una contextualización de las
respuestas sociales al Niño 1997-1998”. (El Niño in Peru: toward a contextualization of the
social answers to El Niño 1997-1998)."
10
11
The president himself has publicly reprehended his regional officials a number of times.
The political process opened up by El Niño revealed a very high level of centralism. All the
budgets, transfers and important economic decisions were adopted in Lima and the
operative autonomy of the very Ctars was very scarce. Ctars happen to be offices where
province employmentcracy’s salaries are paid; the money they manage is, basically, for
regular expenses. The money for investments is, as we saw, concentrated in those new
agencies centralized in Lima that were created during the nineties. For example, 90% of
Ctar Arequipa’s budget is dedicated to regular expense. That is why Ctars’ presidents had
to travel to Lima in order to negotiate the transfers that would allow them to fulfill the
prevention work plan12.
The local political tensions were channeled towards a difficult reconciliation during the
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prevention stage.
The central government's apparatus, the social institutions and the
municipalities got to some agreements during this second part of 1997. For example in
Piura, an Inspection Committee was constituted to take care of the complaints against the
works executed by the government during the prevention. That committee was presided
over by the archbishop, monsignor Óscar Cantuarias and integrated among others by the
rector of the UdP(), Antonio Mabres.
The Inspection Committee made it possible for
bridges to exist between the central power and the regional society13. It was also possible
to have these bridges laid down in Chiclayo during the prevention stage by establishing
coordinations between the central power and the regional society. Though high levels of
harmony were not achieved, the agreement between the state and the society had its best
period during the prevention14.
For example, on November 23, 1997 he made a call to conclude the prevention works in
Piura ASAP, directing the attention on how late these were in Paita and Talara, where
according to his depositions, they had not advanced more than 50%. Cipca’s web site,
news section.
12
For example, general ® Alberto Rios of the Ctar Piura moved to Lima between the
September 19 and the 30 to personally negotiate transfers that were detained.
()
Translator’s Note: UdP stands for Universidad de Piura (University of Piura).
13
The archbishop Cantuarias was an important stabilization factor in Piura. For example
he declared that the works were being managed in a better than in 1983 and claimed the
greater trust from the population towards their political authorities. El Tiempo, 4-Oct-97.
14
Luis Rocca, Loc. Cit. p. 23.
The Indeci carried out a Niño's simulation between August 10 and 16. The results were
poor; 80% of the population did not know how to confront the risk. Hence, the diffusion
task became very important for a series of local actors. In some departments it was not
possible work coordinately as it was the case of La Libertad and Lambayeque. However, in
Piura the Ministries of Education and Health were capable of conforming a commission of
NGOs - such as Itdg and Care -, the National University of Piura, Sencico and Civil
Defense.
This commission worked in a very concerted way and covered the whole
department with training days directed to social leaders coordinated with the local
municipalities.
They were also able to produce good level educational material, thus
becoming a significant example of fertile understanding between the state and the society
during the prevention stage.
On the other hand, going one step down and watching attentively the executive’s
institutional scope, there is a high degree of responsibility dispersion. Indeed, the public
intervention areas are neither well defined nor granted to permanent and stable institutions.
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On the contrary, there is a great overlapping of responsibilities and a lot of institutional
mobility. It occurs that public institutions are not cancelled when new ones are created;
they rather remain half asleep waiting for better times. The state machinery is centralized,
but also disordered and dispersed inside.
We Peruvians suffer the disadvantages of
centralization in the sense of autoritarism, but we do not enjoy its potential advantages in
the sense of order. The political tradition in Peru leads to the exchange of works for
loyalties and so, the basic principle that guides the authority seems to be its desire for the
reelection15.
The Municipalities
If we locate ourselves in the Peruvian provinces, it becomes very obvious that the local
power is expressed in the municipalities, since they are the space where all interested
parties converge to direct the local political life.
As established by diverse authors,
In another work, Zapata and Sueiro, “Naturaleza y Politica” (Nature and Politics), we find
six institutions from the executive that carried out prevention works at riverside defenses.
These six institutions completed their work amid an open competition of responsibilities,
without a concerted or coordinated plan and at eventually the same oficialism accused the
head of one of them for corruption. Lima: IEP, 1999.
15
municipalities are part of the state apparatus, constituting its last step and, therefore, are
located within reach of the population's social institutions. However, during decades they
lacked autonomy and their authorities were designated by the executive. After 1980 they
have recovered democratic origin and have evolved from an exclusive concern for the
public services toward a greater interest for local development topics.
Municipal authorities have usually been officials designated by the central power. This
tradition of submission from the municipalities has its background in the very colonial
period. Later on, in the XX century, municipalities lost their autonomy during Augusto B.
Leguía's office, who governed between 1919 and 1930. Just like every messianic leader,
Leguía felt the call to cancel all power different from his own. So it was done and the
designation of municipality authorities continued from the Inner Affairs Ministry - former
Government and Police -, for more than forty years.
The vertical control of the
municipalities extended up to 1963, when Fernando Belaunde returned the municipal
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democracy. Later on, Velasco annulled it and again Belaunde reestablished it in 1980.
The lack of democratic continuity is one of the most powerful factors to explain the scarce
tradition and the weakness of the municipal structures in Peru.
On the other hand, Peruvian population is spatially distributed in some urban municipalities,
but most of these institutions face rural and agrarian population realities. Thus, of one
thousand and eight hundred Peruvian district municipalities, less than four hundred of them
register populations dedicated mostly to manufacturing or commercialization and services
activities. In other words, in one thousand four hundred district municipalities, more than
half of the population is engaged in agricultural activities. This reality translates into a
municipal system that follows very poorly the population real distribution.
In the
geographical spaces where most of the population lives and works there are relatively few
municipalities, meanwhile most of the municipal town councils are located over huge,
almost empty spaces, where there is excess of land and scant of human beings. In those
wide rural spaces most of the scarce population is dedicated to agriculture. This lack of
synchrony between the institutional scope and the population distribution also affects the
operability and solidity of the municipality institution in the country.
When studying the Peruvian municipalities, a quite complex political process outstands. In
the first place, Peru happens to have many municipalities per inhabitant. We have a great
municipal density because we have the level of district municipality which does not exist in
other countries of the region. Among our neighbors, the municipality is equal to what we
Peruvians call provincial municipality.
In Peru we have two hundred provincial
municipalities and also a thousand eight hundred district ones, which is an enormous
universe of elected local authorities: between municipality deputies and mayors the number
goes up to twenty thousand local authorities. This is one of the numerous paradoxes of
Peru; we have too many municipalities and too few resources for their operation 16.
375
This higher number of local authorities in Peru has both positive as negative consequences
for the democratic process. Seeing the situation from the positive angle, the higher number
of authorities leads to a greater proximity with the population. This proximity frequently is
translated in greater dialogue and communication. Nevertheless, analyzing the matter from
the opposed angle, this higher number of authorities is the signal of an also higher
fragmentation. Such fragmentation is useful for the executive to keep control by submitting
the municipalities. In summary, by being so low a floor of the power structure and having
so scarce resources available, the executive led them with relative easiness17.
As we saw, the municipal resources are scarce and their economic realization power is
limited. As well, we should consider the municipalities’ high economic dependence of the
economic transfers coming from the central power.
Indeed, the Peruvian municipal
finances are characterized by the reduced municipal capacity to generate their own
revenues and the concentration of such revenue-generating capacity in the cities.
Additionally, there is a very limited municipal autonomy to manage the funds coming from
transfers, as well as a lack of legal capacity to set the amount of the tributes. These
16
In Colombia there are one thousand municipalities, approximately half of the ones in
Peru, Colombia having a population of thirty five millions inhabitants, ten millions more
than Peru. In Bolivia until the nineties municipalities were exclusively urban. Bruno
Revesz (ed) “Decentralization and gobernability in times of globalization”
(Descentralización y bobernabilidad en tiempos de globalización), Cipca-Iep, 1998.
17
The case of the Peruvian Municipal Association, Ampe (in Spanish), just confirms this
interpretation, since as a consequence of the November 1998 elections and in spite of the
fact that four fifths of local authorities are not with the government, the central power has
managed to have a directive kindred to its orientation chosen.
transfers are channeled through the so-called Municipal Compensation Fund, Foncomún
(in Spanish).
Foncomún prioritizes capital expenses since it establishes that 80% of the funds obtained
by this concept should be used in capital expenses and only 20% can be dedicated to
regular expenses. This structure is it considered excessive by most of the district mayors,
mainly the rural ones. They know their municipalities practically live on Foncomún and that
it is impossible to afford such a high expense in capital goods having so scanty amounts for
the regular ones.
According to them, in any investment, the expense in personnel is
superior to one fifth of the total expense.
This regulation on the distribution of the Foncomún is an example of national laws
400
exclusively conceived based on the urban municipalities’ reality, in which this approach is
more logical since they have proper resources. In the case of the cities, the law wants to
force the municipalities to contribute manpower paid with their own resources to
complement works that should be accomplished with the transferred money. However,
most of the rural district municipalities cannot respect this regulation and consequently
many incur in fund grafting, which places them in the judges’ pillory. In a context of a not
very independent judicial power, it can be understood that this irregularity is a powerful
political weapon in the executive's hands.
During El Niño's situation, the municipalities were fighting to be allowed to use Foncomún
resources for emergency expenses and be authorized to use these funds not only in capital
expenses. They were only authorized to change these items on March 1998, when the
prevention had already finished and even the emergency was about to be over.
For
example, when the prevention stage began, the mayor of Piura declared he was not even
authorized to modify his 1997 budget to adapt it to El Niño's new situation, because he
lacked legal base.
Nevertheless, by then, president Fujimori had instructed all the
executive dependences to proceed with this readjustment18.
Submitted to so many restrictions, the municipalities could not perform big works during El
Niño and left that responsibility to the central government. The type of works executed by
18
Cipca’s web site, news section, August 28, 1997.
the municipalities was very specific, many times roads securing in the case of rural district
municipalities. Unable to affirm their authority through public works, the municipalities have
specialized in the transaction of project sand works for their towns. The Peruvian mayor is
a representative of his people before the executive, which does have real economic
capacities. In this sense, the mayor is an expert in attracting works and spreading an
image of organized town that will know how to take out profit and be grateful to the
government work.
