Huelga! Huelga! Huelga!

My trusty friend Wikipedia tells me that the UN considers a developed country "one that allows all its citizens to enjoy a free and healthy life in a safe environment." Although it’s probably useful to make a distinction between developed and developing somewhere along the lines, going to Peru right after Nepal has made it clear just how large a continuum development really is. Nepal isn’t even ready to think about providing basic education and health services to their population because they’re still struggling so much with the prerequisites for strong social services, things like roads, building construction, running water, electricity and a financial system to handle aid efficiently. Compared to Nepal, Peru might as well be the US. True, you can't drink the tap water or put toliet paper down the drain. But they have paved roads—highways even—with lights and painted lanes and street signs! The (very comfortable) buses have schedules and seat assignments that are more or less followed. The restaurants are licensed. There are municipal garbage trucks. It’s wonderful.



Woohoo! We don't have to sprint across the highway, there's a bridge!



Lima: looks a heck of a lot like a European city at first glance

But just as I was starting to get lulled into thinking Peru could be a developed country, I hit a roadblock—literally. This weekend, we got stranded in Northern Peru, in a town with no sewage system, because the illegal miners decided to block the Pan-American highway to protest unsafe working conditions. The strike was supposed to last for 72 hours; luckily it only ended up lasting about a day and a half. I’m still a little fuzzy on the details, but I imagine it went something like this:

Miners: Huelga! Huelga! Huelga! (Strike! Strike! Strike!)

Police: Why are you blocking the road?

Miners: We’re protesting unsafe working conditions!

Police: But you’re working in illegal mines… we can’t do anything about the conditions in unlicensed mines.

Mines: …Oh… Shoot.

When you have no legitimate way of airing your grievances, I guess blocking the highway is as good a move as any.

The town we got stuck in was Chiclayo, located on the trade route between the coast and the jungle about 12 hours north of Lima. The town itself has a huge market, including a corner for witch doctors, but most of the really cool things to see are a few kilometers outside the town. We went to see the Sipán tombs, the Sipán museum, and the beach towns near Chiclayo.

Sipán Tombs

Sipán was first unearthed by local grave robbers (huaqueros) who would sell looted artifacts on the black market. Luckily in 1987, archeologists and police were able to protect the sites before everything was removed. The site itself was not too exciting because all the artifacts are now carefully tucked away in the museums, but the tombs are still actively undergoing excavation and some have been mocked up so you can see what they looked like upon discovery.

Mock-up of the Lord of Sipan's tomb

I didn’t really understand what we were looking at initially. To me, Sipán just looked like a little hill and I figured the Moche people used them as a foundation for their temples and tombs. Actually it turns out that hills were the Moche’s temples. Pretty cool.

Hill or Temple?

My favorite thing about the tombs was how the discovery, excavation, and presentation of the site had propped up the local economy. When the tombs were first protected, the locals were not happy about losing access to “their” buried treasure. So instead of bringing in outside help, the archeologists trained the locals as excavators, researchers, guards, and guides, providing lasting employment to the nearby village. And because the main museum is in another town on the other side of Chiclayo, a new level of economic stability has been introduced into the whole region. Tourism walks a fine line between helping and hurting, and this to me was a great example of tourism done right.

Sipán Museum

Most of the goodies from the tombs have been moved into the absolutely gorgeous new Sipán Museum in Lambayeque. It’s amazing how much stuff was buried in the graves of the upper class Moches—enough to fill a three-story museum in Lamayeque, plus the smaller museum at the Sipán site. The Moches believed that in death you just continue doing the same things as you did in life. So the higher up you were in the society, the more things you needed with you when you died—including your entourage, which they killed in order to bury with you! The Lord of Sipán was buried with his three young wives, a military chief, a guard, a flag-bearer, a young boy, a dog and a llama, plus an insane amount of gold and ceramic objects and precious stones. Pictures are not allowed in the museum, but if you ever find yourself in Northern Peru, check it out. I think it definitely lives up to the claim of being one the best curated history museums in the world. Because the excavation was so carefully documented, pictures of the objects as they were found are interspersed with the actual objects, giving you a more complete understanding of the archeological process.

Sipan Museum in Lambayeque

From the little museum onsite at Sipan, the Younger Lord of Sipan

SQUISH! The head of the Younger Lord of Sipan

Beaches

For a change of pace from ruins, we went to check out three beach towns southwest of Chiclayo—Pimentel, Santa Rosa, and Monsenfú. In retrospect, the only one really worth the time was Pimentel. There, along the sandy beach, was a cool look at the fishing economy, both in modern times and historically. On one side of the beach, we got to see the modern fishing economy, with the large boats out in the ocean catching the fish with big nets, then the smaller boats bringing the fish from the big boats to the shore, where they were weighted, rinsed and sold right on the beach!

Small boat bringing in fish

Fish market on the beach

Washing the fishies

Nearby, we saw fisherman making cabellitos, little fishing boats that look like one half of a kayak and are designed to go up and over the ways. Peruvians in the region have been fishing in these boats for ages, and the fisherman still sell these fish to the local restaurants and in the market.

Cabellitos

Helping the fishmen get out on the water

Hopping over a wave

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We’re back in San Bartolo now and likely to stay put until we leave for our big trip after Easter. We're on a regular schedule of helping out now (preschool in the morning, school-aged kids in the afternoon and adults at night) and living with Cecilia is hard to beat.