Peruvian parades, politics and elections (Part I) -
Sunday, October 5, 2014 - Today is election day in Peru. Voting is compulsory for ages 18 to 70 and optional for those older. Fines of 80 soles (approx. US$ 29) are meted out to those who do not vote. Since everyone in the country has an ID card which must be shown and recorded at the voting locations, the authorities are able to track those who do not make it to the polls. While the fine is not too onerous, it is very inconvenient since apparently the government ties a notice to your ID file and any major transaction or banking activity, which always require that you identify yourself, show that you owe the government money and must clear that before you can proceed.

Turnout for presidential elections can be in the 90 - 95% range, while the average for the past 10 years in regional and municipal elections has been in the mid 80's. Elections are held on Sunday to facilitate participation by everyone. No campaigning is permitted on the Saturday prior to the election, liquor sales are prohibited, and most businesses, schools and churches are closed on election day. No meetings of any kind are permitted during the hours the polls are open, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. This ban includes church services. Since this is General Conference weekend, no broadcasts were available at the chapels on Sunday. Fortunately, we were able to watch four sessions in English on the internet at home. All the sessions will be shown at the chapels this coming Saturday and Sunday, October 11 and 12.

A little background on the Peruvian government. This country is divided into 25 regions, which are roughly comparable to our states. Each region is governed by a regional president, vice president and council; similar to our governor and state legislatures. The elections for these positions, as well as for the mayors of all the cities, are held every 4 years. The regional president and the mayors can be elected for more than one term. On the other, the president of the country is elected for a five year term and cannot hold consecutive terms but can be elected again after they have been out of office for at least one term. 

The next presidential elections will take place in 2016. The national congress is unicameral, one body, consisting of 130 representatives and is elected at the same time as the president. Peru has many political parties (over 20 candidates for mayor of Huaraz and at least 12 for regional president), and so a candidate for national or regional president must receive 30% of the vote to be elected. If this does not happen, then a runoff election is held 30 days later between the top two candidates. All candidates have a symbol associated with their name. This facilitates voting for those who do not read as they can mark an X on the symbol of candidates they are voting for.

Campaigning here in Huaraz for the regional president and mayor positions has been very intense since about May. Many of the parades and rallies are organized in the open plaza in front of our apartment and photos of that activity will be shown in this posting. Campaign posters here are numerous and very large and will be shown in the next blog posting.

Gathering in our park and preparing for a parade downtown. Candidate for regional president. 

Note the condor model on the roof. He is their symbol.  It actually looked more like a very large chicken.

Their candidate for mayor.  There were all kinds of vehicles decorated like this for the various candidates.

This sign for a mayoral candidate is bigger than the moto-truck that is carrying it. He was the eventual winner. As you can see, his symbol was the large 1 in the square.

Every parade needs some music. The band is practicing before heading downtown.

Since it usually takes several hours for the parades to get organized, food vendors show up to feed the crowd.

What parade is complete without an ice cream vendor?

Check out this bag of puffed corn, going to provide snacks for the masses.

Ladies in native dress with their green balloons for the parade.

These dancers with the red headdresses are waiting to enter the march.

Another dance group preparing for a political parade.

Loaded and ready to roll. Supporters of Mayor candidate.

Another band prepares to parade.

Some costumed marchers getting ready.

A sign on a moto-truck getting ready to march downtown.

Another political parade ready to roll downtown from our location.


Sometimes a school parade marches through our plaza while a political parade is organizing as happened in the photo below.

Our next post will show a few of the thousands of posters and painted walls that the candidates put up to promote their respective campaigns.

Update on Apartment Life in Huaraz -

Not long after we moved into our apartment, we posted some photos on the blog of the apartment and the furnishings. Since then we have added a few items.

Our laundry arrangements are a combination of U.S. and Peruvian methods and Sister O. uses both to optimum advantage.  However, this little patio really doesn't get any direct sunshine.

This is our open air patio and laundry area. Most homes that we have visited have washers but we have never seen a dryer. A dryer does use a lot of electricity and it is just too expensive for these people.  All clothes are hung on lines, either in open patios or on the roofs. During the dry season this is very convenient and effective. In the rainy season, clothes must be brought inside by noon to avoid the regular afternoon rains.

On the roof of our four story apartment building there are sinks for laundry and lines for drying.