425
Consequently, the municipalities’ first responsibility during El Niño has been the elaboration
of protection plans to be presented to the Ctars. These plans frequently were worked in
forums and seminars with participation of professionals from NGOs and universities. Many
technicians from the executive’s regional offices attended these forums as lecturers. They
were in contact with organized residents and, in this exchange, concerted plans were
elaborated that supported the broadening of spaces for social participation. The planning
phase always seems more likely to stimulate the participation than the management phase,
where a number of good intentions to open the local government to the population have
stopped. Among the numerous examples of this type of municipal seminars during El Niño,
the northern mayors board held in Piura outstands. This board was quite early and was
organized on an initiative of the national Ampe.
In it, the mayors heard the technical
opinion of Indeci before approving a plan that was later presented to the central
government19.
As we have seen, municipalities have specific responsibility over the base organization of
the national civil defense system. This mission led to a number of activities during the
phase before El Niño. On one hand local brigades were formed, many times integrated by
youths who had received training in courses organized by civil defense along with the
municipalities. Nevertheless, the tensions between civil defense and the municipalities
were quite strong. Even in this first phase, which was the easiest for the understanding,
the tensions originated public conflicts. For example, general Homero Nureña, by then
president of Indeci, declared that his conflicts and miscoordinations with the mayors
.Cipca’s web site, news section, 4-Jul-99. Even district municipalities have elaborated
these plans for their jurisdictions. For example, the district municipality of Catacaos
submitted Ctar Piura a district prevention plan on 11-Jul-97.
19
responded to “economic problems that had some political implications". That is to say, the
executive, in this case represented by Indeci, controlled the money and had distribution
issues which foundations and implications are political.
If the municipalities are part of the state as a whole, their position inside this superior group
450
is the last step, behind all the other levels that compose the state machinery. This role to
the bottom of the public apparatus places them very close to the following step, which is the
civil society institutions. This position of the municipalities inside the modern sociopolitical
classification has favored its performance during the nineties, because they have had the
chance to act in a crucial moment, when the central state reinforced its power notably
thanks to its success in the fight against inflation and Sendero insurgency. In that moment,
civil society seemed to have been out aside, almost disintegrated by the great economic
crisis and the cycle of political violence. Well then, in those circumstances municipalities
were bridges that allowed the initial recovery of the civil institutions that later took a road of
their own but that until today appear to be very close to the municipal trend.
The Civil Society
The institutions of the civil society have lost force during the Peruvian political process of
the last two decades. The foreign debt economic crisis, unchained at the beginning of the
eighties, stimulated them at first, increasing the number of popular organizations, their
organizational levels and making their activities more dynamic. However, on a second
moment popular institutions became demoralized, perceived that their activity hit an
impasse and that they were not solving the problems that had called them to get organized.
Much to the contrary, these problems deepened, conforming a devastating sight. The
hyperinflationary spiral finished the shaking of the popular organizations’ structures. Their
foundations happened to lack antiquity and solidity; they were rather very new and very
precarious. Unions were older than neighbourhood organizations, but even so, they did not
provide services beyond the list of claims. On the side of the neighbourhood organizations,
creativity and institutional novelty were accompanied by improvisation. Even though in
popular neighborhoods the organizational web was extensive at base level, it found great
centralization and collective representation difficulties.
475
Toward the end of the former decade, the advance of Sendero Luminoso introduced
additional difficulties that were impossible to bear by popular institutions.
Sendero’s
strategy of taking civil war into the base organizations disorganized them.
When the
Sendero penetration translated in selective murders, the middle levels dispersed, producing
the greatest organizational Diaspora in the history of the Peruvian social web.
This
Diaspora had begun in the Andean fields, which were affected by the violence during the
eighties.
At the end of that decade and during the first years of the nineties, that
organizational setback also occurred in the cities, especially in Lima.
Additionally it is necessary to take into consideration the neoliberal reorganization of the
Peruvian society of the nineties. That new option has led ideologically and politically the
society, imposing a new set of values, where the importance of solidarity and mutual help is
very scarce. On their side, these last two values constitute the moral foundation of social
institucionality and are crucial for its development. It is so that a world came to its end.
The economic crisis, added to the civil war, resulted in the neoliberal reformation that not
only did reduce the functional importance of the civil society, but also finished up with its
ideological foundations, with its ethical proposal. That world that was disappearing in Peru
had never been very solid; its fall without great resistance demonstrates that. However, it
was a social web that had sustainedly advanced since several decades ago, at least since
the fifties, and that had built positions firmly during the seventies and eighties.
After the collapse of the social organizations, there reappeared definite and specific
institutions that started relationships with external political agents for the performance of
small works of local impact. The state policy was fundamental to produce that effect. The
new public agencies in charge of the régime’s social policies, as for example Foncodes (*),
have made it a priority to work with popular institutions that perform small civil works of
social support. These institutions have been friends to the régime in the political aspect
500
and specific in the organizational one. Be it as it may, the case is that the social institutions
reappeared, sometimes working with the social assistance government programs, other
Translator’s Note: Foncodes stands for Fondo Nacional de Compensacion y Desarrollo
Social (National Social Compensation and Development Fund).
(*)
times coordinating with the municipalities. They took their first and hesitating steps towards
their relocation within the national political scenario.
The neoliberalism has also caused an internal realignment of the social web’s internal
institutional map. Certain types of institutions have lost importance while others play more
preeminent roles now than what they did in the previous decades. Among these last ones,
there are small producers organizations that replace vindicative-type organizations, as the
unions, for example, which constituted the main type of social institution during the two
previous decades. During the nineties, the Boards of Irrigation Water Users have outstood
in the coastal fields20. They had a prominent role during El Niño in the provinces.
The Boards of Irrigation Water Users have existed since long ago; they were supposed to
come institutionally from the decisions planned by the agrarian reform, but Teresa Oré, who
is the main scholar on these social organizations, makes them come from similar
institutions dating of the farmers' time, which would have survived during the seventies.
They manage the irrigation waters, which in the coast comes from sources controlled by
dams and integrated systems. The organizational system of the boards follows the logic of
the hydrographic basins. These Boards have two organizational levels, the Board itself,
which manages the basin and their bases known as Irrigation Water User Commissions,
which constitute the organization of the so-called watering districts. The third level is an
instance of integration with the state through Inade(). This is the executive's organism that
manages the dams and the major water distribution system in each one of the coastal
basins. For this purpose, Inade has special projects per basin. Thus, the channels and
drainages of second and third category are in charge of the boards. These second and
third category channels finally arrive to the farmers and provide them of the irrigation water.
525
The boards get paid for it and, although their collection capacity and even their keeping of
affiliated records is uneven, the institutionally more developed boards work as efficient
service companies for their members21.
20
Teresa Oré
Translator’s Note: Inade stands for Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo (National
Development Institute).
()
21
Interview with Carlos Monge
The Boards of Irrigation Water Users own heavy machinery. These, along with the state's
machinery, worked intensely in the prevention physical work. The most outstanding board
according to the experts is the Chancay-Lambayeque valley one, where the city of
Chiclayo22 is. This Board even manages the Tinajones dam in an agreement with Inade,
while in all the other cases Inade keeps control of the watering system source.
The
members of the Boards of Irrigation Water Users are for the most part small owners, heirs
of the agrarian reform. For example, in the valleys of Middle and Low Piura the prevalence
of small property is very evident, because 95% of the members of the respective board is
constituted by rural small owners and small proprietors of surfaces smaller than eight
hectares23. Many times their leaders are their direct representatives, though there are
leaders who come from a superior stratum of medium farmers. Nowadays, the boards are
not managerial organizations similar the national societies and the Chamber of Commerce,
but of intermediate type, halfway between a typical business institution and a social base
association.
On the other hand, the proprietors associations in the provinces hardly appeared during El
Niño.
Regarding this type of institutions, suggestive information can be found in Luis
Rocca’s work on El Niño's effects in Lambayeque during the three mega events of this
century, 1925-1983-1998. Rocca relates that in 1925 the civil works executed during the
emergency were headed by engineers who worked for the big farmers, who contributed
money in much higher quantities than those invested by the central government.
For
example, in 1925 the Larco family, owners of Tumán, a renowned sugar country property,
invested in the protection and defense of its watering system an amount higher than the
550
one spent by Leguía’s government for the protection of the Lambayeque city, from where
the president was native. One only sugar baron spent more than the central government.
Today the situation is exactly the opposite.
This way, the Chambers of Commerce’s role has been limited to be part of the dynamics of
promoting forums, congresses and seminars in which diverse interested people and
scholars have debated ideas during El Niño's cycle. However, they have not had greater
22
.This board has been receiveng the support of the Dutch SNV for more than ten years.
23
Interview with Edgardo Cruzado
capacity for investment of their own. Some economic elites are much reduced now, such
as the one from Piura, which has not even participated successfully of the reprivatization of
some regional public companies24.
As we have seen, the organization of seminars and forums was very intense during El
Niño. Indeed, it was a mechanism for the generation of consensual plans. Many times the
municipalities had enough convocation capacity to gather universities, NGOs, professional
associations and also proprietors' associations. One of the first seminars was summoned
by the Association of Peruvian Olive Producers and Exporters, Apeap (in Spanish), held on
June 15. It dealt with the problems of a farmer sector whose products spoiled first because
of the unusual heat during the winter of 199725. These interinstitutional seminars and
congresses finally gave origin to wide social base fronts in favor of a concerted
reconstruction26.
As it is obvious, these forums have been of very uneven a quality, being some very fertile
and others, much to the contrary, totally dispensable. Among the most significative ones is
an event organized in Cusco by the NGO Arariwa, with purpose of meditating on the
prevention in the south highland, which in Peruvian territory is the main scenario of El
Niño's teleconnections. That is to say, El Niño, besides its direct effects on the north coast
for the heating of the adjacent sea, causes indirect effects through atmosphere
modifications that affect the highland regions that are far from the sea.
575
Due to this
teleconnection process, it was assumed that the south highland would suffer of droughts
during El Niño, as had happened during the mega event of 1983. However, in 1998 the
rain regime was near the habitual one and that great drought of the previous events did not
occur27.
24
Interview with Edgardo Cruzado, Cipca-Piura.
Cepes’s web site. This page contains first line information elaborated by this important
Lima NGO specialized in rural topics.
25
A very complete analysis of the NGOs’ role during El Niño can be found in Pedro
Ferradas, “El fenómeno del Niño y los desastres: enfoques y estrategias de las Ongs” (El
Niño's phenomenon and the disasters: NGOs’ approaches and strategies". Sepia VIII,
Chiclayo, August 1999.
26
For example, engineer Victor Rosas, Huancayo Senamhi meteorologist, declared “the
coming rain regime in the highland seems normal", in a date so early as October 14, 1997.
