Gamarra

I couldn't take pictures for you today because I was in one of the more dangerous places I've ever visited, and to break out a camera would rank up there as one of the more stupid things I've done in my 32 years. I'm currently overstimulated, I think I have a fever, and I daresay the lettuce I ate today was tainted. It was also iceberg lettuce. I'm going to have to cook my own veggies if I am to consume them.

Back to the dangerous place ... Gamarra is a "fashion district" of sorts. It is where mass, and I mean mass, quantities of Peruvian-made clothes go to die. I needed jungley clothes, for I am going to the Amazon soon, and cotton does not behave well in the intense humidity I will face there in "la selva." So ... polyester shorts were in order. Gamarra is the area that most Peruvians go when they need fabric, a bridesmaid dress, T-shirts, knock-off jeans, whatever. The same clothes are available for about four times as much in the Chilean-owned Ripley or Saga Favella franchises, so if Limeños have time, they hit Gamarra first.

Today is Saturday and Gamarra is the craziest place I have ever been. Tijuana times ten? I can't explain. I don't expect to be treated like an asshole anymore. But here in this place I am a child. I have earned the respect of a child. For I am an asshole, staggering, clutching my Coach bag desperately close to my hip.

I stagger around: newspaper vendors, thieves, taxis, aggressive combis, dogs, cats, children, beggars, blind men, and charity workers soliciting centimos. There are rotting vegetables, piles of trash, yards and yards of glittery sateen polyester, lanyards, knock-off Adidas shoes and belts for sale. You can't even walk for fear of running into another person's ass or tits. It is MAYHEM. There is simply no other word. And it doesn't help any that I am the only foreigner in the vicinity (don't go! Don't go!). And I am blond.

"Doing" Cultural Anthropology

Here I sit, "doing" anthropology in my plush-ish Lima living room. My roommate is watching blaringly loud cable television.

So Margaret Mead would have a cow if she knew the methodological fates of her beloved research. Now, we email contacts to make new contacts, and to check back with previous interviewees. Even the "lower middle-class" families I've interviewed have, and check, email. Participant observation with middle-class folks involves "hanging out" at grocery stores, churches, and riding in taxis.

This is obviously not to say that traditional cultural anthropology has died out. My peers still conduct research and glean comparable ethnographic perspectives by spending time in hard-to-get-to villages, all around the world. They speak languages we didn't know existed. They eat foreign foods and nod their heads and write stuff down and try not to offend. They do this in the name of broadening human perspectives, documenting diverse lifeways, and creating new paths toward communicating and respecting the seemingly infinite ways of being human.

But urban anthropology is gaining ground as a valid field of inquiry. As increasing numbers of people move from rural areas to urban areas in order to find jobs, anthropologists and other types of social researchers find themselves intrigued by the varied ways in which people adapt to and perceive new stimuli, new rules, forging or forsaking connections with old ways, in their new city homes.

Did I mention that Lima is loud? Disconcerting? Hellish? Heavenly, too? It's a veritable cacophony, not just of sights, but of smells and SOUNDS, stimulation. Will you EVER SHUT UP, Lima? Please? Five in the morning is a damned sacred time. It's quieter then. I'm not agoraphobic, but I'm assuredly not in a position to oversimplify Limeños' lived experiences. I cannot PROCESS these sounds yet.

The last time I lived in Lima, my apartment was situated on a quieter street.

Again my question here is a methodological one. Am I still "doing anthropology" from this chair? How about from this blog? With my bottled water, my land line, my shitty shitty cellphone? With this technology, I could mathematically quantify networks; I could (and do) observe and document gestures and gendered communication (I don't); I could Skype with highland medicinemen about the fate of Lima (hmm. Not for me). I could be harsh toward myself for the piecemeal nature of my work: three months here, three months there, when I can afford it, rather than leaving L.A. altogether for a year like "real" anthropologists do. The problem with coming and going is the delay in readjusting. Auditory culture shock, man. I tell you what.