Since we are apartment A, you can see our designated sink with the letter A on the wall next to it. We have never used this sink and it does not appear that the other tenants have used theirs either. The sinks only have cold water piped to them. The other tenants have washing machines--at least we think we can hear them from time to time when we are outside on our patio.

Each apartment also has a designated clothes line. The letters can be seen on the black metal pipe to which they are attached. Ours is to the far left.

We also each have a separate water tank with our letter on it into which the city water flows by pressure and then down to our apartments by gravity. You can see the black filter on the incoming line that we had installed on tank A to clean up the incoming city water. It has helped considerably.  We also had new faucets installed in the kitchen and so our water is no longer rusty.

Here is the laundry from one of the other apartments hung out to dry on a sunny Saturday morning.

Marilyn uses the clothes lines for the sheets and pillowcases which dry very fast up here in the sun and breezes.  However, the dryer is much appreciated as it would be hard to lung all our laundry up the five flights of stairs.  The rainy season is just starting again and the sky looks like this every afternoon and like the sky in the picture below every morning.

Before we leave the roof, here is the view toward the north with Mount Huascarán in the distance. It remains snow-capped the year-around. The building in front is the hostal owned by our landlord. He had many rooms rented during the holidays but it is empty now. He and his wife live on the ground floor.

We have added some wall hangings to the front room, office and spare room.

We added a coffee table and an alpaca wall hanging to the front room.  The bouquet of flowers cost one sol, or about 36 cents.  We should always have fresh flowers in our house, right?

 

This alpaca rug or wall hanging was purchased here in Huaraz for 100 soles or about US$ 36.00.

We had this table made here as we couldn't find any that we liked in the furniture stores.  We really like the table but will probably have to leave it here when we go home.

In the other corner of the front room we added these typical Peruvian wall hangings.  We have had several people comment on how pretty these things are and where did we get them.  They were all purchased here in Huaraz but the locals just don't hang typical things on their walls.  Most of them really don't hang much of anything or just posters of various things.

These are made here in Huaraz.

A woven cloth piece.  This is made out of thick pieces of yarn-like cotton strips.  We have seen them in various sizes and designs.  Very unusual.

We had the OxFest picture framed and it proudly hangs in the front room.  And of course everyone has to comment on what an amazing family we have--we have to agree.  And I have shared the calendar you made Jill (thanks again) with lots of visitors.

Here is the Nativity collection in the living room so far. We later moved the OxFest picture to a different wall.

A closeup of the all wood Nativity scene Marilyn purchased in Lima.  This is really an interesting set, all hand made by a couple in Lima.  It also has a tree and an archway that goes with it but the space isn't big enough.

A quick look at our now fully equipped office. 

An office is not complete without maps.  Again, people are surprised at the idea of hanging maps on the wall.  These were about 40 cents each.  But the store didn't have any world maps--guess South America is their world.  The left one is of Ancash, the equivalent of a state and the region where all the records that we are filming are from.

Map of Peru with the different provinces in colors. Ancash, gold or mustard, is the province on the left, just above Lima on the coast.

The third bedroom is now the music conservatory, ironing room and general catch-all room.  Don't you love the ironing board cover? 

The piano teaching area. We bought the keyboard locally. Marilyn now has 3 semi-serious students, 2 wannabes, and a new student. The chart has the note names in Do, Re Mi and the letter names.  As in all countries south of the boarder from the US, students are taught in Do, Re Mi but I think the alphabet letters are much easier so this is a combination--the students refer to it often.

At the suggestion of a student, she has added "Amigos Comen En Grupos" (Friends Eat In Groups) to replace the English "All Cows Eat Grass". "FACE" they all seem to understand as they all use Facebook.

Elder Oxborrow didn't feel that his 2002 SLC Olympics cap (thanks again Matt) was appropriate for Sunday wear, but needed something to protect his balding pate from the intense sunshine at 10,500 feet. He found this derby in a local hat shop but it had to be steam-stretched at the laundry to fit his big head. Such a handsome elder, no?

Marc: Could he audition for the Haymarket Squares?

News and Views from the Neighborhood -

There are always interesting things going on around our apartment. Here are a few that we want to remember.

