Changes in Latitude » Peru

Trans-South American Highway

Mango Steve — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:10:27 +0000

Consider Seattle, once a Puget Sound paradise, now a concrete jungle subdivided by highways bathing once-pure air in smog seven days/week, pumping poisons into the lungs of everything that breathes. Cement trucks pouring new parking lots daily. What interstate freeways did for Seattle, they could do for Glacier National Monument, the Amazon and the Andes.

Just such a freeway is being built from Brazil to Peru, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, across ravines filled by waterfalls and over gorges fed by the Andes Mountains, the source of the mighty Amazon River. This freeway could be completed in 2010, giving birth to numerous other highways feeding off the mother road, increased illegal logging, burning, and poaching. Why pave the last great undivided rainforest?

Such a highway creates new horizons for Brazil’s continued growth, bypasses the Panama Canal, and opens up new oil and gas fields. The road has been called “The Road to China”. Never mind that sea freight through the Panama Canal costs one-quarter the amount that land shipments will cost. Never mind that this road spells doom for places like the Manu and Pacaya-Samiria National Parks, places where the biodiversity will be remembered as staggering.

This is where the automobile has brought us. Corporations have no shame as they colonize nature and pump poison into the atmosphere. Diesel trucks will soon harvest once-protected tropical hardwoods in order to line North American closets. The highway is to be a private toll road, operated by a those with friends in high places, those willing to pimp their grandchildren’s legacy for today’s luxuries.

Our planet’s last un-colonized indigenous peoples will be displaced by this highway. They will no longer be able to live in voluntary isolation from the material culture of consumerism. Cultural, ecological and environmental factors were not evaluated prior to the granting of this no-bid contract to pave yet another paradise. Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt recommends countermeasures to offset the devastation of the Trans-South American Highway; namely, cooperation to create international conservation areas such as Amistad on the Costa Rican/Panamanian border.

Unfortunately, this solution will be “too little, too late” once the first toll booth opens in Peru near the headwaters of the Amazon. Visit Northeastern Peru soon in order to know the immensity of what will soon be lost at the hands of the “Initiative of the Regional Infrastructure of South America” (IIRSA – an organization content to bypass democratic processes involving citizens). Visit very soon.

S. America is Huge & other important lessons

Mango Steve — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:23:00 +0000

This is my first post of criticism from a travel client. It is constructive criticism and it arrives on the first anniversary of Changes In Latitude (after 11 years touring Latin America solely with produce executives, friends & family). While I would like to claim that I have created universally stellar experiences for all my travel clients this year, there is a first time for everything. I was reminded of three valuable lessons from clients recently returned from Peru, Chile & Argentina.

1. S. America is Huge

I was not assertive enough to dissuade these world travelers from biting off more than they could chew in S. America. I cautioned when I should have insisted they reconsider their long list of desired destinations. It is natural, especially when we travel very far, to want to see as much as possible of the region we’re visiting. On the surface, more appears better. But with travel, it is often true that “less is more”. I am reminded that trying to see too much can diminish the overall quality of any travel experience. I will insist on small bites because distances are great enough to be daunting for even the most seasoned travelers.

2. Even triple references do not ensure satisfaction.

It has been a rare occasion when clients have wanted to visit someplace I haven’t been in Latin America. On this recent S. America trip, however, the clients wanted to visit the Peruvian Amazon. Having never been there, I called an old friend in Lima about the best Amazon Lodge. He replied, “there are only three good ones; Tahuayo Lodge is the best”. I did some research and learned the owner had published a book about the Amazon. In addition, this lodge was named “One of the ten best wilderness lodges in the world” by Outside Magazine … and this was only one of a dozen such accolades. With such positives, client satisfaction was virtually guaranteed, right? Wrong. An Amazon wilderness lodge is not for everyone. I’ll use a more formal client questionnaire to better match people with places from now on.

3. Guide books are like casino bets

These particular clients did something I have never tried, and we can all learn from this one. They relied on Frommer’s advice in S America in determining some of their desired destinations and restuarants. They were not satisfied with the results. Guide book advice can never be “all things to all people”. Changes In Latitude serves upscale travelers, not “all people” In this case, Frommer’s advice disappointed my clients. Travelers, think about the nature of guide books – they are highly subjective. You’ll win some and lose some.

I was lucky to have local produce growers show me and my travel companions around Latin America for more than a decade. My goal is to provide that type of guidance to my clients. Today I was reminded that this goal will be a journey in itself.

Obama gets Peruvian Shaman Vote

Mango Steve — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 18:26:00 +0000

Here we are in November, just days before electing our nation’s 44th President. The spiritually-minded are wondering, who gets the shaman vote? For the answer to this question, we look to Peru.

