Debate and Protest

Mayor of Choropancha

Yesterday was our day for our debate. Our debate was over the privatization or nationalization of the mines of Perú. It went pretty well, we had a good back and forth. I was defending the side of nationalization which was pretty difficult since it is such huge difference than what I am used to and most of the problems with mining are due to the government, not the system that is used for it. Finally after struggling for an hour we finished. The other half of the class that was watching had to chose sides, of course since they are form the USA and have western views, they ALL chose the other side. Oh well, at least I got a 90. Afterwards we went home and ate lunch, chicken and rice, not as good as mami's. Then Nikita, Sandhya, and I got together to work on our other project. We didn't do much and instead sat around goofing off. The work could be done tomorrow, we were pooped from the debate. This morning we didn't have to go to class but we did have to finish our project. When Nikita and I left the house we saw a huge group of students blocking the street. They were protesting to protect to the environment. Finally Sandhya showed up and we tried to head towards la plaza de armas. It impossible to find a taxi so we decided to take the tiniest oldest bus I have ever been on. It was really hot and cramped inside, but it was also kind of fun. Until we were stuck in traffic for a really long time and I had to stand there the whole time. The bus dropped us off but we had no idea where we were, we followed this lady who had gotten of the bus with us for a while until we got somewhere that I recognized. When we got there, there was a huge army of people walking down the road. Apparently it was a protest against the mining industry, all the contamination of water and land. We pushed through and got to the lawyers office and interviewed him for our project about cultural patrimony. After the interview we decided to go to the center of the chaos to take a look. The night before I had watched a documentary over choropancha a town that experienced a mercury spill by the mining companies. The mayor of the town was the main guy of the movie and he was very passionate about making a difference. Guess who I saw speaking in a microphone during the protest? Yeah, the mayor! It was pretty cool seeing him in real life. I am sad that this is still a problem though. After that we tried to interview the people constructing a hotel over an old Inca site but they said we needed to set up a meeting and have official documents. Instead we interviewed a travel agent. Then we went home and had lunch, some weird rice and egg patty things. After lunch we hit the books! I interviewed our host mom for our project. Thank goodness we finally finished the project, but now I have to memorize a ten minute speech. =P Photos and video courtesy of Sandhya, I left my camera at home that day.