Ukuku, Qolqepunku Glacier; photo by Jorge Vera 2009

Back in December, msnbc.com published a photo story on Qoyllur Rit’i and global warming, with photos by El Fotógrafo and captions by yours truly.

I neglected to provide the link to that slide show, which includes some of EF’s strongest images of the dangerous (and endangered) glacier pilgrimage, so here it is, belatedly: “Peru’s Disappearing Holy Glacier.”

This photo, above, of a veteran ukuku is one of my favorites. The guy must be about 40 years old, but exposure to the harsh Andean elements has made his face a craggy moraine field.

Most of the ukukus at QR are in their late teens and early 20s; you don’t see a lot of old-timers like this guy. He lived through the crises in the 1990s when the glacier started melting and breaking up, and ukukus began falling into crevasses and dying.

Back then, the religious group that organizes the pilgrimage didn’t know about global warming and its effects on glaciers. They didn’t realize that their seemingly sturdy glacier was becoming a major hazard and couldn’t support the weight of hundreds of ukukus at a time. So they would ascend to the glacier at midnight to perform their rituals, as they had always done, and then the accidents started happening.

One veteran ukuku we interviewed in 2008 told us that he saw nine of his fellow ukukus die on the glacier in 1995. He was about the same age as this ukuku. Both were survivors of and witnesses to the hazards of extreme climate change.

BTW: I swiped the title of this blog post from an entry in the Cabinet of Wonders. COW’s entry provides an excellent introduction to the rituals of Qoyllur Rit’i and to the surreal atmosphere that surrounds this ancient event rooted in pre-Hispanic traditions.

 The title reminds me of these lines about glacier worship from “The Threshold,” by Rudyard Kipling. The speaker starts by recalling the days of early cave-dwelling humans, who lived in the shadow of receding glaciers and were starting to make sense of their place in the world:

The close years packed behind them,

As the glaciers bite and grind,

Filling the new-gouged valleys

With Gods of every kind.

Gods of all-reaching power–

Gods of all-searching eyes–

But each to be wooed by worship

And won by sacrifice.

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The devastating 8.8-magnitude earthquake that ravaged Chile on Saturday could easily have happened here in Lima or anywhere else along the Pacific coast.  Sooner or later another big one will hit Peru, as one did in July 2007, and there are only a few ways to increase your odds that you won’t get killed when it happens. 

Living in a well-constructed, “earthquake-proof” home is the best way to protect yourself. I put quotation marks around that phrase because no structure is guaranteed to withstand the most violent earthquakes. Still, as engineer Andy Johnson notes, a well engineered building should hold up long enough for the people inside to escape before it collapses. If you can live and work in an anti-seismic structure, you’ve increased your survival odds significantly.

But that strategy only works if you live in a developed country that enforces building codes and if you have money to buy or rent a well engineered house.

What about the millions of people who live in developing countries, like Haiti and Peru, where is a montón of substandard housing — structures made of unreinforced brick and concrete masonry?  

Forget about waiting for the government to seismically retrofit every existing structure and to enforce antiseismic building codes for all neighborhoods. Your chance of survival depends on getting your patootie out of your home as fast as you can.

That means: Keeping a pair of shoes handy at all times.

This is our earthquake-preparedness strategy here in Miraflores. We have three pairs of shoes lined up at our front door, one each for me, El Fotógrafo and El Hijo. EH knows that when a quake hits, he’s supposed to go to the door, put on his shoes and leave the house with us.

Forget the Wii, forget the GameCube.

Shoes.

Without shoes, you’re funked. There’s usually glass falling all over and metal things flying around in an earthquake. You can’t run to an open area like a park if your feet are getting cut up by glass.

I know that the United States FEMA website says to stay inside during an earthquake. But that strategy only works in countries where the buildings are built to protect people. As we saw with the Haiti earthquake last month, in poor countries with substandard housing, staying inside means being buried alive.

Why did a collosal 8.8 earthquake kill only several hundred people in Chile, while the Haiti quake (which measured 7.0 Mw) killed about a quarter of a million? Chile, a richer country, has strict building codes and enforces them.

For those who want to change the world for the better, the lesson couldn’t be clearer.

Invest in infrastructure to disaster-proof countries in Central and South America. And include vulnerable areas in North America, while you’re at it.

Well, I seem to have all the answers today. I’d pat myself on the back only that won’t help me or my family when the next quake hits here in Peru. It will take years for Peru to get its housing act together. I can’t wait until then. Neither can the rest of Peru.

We’ve got our shoes lined up by the door. ‘Cause, as Nancy says, these boots are made for walking.

Nancy Sinatra These boots are made for walking
Cargado por igrecman. – Ver más clips de música, videos en HD!

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Levi let me hijack his column today to guest rant about bullfighting (The Twisted Temptations of Bullfighting in Peru). It’s not a particularly green or PC piece. It’s actually a confession about the thing I experienced at Acho that I never wrote about before.