27
Nevertheless, the regional society of the south highland got ready for the potential drought
that finally did not come.
As we saw, the social preparation started with a seminar
organized by NGO Arariwa in June 1997.
In this seminar a consistent strategy was
designed for the construction of water reservoirs, derivation channels and forage sowing.
The idea was that natural pasture would be dry and the livestock would die from hunger or
sacrificed by the peasants. That process was followed in the whole area of the south
highland, including Huancavelica, where the Project Consulting (Consejería en Proyectos)
foundation financed anti drought programs for half million of dollars and has recently
published its results.
These programs were also assumed by the central government, which on its own account
developed a program of pastures in the department of Puno. This program included the
construction of a dam in the town of Inquilla and an advanced system of channels and
reservoirs. The government plan’s goal was to sow fifteen thousand hectares of forages in
Puno before January 199828. Now then, since the drought did not occur, it would seem
logical to think that these programs failed. However, on the contrary, they have been in
general quite successful. They were sufficiently flexible programs to be useful in a series of
circumstances. The high dependence on natural pastures happens to be one of the classic
issues of the highland cattle rising. Therefore, any intent to diminish such dependence has
positive effects in the short and long term29.
In the case of the north coast, there was an interesting work of local managerial elite
sensitization carried out by the Geophysical Institute, (IGP in Spanish), along with the UdP.
600
They held a seminar to discuss the new opportunities opened up by El Niño. The study
presented to this forum had been financed by Norbank, a regional bank and was
regrettably based on that very optimistic forecast that established some beneficent
moderate rains for the regional agriculture. However, beyond the anticipation error, these
scientists’ opening is remarkable. They sought to lay bridges and express themselves in a
El Comercio web site.
The government program was denominated “Revoulcion Verde” (Green Revolution)
evoking a famous plan of the times of the Reformation for the Progress.
28
29
. Arariwa web site.
language that would respond to the true concerns of the regional society segments. In fact,
they sought to adapt their knowledge to answer the concerns of the northern business
leaders30.
When evaluating the scientists’ forecast, we must highlight the presence of a group of local
experts who generally speaking were more accurate than the great Lima leaders. Such is
the case of the already mentioned Senamhi meteorologists in Huancayo and Puno, who
clearly saw signs that the rains would be regular in the highland, while the famous
mathematical models difficultly put together by the Lima institutes had correlated to a
hundred percent the presence of floods in the north coast with drought in the south
highland.
There is as well the case of Norma Ordinola from the UdP and the Riben
biologists, all them linked to the university system who defended arguments in favor of a
strong Niño. All these scientists are closer to the natural indicators that the Lima scientists
who have few opportunities to observe the sky.
To the natural indicators, the more
prepared province professionals have added a wide connection via the Internet with the
great international investigation centers. Nowadays, one can exchange information and
ideas with people abroad as easy as can be, be it where it may that one connects to the
web. Piura is so near New York as it Lima. Those internet advantages were thoroughly
taken advantage of by some provincial meteorologists31.
In the case of Piura, we should also highlight the effort to concert a communications and
diffusion policy among diverse social actors. Promoted by the newspaper El Tiempo and
625
the UdP’s Communications Faculty, several meetings were held to concert a common
informative line that would avoid sensationalism and would rather emphasize prevention.
This answer of the Piura people is exceptional since no similar agreement has been
reported in any other north coast departmental capital or in Lima.
The Lima media, in turn, thanks to their influence over masses have greatly contributed to
form public opinion regarding the natural event.
30
Among them there was no policy
The importance of this adaptation of the language used by scientists to the social use
and requirements has been highlighted by Benjamin Orlove and Joshua Tosteson, “The
Application of Seasonal to Interannual Climate Forecasts based on El Niño-Southern
Oscillation (ENSO) Events”, Berkeley Working Papers, Institute of International Studies.
31
Interview with Norma Ordinola
concertation and different focuses were presented to the public. On one hand, there were
those means with a tradition for the seriousness of the scientific spreading, such as El
Comercio, which that carried out a high-level topic presentation campaign. On the other
hand, there were the more partidarial newspapers, which focused the topic according to
their political options, such as La Republica and Expreso.
In the less organic written
means, El Niño was object of a purely commercial treatment, where the important thing
resided in the sensationalism and its capacity to increase the sales.
On the TV, the most significative innovation was provided by America Satel, which
produced a meteorological newscast endowed with satellite images, thus introducing in the
country the technology of weather visual presentation, very much in vogue in the USA
since long time ago. As well the radio multiplied encounter programs between specialists
and the public creating an informative sequence that was fundamental during the
prevention.
The problem of the media is that they had the same deficiencies on
climatologic culture that prevailed in Lima, where the habitual climate is too stable to
motivate great reports of widespread interest.
Due to this not very interested for the
evolution of the weather attitude, El Niño has not left stable signs in the Peruvian press,
since, beyond the customary patterns, no new programs have been created neither
creative focuses of long term have been founded.
If the scientists did not come to an agreement and the press did not produce meaningful
650
innovations, common people lived the prevention like a time of anguish before an uncertain
tomorrow. The canalization of these feelings was varied and a non-despicable percentage
of people was mobilized by fatalism. Again, a work from Chiclayo takes us back to track. A
survey taken in rural areas of Lambayeque shows that 87% of the rural population thought
that the first priority to get protection against El Niño's dangers was to pray. That persistent
faith in the powers of religion was complemented with incredulity on El Niño's vicinity. 59%
of the rural Lambayeque population did not believe that the event would be occurring.
Nevertheless, when the survey was taken, the prevention works were in progress and at
sight; it was already September 1997.
The months previous to El Niño were of quite extensive poverty for the north coast
peasants. There was no minimum accumulation period that would allow savings to face
the emergency. The season 1996-1997 was quite dry and the rains did not reappear until
the end of the 1997spring. In Chiclayo the dryness continued until the flood unchained.
During this dry season previous to El Niño's impact, the small coastal cattlemen had to
sacrifice good part of their clusters, forced by the absence of pastures. This slaughter of
animals also took place in the south highland, where the government had to buy alpaca
meat extensively for the warehouses of the National Program of Foods, Pronaa (in
Spanish). Rural poverty was not the best stimulus to prepare the rural housing for El Niño's
big rains32.
In the cities, the traditional Peruvian indiscipline was very visible. This made the authorities
reiterate the collective prevention measures, which were systematically ignored by much of
the population. For example, in Piura there was the incessant reiteration of the prohibition
to evacuate the rain waters through the drainage sewers, since rain water dragged trunks
and garbage that could make collapse the sewerage system. The one certain thing is that
collective discipline was not a virtue that shone in Peru during 1997-1998.
675
This indiscipline was hand in hand with a significant level of passivity.
The northern
regional civil society did not deploy in this last event the same activity level that it did in
1983. It was impossible. Those transformations of the nineties we have herein reviewed
did not allow it.
significantly.
As well, the assistencialism from the central power has increased
The civil engineering of great works and the food allotment conform a
program that does not stimulate mutual help. On the contrary, it is at their antipodes.
Therefore, the social organizations that we saw acting during El Niño are survivors after a
very exhausting process. Now then, we did not live the first years after the collapse, either.
We have taken some steps ahead and we are in the phase of the first reorganization of the
social web. During El Niño, we find institutions that have pulled themselves forward in the
coastal field. They are the Boards of Users, which are halfway between social institutions
in a specific sense and business organizations producer - cameras like. These Boards
have a fundamental role in the distribution of irrigation water and indirectly in soil
Karen Kraft, Care-Peru, Final report El Niño 1998. International workshop, “Evaluación
de las respuestas de la sociedad civil y del gobierno frente al fenómeno El Niño”
(Evaluation of the answers of the civil society and of the government in front of the
32
conservation. They have acted as agents for the civil engineering plan set to work by the
government; so, their role has been subordinated, yet they have elaborated some ideas of
their own and have defended proposals in benefit of its members.
Their interests
negotiation logic is closer to lobby making than to the list of claims. Yet, there they are, and
their appeal for a democratic reconstruction of the Peruvian institutions also lies in their
management capacity and their economic resources.
Chapter 2
Emergency and reconstruction
By the end of 1997, the rains fell on the north coast. In Tumbes for example, during
December it rained torrentially, reaching 300 mm; twice the usual figure per the entire year.
In the previous mega El Niño of 1982-1983 the rain regime had been quite different. Then
the rains began little by little and prolonged for seven months. Meanwhile in the last El
700
Niño, the rains began something earlier and they finished soon. For example, in Tumbes,
already on May 1998 the rains were almost finished and had reached only 70 mm; on the
other hand in 1983, May was the rainiest month, registering 1,250 mm. The previous
occasion the main characteristic of the rains had been the abnormally length of the humid
period and the concentration of the big rains at the end of the cycle. On this opportunity,
the most outstanding feature has been the great magnitude of the rains in a shorter cycle.
At almost identical intensities, time has been crucial. In 1983 the season of rains was long
while in 1998 it has been short. For that reason, in this opportunity the effect has been
bigger doubling its destructive capacity33.
As the rains became intense and the population suffered their initial consequences, many
Peruvian scientists passed difficulties. Indeed, most of the state scientific institutions had
predicted a moderate intensity Niño. Contrary to this, they were facing the spectacular
beginning of the rainy cycle. Progressively they realized their mistake and they began to
phenomenon El Niño), Piura, October 1998.
Ctar Region Grau, “El Niño's phenomenon in region Grau", Report to the Congress of
the Republic, March 1998.
33
interpret it34.
The most honest was doctor Ronald Woodman who sustained in an
academic congress their mathematical model's failures and the absence of accurate data
regarding the Peruvian sea.
In front of our coasts there are no buoys endowed with
measurement instruments, as can indeed be found in other regions of the Pacific.
Woodman and the rest of Peruvian scientists infer the evolution of the climatic parameters
of the Peruvian sea on the basis of the real data obtained for the Central Pacific. Besides,
their model failed, go figure the mathematical causes of such a failure, but the case is that
the main Peruvian scientists issued a forecast of rain regimen notably optimistic in contrast
with the reality of the 1998 flood35.
Doctor Marco Espino, director of scientific investigations of Imarpe, shared this optimistic
vision. He is a renowned biologist, with a series of accomplishments in the area of marine
biomass regulation. One of his abilities is the analysis of Pacific Ocean satellite pictures.
725
Those pictures constitute the main visual innovation occurred for the last Niño event.
These pictures showed the sea on different colors according to its superficial temperature.
