A society with very traditional values
Peru remains a conservative society in its majority, which still projects to the community figures of reassuring reference. The family is here in the heart of all and against all. The family link is an essential value for many. It is not uncommon to see several generations living together under the same roof (which becomes larger as floors are built to accommodate children, their families and then grandchildren). It is only recently that real estate in Lima, for example, is beginning to offer small surfaces, so much so that this quest for independence which seems to characterize our European societies is exempt from the Peruvian social scheme. This family attachment seems moreover to transcend the social differences
On the other hand, Peru remains a macho country. Domestic violence is a serious problem in Peru: according to justice statistics, 132 women were killed in 2020 by their partners and there were 204 attempts and 59 violent deaths of women still not precisely elucidated. In 2011, the crime of "femicide" was finally recognized punishable by 15 years in prison, but the numbers are not decreasing, quite the contrary. Today, more and more women are getting involved against violence against women. The movement #niunamenos walks every year in August in the streets of Lima and sounds the alarm as soon as a case is declared. A police force that is not very attentive and a justice system that still too often rules lightly are points that the associations continually denounce. Ordinary violence also exists in isolated rural villages where victims do not have access to sufficient support to even report the abuse they have suffered
Progress on issues such as abortion and homosexuality is non-existent. If debates are held, they are systematically postponed without the country making any progress on these important issues. There are a few pockets of progress, but the vast majority wisely shelves under a smooth and harmonious facade.
Precarious social rights
Precariousness. The average INEI figure for the average income of Peruvian households is still low: 1,325 soles or about 340 euros. The average salary in Lima is a little higher but so is the cost of living. If we add to that a very high precariousness of rights, it is far from being easy to live from day to day in Peru. Only 50% of the population is associated to the banking system, figures which vary very slightly as for the active and/or urban population but it remains an average of 40% of Peruvians who live from day to day in the heart of an informal economy which, moreover, has been paralyzed by the crisis of the Covid. These precarious and itinerant jobs reappeared after a few months, necessity being the law, and explain in part the rapid spread of the virus in a poorly protected population
Health. According to INEI, 81.3% of Peruvians have access to social security. Since 2002, the Peruvian government has implemented a comprehensive health insurance (SIS, Seguro Integral de Salud) designed to ensure that the poorest people have access to basic health services, and it now represents 50% of the insured, which means that very few people still have full social protection. The SIS has yet to prove itself, especially in rural areas where access to care and medicines is difficult. The Essalud public system has a rather bad reputation due to the overcrowding of hospitals and the lack of means, while the private system is very expensive. In general, health is very expensive and self-medication is the norm. The Covid-19 made victims in all the social classes in Peru. It became impossible to find beds in intensive care but many victims also made the choice to die at home not to add an economic burden to their family. As elsewhere, the price of oxygen balloons went up, endless queues were formed and only family solidarity allowed in some cases that patients were saved at totally exorbitant hospitalization costs
Retirement is another subject on which the situations are very unequal. Since the early 1990s, Peru has restructured its national pension plan by transferring the social responsibility of the system to individual responsibility (compulsory individual savings and private and voluntary pension plans). This private system covers only 7 per cent of the poorest households. Former President Ollanta Humala installed a minimum old age pension in 2011 (the Pension 65 program). This system has more than 500,000 beneficiaries who receive 250 soles every 2 months. The average life expectancy is now 77.2 years. The middle classes have partly survived the crisis because the government has opened up the right to recover these private pension funds in advance, subject to a ceiling. Many of them have applied for this measure, which has solved the "here and now". Between April 2020 and February 2021, 6.8 million affiliates withdrew 32.7 million soles. Only 1 million affiliates have not touched their pension funds. This economic truth has supported the recovery and reactivation but also announces greater precariousness in the future
The challenges of education
Like the rest, the education system in Peru is two-tiered. In the public sector, classes are often overcrowded. Teachers in the public sector also have a bad reputation: they are paid so little that they have to look for other work on the side. In almost all schools (public and private) students wear uniforms. Students in the private (and very expensive) sector usually study for longer periods of time, sometimes up to university (also at a cost). In both public and private schools, classes are often held in the morning. According to INEI (National Institute of Statistics), the illiteracy rate in Peru is 5.2% (2.7% for men and 7.6% for women). The figures for access to education were also on a steady improvement curve before the crisis.
Schools have remained closed in Peru since the beginning of the Covid crisis and have never reopened. More than a year and a half! The process of resuming semi-presidential classes began in April 2021 in rural areas where Internet access is difficult. Then the new government finally decided to let schools define "openings in semi-presential on flexible, progressive, voluntary and safe criteria with regard to health standards." In the most privileged cases, distance learning systems have made it possible to maintain a school link, but in the year 2020 alone, 230,000 children left the system. According to a study by the Peruvian Ministry of Health (Minsa) and Unicef, more than 30 per cent of the country's children and adolescents suffer from cognitive and mental disabilities. The crisis will have cost future generations a lot. And the gaps have only widened during this long parenthesis in a country where only 31.7% of the population owns a computer
The arrival in power of a former provincial teacher created some illusions about an upcoming and necessary reform of education, but soon drowned under the affairs of the government, no major reform was made. Let's hope that his successor will do better.
Chronicles of a common racism
Since 2010, the Peruvian Ministry of Culture has a Vice-Ministry of Interculturality to maintain vigilance and guidelines to avoid discrimination against any type of citizen or people. And this one is well punished by the law. Nevertheless, 53% of Peruvians consider that their fellow citizens are racist: towards the Quechua or Aymara minorities who do not dominate the Spanish language, towards the Afro-Peruvian population or the Amazonian ethnic groups. In a society that is such a cultural melting pot, racism is quite difficult to define. Many little nicknames that could be considered discriminatory are used even within the family to refer to each other: almost every family has its "gordo" (fat), "flaco" (skinny), "chato" (small), "chino" (with Asian features), "negro o negra" (with darker skin color), "cholo" (with Andean features) or even "gringo" (the whitest of all) without anyone taking offense. But these same adjectives in another context mark a deeply rooted social categorization. Here, the other is also read through his skin color. The dominant system, white or mestizo and Spanish-speaking, is structurally excluding and things are struggling to change. Indigenous and Afro-Peruvians are poorly represented politically, in economic or cultural bodies. Some young authors or thinkers are militating for a reawakening of identities within society and things are gradually moving. Quechua singers of the younger generation are emerging, such as Renata Flores or Liberato Kani. The fashion is also more inclusive and diverts identity markers (native fabrics, colors) to associate them with others. The road is long. Again, the arrival on the political scene of Pedro Castillo, who wears the traditional Cajamarca straw hat almost constantly, is a strong symbolic step. The campaign itself has not been devoid of the ordinary racism that only hinders a society that hides many of its most creative talents among these minorities. They are also bearers of the unequalled resilience and constant reinvention which is the trademark of this young Peruvian society, which is searching for itself but which pushes little by little to draw another face of Peru.