As it stands, I'm making appointments with people who work in high-rise buildings, who work nine- to ten-hour days (without being paid for overtime, they frequently note), and who have kids to raise. They're busy, so sometimes I meet them for lunch so we can knock out the demographic survey aspect of my study so that when we actually meet in their homes, we can reduce the amount of time they need to take to do the filming and the open-ended interviews.

I wanted to conclude this entry with something powerfully cohesive. As of now, it's a rambling self-attempt to render my doctoral stab at research valid ... gulp.

Anthropologists are an insecure bunch. It's not that we're insecure in ourselves, per se, but that we're insecure in our discipline. It's hard to pronounce, it's hard to define, it's hard to DO. We're awesome at winging stuff. We're people people, yo.

Peru

I hate when people are like, "what's Peru like?" And I'm like, "Peru's big."

G-l-o-r-i-a

Fascinating target-marketed ad campaign going on here involving painted life-sized cows. The cows are made from a mold, and Peruvian (?) artists have been commissioned to paint the cows as they see fit.

The cows advertise the Gloria company - the primary upscale milk company in Peru - and are placed in public areas in which wealthy people and tourists spend time (e.g., kiss and argue, kiss and argue. I love Latin America.).

Yesterday I saw a man putting up a new cow in Parque Kennedy in Miraflores. Admittedly I was exercising a Starbucks, "big black iced coffee" in hand. I walked over to him, and asked him about the campaign, and he said there were 80 cows in total.

For a second, I made it my goal to find and photograph them all, but then I decided to only capture the ones I particularly liked, aesthetically. I have found a good many of them, I think, though I have not counted. Many overtly advertise Gloria. The distinctly painted cans are embedded in the art, and sometimes the art is actually centered around the milk.

Polititcally, though - why is this campaign aimed at rich people who consume art? Well, they are certainly the only people who shop at Wongs or Plaza Vea, the stores that carry this brand of milk. But is art not for all people? I guess not here.

I will post more cows sometimes.

Stop, Collaborate and Listen: Saving the World, One Potato at a Time?

I need collaborators. I need photographers and professional chefs and nutritionists who want to help me improve the quality of life for Andean natives and residents of "developed" nations alike. I am embarking upon a new project that has life, has energy, has devoured carbohydrates and aphrodisiacs that my dissertation research has, well, at least temporarily sidestepped. But there's one caveat: you'll need to come to the high Andes.

L and I went on a voyage today, after she dizzily washed her feet. I have been planning said voyage for at least a month, working from the States to set appointments and earn respect and special privileges to individually tour the facilities of a very special potato-protecting institution.

We hailed a cab, and after I negotiated the price from San Isidro, I realized it was going to be a long drive. We were going to be late. I tried to call Viviana, my connection at the potato-protection institution, but my 1999 Nokia phone ran out of saldo as soon as she said " 'Alo?" Anal Virgo that I am, I began to stress hard, and then I let it go into the universe, evoking saints and gods and what-have-yous. Step One: I have no control.

Lima traffic is like L.A. traffic but way more insane, way more diesel fumy, and way louder. Christ, but this city is loud.

We got to La Molina at 9:42 and I found a secret Lima. There is in this city a National Agricultural University (here? Why?), and, nestled behind it like a tuber, the C.I.P.

I might be a post-doctoral fellow, or affiliate at the C.I.P. The C.I.P. is the International Potato Center, whose mission it is to:

"reduce poverty and achieve food security on a sustained basis in developing countries through scientific research and related activities on potato, sweetpotato, and other root and tuber crops and on the improved management of natural resources in the Andes and other mountain areas."

International Center for Potatoes

Carlos showed L and I around, speaking in his Oxford-educated accent about potatoes, potatoes, and some other potatoes. He discussed the health benefits, the origins, the uses of the crop, and the problems indigenous Andean people have in maintaining their intellectual and land rights, as well as preserving the ancestral varieties of potatoes that their grandparents knew. He showed us in vitro potatoes, potatoes in gardens, plastic-covered potatoes boldly fighting viral infections (it evoked for me memories of the scary parts of "E.T."). 

