<<Preface>>  I wrote this post about a month ago while in site and did not have internet sufficient enough to upload this until today. Enjoy! Hopefully there will be more to come soon.

9-28-2012

So it’s revocatoria season in my site. The revocatoria is something that happens every four years in the middle of the mayor’s four year term in office in my site. Essentially, the idea is to give the people of the pueblo the opportunity to kick the current mayor out of office two years into his term if he’s not doing a good enough job. While this sounds like a potentially good idea to provide the citizens of Pueblo Nuevo the opportunity to have more of a say in the political workings of the pueblo, my personal take is that it instead provides the two political parties in power here a chance to fill every waking second of the day during the month of the revocatoria with extremely loud and repetitive political propaganda, prompting a friend of mine to comment during a recent visit to my site that “Peru’s a loud place.”

A little history I’ve recently learned about my site. Apparently, there have been two men consistently duking it out for the position of alcalde (mayor) of Pueblo Nuevo de Colan over the last ten years or so: the current alcalde who is a member of the Somos Peru (We Are Peru) political party whose first name is Reymundo and another guy who is a member of the Peruvian socialist party. Every four years these two stir up their political bases by staging marches, speeches and blasting propaganda over the emisora. An emisora, as most Peace Corps volunteers in rural sites know all too well, is the way small towns communicate local news to everyone in town, usually in the form of a loudspeaker of some sort. When one candidate wins the election, the other spends the following four years trying to ruin the winner’s term by constantly pointing out everything he’s doing wrong while infrequently offering concrete alternatives. Sometimes the rivalry between the parties becomes violent. Two years ago, when the previous alcalde lost the election, his staff trashed the municipalidad and set one of its offices on fire.

Yeah. Needless to say, there’s some division between the parties.

So back to the noise issue.  I’m sure each town has its own take on it, but in my town, the emisora is essentially a megaphone speaker attached to the top of multiple long bamboo rods tied together so that it reaches over the tops of the houses and can spin around 360 degrees. Usually, when it’s not revocatoria season, it just emits the dull robot-like voice of the woman who makes the daily news announcements in the morning and in the afternoon. When I first came to site, this woman’s voice was the bane of my existence because, as I quickly found out, people in my site like to get up real early, thus necessitating their news needing to be emanated real early as well, meaning that any chance of sleeping in was impossible. Unfortunately, I chose to share my feelings about this particular voice with one of my socias (community partners) in site to which she promptly informed me that that voice belonged to her mother. Chock that one up to early in-site awkwardness. Like most things, I got accustomed to it and can now sleep through its staccato-monotone morning news broadcasts no problem.

Then came revocatoria season. I’d heard mention of this revocatoria thing since coming to site, but had no idea what was in store. Within the span of about a week, every square inch of public space was painted in giant political propaganda: Marca Si or Marca No (“Mark Yes” to revoke the mayor or “Mark No” to keep him). Bumper stickers stating the same were slapped on every mototaxi, light post and small child in town. Political rallies were staged with hundreds of devoted party members waving banners, chanting and incessantly blowing loud soccer horns. It's made even creepier by the fact that Reymundo's political banners use a shortened version of his name, "Rey," which is the Spanish word for king... Yeah.

And then began the daily emisora messages.

It started off with announcements and the occasional repetition of the Reymundo No Se Va song (Reymundo don’t leave). Then the repetitions of the song became more frequent. Then they became incessant. I woke up cursing loudly one Saturday morning to the sound of Reymundo No Se Va blasting five times in a row as if it was right outside my bedroom door. Apparently, the original emisora was not sufficient and the Somos Peru faithful had installed another one above their headquarters one block away and decided to face the speaker directly at my house. Now, for my listening pleasure, I could hear Reymundo No Se Va on repeat every day from 6:30 AM until about 11 AM and then again from around 4 PM until about 7 PM. I find myself humming it or singing it to myself at times, which I guess is the idea. As a result, I’m sure the Reymundo No Se Va song will haunt me to my grave.

Luckily for me I was given a short week’s respite in which I participated in the Amazon River Raft Race with some Peace Corps friends in Iquitos. We helped assemble (paid Peruvian youth to assemble) a raft out of tree trunks and spent three days paddling down the Amazon River. Needless to say, it was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but was extremely rewarding and I got my first peak at the marvels of the Peruvian jungle. More on that in another blog post.

So it only took five days of brutal heat, humidity and spastic torrential jungle downpours to get that damn song out of my head… until the first day back to site.

I believe I just made it out of the back of the colectivo before hearing the opening lines (and really only lines) “Reymundo no se va, no se va, no se va…” I rolled my eyes and resigned myself to several more days of this before the final vote that would happen on the 30^th of September. I went to my room, unpacked by backpack and shared my presents with my host family. We were sitting down to eat dinner when suddenly we heard a ton of noise coming from outside in the street. All the women and kids in my family jumped up and ran to the windows and doors and yelled for me to come quick. I ran over to the window expecting to see a political riot, but instead watched as a crowd of alcalde faithfuls came marching down the street chanting, carrying signs and blowing their soccer horns. My host dad muttered something about it being a bunch of rubbish and how he wished it would all be over already. I returned to the table to finish dinner and went upstairs to get ready for bed.

Then came another call from my family as I heard the crescendo of even more people marching down the street. Deciding I needed to capture this insanity with my camera, I started videotaping the pro-alcalde procession as it passed by my house. I watched in awe as the entire street in front of my house was filled with people, cars, mototaxis, children, animals and even the alcalde carrying a banner. This went on for so long that my camera’s memory ran out of space after five minutes and it still wasn’t finished. I retreated back into my room only to hear the sounds of this march going around town until around midnight.

Of course, at the time I was put off by the excessive noise and slightly disturbing display of devotion to one man, but after having a chance to step back and look at the situation a little more objectively, I couldn’t believe that in a town of only about 12,000 people, so many would take to the streets to show their support for anything. That’s to say that I feel like in the States, in order to get people riled up in a similar fashion, your best chances are to have a two-for-one sale at the Apple store the week before Christmas.

And seeing as how it’s election season in the States, it makes me wonder if our political system is really all that different. Sure, it looks different on the surface and at first, I was tempted to view things here as juvenile and immature; a bunch of adults getting stirred up into a frenzy by a man just trying to stay in power. But then I started thinking about it in comparison to the political climate in the States and realized there are striking similarities that are interesting to see up close and personal in the microcosm of an isolated pueblo: the nonproductive partisan bickering, the money wasted on marketing the party, the repetitive propaganda, the mindless touting of the party line. All I have to do is look at video or a photo of any Democratic or Republican political rally or convention and see the American replica of the same thing.

But in keeping with that time honored political tradition, I’m not here to offer any cohesive answers or suggestions about how things could function better. It’s much easier to point out the faults in the system, voice my frustrations and then step back into the fold, leaving the responsibility to fall on someone else more motivated or idealistic than I to assume responsibility.

So, with that being said, I’ll remove my ill-fitting political commentator cap and don once again the more comfortable dunce cap of a Peace Corps volunteer.

Until next time, faithful few, much love to you all.

P.S. For anyone curious to know, Reymundo did not “se va.”