Red represents the hot sea and blue the cold one. This way, the public has been able to
observe El Niño's process as a red wave that left Oceania to go like an arrow toward South
America. Well then, the media specialized in publishing these pictures was the prestigious
newspaper “El Comercio” and the scientist specialized in the picture’s interpretation during
El Niño was Marco Espino. He found at the end of January 1998 a meaningful modification
in the pictures. Six hundred miles from our coast a blue stain of cold waters had cut in two
the wave of hot red that was coming closer to Peru. Their interpretation was that that
rupture of the red tide indicated the beginning of the terminal process of the hot event. The
34
The problems scientists face to dialogue with politicians as to the categories and scales
that are a matter of interes to these last ones are broadly discussed in Michael H. Glantz,
“Corrientes de cambio: el impacto de El Niño sobre el clima y la sociedad” (Currents of
change: El Niño's impact on the weather and the society), Santiago de Chile: Cambridge
UP, 1996.
35
As for example, declarations of Ronald Woodman appeared in the Piuran regional
newspaper El Tiempo, “I have an encouraging news for the Piurans, rains will be
moderate as in 1987 and 1992 and not as in 1983". Cipca’s web site, news section,
December 1997.
newspapers elevated his opinion to big headlines: "Imarpe announces El Niño's end".
However, it was precisely that moment the most intense one36.
What was happening? Strictly speaking, in the moment of highest intensity, a first decline
sign is perceived, which then develops to give way to the opposed phase, to the heating.
That cold phase is denominated La Niña and it is part of the mechanism with which nature
recovers its normality. What Espino had seen was that first decline sign. However, that
sign rather announced that the heating had entered to its highest intensity, coinciding
obviously with the February midsummer in the south hemisphere. Now then, why did some
newspapers interpreted and presented it so? Because there was political pressure to show
that El Niño was an event that was totally under control and that government prevention
plan had been a success.
The optimism did not come from the scientists, they were
already pessimistic and trying to explain the causes of their mistake; the optimism, on the
contrary, came from the government and it was based on the propaganda of its efficiency.
By the middle of December 1997, president Fujimori claimed he was very satisfied with the
works in Tumbes, since the first rains had shown that they worked to perfection. In his trips
750
over the north coast, the presidential optimism continued burgeoning. On January 11,
culminating a two day visit to Piura, Fujimori declared that thanks to the prevention works,
the damages were not even 1% of those suffered 1983. Nevertheless, Tumbes would later
flood six times during this last Niño's rains. And the early government optimism had meant
to stand out its efficiency as a political prevention agent.
As January went by, problems multiplied in all the fronts. Landslides and floods caused
disasters in the whole national territory. Besides, it did not only rain in the north coast, but
the zone between the highlands and the forest was also object of very intense
precipitations that caused the avalanche and the consequent rising flood of the Machu
Picchu Hydroelectric Power Station, the greatest catastrophe during El Niño's 1998cycle in
Peru. The accumulation of disasters all over the national territory got to a moment of great
tension when the flood at Ica. It was January 27, 1998 when a huge increase of the Ica
river surpassed the urban riverside defenses that had not been reinforced, and overturned
36
El Comercio.
onto the city, covering two thirds of the urban area. That flood also originated the collapse
of the sewerage system and other urban services. Immediately a great political tension
arose.
All the régime opponents clained that the tragedy of Ica was a sample of
remarkable lack of prevention.
Then, the topic of the help for Ica was quickly politically manipulated. The opposition
congress members showed up in the southern city and, with the water up to their ankles,
demanded sensibility to the government. Anel Townsend and Fernando Olivera played a
scene with the president. Amid this tension in the heights, the provincial mayor of Ica felt
caught. He was a more or less independent mayor, or rather identified with the opposition.
But, in view of the disaster, he thought his only possibility to channel significant help to his
people was to join politically the central government. Soon after he was over with the
minority congress members, the mayor started to be part of diverse official committees in
775
charge of the reconstruction works. The case of Ica constitutes an outstanding and early
sample of municipal clientelism that would become general after the 1998municipal
elections.
Indeed, the government proved later to be very skilled in coming closer to
independent mayors and gain them to its side with the promise of financing for local impact
works.
The rains just double pressured the executive’s centralism. In the scenario of a emergency
superior to what had been foreseen, the executive locked inside itself. In the case of
Chiclayo, Luis Rocca finds that during the prevention period, the diverse forums granted
the municipality and the NGOs the opportunity to suggest an idea that was viewed with
good eyes by the Ctar. The idea was simple: to elaborate a common plan and distribute
the tasks assuming each one their respective responsibilities, including the financing of the
acquired commitments. That pact concluded during the emergency, because the tension
generated by the rains took the president to adjust all the nuts of Ctar and its bosses, for
them to push their machinery from the inside. There was no longer time or interest for
coordination with civil society37.
37
L. Rocca, Ibidem.
The confrontation between the state powers became a characteristic of the emergency
phase. Example: the by then Minister of the Presidency, Tomás González, declared that
there would be no transference of public resources to the municipalities. This measure had
been unceasingly claimed by some municipalities. Among many other local authorities, the
by then mayor of Cajamarca, Luis Guerrero, who was president of the Ampe, had claimed
that the emergency funds managed by the Presidency of the Ministers Council be
transferred to the municipalities. By the way, those funds are just but a reduced fraction of
the total resources managed by the central power during the emergency. But, besides
refusing that transfer, minister González explained his reasons. According to him, if the
transfer took place, mayors would use that money politically, making electoral proselytism
800
instead of good works executed with technical vision, as those made by the central
government38… No comments.
Also, there was a marked political preference in the selection of the destinations for the
government help during the emergency. The mayors who were clear opposition were set
aside with no remorse whatsoever. Different was the treatment for the mayors in favor of
the régime. Even some independent mayors from key cities were supported sustainedly,
as part of an initiative to attract them to the government side. For example the mayor of El
Callao, Alex Kouri, had always stayed at a wise distance both from the government and the
opposition. He found that such attitude was excellent to channel government investments
to the constitutional province. That is to say, even better than humble submission, the
mayors found that swaying was the attitude seen by the government as more interesting.
The case of Kouri is very illustrative because during El Niño he received direct support from
the Development Corporation of Lima and El Callao, Cordelica (in Spanish), a central
government's agency that started up an global security plan in the port.
The rupture of the fragile political consensus that had dominated the prevention phase was
simultaneous in the whole north coast.
In Piura for example, the bishop monsignor
Cantuarias retired from the verification commission, which he had accepted to preside over
on request of the Ctar’s. Durnig those days, he declared that the government plan had
Cepes’ web site, news section, February 1998. This is the web site of a renowned NGO
specialized in rural issues that during El Niño elaborated first rate information that is
fortunately still in the cyberspace.
38
forgotten to those marginated and that the poor people from Peru continued waiting. His
anger was particularly evident when he commented the delay in the construction of refuges
for the victims who had lost housing. In Piura, the city for victims denominated La Niña
never finished to be ready. By the end of January, the people who had lost their housing
occupied schools and communal centers, until when they were totally full; then they began
to be transferred to the desert39.
As to the topic of the popular housing, the balance was mixed.
825
Firstly, the main
government programs happened to be channeled by the Materials Bank. This institution is
included in the Ministry of the Presidency’s payroll and is an inheritance of architect
Belaunde's second government (1980-1985).
His credit policy bestowed remarkable
priority to the city in contrast with the quasi abandonment of the country . Even the very
statute of the Materials Bank established that its sole work area is the urban-popular
envirnment . Only in February 1998 it was authorized for the Bank to grant loans to the
rural area. Nevertheless the critics on its slow pace, the work of the Materials Bank was
simple and massive, helping the ordinary citizen to defend his housing.
There were also other actors in the defense of popular housing. For example, there was an
outstanding activity from Sencico (in Spanish), which is a
practical school in civil
construction linked to the Construction Chamber with the participation of union workers
through their National Federation. This institution sent specialized instructors to the north
coast that multiplied courses on light roof and wall reinforcements. One of these instructors
remembers that the process was well conducted, but that the whole program was too
concentrated in roofs. He could notice that when it rained the water entered to the houses
through the interior patios, where the drainage was insufficient to evacuate the waters.
Then they stagnated and entered the houses through the kitchens. He also noticed that
the rural housing rarely collapsed since the peasants had intensely used of sand bags
against the walls to keep them from becoming moist. These sandbags were distributed by
NGOs and also for the central government40.
39
El Tiempo, 4-Feb-98.
40
interviews with Walter Luna, carried out in Lima on August 28, 1999
During the 1998 emergency, people had less problems to get food than in 1983. Then, the
event was unexpected and the break in the road net was followed by the isolation of the
cities at the north coast. In 1983, that interruption of the road net was followed by a
sustained want of foods.
In this last Niño, the state of things did not go that far.
Notwithstanding, popular sufferings were not absent. There is a number of complaints
850
against the merchants who speculated and increased the prices, making of the regional
inflation a reason of constant concern41. However, all the observers coincide in that the
situation did not get to the levels of 1983. The 1997 prevention allowed the Pronaa (*), a
government entity included in the payroll of the Woman's Ministry, Promudeh (in Spanish),
to distribute foods in warehouses over the whole north coast.
As well, it gave away
approximately one thousand semi industrial stoves among mothers' clubs from the north
coast. Luis Rocca says that there were a lot of donated foods in Lambayeque and that
their influence was notorious in the food regional market42.
He has a pretty negative
appreciation of the government food assistance, stating that it was the touchstone of the
assistencialism, and that it caused civic passivity. On its side, the government also claims
that the alimentary assistance has been huge and its evaluation of it is just at the antipodes
of Rocca’s. According to the central power, this assistance has been very positive, since it
avoided a period of famine that could have occurred with disastrous consequences.
In the case of Piura, the food crisis did not get to the critical levels of 1983 thanks to the
sustained stability of the highway Paita-Piura that connects the departmental capital with
the Paita port. In 1983 this highway became completely impossible to use. Fortunately,
when it was reconstructed, it was made to certain height and avoiding, thanks to a
surrounding, the great lagoon of Congora that had been formed at the highway crossing.
Well then, in 1998 the lagoon formed again at the same place of 1983, but the course of
For example, Cipca’s web site remembers the espectacular rise of prices guring 1997
Christmas. News section.
41
Translator’s Note: Pronaa stands for Programa Nacional de Asistencia Alimentaria
(National Program of Food Assistance).