I love potatoes and my heart is in the Andes (and L.A. and Prescott and sometimes Lima and Tucson and and and and) ... I want to help.

My contribution is to generate an ethnographic cookbook of broad interest, delineating all the wonderful creencias (beliefs, folklores) and recipes related to approximately 35 of the 2300 varieties of Peruvian potatoes and other tubers. I will provide recipes for each tuber (for they each taste different, and all the varieties I have had are really delicious roasted with sea salt and olive oil), their nutritional content (more than 50% higher protein content than our potatoes'), and, most interestingly to me, the beliefs and sayings that surround each variety. For example, in Ancash, the north-central Peruvain state where I conducted my masters research, native people say that "life without chuñyu (an important potato soup) is like life without love."

A beautiful book like this will seduce norteamericanos to buy new varieties of potatoes; they are organic, they are lovely, they are purple and yellow and white and chemical-free. In order that we can be legally export them to Europe, Japan, Canada, the EE.UU., et cetera, we must freeze-dry them, but that is a traditional way to prepare them anyway, and they are easily restored to plumpness (though never juiciness per se).

Thus the people of the Andes will see an increase in income (they are incredibly impoverished); their varieties of potatoes will be maintained (the CIP does this in their important labs, but the Andean people are proud of their food heritage and would like to do it themselves as well); and consumers of these newly imported crops will realize well documented health benefits. 

We need:

1. help starting a company or NGO to start the freeze-dry process so we can export the new varieties of potatoes

2. a photographer to illustrate the book

3. a nutritionist willing to help me determine the content of the recipes (potato nutrition is well documented)

4. a chef to help design the recipes (and/or replicate the indigenous ways of cooking the potatoes)

5. a layout artist

6. a publisher

I will conduct all the research, do the writing, find the funding. The CIP will sponsor us and give us office space, scientific/genetic knowledge and library access at their pretty facilities in Lima, ensure that profits are properly disseminated, and ensure that the freeze-dry process is well maintained throughout its lifespan.

Who wants to come to Peru, for real? 2012?

Ciudad de Reinas

Your Norte Americana amiga visits South America for the first time. Her plane landed in Lima from Miami at 05:30 this morning; you go to greet her. Your Mormon taxista is chipper, eager, talkative. You feign ignorance, pretend to text your invisible novios Peruanos. She appears from the baggage claim from the middle of a gaggle of foreigners. You are groggy, she is too.

Bueno. Looking for a place to eat an early breakfast in San Isidro is an exercise in Buddhist patience. If you are really hungry, you will look upward, as you rarely otherwise might, recalling your ancestral primate origins, in search of maracuya (Passifora edulis).

Maracuya

The modern city of Lima was built upon maybe 100 distinct pre-Inca archaeological sites, but like everything else, none are open for breakfast. Only ghosts and drunks are up at this hour, or búhos, como yo. If you are lucky enough to encounter a living, cognizant someone who is awake (always a night watchman), and you ask for directions to a nearby open restaurant, the night watchman will merely laugh. He will point you to the Radisson. Or if he is feeling feisty, toward his house in Surco Viejo. He’ll smirk.

Your friends's impressions of the city are favorable as she asks where the sun is, and, in the same sentence, if there are stray dogs. No sun. Yes to the dogs, but not in San Isidro or Miraflores. She’s been all through Asia, but she avidly fears dogs. Rabid dogs usually run toward their prey. They are vectors and their job is to spread the virus. Thus they are predictably violent. These street dogs aren’t usually rabid, but they have not had their shots.

Lima is on her best behavior for your friend. It’s like your friend is a visiting aunt with money, and Lima is her poor niece with mommy issues. Negotiations are possible. No cars have tried to run you over yet (for there are no cars) and only two taxistas have whistled at you in as many minutes. Lima’s grey rendition of sunlight begins to appear, and un cafecita opens its doors, as if magically, for you, your friend, and rich businessmen holding El Comercio. It is 07:00 a punto, you drink fresh jugo de lucuma (Pouteria lucuma) sin azucar, and it is as if you could love this city, this octopus of sprawl, again.

