También en español: Culpemos a EEUU primero

Ayacucho is a region with a population of 612,000 people. That means it is home to barely 2 per cent of the Peruvian population, according to the last census.
The strong poverty reduction figures, fed by market-opening policies, haven’t reached Ayacucho yet to take it out of its economic tightness - the rural sierra (although this region includes a section of jungle connected to the Apurímac and Ene rivers in its geography) continues to exceed 60 per cent poverty.
A couple of months ago, the communities of Huanta and Hamanga were surprised by the presence of people in uniform, with foreign military clothes, in their streets and living with them in a relatively calm – but somewhat suspicious – environment.
A US military deployment, with the approval of Congress and the authorisation of the Ministry of Defence, had arrived in the region to carry out, according to the rules, humanitarian work which includes building classrooms, wells, and giving medical attention to the citizens.

The voices of protest at this military visit, marked by the ties of inter-governmental cooperation, didn’t hold back.
The heads of the community protection groups, in Ayacucho as in other regions, reduced by their incapacity to form themselves into an intelligent opposition – lacking one of them in Congress – have again poured out the clumsy and monotone anti-imperialist declarations that accuse and criticise North American military interventions, placing on them the responsibility for the country’s poverty.
Ayacucho sits in a zone which acted as a base for subversive group Shining Path to plan terrorist acts throughout the country and, although now the group has been seriously reduced in number and in effect, its remnants affect the region’s stability, since its complicity with drug traffickers puts at permanent risk the region’s security.

Clearly, the number of Ayacuchans displaced by the armed conflict initiated by Shining Path and the worrying levels of poverty registered have enormously restricted the region’s development.
However, what isn’t mentioned are the figures that show the quantity of Ayacuchan immigrants produced by the wave of violence unleashed in that time in Peru.
An important study carried out by Karsten Paerregaard, a researcher at Copenhagen University’s Anthropological Institute and specialist in trans-national migration, notes that during the early nineties a considerable number of people presented themselves to the US authorities as refugees of the political violence in their home towns and villages, and asked for asylum in the northern country.
Currently, the study adds, many of the shepherds in the US come from the rural and urban areas affected by the war fought between the Peruvian armed forces and Shining Path.
The effects of this migration can be seen in the changes hidden in the society but well-known to each family of the central highlands of Peru that receives money from the US, in terms of access to education, being able to afford the basic necessities, and the acquisition of goods that improve, progressively, their quality of life.

Cooperation is necessary. The improvement in security that an impoverished region like Ayacucho can enjoy, brings with it economic development.
This couldn’t satisfy the expectations of thousands of campesinos and small businesspeople if it didn’t come accompanied by progress in humanitarian aid, reconstruction and social opportunity. The enemy to beat is not the US, it’s poverty. Any shadow of suspicion can be cleared up if we first get rid of the desire to be uninformed.

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