(*)
42
All over the northern area the donated food entered into the market of nutritious
products. There are many accusations on this situation during all thEl Niño situation. For
example, the mayor of Huancabamba, in Piura, denounced the massive traffic of donated
food in his district on 22-Jan-98. Cipca’s web site.
the new highway avoided it. That highway connection is fundamental for Piura because it
allows the coastal sailing traffic. This way, the food continued flowing even when amid the
rains the Panamerican North highway system was broken in many points. If the coastal
sailing traffic saved Piura from the ghost of hunger, great part of such success was due to
the highway to Paita. It was one of the scarce reconstructions well done after the 1983
Niño and precisely for that reason it deserves to be higlighted.
875
One of the most significantive successes in the government plan of riverside defenses was
the formation of the lagoon denominated La Niña in the desert of Sechura.
For that
purpose, those rivers that that are usually dry and do not get to the sea were led to the
desert by building defenses that guided them there. The rivers La Leche, Olmos and in
good measure the same river Piura was conducted toward the area of the lagoons
Ñaupique and Ramón that always become formed at times of the mega Niños. They are
two hollows that collect out of bed waters, forming an extensive and shallow eye of water.
The president was charmed with the formation of the lagoon, which had been suggested by
the television meteorologist Abraham Levi.
In that moment Fujimori stressed the
possibilities of using the La Niña lagoon to promote adventure tourism. Soon after that the
lagoon would begin its evaporation process, which would quickly reduce it at the historical
levels of the previous lagoons: an interesting oasis in the desert of Sechura that lacks,
however, the magnificent attributes that the presidential propaganda granted it at some
stage43.
By the middle of February 1998, Cofide(*), the national, second level bank, approved a loan
for one hundred million dollars for the rural and municipal funds, in an gesture that exposes
two very particular situations that occurred during those days.
The first one was an
exception. The credit to the municipal funds has been one of the few points in which the
central power has supported the municipality institutinality. Indeed, these municipal funds
43
Not everyone had approved the forming of the La Niña lagoon, which made Abraham
Levi's figure higher before the president's eyes. For example, the regional agriculture
director of Piura had expressed an opinion in favor of building a drainage of the Ramón
lagoon toward the sea to precisely avoid an accumulation that he thought dangerous.
Cipca’s web site, December 1997.
Translator’s Note: Cofide stands for Corporacion Financiera de Desarrollo (Financial
Corporation for Development).
(*)
constitute popular banks that during the eighties received the support of the German
organism GTZ to favor their modernization. In many departmental capitals they were well
organized and its link to the municipalities, on which they depend, allowed these credit
institutions not to be swept away from the national economic scene by the nineties
neoliberalism, as did happen with the promotional banking and the cooperative system.
Besides, although each municipal banking is independent and depends on its respective
900
municipality, there is a system-like operation and therefore it is one of the few mechanisms
that reinforces the municipalities as group power.
However, that same loan from Cofide was a crucial sign of the economic recession Peru
was approaching to. Indeed, that year 1998 was very difficult for the whole Third World.
First, there were strong setbacks in the East countries, the so called new Asian tigers.
Later on, the recessive wave arrived to Brazil and moved to the Latin America.
The
particular and specifically Peruvian form of this international recessive wave was a bank
liquidity crisis that progressively paralyzed private business, which had grown moderately
during the previous expansion. That liquidity crisis would make the Peruvian economic
system tremble as a consequence of El Niño. At the end of the period the crisis would
dodged thanks to massive packages of supporting credit granted to the private banks. The
government answer to the crisis imposed by El Niño was bank loans through Cofide. For
this reason, the credit for the municipal funds was the background of a public policy pretty
much discussed by diverse analysts. Indeed, if the government, for the sake of liberalism,
abstains from supporting with credits the producing sector, Why would it be legitimate to
grant credits to the banks?.
On the other hand, for most Peruvians government morality does not depend on the
greater or smaller politization in its programs. Program politization is viewed as normal
since it is within the limits of what is customary. For ordinary people, all the governments
have looked for political profit from their works and consequently there are other facts that
take Peruvians to be make an opinion about the morality of a certain government. In that
sense, the corruption case of general Homero Nureña was spectacular.
This general
presided over Indeci, the aforementioned central power agency that directs the national
civil defense system. During the prevention, this institution managed a high budget for
emergency works related to El Niño.
925
From June 1997, when the central government
decreed the emergency in seven departments, the state contracts did not follow the usual
procedures. On the contrary, emergency means an exceptional legal régime that avoids
bids and allows to grant the works to those who win in a simple licitation invitation. That
exceptional legal régime allowed the extensive practice of a corruption system through
contracts.
Diverse relatives and friends of general Nureña’s hastily formed constructing companies
and won a great part of the works contracted by Indeci, probably granting him an
underhanded participation.
Later, their technical unskillfulness helped some works be
totally useless to restrain the Niño. What was surprising was how fast the general's fall was
and the political elements that intevened in it.
Indeed, a journalistic campaign by the
newspaper El Comercio brought to light an enormous set of irregularities in the emergency
handling. On the other hand, president Fujimori had progressively gotten mad about those
works contracted by the state that had worked wrong, thus granting his political opponents
arms against him. For that reason, he felt this was an open opportunity to give some public
punishment and was over with the general in just a few weeks. First the geenral was
accused by an investigating commission conformed in the congress and presided over by
government party members; later he was jailed in a military prison while he waited for a trial
for corruption. Finally, he has already been condemned to six years of effective prison.
Fujimori showed the importance of the scapegoat for the political system operation. In very
highly visibility situations, as it was the case of El Niño, he could not allow public opinion to
perceive that corruption was reaching the whole government. It was necessary to cut and
the president made it to his usual way, quickly and not looking back.
The reason why corruption becomes simpler is that it is never clear whose responsibility
something is. Another is that accounts and bills are not clear either. A citizen cannot have
an accurate idea of how and in what the budget was spent. For example, the Ministry of
950
the Presidency, Mipre, gave the Congress account of its expenditures during the El Niño
prevention twice: in September 1997 and in March 1998.
The problem is that these
accounts are not coherent. The first one classifies the expense as per ministries, per
performing institutions. In that occasion the Mipre also assumed the role of coordinator of
all the executive power and, consequently, reports on behalf of all the ministries. In the
second, the expense was classified as per functions, that is to say, as per items different
than the previous. Instead of ministries, we find food, housing, machinery, infrastructure
etc. Also in this second presentation, the Mipre did not play the same role of executive
power coordinator: the official report is rather limited to its individual performance as
ministry44. Different area and different criteria. This way it is not possible to know for
certain what is happening. Society lacks facilities to keep account of the bills. In view if
this, the main function of the responsibility overlapping is to contribute to darken the bills, to
hinder the visibility of the account giving45.
The disorder of the reponsabilidades also hinders understanding for the civil society. To
begn with, it sets forth an operative problem, since the executive lacks time to coordinate
with institutions outside of its environment because they spend all their time in meetings to
get to internal commitments. Complicated wihtin themselves, they lack the time and the
energy to go out to talk. Iit is also difficult to concert because there is no possibility of
stable agreements amid the executive's characteristic disorder. The control line and the
institutional autonomy are never totally clear among the central power organizations.
The relationship state-society in Peru registers diverse combinations that El Niño has
brought to light. To have a equitative idea it is necessary to present diverse situations and
then assess, since cases like those of the health sector seem to go in an opposed direction
than those previously presented. Indeed, the health sector seems an advanced example of
concert with participation of the state. Firstly, the ministry coverage system is based on the
975
great extension of the medical post net that extends even to the small communities. This
coverage is as extensive or even more extensive than that of the Ministry of Education’s,
integrated by the national schools. Both are the most extended social nets in the national
territory.
Besides, the medical post net is basically attended by a very numerous
Document 054-98-CP/CR, “Informe sobre el Fenómeno del Niño, acciones y medidas
adoptadas por el Ministerio de la Presidencia y entidades públicas del sector” (Report on
El Niño's Phenomenon, actions and measures adopted by the Ministry of the Presidency
and public entities of the sector), March 1998.
44
Jorge Basadre, “Sultanismo, corrupción y dependencia en el Perú republicano” (Sultanism,
corruption and dependence in Republican Peru), Lima, Mile Batres, 1981.
45
paramedic personal, whose perception is that quite a part of the illnesses in Peru are social
and related with the extended poverty before them. Even the medical personnel goes
through the experience of the posts during their professional training and among the sector
workers a spirit has ensued, a certain vital élan that transcends the diverse governments.
That élan allows a a better flow in the otherwise very tense relationships between state and
civil society.
The topic of the concertation seen from the municipalities’s point of view is very complex.
Given the central government's general attitude, it is quite difficult to concert at the upper
levels, so the only options are to make it at the lower ones and relate preferably with civil
society. But, to concert a lower levels implies to distribute among several instances the
small power the central government has granted the mayor.
Not all the municipality
authorities happen to be willing to accept that allotment that will make them feel they are
giving away all the power remaining powerless. Many mayors claims participation and
concertation in their relationships with the central power, but they are not so willing to grant
them in their relationships with their social bases. In the case of the provincial municipality
of Piura during El Niño's cycle there is not record of any effective popular participation
structure set in action by the municipality. This municipality did nothing but claim. The
provincial municipality of Piura was in hands of the Apra(*) and its confrontations with
Fujimori were very intense; the president always ignored the mayor and never invited him
during his numerous visits. The mayor claimed and inspected, but he did not do anything.
For that reason he lost the 1998 elections.
1000
On the contrary, in the specifi case of Trujillo, José Murguia, also from the Apra, was
reelected for fourth serial time in the 1998 elections. The contrast is remarkable since it
affects the provincial leaderships of this traditional party that has solid historical supports
precisely on the north coast. What did the Trujillan mayor make different, since he indeed
had the same complaining and inspecting attitude. What had happened was that in Trujillo
the municipality acted through stable local neighbour boards, which have the function of
connecting the neighbours with the municipality. There are 44 of them and their authorities
Translator’s Note: Apra stands for Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (Popular
American Revolutionary Alliance). This was the party of Alan Garcia’s, president of Peru
for the term 85-90.
(*)
are formally elect, though there have not been local elections since 1996. When a work is
performed in its sector, the board inspects the municipality or its contractor. In turn, the
board is entitled to initiative, to porpose works and studies to the municipality.
In the
municipal space, the boards coordinate the lead of local participation. In Trujillo there are
many complaints on the extreme politization of the local boards and the charismatic and
vertical management of Murgia. But those same critics start from acknowledging the local
political importance of the local boards46.