Lucuma

Can I have an advance on liberty?

We anthropologists and ethnologists must avoid interpreting the world by employing a notion of a "collective identity," lest we arrogantly relegate "others" to a very small and uncomfortably tight box. So said Mario Vargas Llosa in his brilliant article from 2000, "The Culture of Liberty," which appeared in Foreign Policy (122): 66-71. Here a post-Maoist Vargas Llosa argues that some aspects of postmodernity and its offshoots, while, yes, denying the world of rich folkloric color, empower many humans to free themselves from stifling nationalism and other shackle -isms. Peruvians and Frenchmen alike can go to Micky-D's and celebrate with ketchup, a condiment so guiltless and beguiling, corn syrup be damned.

Nonetheless, here in Lima, the taxistas participate if not in a collective identity, than in collective practices that involve: (1) honking at everything that moves or does not move, including birds and trash cans; (2) swerving toward one another, glaring, and then honking; (3) eagerly honking at all gringos, soliciting them, regardless of whether they seem to need a taxi or not (and usually ripping them off, shamelessly overcharging us). Fearlessly, I can assert: they ALL do ALL of these things in the course of a day.

How then should we compartmentalize culture? Where is the colloquial boundary of culture-with-a-capital-C? Ah, Intro to Anthropology. I still don't know what to tell them. Just like my mentors, I have devised sufficient answers for even the brightest students. 

And then I go to the bar, whereupon ...

We smell a new Limeño culture. As we step through puddles of don't ask, we have, if you are in, say, wealthy touristic Miraflores, at least three archetypes. We have the slut. She's somewhat cute but not brag-worthy, ok? She wiggles her little ass all over, and I mean ALL over, archetype two: the foreign drunk guy. He's usually "on holiday," and muy guapo. He buys her a Pisco. And another, and another. And another. Enter archetype three: the beggar. 

I am sad to report that even Peruano Vargas Llosa ignores her in his article. Maybe the beggar can employ some aspects of globalization to "construct their cultural identities through voluntary action, according to their preference and intimate motivations." As John Fogerty shouts from high nosebleed stages, "Don't you wish it were true." 

I do. For if it were true, my doctoral dissertation - about the subjective interpretation of beauty, the expression of intimate furniture preference - wouldn't be so goddamned moot. Really, my interviewees, my families, my beggars, my taxistas ... can only choose from what they can afford. And I don't see President Alan Garcia helping them out very soon. 

The only professor to ever make me cry in class called me a Bootstrap Theorotican.That is a person who believes that anyone on the planet can lift themselves up by the colloquial bootstrap. Such a North American construct, no? Because it's really hard to lift oneself up if one hasn't eaten in three days. 

Now I am an indigenist - but I am not a naive one. I see the benefits that the Great White West brought the Quechua and Aymara speaking descendants of the Inca. Now they can vote, using ballots they cannot read. I see the lovely mix, though, too, of Spain and her innocent, pues, children, who never meant any harm, and who brought the powers inherent to literacy and new forms of nutrition and music and art. We must always meld and weld and as Vargas Llosa says, "joust" against one another.

My taxista - the interviewee of the day today - he works 14 hours most days. He brings home about 70 nuevo soles (new suns - so poetic!) on a daily average, and sometimes he really does choose to spend some on simple pottery. He loves ceramics. HE, not his lovely wife (employed full time in a grocery store), makes the household décor choices. Hey. The liberty of globalization offers him that choice - manifest in new constructs of masculinity. Will he select glazed? Unglazed? He also enjoys watching the street kids on his lower-middle class block paint the street with sidewalk chalk. It gets destroyed, he says, and they do it again the next Sunday afternoon. He says Peruvians have a lot of talent. 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Vargas_Llosa