Giving Up is Only the First Step

A year ago when I arrived in Callanca I asked at the health post if there existed any record of the number of diabetics living in Callanca. I wanted to offer some classes on how to manage the disease. Needless to say no such records existed. In fact the health post didn’t even own a glucose monitor so there was no way to screen pregnant women for gestational diabetes or older, overweight patients for Type II diabetes. A related problem had been proven to exist without doubt. The health post was open only from 8 A.M. to 1 P.M. six days a week. It offered no laboratory facilities or services or testing equipment more sophisticated than a scales and blood-pressure sleeve. The post was tiny. It had been built in the 1980s to serve 2,000 people and was now attempting to serve 6,000. So Gisela, the obstetrician, convinced me to triage the diabetes education classes and help her in her efforts to expand the health post. Sure, why not?

Gisela assured me that preparations for the expansion were well underway. A year ago she’d met with an NGO in Chiclayo and the NGO had offered the services of an engineer who’d come to Callanca to survey the land on which the expansion would take place and to draw up plans. Gisela brought out a thick file folder. It contained papers that addressed the issue of a donation of land for the expansion of the health post. The donated land consisted of a small parcel in back of the existing health post. We looked out the back window at it, an even, rocky, barren strip of earth about the size of two tennis courts with carizo (cane-like weeds) five feet high growing in the strip nearest the building where it received enough shade to survive. It looked like a quarter-acre of Hiroshima from the year 1946. No wonder somebody donated this, I remember thinking, who would want it and of what use could it possibly be to anyone besides the posta?

But in Callanca that’s a dangerous question to ask about any piece of land. Here nobody gives away land. Not for a park, not for a market, not for a school, not even the four or five square meters it takes to accommodate a well that would provide water for maybe 60 or 80 families. And not for a health post, either, I was about to find out.

Gisela extracted papers from the file folder and told me that the land in back of the health post had in fact been donated by the legal owners, a family named Gonzales. A thick sheaf of papers that included photocopied identification cards, signatures and fingerprints indicated that the donation had been made four years ago. So why was the health post still the size of a Seven-Eleven store and keeping the hours of an antique shop in Monson, Maine? There’d been a dispute over ownership of the donated land, Gisela admitted. Even though the title to the land was registered to the Gonzales, another family had disputed the donation. They said that the property was actually theirs and that the Gonzales had stolen it from them twenty years ago when the Municipalidad had first sent representatives to Callanca to take a census and register property ownership.

Two years ago representatives of the families had signed an “acta,” a copy of which Gisela extracted from her folder. The acta stipulated that the families would be paid 2,000 soles each to stop bickering and agree to the donation. The Gonzales were willing to donate outright but since the other family—a family that didn’t even officially own the land—was demanding money, they wanted money, too. The posta had never paid the 4,000 soles. So even though the land had been “donated” both by the family that owned it and by the family that didn’t own it, the health post was unable to do anything with the land because of “those people,” Gisela said, and nodded in a direction that indicated I was supposed to know of whom she was speaking. Who are “those people” I finally had to ask.

“Los Campos,” she whispered, and nodded in the same direction. Los Campos? But the Campos were my host family, the family in Callanca with which I was living. Their house was located next-door to the health post. My host family was singlehandedly preventing the expansion of the health post..

Slowly but surely, over the course of nearly a year, this revelation would give rise to a series of discoveries and related events that could only have taken place in Perú. First, Gisela returned to the NGO that had been willing to sponsor the renovation two years ago. Needless to say they’d long ago spent those funds on other projects and couldn’t promise more funding in the forseeable future. Next, Gisela consulted the legal advisor for the Ministry of Health in Chiclayo. The lawyer looked over the paperwork and said that the donation was still valid, however no organization either public or private was going to fund the renovation unless we settled the dispute between the legal owners of the property and the supposed owners—my host family. Gisela didn’t want any part of this negotiation. It was up to me.

I’ve finally been able to work out a mutually satisfactory, even cordial relationship with my host family. But during the period of which we’re speaking conditions were much less than cordial and far from satisfactory. When I broached the subject with César and Margot they insisted that the land belonged to the heirs of César’s late aunt, Micalea Campos, and that the family in whose name the title was registered had stolen the land and sereptitiously registered the title without the Campos’ consent or knowledge. When I pointed out that an agreement to donate the land would benefit the entire community Margot asked what the community had ever done for them and what benefits could they expect? She unleashed a screed on the subject of their financial problems, how badly they needed money to pay off their loans, how César’s mother Natividad was ill and bedridden and who in the community was thinking about her or her welfare? I knew that César’s mother and father were actually very well off and regularly hosted weddings and birthday parties at their house that had to be costing them hundreds or thousands of soles. But of course I kept quiet about this and let Margot keep talking. The people who do the most talking in a disgreement eventually end up saying something that compromises their own position. This Margot did. She said that the only reason the Campos were demanding money was because the other family, the Gonzales, were demanding money as well and if the wrongful owners were going to benefit from the transfer of the land then so were the rightful owners. I pounced on this opportunity. I knew that the Gonzales weren’t asking for a penny. The only reason they’d ever been offered money was because the Campos had demanded money and they and the NGO who’d tried to resolve the dispute two years before had thought it fair to offer money to both parties. So if the Gonzales were willing to donate outright then so were the Campos?, I asked. Either because she thought the Gonzales would be unwilling to donate or because she’d painted herself into a corner, Margot somewhat hesitantly agreed and César concurred. I settled for this shaky commitment, returned to speak with the Gonzales and confirmed their willingness to donate and, over the course of the next few weeks and months, spoke to my family about the donation as if it were a done deal. Gradually they seemed to resign themselves to the idea. Possibly they realized how bad they would look in the community if they and they alone were holding up the expansion of the health post.