Those Trujillan local boards deployed numerous initiatives during El Niño and they were the
difference in the political attitude of these municipalities, both under the Apra leadership. In
the Piuran case it was the impotent complaint, while in Trujillo It was the boards marking a
social dynamics. They were very active, headed the civil defense organization and the
youth brigades, which according to the law is their responsibility. We have seen this civil
defense system appear several times in this story as meeting point, but overall as point of
dispute between the central power, represented by the army, and the municipalities,
supposedly in charge of the system’s provincial and district committees. Well then, in
Trujillo the local boards intervened actively in the system base committees and, by heading
these, they gave the municipality a first line role during the emergency. That role was
perfomed in Trujillo but was absent in Piura because stable social participation structures
1025
had been formed in advance in the municipal management. That management was maybe
subordinated to the mayor's vertical authority and also politiziced in favor of his party, but
he gave an image of efficiency, accomplishing an active role in the conservation of the
discipline and the social unity.
Social unity was a goal self impossed by the regional leaders and the municipality
appeared as the instrument able to put make it real. Contrary to what happened in 1983,
there were no surprises and therefore radical opinions diminished. The provincial opinion
leaders sought to apply rational plans that avoid the Niño from transforming into a disaster.
In the 1998 municipal elections, voters judged the municipal efficiency on the basis of the
performance on this social discipline goal. And that was a basic criterion because that is
precisely the very function of the municipality. That is to say, people judge the capacity of
46
Carlos Vargas.
the local management to maintain the social unity, the life in the urban community
threatened by a natural catastrophe.
In this arena the differences between Piura and
Trujillo are remarkable. As we saw, in Piura the authorities repeatedly complained about
the neighbours’ indiscriminate use of the sewerage system to drain the rain waters. There
is no record ofr such a complaint in Trujillo. The discipline seems to have been very
different.
As well, in Piura traffic congestions were monumental and the municipality delayed notably
in applying a vehicle classification plan. In Trujillo, the traffic did not have any of the Piura’s
traffic issues. This so different a result was maybe owed simply to urban geography. In
Piura the river cuts the city in two and the bridges that fell are vital for the circulation and
urban transportation. But the Piuran municipality’s slowness to manage the traffic and the
early demonstration of big congestions that caused the civic complaint can be noticed from
the very start. On the contrary, thanks to a series of mechanisms, the Trujillan municipality
controlled the city and collaborated with its brigades formed by the boards to maintain the
1050
unity of the social body. In Piura that role escaped to the provincial mayor and, as a result,
the urban society had many cracks that later costed him the election47.
This greater pressure on planning and rational action was also expressed in the dynamics
of forums which importance we highlighted when presenting the prevention. Later on,
during the emergency that dynamics was interrupted for some weeks. It reappeared soon,
however, to deal with the reconstruction perspectives. For example, by the end of March
1998, the Lima Municipality summoned a municipal creativity and competitiveness seminar
towards El Niño, which featured the combined participation of experts from fields that few
times dialogue between themselves, such as engineering, economy, and social sciences.
It was a period of fertile treatment of public policies, a new field, arised during the nineties,
veiled during the previous decades by an excess of political debate ideologization.
47
For example, in Piura the by then director of municipality urban transportation, Jorge
Ledesma, asked for patience from the citizenship on January 9, 1998, explaining that the
road emergency plan was just being elaborating. The prevention stage had ended, six
months after its beginning, and they had not still solved a basic topic yet. El Tiempo,
Cipca’s web site.
These seminars started to spread the idea that reconstruction ought be linked to the
greater topic of the national development. The first idea to emerge was that reconstruction
ought to be conceived as a moment to define regional economic development priorities
and, secondarily, as a stage of physical infrastructure reposition that would allow to take
advantage of the post Niño opportunities, when the earth is humid and the desert becomes
green for some years.
In this dynamics, the reconstruction forums showed again the
importance of the association between municipalities, regional universities and NGOs that
we had already found during the prevention. The extended cooperation between local
professionals came that way. A bridge for the communication and exchange of the regional
intelligence had been laid.
These regional forums concluded with explicit proposals, some very organic ones. For
example, the Piura Council of Peru Engineers Board presented in July 1998 a proposal of
agrarian reactivation for their department.
The proposal requested the government to
finance a guarantee fund, so that the private banks would lend 74 million dollars that would
1075
be thought as an investment in two agricultural campaigns, a big one and a small one. The
first one would be for regular highly marketable products, such as fruits; the second would
be for temporary high yield products such as diverse types of grains and beans.
Additionally, the cost of both campaigns and their revenues, estimated in 132 million
dollars, were calculated. The Piuran engineers thought this loan could be paid in three and
a half years. This proposal is a typical example of the many similar suggestions elaborated
in the period. Two elements outstand. First, these proposals emphazise two economic
policy instruments: credits and tributes, as mechanisms that the civil society requested the
state to put in use. The suggestion was the same: the state should lend money to common
people, for example to the small farmer, as in the proposal herein analyzed, and stop
charging him tributes so high as the usual ones48.
But, the government did not plan to use these mechanisms thoroughly. At least, not in the
sense of these suggestions. The official reconstruction had been thought as a prolongation
of the civil engineering work that the prevention had been. For the government it was a
48
Peru Engineers Board, Piura Departmental Council, technical support group, Mario
Boza Mechato et al., “Proposal of agrarian reactivation for the Piura department”
(Propuesta de reactivación agraria del departamento de Piura), July 1998.
matter of restoring the lost infrastructure and to a pace perceived as very slow, too. In
June 1998, the government formed a committee in charge of the reconstruction
denominated Ceren.
This committee is presided over by engineer Alberto Pandolfi, a
minister that has occupied diverse positions in the Fujimori government's several cabinets.
He was even the frst minister when the emergency, and later he has passed to the Ministry
of Transports, from where he directs the Ceren. This way, Pandolfi personifies a ministerial
official who counts with the president's total trust, and who, managing the El Niño matters
from beginning to end, represents the continuity in this story. The Ceren does not execute
physical work but summons bids among private companies and then delivers to society.
President Fujimori has defined the role of the state during the reconstruction as that of a
contractor and has refused other possibilities. Among other discarded options is the one of
1100
forming a stable reconstruction institution, as had happened in previous occasions of
natural catastrophes49.
The government dynamics is being so slow that it cannot even restore what is destroyed.
Much less hve they thought of linking the reconstruction with the regional development.
They are even many contradictory decisions in the light of the minimum logic.
For
example, the case of the rice is particularly meaningful. This product is regularly cultivated
on the north coast and its extension depends on the available humidity. In view of El Niño's
year and following a period of intense humidity, it is logical to suppose that the farmers
must grow more rice than ever. Even president Fujimori saw it this way and on January 15,
1998 he announced the reduction of rice import to zero as an example of the benefical
effects of El Niño’s, thanks to the plentifulness that was seen to come. However, 1998 was
not only a year of plentifulness in Peru, but also it in the whole world. Besides, the Asian
countries, affected by a deep recession, sold their reserves and consequently the price of
rice went very low. The international price fell below the production cost of many farmers in
Peru.
Production cost in Peru is relatively higher because the communication means are not very
good. Transportation is slow and consequently expensive. Besides, agriculture works
49
Just as Cryrcsa, formed by military officers for the reconstruction of the Callejon of
Huaylas after the 1970 earthquake. Another example is the special committees formed
after the Arequipa and Cusco earthquakes in the fifties.
based on small proprietors, plenty of minifundistas(*) who produce rice with all the
inconvenients of the small scale production and the difficult though indispensable
coordination between producers. The rice seedbed must be permanently under water, not
stagnated but flowing; hence, the watering system and drainage coordination is
fundamental for an efficient production. This way, Peruvian farmers do not have the lowest
prices in the world market. In the context of a neoliberal economy where the state happens
to refuse to protect markets, the abundance of Peruvian production was followed by a
massive import of oriental grain and a spectacular fall of the internal price. This fall has
1125
taken many national farmers to the ruin, precisely in the year they had entrusted their
salvation hopes in the production of rice.
It is so that, in spite of the watering and drainage infrastructure reconstruction carried out
during 1998, the post Niño season has been fatal for Peruvian northern agriculture. The
economic problems of the short term situation have increased the problems of long term,
since it seems the region does not finish to settle in economic terms. It does have plenty of
economic resources, both in agriculture and fishing, but no regional market capable of
accumulating in itself has been formed. All the reference points are at the capital city and
there is scarce interdependence between the departments and regional productive
sectors50. For example, during El Niño's emergency, an air bridge that connected Piura
with Talara and Tumbes was established; as well there was another service that connected
Piura with Lima.
According to commander FAP(*) Edgardo Pino, when assessing the
service, demand for the interregional flight was low, meanwhile the connection with the
capital city was totally full.51 That unequity ensued from a little structured regional market.
Each one of the parts communicates and makes business only with the great market, the
Translator’s Note: Minifundistas is a term widely used in Peru during the military coup
and further régime of General Juan Velazco to name the small proprietors, as opposed to
the mayor ones, the Latifundistas. General Velazco accomplished the so called Agrarian
Reformation.
(*)
Efraín Gonzales de Olarte, “La descentralización en el Perú: entre la fortaleza del centro
y la debilidad de la periferia” (Decentralization in Peru: between the strength of the center
and the weakness of the periphery), in Bruno Revesz, Ibidem, pp. 123-147.
50
(*)
Translator’s Note: FAP stands for Fuerza Aerea del Peru (Peruvian Air Force).
51
Cipca’s web site, news section, 13-Feb-98
capital city one, yet the internal connection is scarce. In the great macro north region the
economic destructuration prevails52.
The problems of the short and long term are also manifested in another area.
The
country’s vulnerability is played in the long term, while the mitigation possibility is solved in
the short.
In the introduction we saw the always complex relationship between these
expressions. We also saw how the long term eventually dominates the possibilities of the
short one, for there are just too many structural mistakes that cannot be corrected with
reinforcement works quickly carried out with some months advance.
For that reason
reconstruction is a fundamental moment. It is now when the decisions that shall affect the
country’s future in the long term must be adopted. It would be good that the projects were
1150
very clear and that the objectives were very well defined. On the contrary, however, the
Ceren contracts specific works all of a sudden, without previous discussions or society
debated plans. Besides, nobody keeps track of them in an orderly way. The regional
fronts that were formed from civil society after the emergency did not survive.
