More from Brianna’s second birthday party.
As I mentioned in the previous post, this was before about half the guests arrived because I forgot to charge the camera and it died on us before the party really got started.
Birthday parties in Peru are the best!
Brianna’s second birthday party…
Birthdays are a big deal here in Peru. Brianna’s birthday was actually on June 20, but since I was away at the time we decided to have her party last Sunday. The video was taken before about half of the guests arrived, since somebody forgot to charge the camera’s battery the camera died on us before the party really got started 😦
The party was a blast. I think there were about 10 or 12 kids and 30 or so adults. The clown did a great job entertaining both the kids and adults, ending in a fun “hora loca” (crazy hour). Of course we had surprises, balloons and a piñata for the kids, the mandatory “pollo la brasa” (rotisserie chicken), a bunch of “bocaditos” (snacks) and a yummie cake!
Mamacita worked hard all week to prepare for the party. Next year we’re just doing something simple at the house… but then again, that’s what we said last year too 🙂
“Somebody said to me, `Whenever somebody says your name, a smile comes to their face.` That’s a great accolade. I strive to keep it that way.”
Clarence Clemons
Clarence Clemons, longtime saxophone player with Bruce Springsteen, has died. Obituary from AP here.
Were it not for rock ‘n roll music, I’d still be living in the suburb, working a job I liked only for the money.
Allow me a tangent.
Bert, my best friend, was a counterintelligence agent. A really good one. I’ve said bad things on this blog about US foreign policy and intelligence. From shadowing John Lennon to bombing wedding parties in Afghanistan, much of Western intelligence is the bad product of people stuck in their own ideology and world view, but Bert was nothing like that. Many guys tell tall tales about covert operations, war stories about threats and enemies that sound eerily similar to the latest Hollywood movies, but not Bert. He didn’t carry a gun or shoot bad guys. He didn’t brag and rarely told any stories, I was perhaps the only person he confided in. About certain things he confided in me more than in his own sons.
Bert was a true counterintelligence agent, a card-carrying member of the US Communist party at the height of the so-called Cold War. He played a significant role in bringing about “detente”. He brought Romanian business to Foreign Trade Zone 24 in Scranton PA while Nicolae Ceausescu was trying to move policy towards the West. Bert always maintained Ceausescu was with the CIA. Bert was trusted so much by the Soviets that he did business with the head of the Siberian railroad and Amtorg. When he was out with Soviet agents, the Soviets always would point out the FBI agents watching. “See him over there, he’s FBI.”
His biggest coup was organizing the 1972 Nixon visit to China. Bert always said that the FBI had tried for 25 years to get in with China, but never made any headway. He got in in 2.5 years. Regardless of how you feel about China today, at the time the objective was simply to avoid all-out war.
Bert died several years ago after a long battle with cancer that he blamed on cigarettes and nuclear radiation. He had a large spot on his thigh that was smoother than a baby’s bottom where he believed he’d been hit by Soviet nuclear instrumentation (which he wanted to sell in the US).
My best friend and I, many years ago. He was already very ill then.
What does any of this have to do with Peru and Ollanta Humala?
There have been many comments and opinions this week about the future of Peru under new President Ollanta Humala (he takes office on July 28). Otto was interviewed by The Motley Fool and he makes reasonable arguments (except that I don’t believe the meteoric rise of the Lima stock market is sustainable in the long run and I’m concerned that the amount of cash that the AFPs are pumping in the stock market is a considerable long term bubble risk).
As for Humala, I said way back in April that people were overreacting and not much would change under Ollanta Humala. I stand by that statement because of something Bert told me long ago. This was one of his stories that he repeated down to each and every detail maybe 50 or 100 times (he readily admitted that some of his past was traumatic and had taken a mental toll on him).
Bert’s career was no fairy tale by any stretch of the imagination. He got hurt and in trouble several times. He joined the US Navy as a young man and served on the Destroyer Leader USS Willis A. Lee. He got seriously hurt in the Navy and was medically discharged (but retired). He walked with a leg brace most of his adult life. He was badly beaten by the New York mob and arrested for being a Communist. He always maintained at one point both the FBI and CIA wanted him dead but the Navy Admiralty said there would be hell to pay if he was harmed. I believe that story because one day at the VA hospital in Tampa a group of young Navy officers came in to salute Bert. Everyone else in that hospital ward said something like: “who the heck are you? In here we’re all just sick old men who used to be somebody, and nobody comes to salute us.”
