Gana Peru con Ollanta! (Peru wins with Ollanta)
It´s an exciting time to be in Peru! The presidential elections were yesterday, and the preliminary results are showing that Ollanta Humala, the nationalist canditate, has won by a small margin. Before I arrived in Peru, I had no idea that the elections were so close. However, I´m less embarrassed about that after discovering that the NY Times has only had a couple of articles about Peru in the past month. The other candidate waKeiko Fujimori, the daughter of imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori. Although many people supported her, her run for presidency is quite controversial. Her father is in prison for corruption and human rights violations during his presidency.
The family whose farm I´m on is very politically active. The older daughter, Alexa, has been working 12-hour days on the campaign of Ollanta for the last week (and has been tirelessly working on the campaign for many months). On Thursday, I accompanied Alexa on her campaign work to help her out (although I didn´t do that much and most of the time was spent squished with three other people into the backseat of a jeep cherokee). While we drove up the mountain to attend a meeting in Canta, then back down the mountain to Lima, we had a speaker on top of the jeep that blasted campaign songs for Ollanta.
The most exciting part of the day was the mitin (rally) on Thursday evening for Ollanta. It was held in Plaza 2 de mayo in Lima. What an exciting rally! Several bands performed first, many important cultural and political figures voiced their support for Ollanta (including the famous Peruvian author Mario Vargos Llosa), and then finally Ollanta spoke! He was a great speaker and spoke a lot about putting women first if he began president. Although there has been concern that Ollanta will nationalize many businesses and behave like Hugo Chavez has in Venezuela, he has made promises that he won´t and has distanced himself from Chavez, who he used to be close to.
The rally in Lima with Ollanta speaking
One of the largest concerns about the election was voting fraud, and interestingly, people from both parties are supposed to sit at the polls to monitor the voting. Since Ollanta won, though, it seems like there won´t be any investigations into fraud. If Keiko had won, then there probably would have been protests and investigations. To read more about the election, check out this NY Times article.
The family whose farm I´m on is very politically active. The older daughter, Alexa, has been working 12-hour days on the campaign of Ollanta for the last week (and has been tirelessly working on the campaign for many months). On Thursday, I accompanied Alexa on her campaign work to help her out (although I didn´t do that much and most of the time was spent squished with three other people into the backseat of a jeep cherokee). While we drove up the mountain to attend a meeting in Canta, then back down the mountain to Lima, we had a speaker on top of the jeep that blasted campaign songs for Ollanta.
The most exciting part of the day was the mitin (rally) on Thursday evening for Ollanta. It was held in Plaza 2 de mayo in Lima. What an exciting rally! Several bands performed first, many important cultural and political figures voiced their support for Ollanta (including the famous Peruvian author Mario Vargos Llosa), and then finally Ollanta spoke! He was a great speaker and spoke a lot about putting women first if he began president. Although there has been concern that Ollanta will nationalize many businesses and behave like Hugo Chavez has in Venezuela, he has made promises that he won´t and has distanced himself from Chavez, who he used to be close to.
The rally in Lima with Ollanta speaking
One of the largest concerns about the election was voting fraud, and interestingly, people from both parties are supposed to sit at the polls to monitor the voting. Since Ollanta won, though, it seems like there won´t be any investigations into fraud. If Keiko had won, then there probably would have been protests and investigations. To read more about the election, check out this NY Times article.
Hey Chloe! We're catching up on your travels and it looks like you're having a great time. Have you been to the Gold Museum in Lima? Thanks for letting us follow along on your adventure! Love, Maureen and Scott
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