These regional defense fronts had an outstanding performance during the 1983 Niño. By
that time Peruvian civil society was still expanding and had not reached the decline stage
that occurred during the nineties. Regional fronts had been formed all over Peru during the
the final years of the seventies and by 1983 there was a period of great activity on the north
coast.
The 1998 regional fronts, although having the same purposes, were less
meaningful. The fronts’ goals were to elaborate reconstruction proposals and accumulate
social force that would allow to win consensus in favor of their propositions. The purposes
were similar and so were the methods: debate forums and demonstrations of citizen
support to their proposals. But, times have changed. The same results were no longer
achieved.
For example, In Piura, on October 1998, after months of regional expectation of yearned
great reconstruction investments, it was clear the things advanced much slowlier. The
government, as we have seen, had undertaken a limited project of infrastructure reposition
52
A very complete analysis of El Niño's economic effects in Piura can be found in Edgardo
Silveri Cruzado, “El Niño's phenomenon in Piura 1997-1998 and the role of the state:
sectoral and social consequences" (El fenómeno del Niño en Piura 1997-1998 y el rol del
and advanced step by step. The deception gave way to indignation and a regional front
presided over by the archbishop Óscar Cantuarias was formed. Much of the civil society
was of his side: universities, NGOs, Boards of Irrigation Water Users, though the
municipality was absent due to the electoral campaign for authority renovation.
The
regional Piuran front called to a multitudinous demonstration that got to the cathedral and
prayed one Lord’s Prayer and several Ave Marias. After the prayers, the bishop resigned
to his position of regional front president, resignation which completely paralyzed the front’s
activities at once. His partisans, who make a big number, explain that the bishop did not
1175
want to take the place of the civil society; that, on the contrary, he had sought to give it
way, since he had left as regional front president the Engineers Board Dean. The long
term concertation and planning work was no longer interesting. A close friend to the
bishop's confessed to me that people wants punctual things and that cannot be changed by
it monsignor Cantuarias, no matter how much of a spiritual father he is.
Conclusions
The study of El Niño's last phenomenon in Peru has allowed to x-ray the the society and
state attitudes facing natural disasters. We have seen the reaction and the plans of several
actors located in different scenarios.
As well, we have had chance to analyze the
relationships between these actors and their numerous contradictions. At the end what we
have is a panorama of the diverse rationalities at stake. The whys of the diverse social
agents arise.
In the first place, we have the analysis of the state, presents itself as very speedy before
the early alert, and poorly organized in the long term of the prevention. Indeed, once the
forecast of El Niño had taken place, the state elaborated an integral plan in a very short
time and the republic’s presidency deployed unusual gifts of energy to implement it.
Fujimori knew that the result of his second presidency was engaged and he played his
cards with decision. As he was attempting a third presidency, Fujimori knew that such
possibility was being played in El Niño's situation. From the vertex of power there emerges
estado: consecuencias sectoriales y sociales), Sepia VIII, Chiclayo, August 1999.
an authoritarian and reeleccionist rationality that confronts difficulties to mobilize the central
power apparatus.
The heaviness of the state to face natural emergencies ensues from its lack of an efficient
institution and clear conceptualization of its mission. The Indeci conceives its function as a
post catastrophe assistencialism and does not include extensive prevention policies.
Besides, it has a low profile role within the state since its dynamics goes unnoticed for the
1200
true axes of the state power. Such is its lack of influence that, when the first emergency
plan was elaborated, the minister council forgot Indeci and did not include it in the
executive's intersector committee that should face El Niño. Other structural organization
defects make of the Indeci a public institution that deserves an integral reformation. On the
other hand, the high moral standards of many of its members and the enormous sacrifice
spirit deployed by its brigades allows to be optimistic on the result of such institutional
reformation. That reformation should define its role in a modern way and adapt its internal
organization to the requirements of the Peruvian social dynamics.
Finally, the reconstruction policy followed by the government during the post Niño period
does not seem the most appropriate.
The state has created an adhoc organism
denominated Ceren, that assesses, bids and contracts reconstruction works executed by
private companies. Most of its financial resources come from World Bank and IDB loans,
besides the Peruvian tallies. The dominant features of its work have been the slowness
and inadequacy that have caused great disappointment among the affected provinces.
The reposition of the watering and road infrastructure has been the government's leit motiv
in this period.
Lately it has summoned bids to reconstruct the urban sewerage
infrastructure of the main affected cities.
The state scientific organizations do not present an efficient institutional panorama either.
Included in diverse ministerial payrolls, their institutional coordination organism, Enfen,
does not seem very stable. It is necessary to take into cosnideration that Enfen was
reconstituted during the prevention stage, after many years as lethargic institution. On the
other hand, Enfen has not undertaken stable coordination with other scientists. Scientists
linked to the university system, keep investigation centers and surveillance nets that have
not been integrated into the official circuit.
The Senamhi was the institution that resulted with a better balance on the forecasting topic,
1225
though its extensive influence has not increased. Indeed, once El Niño was over, its role
has been, again, that of short term climatic variations commentator. After El Niño, the state
scientists have become beneficiaries of a World Bank loan that will allow them to be
provided of equipment. Their forecast capacity will be notably improved, but there is not
guarantee of some meaningful institutional improvements as well. We do not know either
whether the scientists will seek to establish an effective communication with the civil society
and its institutions. A greater forecast capacity can mean very little if it is not accompanied
by communication lines and in terms that may be understandable for and used by the
population.
The dialogue between the scientists and the politicians does not seem too fluent, either.
Scientists lack mechanisms to make themselves be heard by politicians. Only when these
last ones summon the first ones do they converse, but no state political decision requires of
the previous opinion of any scientist who works in those matters for the state itself.
Politicians consider scientists as avis raras that do not deserve considerable attention.
The business community has been gravely affected by El Niño and they have not received
priority attention from the government. Their reaction capacity has not been high, either. In
the provinces, the weakness of the regional bourgeoisies is verified, which have not been
able to participate in the prevention economic effort and even less in the reconstruction
one. This economic effort has fallen almost completely on the central government.
The Chamber of Commerce and provincial business organizations have participated in the
forums and seminars dynamics that tried to make concerted plans by elaborating policies to
face the emergency.
However, they were not the axis of social mobilization in this
dynamics; they rather played an accompanying role.
Since its economic capacity
decreased because of the recession that accompanied the post Niño, the business
community wanted to agree with the government on a program of direct economic help, but
1250
they could not achive this purpose.
The forums and seminars gatheres overall provincial professionals and they were an
effective mechanism of political and social elite reorganization in the provinces. These
forums were the channel of a precarious commitment between the central government and
the regional institutions. Some cases, such as the education and health commission in
Piura, resulted in fertile collaborations that extended during the emergency. However, in
most of cases, the agreement between civil society and state, mediated by professionals of
both spheres, only extended to the phase of prevention; the consensus broke up during the
emergency and further reconstruction.
These forums opened the way to regional development fronts that have had intermittent life
and few realizations.
Fruit of the consensuses reached during the prevention and
appealing to old organizational traditions, regional fronts arose in the north coast
departments, which tried to make an agreement on the reconstruction. In spite of these
intentions, the central government has not even discussed extensive commitments. So,
the central power has managed the reconstruction exclusively. Then, the regional fronts
attempted mobilizations, demonstrations and occasionally regional protest strikes. These
fight forms were not able to mobilize to the great provincial majorities and in occasions
even the municipalities released such initiatives. However, the regional fronts have not
disappeared completely; they have an intermittent life and in occasions they reappear in
the scene, waking up as of lethargies to head explosions of regional protest.
Their
rationality consists on the search of social consensus and its political action has been the
protest reasoned to impose popular vindications.
The municipalities, in turn, constitute the of best tuned provincial power instrument and with
greater institutional tradition. Their convocation and realization power is quite superior to
that of the civil society institutions.
1275
Nevertheless, their resources are limited and they
depend on transfers of items collected by the central power.
Their political and legal
autonomy is not very high either as they depend on the central government to carry out
many of their initiatives. In order to achieve their purposes, they should process them
before the executive in quest for resources. So, their dependence is high and they have
serious political restrictions. Their decision making logic is that of the negotiator who looks
for margins of autonomy amid diverse pressures from the central power, to whose offices
he necessarily has to go. On the other side, they have the population and their institutions.
Hence, mayors are tensed figures and their only possibility of efficiency is based on a
negotiation system and permanent search of consensus.
That negotiation does not
exclude the firmness, quite necessary in a country like ours, if the purpose is to coordinate
very diverse interests. For that purpose, successful provincial mayors as José Murguia, the
Apra mayor of Trujillo, exhibit a high dose of vertical authority along with a acknowledged
consensual capacity.
The regional tensions express problems derived from the centralism, which concentrates all
the decisions and advantages in Lima. That concentration in the capital city is one of the
most deep rooted vicious circles in the national political culture. The problem, just in any
vicious circle, is that it grows from the very conditions that it creates by itself. Therefore, it
strengthens as option and bends multiple wills, even provincial ones. Much of the support
to centralism comes from the other departments, which by principle should be thought to be
the decentralization defenders. The central power happens to be able to subject many
people in the provinces. The Peruvian civil defense system is a vivid testimony of these
tensions and its impotence advances the general difficulties of a country whose institutional
progress is hindered by this contradiction. To solve this, it would be necessary to build a
descentralizating force originated from the very provinces.
However, the challenge is
complex since it implies transforming the local force into a national project, facing the
1300
classic limits for this type of movements, such as uniting local interests that many times are
opposed, or even more complicated things such as relating diverse provincial interests and
to gain decisive force in the capital city.
The future is uncertain and the presidential
elections of year 2000 must solve the final direction that El Niño's political process will take
in Peru.
El Niño has been subject of several bibliographical publications.
A specialized
compilation in social sciences was prepared as chapter of the monumental work “Piura:
región y sociedad, derrotero bibliográfico para el desarrollo” (Piura: region and society,
bibliographical course for the development), by Bruno Revesz, Susana Aldana, Laura
Hurtado and Jorge Requena, Piura: Cipca, 1996. Another bibliography, somewhat older
and specialized in natural sciences was gathered by Jorge Mariátegui, Aurora Ch. De
Vildoso and Juan Vélez, “Bibliografía sobre el fenómeno del Niño desde 1891 a 1985”
(Bibliography on El Niño's phenomenon from 1891 to 1985, El Callao: Imarpe, 1985.
Cipca’s web site. Section El Niño, regional events. Newspaper El Tiempo de Piura.