Of 11 shamans in the Peruvian healing organization Apus-Inka, nine support Obama. The shaman group’s leader, Juan Osco, is sure he is going to win. “Obama is growing stronger, I’ve seen that he has the spiritual support of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy to protect him”, Osco intuits. “We have seen that if the election is not fair, there will be another global economic crisis, war and despair.”

“He will win and he will change history. He is going to help all the Latinos living in the United States”, adds Mary Gomez, a healer from Chiclayo. Apus-Inka held a cleansing ceremony on the beach in Lima this week using Andean spirit totems to prevent negative energies that could effect his election. Obama may be in Lima, Ohio this week, but he is receiving mighty supportive energy from Lima, Peru.

Thanks to Linda in Lima for this graphic and to Andrew Whalen for reporting this ceremony. Now, get out and vote!

Changes in Attitude: Left-leaning Hemisphere

Mango Steve — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:15:00 +0000

Add Ecuador to the growing list of nations leaning left in the Americas. Today, President Correa’s new left-leaning constitution was approved by a significant 64% margin. There are few right-leaning countries remaining in our hemisphere and Latin America is merely a microcosm of the global liberal/conservative contest.

In colonial times, the fear over liberalization was derived from fear by the ruling elite over sharing the land, wealth, and power they amassed through conquest and slavery. They chose to conserve their land, wealth & power, so they were conservative. Those seeking balance, retribution, fairness, (you decide) were liberal in their approach. The 21st Century finds Presidents Correa (Ecuador), Chavez (Venuzuela), Morales (Bolivia), Garcia (Peru) and Lula (Brazil), among others, liberalizing their countries.

A similar battle is waging in the USA today. Instead of colonizers, the right now represents U.S. corporations such as Bear Stearns, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. The CEO’s of the nine major banks that taxpayers now partially own were paid $32.2 million last year, on average. On the retail end, we’ve seen similar gluttony. Global colonizers such as Wal-Mart entice young people from all over China to leave their family farms to slave in squalor in company-owned factories producing plastic gimcracks for voracious consumers, in the name of monopolistic ambitions, profit, and cheap consumer crap.

Consumer culture – isn’t this a crime against nature?

Regardless, corporations are paying billions to their leaders and shareholders, such as the Walton family, while a generation of indigenous peoples move away from their fields to barely subsist in polluted cities working for Fortune 100 companies producing unneccesary consumables. Whether it’s a Nike sweatshop in Asia or a garment sweatshop in Latin America, CEO’s are making hundreds times more than the workers.

Why grow food when you choke the planet in cheap plastic toys for “happy meals”? The children who throw away today’s toy tomorrow do not realize its half-life is 5000 years. This is the modern day conquest – pillaging once peaceful agrarian societies of their way of life to line the bank accounts of multinational corporate executives. The consequences are not tangibly different from colonization that occured centuries ago through slavery.

In this context, it is not hard to understand backlash against capitalism. “We need to reintroduce morality into capitalism” – Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France.

The USA is set to join the leftist movement next month by inaugarating a liberal to the White House on promises of increased regulation and an economy that works for people as well corporations. The U.S. Congress is already leaning left. Obama shuns lobbyist contributions and special interest money. His average contribution is $86 and he’s received such donations from over 3 million voters. If you are surprised by this, read on.

There are three reasons our hemisphere continues to lean left, according to the book “Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left”:

1. The end of the Cold War removed the stigma of the left. The USA could no longer label leftist governments ‘communist sympathizers’.

2. Latin America’s extreme concentration of wealth, income, power, and opportunity (among two percent of the population) meant that it would have to be governed from the left. “The combination of inequality and democracy tends to cause a movement to the left everywhere. Impoverished masses (98% in much of Latin America) vote for the type of policies that, they hope, will make them less poor.” – Jorge Castaneda

3. Real democracy will naturally lead to victories for the left. Wealth cannot be unfairly concentrated among those who must seek reelection in a land of fair elections, unless the rising tide truly does raise all ships or the voters can be duped. Voters like “Joe the plumber” are often duped into voting against their best interests by narcissists seeking the throne (versus seeking to serve).

For example, McCain keeps calling Obama a socialist, saying he wants to redistrubute wealth with his tax policies. This is either an attempt to dupe the voting public, or evidence of how little McCain understands the progressive income tax was introduced 95 years ago. Wealthy people have higher tax rates; poor people benefit from government programs while paying little to no tax. If we want to talk about socialist actions, Paul Volcker asks “How do we reprivatize institutions” that have been “socialized” by the Bush administration?

In this context, it is no surprise that corporate greed unveiled results in the masses saying “no” to conservative party staples such as obscene wage multiples for CEO’s who create huge taxpayer debts in their bonfire of the vanities. Anyone surprised by Obama’s popularity needs a refresher course in cultural anthropology. Everyone else already knows why the hemishpere is leaning left… we are so much more than consumers and too many corporations are acting like conquering colonists instead of good citizens.