Call it my testosterone moment in the bullring. The column includes nice photos by El Fotografo, by the way.

I only went to the bullfights twice in Lima but I still think about what I saw and felt on those hot, dusty afternoons. It’s one of the strange things about living in Lima, which has never shaken off its colonial past. The longer I live in Lima, the more deeply I feel the presence of all that Spanish colonial-era stuff –  the importance of one’s family name, the rigid social/racial hierarchies, the passion for dancing horses/bleeding toros. You’d think that after two and a half years I would have gotten over the strangeness of Peru, but it’s the opposite. Lima is just getting odder and odder to me.

I was away in the United States for a month, which might be partly responsible for my state of mind. (Not that the U.S. felt any less odd while I was there). I enjoyed being in the States but was happy to fly back in January and start teaching. Even with the chaotic traffic, life is simpler here. People aren’t killing each other with handguns.  There’s no such thing as a FICO score. Vegetables are cheap.

The racism, the bloody animal stuff — that still needs work. Time for Peru to get a move on.

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A tower of Peruvian-made panettone entices shoppers at Wong supermarket, Miraflores (photo c. Barbara Drake 2008)

Peruvians and  Brazilians love their locally-made panettone, an Italian-style Christmas cake that’s grown into a multimillion-dollar business for bakers in South America.

Now the Italian Cake Industry group wants nonItalian manufacturers to conform to strict baking standards or stop calling their cakes “panettone,” reports Reuters:

Keep Christmas cake Italian, panettone makers say

Dec 12, 2007 ROME (Reuters) – Italy already has strict rules governing the origin and quality of its wine, while Parmigiano parmesan cheese can only be made in Parma and regulations on “Italian” olive oil are being tightened.

Now Christmas cake has become the latest product that the government and manufacturers want to protect from foreign imitations.

Italian bakers produce some 117 million panettone and pandoro cakes every Christmas — worth 579 million euros ($849 million). By law they must be made according to strict rules, including using only butter and beer yeast.

But those rules do not apply abroad, meaning exported Italian cakes may not be up to scratch, and foreign-made versions may only bear a vague resemblance to the tall, puffy, golden desserts prized by Italians.

“Just think — seven out of 10 panettoni and pandori exported to the United States do not respect the production norms. Seven out of 10 Americans buying an ‘Italian-style’ panettone are getting a fake,” Alberto Bauli, head of the Italian Cake Industry, told a news conference.

Click here for the full article.

The bru-ha-ha goes all the way up to Italian Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro, who wants to take action with the World Trade Organisation.

All I can say to Castro and the Italian cake jefe is: Have fun trying to stop the so-called bomba panettones. You’re too late.

Panettone manufacturing has been around for decades in Latin America, and the business is booming.

Todinno, one of Peru’s major manufacturers, reported that sales had risen by mid-November, despite the international financial crisis. Sales of Peruvian panettone alone were expected to exceed $110 million, according to a Nov. 24 news item in Andino:

The Peruvian panettone market is still dynamic and would increase by 7% this year, with sales for about 110 millions dollars, Todinno Company stated today.

“The consumption of panettones in the country [Peru] have been growing in a good pace for the last years and despite the international financial crisis, we have seen this Christmas campaign come ahead of time,” said Carlos Bravo, general manager of Todinno.

“In previous years, sales only reached 40 per cent by this time of year, but now sales have accelerated and we have already achieved 60% in mid-November,” he told Andina news agency.

(Full article here.)

Not only are sales of Todinno and other Peruvian panettone rising in Peru, they’re also up in Venezuela, Chile, Panama, Brazil, United States and Japan, Bravo said.

Sounds like Italy is getting riled up about the authenticity of S.A. panettone because it resents losing out on worldwide sales. If this issuch a serious concern to Italian bakers, why didn’t they raise a fuss decades ago when Italian immigrant Nicolas D’Onofrio first started baking sweet cakes in Peru?

It’s all about the money.

Moreover, the logic doesn’t hold for this product. What’s next? Start suing foreign businesses for making Italian bread? Ciabatta? Pesto? Marinara sauce?

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Lara helped me coordinate the NBC Nightly News team’s coverage of water scarcity in the shantytowns. The NBC crew followed an aguacero (water truck) driven by her neighbor as it traveled on its early-morning route through neighborhoods in Ate-Vitarte. The expensive water sold from the truck comes directly from the contaminated River Rimac and is supposed to be treated for heavy minerals, bacteria and contaminants but is not.

SEDAPAL, the agency charged with overseeing water quality for metropolitan Lima, turns a blind eye to the aguaceros.

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Here’s the video of the report that aired on NBC Nightly News on December 8.

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I did. I even tweeted about it, erroneously.

Thank god for Wikipedia and the efforts of reporters on the religion beat. Because it turns out that December 8 is the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose birthday is celebrated September 8 and whose own conception is said to fall nine months earlier, on today’s date.