Bert grew up in a devout Catholic family. The story he told me over and over is that one day early in his career he got in serious trouble and sought refuge in the Vatican. There he confided in a high-level Vatican attorney that he had conflicting feelings about his work. He was raised a devout Catholic but became a counter-intelligence agent and card-carrying Communist.
The response from the Vatican, the Holy See, was this: “Son, you should work for whoever pays you the most.”
Long story short, there is a lot of money in Peru nowadays (mostly thanks to high metals prices and booming tourism) and Ollanta Humala will not want to upset that. Money always wins. Humala will certainly implement some domestic social programs, and that’s not a bad thing, but he won’t do anything so drastic that it would upset the country’s macro-economic prospects.
You can’t just compare Ollanta Humala the person to Hugo Chavez or Lula, look at the environment as well. Peru today is a very different country from 1980 or 1990. There is a lot of money in Peru today and Ollanta Humala will have to work with whoever pays Peru the most.
R.I.P. Bert, and know that at least some of your advice stuck with me.
Exit polls for Peru’s 2011 Presidential elections are showing Ollanta Humala 52,6%; Keiko Fujimori 47,4%. Official election results are not due in until later, but it looks safe to say Ollanta Humala will be Peru’s next President.
Exit polls show Ollanta Humala leading Peru elections 2011
Image courtesy of El Comercio.
UPDATE:
Here are the up-to-the-minute Peru election results from La Republica, the only major Peruvian newspaper that had endorsed Ollanta Humala.
Expect the Peruvian stock market and real estate prices to take a long overdue nosedive tomorrow, but I believe there are many great opportunities in Peru and Ollanta Humala has a chance to prove his doubters wrong.
Results are not official yet, but congratulations to Ollanta Humala.
A special treat for my Australian readers – you know who you are 😉
A great live performance at the Telstra Dome in Melbourne by the famous Dutch violinist André Rieu and Australian soprano Mirusia Louwerse (who is of Dutch descent).
Watch in its entirety, something very unexpected happens at the end of the performance.
We earthly people take ourselves waaayyyy too seriously sometimes. Just take a look at the video taken this past Sunday when so-called environmental activists in Belgium destroyed a field of genetically modified potatoes. The field was a scientific test organized by multiple universities, where genetic material from Peruvian potatoes was added to Belgian potatoes to make the resulting potato resistant to disease.
There’s a fine line between idealism and stupidity. Both the scientist types and the so-called activists have too much time on their hands or take themselves too seriously, I don’t know. Perhaps they should do something that’s really important to the world, like, say, spend time with their families and loved ones.
Speaking of mixing Peruvian and Belgian genes, check out this apple 😉
Brianna Nayaraq, almost 2 years old!
A loyal reader asked me to comment on the following video. From Melissa Peschiera at the Peruvian TV program “REPORTE SEMANAL”: CUSCO, LOS DE ARRIBA Y LOS DE ABAJO (“The haves and have nots of Cusco”):
It’s not a bad report, although it’s sensationalized as anything TV usually is. The report only takes 2 snapshots and leaves out the middle class, which is thriving in the city of Cuzco. Life in our middle-class neighborhood is nothing like either the partying tourists or rural poverty that is shown in the video.
As for the rural poverty, the longer I’m in Peru the more reluctant I’ve become to suggest that more money and material possessions equals a better way of life. Having said that, it is hard to comprehend how the South of Peru (especially the regions of Cuzco and Puno) can be so poor and with such bad infrastructure when so much tourist revenue is generated there. That has to be a failure of local authorities.
Much is said in the report about the popularity of Ollanta Humala in the South of Peru. On the surface it may seem that the rural poor support Ollanta Humala because they believe he offers them a way out of poverty. I’m not convinced of that. I think it has more to do with being able to associate with your leaders. The way of life of the market-oriented, neo-liberal ruling class in Lima during the last 10 years or so is completely foreign to the way of life of the rural poor as well as urban poor, and this in my opinion is the reason why the Peru presidential runoff is between Keiko Fujimori and Ollanta Humala, the 2 candidates who represent the greatest perceived change.
