Cocktails of the chicha and molotov varieties

Given the length of Ty´s last post, I decided to wait a few days for our readership to digest his tales of adventure before I went ahead and wrote my next one which is so much cooler than his, it will crush his post´s head and eat its soul. Again, I apologize in advance to my mother and grandmother for the danger content in this post. After this one, there won´t be any more tales of near-death. Just jaguar attacks. (You´ll see).

As Kat and I peke-peked away from the rest of the group, we expected a nice, easy, relaxing journey downriver and out of the jungle. This turned out to not be the case, although the first few days were actually quite pleasant.

The man who owned the peke-peke, despite the arrangement worked out ahead of time, decided halfway on our voyage to Sapahua not to go any further. This is probably due to the fact that he stopped at his house in a small community along the river for lunch, and had apparently encountered something, most likely in the form of a wife, which convinced him it was a bad idea to go the rest of the way downriver with us. He told us that around the corner there was another boat we could catch, leaving shortly.

This change of plans actually worked out for the best, as the boat around the corner was not a public boat, but a private one loaded up with government workers travelling downriver to check on various development projects that they were working on with the locals. They agreed to take us with them (in spite of and not as a result of anything I did, but rather due to Kat´s friendly interest in their plans and works). Soon, we were motoring downriver in a fast boat with a cover overhead to keep off the sun, eating olives and hard-boiled eggs they were passing around.

The men in the boat were all working on a few different projects, but had teamed up to save time and gas, and because they apparently shared a common interest in olive-and-hard-boiled-egg-eating. After a short trip downriver, we stopped at a small community to check on one of those projects. In this community (which may have been called Nuevo Luna, Nuevo Mundo, or something else starting in Nuevo), they were trying to start a small agricultural project, designed to allow the locals to grow fruit first for their own consumption, and later to sell. We went with the guys up to the village as they explained the project and checked in on it to see how it was coming.

In one of the villages, the men in the boat agreed to take on board another passenger and carry him downriver. Whomever made this decision apparently didn't care that the man was stumbling drunk, and was completely unconcerned by the way he proceeded to sit in the bow and try to fall overboard at every major opportunity. While sitting there, which put him in close proximity to us, he would every now and again suddenly take notice of us yet again, and having forgotten that he'd spoken to us only moments before, would be surprised to find two gringos on board the boat with him and begin much the same conversation we'd just finished mere moments before. At one point, he told us in a voice rife with incredulity, that perhaps the two of us, being gringos, would take interest in the fact that further upriver there were apparently a bunch of gringos on balsa wood rafts trying to float down! Could we believe it!! Our fame had apparently preceded us.

We continued downriver, stopping occasionally. As it began to grow dark, we realized we wouldn´t actually be able to make it all the way to Sapahua that evening. Not too worry, the government guys were going to stop in Nuevo Luc (where Tyler and the aussies later stopped as well), and would help us find a place to stay and food, and take us further downriver the following day. One of the guys on the boat, a young peruvian named Carlos (like roughly 60% of peruvians), was supervising a big project in the community to set up a system to deliver clean water, and as such had spent a fair bit of time in the community. He took us under his wing and made all of our arrangements for us. Our stay in the community was very pleasant, playing volleyball with the locals, bathing in the river in the dark of night under the stars (after first throwing rocks into the water to scare away stingrays or anacondas or whatever might be waiting to eat, sting, or otherwise disable us), and drinking chicha (luckily only discovering after I drank 4 glasses how its made).

The next morning, a long, low dugout canoe with a big peke-peke engine on it took us downriver through the early morning fog as the sun rose blood-red over the Urabamba to Sapahua. Upon arrival, we immediately caught a public boat downriver 8 more hours to Atalaya, the next major city on the river (although "major" means it had mud streets and hotels, and a few decent restaurants). We ended up spending a day in Atalaya, recovering from the arduous river journey.

From Atalaya, the original plan was to keep heading downriver to Pucallpa, from which we would head out to Lima. However, the only boat that could take us there, didn't leave for 4 days, and then would take another 2. However, there was another option, which we decided to take. At Atalaya, another river called the Tambo comes in from the west, and a short 8 hour ride up the river to a city called Puerto Colpa would put us at the first point reached by roads, from which we could catch first a taxi and then a bus over to Lima. This seemed reasonable.

A full day later, we arrived in Puerto Colpa, and upon disembarking from the boat, we encountered our first hints of trouble. The locals on the bank helping people get off the boat told everyone that there were no cars going to Satipo at the moment, (Satipo being a fairly large city, with a paved road and regular bus service to Lima). The problem was apparently that there was some sort of trouble, blockades, on the rough dirt road leading there. When I heard the words blockade and trouble, my sphincter clenched a little. After the two previous experiences I've had with blockade-running, I had no desire to ever be involved in that sort of adventure again.