As one Wikipedia contributor ponderously points, the Virgin Mary’s “immaculate conception in the womb of her mother, through sexual intercourse, should not be confused with the doctrine of the virginal conception of her son Jesus, known as the Annunciation, and followed by the Virgin Birth.”

In other words, Immaculate Conception Day doesn’t have anything to do with the conception of  the baby Jesus. I’m glad about that, actually. The idea of Mary conceiving on December 8 and giving birth 17 days later conjured images of Mary’s stomach swelling and bursting at breakneck speed, a frightening scenario for any woman who’s given birth to contemplate.

December 8 is supposed to have special significance in the United States, where it is the country’s patronal feast day.  I don’t know any Americans who celebrate it as a national holiday.  It’s strictly a Catholic affair.  But here in Peru, it is a national holiday. Banks closed, schools closed, government offices closed.

Apart from going to church, what is there to do on Immaculate Conception Day in Lima? In our house, El Hijo woke up ecstatic that he didn’t have to go to school.

“It’s like a Saturday,” he explained and rolled for another hour of sleep.

EH’s thoughts echo those of this Marianist poem, by Raissa Maritain:

The Blessed Virgin is the spoiled child of the Blessed Trinity.
She knows no law. Everything yields to her in heaven and on earth.
The whole of heaven gazes on her with delight.
She plays before the ravished eyes of God himself.

In the spirit of the Virgin Mary, my nonCatholic son played like a spoiled child morning long and balked at finishing his homework.

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NBC Nightly News Chief Environmental News Correspondent Anne Thompson interviews glaciologist Marco Zapata at Pastoruri Glacier, Oct. 2009 (photo c. Barbara Drake)

Tune in to see footage of dying Pastoruri Glacier and to hear correspondent Anne Thompson talk with experts on how Peru is struggling to adapt to a world without glaciers, a scenario that may be realized within the next quarter century.

Kudos to the NBC environmental news team for bringing this important story to the attention of U.S. viewers during Copenhagen 15. What happening in Peru is dramatic evidence of the catastrophic effects of global warming and rapid climate change. And although people in North America may not be experiencing such drastic climate effects yet, experts point to dire consequences if no action is taken on climate shifts.

(See “Manhattan floods, Chicago heatwaves and withering Californian vines: how scientists see the US in 75 years.” Guardian, June 16, 2009.)

Click here for my recent blog post on the report and additional video footage to be featured on MSNBC.

I was fortunate to work with the NBC team as a fixer while they did their investigations in Peru. Anne Thompson was fast-thinking and insightful in the field, as well as an excellent listener. She took in the stories of campesinos struggling to water their crops with the same degree of attention that she gave to Antonio Brack when the environmental minister told her that it was “very hard” to regulate environmental abuses in Peru.

“Yes, but that’s your job,” she pointed out to him several times. The reporter’s message was clear: Stop passing the buck.

That message applies equally to the United States, I’d add. It’s time for America to commit to reducing emissions. For those flat-earthers who still deny that global warming is bad for humanity, take a look at tonight’s broadcast and hear what the campesinos in Ancash have to say. Their struggles show that adaptation to climate change is part of our future as well.

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NBC Nightly News crew films Anne Thompson’s interview with community leaders near Huaraz who are fighting to retain water rights (Oct. 2009)

Environmental news correspondent Anne Thompson explores the accelerating retreat of tropical glaciers in Peru and the downstream effects of dwindling melt-water on agriculture, hydroelectricity and drinking water supplies for highlanders and coastal dwellers. Peru is among the three countries in the world most vulnerable to the effects of climate change (IPCC), and its dependence on glacier melt-water for most of its water needs could spell disaster for this Andean nation within 20 to 30 years.

 Thompson and a team led by environmental news producer Mario Garcia traveled throughout Peru for ten days of investigations in early October. The team spent time at Pastoruri Glacier, Huascaran National Park, Lago Parón and Cañon del Pato, in the department of Ancash, where Thompson interviewed glaciologists, community leaders and environmentalists.

Back in Lima, the team explored the hardships suffered by inhabitants of Ate-Vitarte and other shantytowns without running water service. Minister of the Environment Antonio Brack spoke to Thompson about Peru’s environmental policy, mineral rights and proposed solutions to the country’s pending water crisis.

In addition to the news report airing next week, MSNBC will feature extended video coverage about Peru on its online site. The report coincides with the Copenhagen 15 summit.

Apart from being deeply concerned about what will happen when Peru’s glaciers disappear, I have an additional interest in seeing the report: I worked as a ‘fixer’ for the NBC Nightly News team while they were in Peru, obtaining permits, arranging transportation and lining up interviews with experts. It was hard work and a lot of fun to help these news professionals get up to the glacier and back. Along the way, we managed to survive a freak electrical storm on Pastoruri that could have fried the team’s expensive cameras but thankfully just left a few people with very static-y hair. As Peruvians know, it’s always a risk when you climb to the realm of the apus.

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