What do you think?
Dedicated to both my late grandmothers on Mother’s Day:
Spijt
Dat in gemelijke grillen
ik mijn dagen kon verspillen,
dat ik haar voorbijgegaan
of een steen daar had gestaan,
dat ik heel mijn zondig leven
heb gekregen zonder geven,
dat mij alles heeft gesmaakt,
dat ik niets heb uitgebraakt,
dat ik niet kan herbeginnen
haar te dienen, haar te minnen
dat zij heen is en voorbij,
bitter, bitter grieft het mij.
Maar de jaren zijn verstreken
en de kansen zijn verkeken.
Moest die kist weer opengaan
geen stuk vlees zat er nog aan.
Priesters zalven en beloven,
maar ik kan het niet geloven.
Neen, er is geen wenden aan:
als wij dood zijn is ‘t gedaan.
Ja, gedaan. Wat helpt mijn klagen?
Wat mijn roepen, wat mijn vragen?
Wat ik bulder, wat ik zweer?
De echo zendt mij alles weer.
Gij die later wordt geboren,
wilt naar wijze woorden horen:
pakt die beide handen beet,
dient het wijf dat moeder heet.
Willem Elsschot – Spijt (Antwerpen, 1934).
“Spijt” (regret) – A poem by the great Belgian writer Willem Elsschot, in honor of his mother. The poem was quite controversial when published because the words are not sweet and loving but raw, powerful and full of emotion.
Willem Elsschot, the great Belgian writer
A recent picture of our baby goose with mamacita in the Plaza Tupac Amaru, Cuzco:
In honor of Mother's Day
Happy Mother’s Day!
I had another one of those expat experiences last weekend. One of those moments where you go in no time from “I’m so happy to be here” to “What are these people thinking”, or vice versa.
This past Easter Sunday we decided to take a trip to Urubamba and eat Easter dinner at “Sol de Mayo”. This in itself was a big step for us. “Sol de Mayo” is one of our favorite restaurants, where you get a heaping plate of excellent typical Andean food. However, “Sol de Mayo” was also the place where Brianna decided to throw noodles on the back of an unsuspecting customer about 6 months ago, and we hadn’t been back there since 🙂
Instead of taking the traditional buses from Cuzco to Urubamba, we took one of the “fast cars”. These are simply combis (vans) that drive direct from terminal to terminal, which saves about 20 minutes or so over the traditional buses between Cuzco and Urubamba.
No matter how many times we’ve taken the trip from Cuzco to Urubamba, I still enjoy the beautiful scenery along the way:
Riding from Cuzco to Urubamba, Peru.
So we’re the proverbial fat and happy in the back of our combi, no more than about 1/4 of the way to Urubamba, when the driver pulls over to check the rear tire. No big deal, tires get damaged regularly on the winding / pothole-filled mountain roads. The driver gets back in and gets into a fairly agitated discussion with the boletera (the girl who takes bus fares). The boletera gets on her cellphone and starts an equally agitated discussion with the person on the other end of the line.
Next thing we know the combi turns around and limps back to the nearest service station. By now Patricia is mad because she overheard the driver and boletera discussing something about a problem with the tire before we left. The combi pulls into a service station and we get out.
Combi driver knew tire was bad before leaving Cuzco.
Combi has no spare tire.
Service station has no tires.
So these guys started out on a trip with a known bad tire, no spare tire, and a bunch of paying customers in the back. Oh, and the driver drove like a maniac on the flimsy tire. Only in Peru!
The boletera took off walking, never to be seen again. We waited about 15 minutes hoping that a spare tire would magically appear, but then we just hailed a taxi and went the rest of the way by taxi. Luckily the road from Cuzco to Urubamba is quite busy with numerous combis/buses/taxis, so we didn’t have to wait too long.
After that we had an uneventful trip and a wonderful Easter dinner. Brianna ran around the restaurant and generally acted like the lovely little hellraiser that she is, but at least no food got thrown at anyone 😉
Typical Peruvian food
Easter dinner!
Papi can smile and chew at the same time!
Playing in the park after Easter dinner.
Life in Peru 