Thanks to the Interoceanic Highway, a construction project linking Brazil to Peru's Pacific shoreline, villagers from the small town of Pacaje, high in the Andes of Southern Peru, can now travel in three hours along a paved road to their provincial capital, instead of a seven-hour trek on a dirt track.
This project has provided much needed accessibility to villages in the region. But such progress has come at a high cost.
Without consulting the Alpaca herders and farmers of Pacaje, engineers paved over communal cropland and demolished sacred rock formations, angering their local deities.
The Association of Rural Educational Services (SER) has chronicled the highway's construction through Andean villages like Pacaje to document its impact on the indigenous people that live along its path. They have also taken the lead in bringing local concerns into the national debate over the Interoceanic Highway and six hydroelectric projects funded by Brazilian investors.
Through its news service, public policy magazines, and public forums, SER is helping community leaders make their voices heard by the central planners in Lima at a time when social conflict, especially in rural areas, is on the rise. By encouraging debate among local populations, sub-national governments, and decision-makers in Lima, SER is helping mitigate disputes and avert violent confrontations such as the clash last June between indigenous protestors and police in the Amazonian region that left at least 22 people dead.
SER has brought officials from national and regional bureaucracies together with local mayors to devise policies that will better protect the biodiversity of Peru's Andean and Amazonian regions. Among the most contentious issues now under discussion is the Inambari hydroelectric project, which has sparked local protests and strikes because it could flood farmlands used by some 15,000 people.
Even projects that enjoy widespread support, such as the Interoceanic Highway, hold both promise and peril for affected communities. Local leaders are looking forward to improved transportation and more jobs but they fear a rapid influx of outsiders, bringing with them increased illegal logging, wildcat gold mining, contraband, prostitution, and drug trafficking.
While none of these problems are new to the region, the new road could make them worse, writes Aldo Santos of SER. "Certainly the Southern Interoceanic [highway] is a blessing for many, but it is only half a promise when it comes to improving the lives of the thousands of families who live in Cusco, Puno, and Madre de Dios."