Fix the Cholo Divide in Peru

Standard disclaimer: I am a partisan Creole. I say politically incorrect things like “un criollo que se respeta” before an activity that I myself do in order to signal desirable behaviors. Un criollo que se respeta has at least three children (as opposed to one is the new two). Un criollo que se respeta drinks the leche de tigre at the bottom of the ceviche plate, etc.

That said, how can the racial divide in Peru be fixed? I don’t know. I don’t know if anybody knows.

I’d take a page from Mexico’s PRI, which embarked on a rhetorical “revolution” for decades to keep anarchists and Marxists at bay. While it was coupled with policies like agrarian reform which had only marginally better results than they had in Peru, the soft side was subsidizing the arts to promote a new “cosmic race.”

Peru’s government tries to showcase the beauty of native cultures, but you only see it on TV Peru, the much less popular equivalent of PBS. Their attempts are noble, but not very compelling. I’d give money to street artists to cover the urban infrastructure with indigenist and mestizaje murals, especially in Lima and the cities.

Such a campaign was initiated by Lima mayor Susana Villaran, only to be undone by her villainous successor Luis Castañeda. Beyond continuing a public arts campaign led by artists themselves, I don’t know what government could do.

Another message for the creoles, albeit inappropriate for government to deliver, would be that the cholos are Peru’s only draw for international tourists. Nobody outside Peru thinks creole Peru is cool. Trust me, I’ve tried to sell Peruvian criollismo with a website and a book. Nobody cares!

As the partisan creole, I love Lima/Callao, gastronomy, bullfighting, Catholic history in the Americas and Señor de los Milagros, Carmencita Lara and Zambo Cavero, marinera, pisco and guisos, wooden balconies and sillar. I love it all, but my fellow gringos don’t. Neither do other Latins.

What do the foreigners want from Peru? Machu Picchu and Chan Chan, Inca/Nazca/Moche/Shipibo, ayahuasca and siete raices, Pachamama and her apus and the music of Brisas del Titicaca. If it weren’t for the cholos, Peru’s tourism would be about the same as Chile’s. A few naturalists coming to experience the sierra y selva, then skipping through Lima even quicker than they do now.

I learned that if you’re not selling Cusco, Iquitos and Puno, you’re not really making money in Peru tourism. Fortunately the creoles are a mostly educated class, especially with business. Those who don’t suffer from pituco pomp are aware of the cholo attraction, and the lack of interest in criollismo.

It’s become popular for haughty white dudes to cite some great-grandparent’s Inca surname. Gianmarco’s daughter plays huaynos. And the art students too smart for their own good decorate their apartments with Elliott Tupac-inspired graphics and listen to Chacalon, or even make their own trip-hop versions of it.

Maybe we just need to wait for these forward-looking creoles to keep working their magic. It takes a long time to forge a national identity.

On the other hand, some of the cholo divide comes from cholos themselves. Or at least people who look like cholos and have cholo names. In my experience, the people who watch La Paisana Jacinta to laugh at the ignorant Indian in the big city are not the creoles, but the children of cholos! The LPJ-branded circus was in San Juan de Lurigancho, an area your average pituco will only see on the news or in that awful Paolo biopic.

Lurigancho and the periphery districts are filled with indigenous families that moved to the big cities. Their children who grew up in Lima or wherever are urbanized, and they know firsthand how rural peasants aren’t. They don’t want to be that way, and so they laugh. I imagine actor Enrique Espejo justifies his portrayal of the cholita by looking at his audience. How offensive could it be if that’s who watches?

It’s not the elite creoles tuning in to Esto es Guerra to worship the PED bods of the white models from Lima. I only catch cholos watching that show, and I only see creoles making fun of it. There may be a self-loathing among the urban cholos, I don’t know. But it’s unlike the Black-White Divide in the States, where more white youth enjoy black culture.

Also unlike the racial divide in the United States, the Cholo Divide in Peru is not necessarily race-based. The vast majority of Peruvians are somewhere on the spectrum. Almost nobody is all white or all indigenous (or other). So the government asks in the census, and this is not a joke, and I agree with this approach: how do you self-identify?

In the same way Joe Rogan or Sopranos writer David Chase identify as Italian-Americans, the surname matters less than the predominant culture of their families. Many of the most hardcore neoliberals and urban intellectuals in Peru are as brown as Pedro Castillo. And some of the most devout worshippers of ayahuasca and Pachamama are as white as PPK.

Maybe the young cholo-looking Peruvians who identify more with creole culture infuriate the indigenous leaders and drive the animosity against Lima. I don’t know. I don’t have ties to that world, pure speculation.

But it doesn’t always work in the creoles’ favor. In 1990, Mario Vargas Llosa’s presidential campaign was doomed because he was a rich white creole from Miraflores. Fujimori only defeated him because he presented himself as a humble, nonwhite farmer.

Again, I’m a partisan creole. And of course there are still reactionary creoles who remove beautiful murals at taxpayers’ expense and self-respecting cholos who would consider voting for an old white neoliberal capitalist.

Maybe there is a whole world of slights and insults that the cholos suffer that I don’t know about and haven’t mentioned here.

I walked the streets of downtown Arequipa after the day of looting and talked to a few shopkeepers. The mantra they seem to have worked out was “Hoy nos defendemos.” One old woman opened a closet to show me a long lead pipe she claimed she’d use if they came back. I put my money more on the tanks and platoons situated strategically around the city center.

Most of the corporate retailers on Mercaderes were closed well after 10 a.m. A restaurant manager said the mob looted the Estilos department store because they hadn’t closed and respected the strike. One prick in the group throws a brick at the glass and the opportunists descend on the merchandise. Then all the neighbors decide it’s better to take a few days off work.

The image above became an early icon of the protests after they captured the Arequipa airport. This poor bastard isn’t creole elite. He’s an upwardly mobile mestizo working for a better life than his parents had. Same with all the shopkeepers downtown. I believe images like this are why more didn’t join the protests.