A group of bouys with scientific instrumental and satellite interconnection with modern
computers are installed all along the Pacific up to the height of Ecuador. Those bouys are
the ones that detect the heating of the ocean from the beginning of the process, which
happens many months before the arrival of the event to the Peruvian coasts.
Luis Rocca Torres, “Impactos del Niño en el sector rural: Lambayeque siglo XX”.(Impacts
of El Niño in the rural sector: Lambayeque XX century). Monograph presented in Sepia
VIII, Round Table, Climatic change and disaster prevention: El Niño's Phenomenon (Mesa
Redonda, Cambio climático y prevención de desastres: el Fenómeno del Niño), P. 15.
1325
Peruvian government has contracted foreign debt for $450 million dollars. One hundred
and fifty millions with each one of the three following institutions: Eximbanc from Japan,
the World Bank, and the Interamerican Bank of Development, IDB. Cepes’s web site.
There are also other not very high loans on which there is no precise information. Among
these stands out a credit of the Andean Corporation of Development, CAF, for 20 million
dollars.
Alberto Pandolfi, Congress Pro El Niño Roads, organized by the Ministry of Transports in
August 1998.
Eduardo Franco and Linda Zilbart Soto, “El sistema nacional de defensa civil en el Perú o
el problema de la definición del campo de los desastres” (The national civil defense
system in Peru or the problem of the disasters field definition), in Allan Lavell and Eduardo
Franco (editors) “State, Society and Disasters Management in Latin America: in search of
the lost paradigm” (Estado, Sociedad y Gestión de los desastres en América Latina: en
busca del paradigma perdido), Lima: La Red, 1996.
This opinion about a moderate Niño of benefical effects was assumed by a group of
Peruvian scientists headed by Dr. Ronald Woodman, executive president of the IGP.
Among many others of his interventions on this topic, a press conference in Piura can be
reviewed under the suggestive title of “The 1998 El Niño's will be as that of 1973 and not
as that of 1983". El Tiempo, 2-Aug-97.
Ministry of the Presidency, “Minister of the Presidency’s Exposition before the Congress
of the Republic", 15-Sept-97. Xerocopied.
“The great absentee was the producer". Based in this statement, Eduardo Franco has
written an important monograph, “El Niño en el Perú, hacia una contextualización de las
respuestas sociales al Niño 1997-1998”. (El Niño in Peru: toward a contextualization of the
social answers to El Niño 1997-1998)."
1350
The president himself has publicly reprehended his regional officials a number of times.
For example, on November 23, 1997 he made a call to conclude the prevention works in
Piura ASAP, directing the attention on how late these were in Paita and Talara, where
according to his depositions, they had not advanced more than 50%. Cipca’s web site,
news section.
For example, general ® Alberto Rios of the Ctar Piura moved to Lima between the
September 19 and the 30 to personally negotiate transfers that were detained.
()
Translator’s Note: UdP stands for Universidad de Piura (University of Piura).
The archbishop Cantuarias was an important stabilization factor in Piura. For example he
declared that the works were being managed in a better than in 1983 and claimed the
greater trust from the population towards their political authorities. El Tiempo, 4-Oct-97.
Luis Rocca, Loc. Cit. p. 23.
In another work, Zapata and Sueiro, “Naturaleza y Politica” (Nature and Politics), we find
six institutions from the executive that carried out prevention works at riverside defenses.
These six institutions completed their work amid an open competition of responsibilities,
without a concerted or coordinated plan and at eventually the same oficialism accused the
head of one of them for corruption. Lima: IEP, 1999.
In Colombia there are one thousand municipalities, approximately half of the ones in Peru,
Colombia having a population of thirty five millions inhabitants, ten millions more than
Peru. In Bolivia until the nineties municipalities were exclusively urban. Bruno Revesz
(ed) “Decentralization and gobernability in times of globalization” (Descentralización y
bobernabilidad en tiempos de globalización), Cipca-Iep, 1998.
The case of the Peruvian Municipal Association, Ampe (in Spanish), just confirms this
interpretation, since as a consequence of the November 1998 elections and in spite of the
fact that four fifths of local authorities are not with the government, the central power has
managed to have a directive kindred to its orientation chosen.
1375
.Cipca’s web site, news section, August 28, 1997.
.Cipca’s web site, news section, 4-Jul-99. Even district municipalities have elaborated
these plans for their jurisdictions. For example, the district municipality of Catacaos
submitted Ctar Piura a district prevention plan on 11-Jul-97.
Translator’s Note: Foncodes stands for Fondo Nacional de Compensacion y Desarrollo
Social (National Social Compensation and Development Fund).
(*)
Teresa Oré
Translator’s Note: Inade stands for Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo (National
Development Institute).
()
Interview with Carlos Monge
.This board has been receiveng the support of the Dutch SNV for more than ten years.
Interview with Edgardo Cruzado
Interview with Edgardo Cruzado, Cipca-Piura.
Cepes’s web site. This page contains first line information elaborated by this important
Lima NGO specialized in rural topics.
A very complete analysis of the NGOs’ role during El Niño can be found in Pedro
Ferradas, “El fenómeno del Niño y los desastres: enfoques y estrategias de las Ongs” (El
Niño's phenomenon and the disasters: NGOs’ approaches and strategies". Sepia VIII,
Chiclayo, August 1999.
For example, engineer Victor Rosas, Huancayo Senamhi meteorologist, declared “the
coming rain regime in the highland seems normal", in a date so early as October 14, 1997.
El Comercio web site.
The government program was denominated “Revoulcion Verde” (Green Revolution)
evoking a famous plan of the times of the Reformation for the Progress.
. Arariwa web site.
1400
The importance of this adaptation of the language used by scientists to the social use and
requirements has been highlighted by Benjamin Orlove and Joshua Tosteson, “The
Application of Seasonal to Interannual Climate Forecasts based on El Niño-Southern
Oscillation (ENSO) Events”, Berkeley Working Papers, Institute of International Studies.
Interview with Norma Ordinola
Karen Kraft, Care-Peru, Final report El Niño 1998. International workshop, “Evaluación
de las respuestas de la sociedad civil y del gobierno frente al fenómeno El Niño”
(Evaluation of the answers of the civil society and of the government in front of the
phenomenon El Niño), Piura, October 1998.
Ctar Region Grau, “El Niño's phenomenon in region Grau", Report to the Congress of the
Republic, March 1998.
The problems scientists face to dialogue with politicians as to the categories and scales
that are a matter of interes to these last ones are broadly discussed in Michael H. Glantz,
“Corrientes de cambio: el impacto de El Niño sobre el clima y la sociedad” (Currents of
change: El Niño's impact on the weather and the society), Santiago de Chile: Cambridge
UP, 1996.
As for example, declarations of Ronald Woodman appeared in the Piuran regional
newspaper El Tiempo, “I have an encouraging news for the Piurans, rains will be moderate
as in 1987 and 1992 and not as in 1983". Cipca’s web site, news section, December
1997.
El Comercio.
L. Rocca, Ibidem.
Cepes’ web site, news section, February 1998. This is the web site of a renowned NGO
specialized in rural issues that during El Niño elaborated first rate information that is
fortunately still in the cyberspace.
1425
El Tiempo, 4-Feb-98.
interviews with Walter Luna, carried out in Lima on August 28, 1999
For example, Cipca’s web site remembers the espectacular rise of prices guring 1997
Christmas. News section.
Translator’s Note: Pronaa stands for Programa Nacional de Asistencia Alimentaria
(National Program of Food Assistance).
(*)
All over the northern area the donated food entered into the market of nutritious products.
There are many accusations on this situation during all thEl Niño situation. For example,
the mayor of Huancabamba, in Piura, denounced the massive traffic of donated food in his
district on 22-Jan-98. Cipca’s web site.
Not everyone had approved the forming of the La Niña lagoon, which made Abraham
Levi's figure higher before the president's eyes. For example, the regional agriculture
director of Piura had expressed an opinion in favor of building a drainage of the Ramón
lagoon toward the sea to precisely avoid an accumulation that he thought dangerous.
Cipca’s web site, December 1997.
Translator’s Note: Cofide stands for Corporacion Financiera de Desarrollo (Financial
Corporation for Development).
(*)
Document 054-98-CP/CR, “Informe sobre el Fenómeno del Niño, acciones y medidas
adoptadas por el Ministerio de la Presidencia y entidades públicas del sector” (Report on
El Niño's Phenomenon, actions and measures adopted by the Ministry of the Presidency
and public entities of the sector), March 1998.
Jorge Basadre, “Sultanismo, corrupción y dependencia en el Perú republicano”
(Sultanism, corruption and dependence in Republican Peru), Lima, Mile Batres, 1981.
Translator’s Note: Apra stands for Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (Popular
American Revolutionary Alliance). This was the party of Alan Garcia’s, president of Peru
for the term 85-90.
(*)
1450
Carlos Vargas.
For example, in Piura the by then director of municipality urban transportation, Jorge
Ledesma, asked for patience from the citizenship on January 9, 1998, explaining that the
road emergency plan was just being elaborating. The prevention stage had ended, six
months after its beginning, and they had not still solved a basic topic yet. El Tiempo,
Cipca’s web site.
Peru Engineers Board, Piura Departmental Council, technical support group, Mario Boza
Mechato et al., “Proposal of agrarian reactivation for the Piura department” (Propuesta de
reactivación agraria del departamento de Piura), July 1998.
Just as Cryrcsa, formed by military officers for the reconstruction of the Callejon of
Huaylas after the 1970 earthquake. Another example is the special committees formed
after the Arequipa and Cusco earthquakes in the fifties.
Translator’s Note: Minifundistas is a term widely used in Peru during the military coup
and further régime of General Juan Velazco to name the small proprietors, as opposed to
the mayor ones, the Latifundistas. General Velazco accomplished the so called Agrarian
Reformation.
(*)
Efraín Gonzales de Olarte, “La descentralización en el Perú: entre la fortaleza del centro y
la debilidad de la periferia” (Decentralization in Peru: between the strength of the center
and the weakness of the periphery), in Bruno Revesz, Ibidem, pp. 123-147.
(*)
Translator’s Note: FAP stands for Fuerza Aerea del Peru (Peruvian Air Force).
Cipca’s web site, news section, 13-Feb-98
1475
A very complete analysis of El Niño's economic effects in Piura can be found in Edgardo
Silveri Cruzado, “El Niño's phenomenon in Piura 1997-1998 and the role of the state:
sectoral and social consequences" (El fenómeno del Niño en Piura 1997-1998 y el rol del
estado: consecuencias sectoriales y sociales), Sepia VIII, Chiclayo, August 1999.