The boat we had come upriver with was packed with a large group of older women from Atalaya, trying to get to Lima for a shopping expedition, and they were all quite upset at not being able to go further. However, as necessity is the mother of opportunistic greedy profiteers, a man began arranging to take a truckload of people and try to get through the blockades. He owned two small 4x4 toyota trucks, and soon had them filled with people standing in the back clutching to the roll-bars built over bed, Kat and I included. I had a bad feeling, but the man seemed very confident that we could get through without trouble. If I ever see him again, I'm going to have to have a short talk with him that may end in my losing a piece of footwear up a part of his body normally reserved for exiting only.

We bumped along a dirt track which can only be called a road if one has either never seen one, or is insane. I spent a fair bit of time trying to talk with a young military recruiter who was coming back from a trip to the river with two new young draftees in tow, as I struggled to remain on my feet in the pitching bed of the truck as it brute-forced its way over the potholes and giant ruts which threatened to swallow the truck at every turn. He pointed out the interesting sites along the way, such as the giant coca plantation on a hillside which he only pointed to surreptitiously and told me about under his breath. It began to get dark, but so far things seemed to be going just fine.

After a couple of hours, we came to a spot where some large trees had been dragged across the road to block it, but no one was around. All the men in the truck piled out to move them, and I had been helping for only a minute or two when I noticed the army guy was standing by the truck with his pistol held inconspicuously behind his leg, ready to use as he scanned the hillsides around. Either he knew something I didn't, or he just felt more comfortable with pistol in hand (he is from the military after all). The road cleared, we continued on in the dark.

4 hours passed in this way before we came to a town whose name I can't recall. It begins with the letter M, and sits just 20 kilometers short of Satipo (from which we'd be home free), but I suppose the name doesn't make much difference. It's merely the setting for the most frightening night of my life.

As we began entering the town along a road with small houses along the sides, we soon saw we we're going to have problems. Ahead of us was a long line of trucks and other vehicles, stopped and turned off. From my previous experiences with roadblocks, I figured that meant we wouldn't be getting through any time soon. In the town, there were only two bridges crossing a river which divided the town in half, and the blockaders had control of both of them, and no one was getting through. The reason for the conflict is relatively unimportant, being a very local issue regarding which of two states would have ownership of the dinky little town, but whatever the reason the result was our driver unloading his human cargo in the dark night and hightailing it back the way he'd come. Kat and I were left standing in the road with giant backpacks on, not really sure what to do next. The people we'd ridden with began moving off to see if they could get through, so gathering a small group for safety's sake, we headed down the road toward the bridge. Peopl standing in the street began warning us not to go further, that there was trouble on the bridge and it wasn't safe. We went only a little further, until 3 blocks from the bridges, before we could see that they were right. There was a fair bit of commotion further along, and stories among the people milling about began to contain violence. We were with a couple of older ladies at this point, and they wanted to get a hotel for the night and wait it out till morning. Roadblocks are much less dangerous during the day, so we decided this was a good idea and went with them. Unfortunately there were no hotels in the city, particularly not on the side of the river we were on, so we were left with the option of trying to find someone to let us stay with them, or trying to walk out of town back the way we'd come. Luckily just then a different group of ladies from our boat saw all of us and told us that the woman in a house had said they could stay, and invited us to join them. The house was basically a large shack, rough wooden walls and floors, what furniture there was was simple and basic. It had two floors and was divided into 4 rooms (two upstairs and two downstairs), with a fairly large backyard. It turned out all the ladies, perhaps 15 in all, had all holed up in this place, so Kat and I sat on the floor and chatted with them. We had no food, but the woman who lived in the house with her sister and her sister's children cooked us all a dinner of rice, fried eggs, and yucca. Things seemed to be going just fine, and we anticipated an uncomfortable but safe night sleeping on the wooden floor.

The position of the house actually turned out to be quite important, as it was situated at the crux of the coming problems. Situated on a corner, 100m in one direction led to the main bridge through town, and roughly 200 m along the other road led to the other bridge, both of which were blockaded. As such, the house sat at the crossroads of the two problem areas.

Around 11 the first trouble started. We had all just stretched out and began trying to sleep when we heard explosions and people running and shouting in the streets. I peeked out the door to see people running back along the road away from the main bridge. Questioning people yielded uncertain answers, something about a truck or two trying to run the blockade and being attacked with dynamite, possibly more. The sounds of shouting and more explosions sounded from the bridge, but I couldn't see anything from my vantage point. Despite the hissed imprecations from the crouching ladies in the room to stay inside, I ventured out carefully to see what I could find out. In the distance I could see fires and running men, and not much more.