This is Zoe, our friendly 8 year old neighbor who lives in the third floor apartment above us. When she is home from school, which is after 1:30 every day, she usually greets all who come and go in the patio below from her third story window. You can see her father Richard behind the window to the right keeping an eye on her. The landlord calls her the "cuckoo" since she pops out of this window to greet everyone. We think she is the "social committee" for the building. Marilyn is teaching piano to her older sister Tracy, who is 15, and Zoe sometimes brings us pastries or something else from her mother, who is very appreciative that she does not have to pay for the piano lessons.

This is Mitzy, our landlord's cat, perched on her owner's truck. Every few months she has boyfriends who appear on the adobe wall in the background and often wake us up with their howling since our bedroom is the corner window in the back corner. Otherwise, she mostly stays in the landlord's apartment and ignores the rest of us. 

The park in front of our apartment is the staging ground for all kinds of parades and large group activities. This was a formation and inspection of some kind by the students of a military school.

 

Here is the same group in formation.

This small movie hall opened up next to our apartment about 3 months ago. It was a house that they remodeled and put large screen TV's in 6 or 7 rooms. You rent a video and show it in one of the rooms with your family or group. The charge is US$ 1.80 for the video and 35 cents for each person. They sell soft drinks and chips. They said it has been going well since there are no movie theaters in Huaraz. We keep thinking we will try it out one evening--they do have some movies in English.  Anyone seen a movie worth seeing lately?

They installed these two high tension power poles recently at the corner of our street and as we left for the archives one morning we noticed the two lineman hanging in the top of the poles.

Upon closer inspection we could see that they did have safety harnesses to hold them to the poles.  They said this should improve the electrical service in the neighborhood although we really can't complain too much.

                                                                   ********************************

Since the archives where we work are on our side of town, therefore part of our "neighborhood", we'll include a few items of events there. The archives get many visitors looking for legal documents such as deeds, wills, probate settlements, court documents, etc. Some also come looking for information on ancestors. Recently we received some four legged visitors.

They appeared on the sidewalk across from the archives.

They didn't stay long. I guess they didn't find the information they were looking for and soon departed to the open pasture behind our building.

A new food service has been added to the archives. About three weeks ago a lady and her daughter showed up at 9:00 a.m. across from our entrance with a table and various food items for breakfast. She has developed a thriving business serving mostly hot food items and sandwiches to the office workers in the complex. She stays about an hour and then puts the tables under the back of the truck in the background, picks up her remaining food and containers and leaves.

The owner is in the red jacket behind the table. Here are five customers enjoying their breakfast. They can even sit on the sidewalk behind her since she has no chairs in her "restaurant".

As we are photographing the old birth records, we run across interesting Spanish first names for their children. Most make sense in Spanish but their English translation often sounds a bit odd. Here are a few examples.

Visitación - Visitation

Incarnación - Incarnation

Segundo/a - Second

Fortunato - Fortunate or Lucky

Espíritu - Spirit

Peregrino/a - Pilgrim

Nieves - Snows

Asunción - Assumption

Apifanio - ???

Amable - Friendly, lovable

Lucha - Fight

Dolores - Pains

Justo Pastor - Just or Fair Pastor

Oyster - ???

Natividad Alicia - Nativity (she was born in Sept.)

Digna - Worthy

Modesta - Modest

Inocencia  - Innocence

Albino - Albino

Primitiva - Primitive

Ledy - Lady

Amable is the first name of our new secretary at the archives and she is very friendly.  

Our records preservation bosses were in town this past week--one from Salt Lake and the other lives in Lima.  They came to assess the project and try and decide how much longer it will take to finish here.  We doubt we can finish before we leave.  They are pleased with our work--we have taken almost 130,000 images now.  All those names, plus the millions more that other camera crews around the world are taking, have to be indexed (digitized) before they are available as searchable databases on FamilySearch.org.  It is really an huge project the church has undertaken.

As a part of their visit, we went out to lunch with them and the director of the archives.  We ate at a restaurant that specializes in cuy (guinea pig).  We talked about this in our earlier blogs, that cuy is considered a delicious delicacy here and we have been asked many times if we have tried it.  They ordered a grill with lots of different meats on it, including cuy.  So we finally split off a very small piece, about one bite each.  It tastes like dark chicken meat (doesn't everything taste like chicken?)  We keep telling everyone that eating cuy is like eating a pet cat or dog for us and one bite was more than enough.