After learning nothing more than that the troubles had escalated for some reason, I retreated back inside to wait. Keeping watch at the door, peering through cracks in the rough planks, I watched the confusion for awhile till it subsided somewhat after a half hour or so. I went back to where Kat and I had spread our sleeping pads in preparation for the night, and assured her that it seemed to be over now. A half hour passed, when suddenly the shouting rose again, more explosions this time, interspersed with smaller pop-pops that could only be gunfire. I again slipped quietly to the door to peer out, opening it a small crack to inquire of the people outside what was happening. There were more people in the streets now, some running away from the conflict, others running to meet it. The woman who owned the house and some other people standing cautiously outside said something about the police arriving, having brought a tank and teargas. They apparently needed the armor, as the blockaders numbered roughly 400, and were fighting back now with rocks, dynamite bombs, and molotov cocktails. The fighting outside raged down at the bridges, until finally the blockaders began streaming by as they apparently fled. A man stopped and began yelling, rallying the troops, arresting the retreat and gathering a large enough group to turn and charge back to the fight, picking up rocks and lighting molotov cocktails as they ran. The sounds of battle would recede down the street to the bridges, before swelling again as the blockaders continutally fell back to regroup before returning to the fight, and in the relative silence when the fray fell distant, the only sounds in the room were the ladies crouched behind a desk in the far corner of the room, whispering prayers to the virgin mary to save them. The mostly dark room was lit fitfully by flickering firelight from a large conflagration burning at the crossroads, made of tires taken off trucks waiting to get through. I went and sat by Kat in the dark, the role of strong, brave man somehow falling on my unworthy shoulders. I've discovered that it's quite difficult to maintain a veneer of calm, confident strength when one feels anything but, but I did my best. During one particularly long period in which the commotion seemed sufficiently distant, we decided to try to get some sleep, and everyone else tried to do the same. Suddenly, we were startled by a new commotion, this one by the people downstairs in the house we were in, yelling loudly about something. The commotion spread, running feet outside and yelling, something about water and the word "bomba". The house swarmed like a kicked anthill, and I tried frantically to get information out of anyone passing by, but no one had time to explain what was happening to the gringo. A few hurried snatches of information revealed that a bomb had rolled into the house downstairs, and the shouts for water indicated that they were trying to smother it. Should we get out? Was it going to go off? No one would answer, so I ran to Kat (whose spanish was just insufficient enough that she had no idea what was happening, and as such stood in the center of the room calmly), waiting at any moment to be torn apart by a blast from downstairs. Before I reached her, I was seized as my throat and eyes began stinging profusely, and my previous experiences with teargas made clear in an instant what was going on. The bomb downstairs was a teargas bomb, and everyone shoved whatever fabric they could find over nose and mouth as the room began to fill with the noxious fumes. The minutes ticked by in agony, till it slowly cleared, and one could breath without the benefit of improvised gas masks. Someone brought water, and we splashed some on our faces to rinse off the burning chemicals. In the aftermath of this new development, we sat on the floor truly frightened, listening to the continued sounds of battle outside, hoping for light and the possible end of the conflict. The conflict remained at a distance for a tense hour, until finally I felt confident enough to tell Kat she should try to get some sleep, that I would keep watch. It was probably 3:30 in the morning, and we were exhausted. I tried to stay awake, listening for any sounds that might indicate trouble coming, only to repeatedly start awake as the battle raged closer again to realize I'd fallen asleep. Finally, at around 4:30, the sounds died down, even in the distance, to the point where a peruvian guy who had holed up with us ventured out to see what he could find out. He returned some time later with the news that the police had been defeated and fled, and that the blockaders had told him we could pass. A quick assessment of the situation told me that the risks of trying to pass in the dark were outweighed by the safety offered by crossing in a large group of peruvians, mostly older ladies, and Kat and I quickly got our gear put away and backpacks on. At around 5am, in the dark, we all set out in a group towards the main bridge. Kat and I stayed near the center, trying to be as inconspicuous as one can be with a giant backpack on, as gringo as they get in the middle of a remote part of Peru, as we approached the bridge. We began passing large groups of men standing and drinking around burning fires, their ranks becoming denser as we approached the bridge and the main concentration of them, all yelling and celebrating their recent victory. Every muscle in my body was tensed, ready for attack, my pack straps unclipped and the whole setup ready to be ditched if we needed to run. They were shouting things at us, and after a few moments I managed to seperate out enough individual threads to realize that most were shouting "Tranquilo! Pasa, no mas!" (roughly "Calm, go ahead and pass"), but there were enough angry shouts about "gringos" and "extranajeros" that I didn't relax until we'd passed over the bridge, and roughly 300m beyond without incident. On the way, we walked pass the police tank, now unoccupied and abandoned. In a plaza further along, we found taxis willing to take us further, and 20 exhausted minutes later, we arrived in Satipo, a large city where no effects of the problems only 15k down the road were felt at all.

I've learned a lot in my travels, and one of the most important lessons has been about the nature of mobs and violence. The same person that would ordinarily smile and shake your hand, might just as easily use those hands to throw rocks or worse when caught up in the frenzy of an angry mob. Twice now, I've been in danger at the hands of mobs, but I wouldn't want to paint a picture of South America as land of open warfare in the streets. My experiences have been the result of bad luck, combined with bad decisions, decisions which ignored common sense and my instincts. Violence associated with political protest is not a characteristic exclusive or even inherent to South America. I've been teargassed three times in my life, and one of those three was in San Francisco protesting the Iraq War. On the other hand, I've walked past countless political protests in Argentina and other countries which were entirely peaceful, where I was in no danger. Regardless of where I am in the future, I've learned that large groups of people with heightened passions are highly unpredictable and dangerous, and best avoided.
- posted by Micah @ 12:45 PM