During those months several events beyond our control occurred. Elections were held and the change of leadearship meant that many functionaries at all levels of government changed, including the legal advisor at the Ministry of Health. The previous advisor had been extremely helpful and interested in our situation and his specialty had been property rights. The new advisor didn’t seem particularly concerned about us and her specialty was contract law. So we found ourselves severely deficient in that critical area of support. Also Sebastiana Gonzales, the Gonzales in whose name the donated property was registered, died suddenly. According to some of the legal experts whose advice we sought, this meant that a description of the property and a notification of its change in ownership had to be published in the newspaper so that any heirs to the property other than the sons of Sebastiana could come forward and state a claim. This would not only delay the donation but would result in costs that the health post couldn’t afford and that the heirs to the property would be unlikely to want to incur. Also the doctor in charge of the health post quit and a new doctor was assigned to replace her. The departing doctor took with her the health post’s only copy of the plans drawn up by the NGO four years previously.

But problems beyond our control appeared to be the least of our worries. Plenty of problems that had been completely under the control of the health post also existed. They easily could have followed through with the stipulations of the acta consenting to the donation two years ago when the NGO had been willing to pay both parties. They could have taken advantage of the recent willingness of the Campos to agree to the donation and could have signed a new acta while Sebastiana was still alive. They could’ve made more than one copy of the plans. But they didn’t and so we began to explore other options.

In the course of exploring these options we found out that there was one other small detail that the health post had never gotten around to attending to. It turned out that the title to the land on which the existing health post had been built had never been publicly registered following its donation twenty years ago. In short, nobody legally owned any of the land that the current much less the future health post occupied or might eventually occupy. The health post was essentially a publicly funded squatter.

We sorted all this out with an attorney. The cost of registering all the land and wiping up all the legal nastiness involved in establishing legitimate ownership would come to 2000 soles, the land on which the current posta had been built could be registered immediately but the land slated for the expansion would take more time. The cost of surveying the land and drawing up a plan would come to 4000 soles. We would need to construct a fence around the property to be donated and hang up a sign declaring the land to be the property of the health post and the site of the future construction of an addition. This would cost several hundred more soles. It all seemed pretty much impossible so nobody did anything for several months.

But in Perú (if not everywhere), giving up is only the first step.

The new doctor—though of course it took her some weeks to get accustomed to her new job—turned out to be willing to devote the time and attention it deserved to the process of clearing the title to all the property. And an unexpected ally, someone who’d been working on the expansion of the health post long before I arrived in Callanca, came to our aid.

Aldo Rodríguez was a callancano I’d worked with on various other projects—the artisans’ association, agricultural projects and the establishment of a municipalidad in Callanca. He knew about the legal stipulations requiring us to fence in the land and post an official notice. Some months previously he’d been about to begin that work when I told him about the disputed ownership of the property on which the expansion would take place. He lost interest at that point but now he’d returned to speak with the doctor and understood better all the implications of the legal procedures pending. He had a friend, an engineer, who’d be willing to survey the land and draw up a plan for free. The engineer was used to working with the public registry of deeds and titles and volunteered to do the investigation necessary at no cost. He believed that he could clear the titles without the help of the expensive attorney.

So with these processes underway, it was again up to me to drag my host family along for the ride. Aldo scheduled a meeting at the posta to sign the acta that would make official the donation of the land for the expansion. All I had to do was get my host family to show up and sign.

Everything in Perú requires a document. Aldo delayed in writing and printing the document inviting all the interested parties and witnesses to the meeting until the day before the meeting would take place. Late in the afternoon on the day before the meeting he brought me invitations for César and Margot and for Macedonio, César’s father. I left a copy with César and Margot and at dusk rode my bike to Macedonio’s house out in the fields north of Callanca.

Macedonio greeted me warmly. Macedonio always greets me warmly in spite of the fact that he probably has about as much use for a gringo as he does for a subscription to GQ. He respects me because he knows why I’ve come to Callanca and sees that I haven’t shown up for a week or a month and then headed back to Lima or Chiclayo as have so many other so-called friends of Callanca over the years. Though an octogenerian and a little hard of hearing, Macedonio can still dance till dawn at a matrimonio and consume liters of beer and chicha as he does so. His wife Natividad is confined to a wheelchair after surviving stomach cancer and the requisite treatments. Both she and Macedonio were still plenty sharp enough, I’m sure, to guess the reason for my visit. I explained that the posta was finally ready to begin preparations for the expansion and showed Macedonio the invitation. He thought it was a paper that I wanted him to sign but I repeated that it was merely an invitation. He handed it to his daughter María who read it, confirmed its nature and pointed out to Macedonio that the signing would take place tomorrow. María clearly wasn’t happy with this development. Her late mother was Micaela, the alleged owner of the disputed property. Later I understood that there was another reason why María seemed unhappy. For some reason Aldo, when he’d written the invitation, had included a paragraph thanking the Gonzales family for donating the land but making no mention whatsover of the Campos. Since I hadn’t had time to read the invitation before delivering it I didn’t find this out until later that night.

In spite of the lateness of the invitation and the undiplomatic wording of the document, the Campos, represented by César and Macedonio, showed up on time for the meeting the next day. On time meaning on Peruvian time, an hour or so late. Aldo was there, and of course the doctor and Gisela, as well as three witnesses and the Teniente Gobernador, an appointed official of the Peruvian government living and working in Callanca. The only person who hadn’t shown up was Benjamín, the representative of the Gonzales family. Aldo had invited him and he’d said that he’d be there. Aldo rode his bike to Benjamín’s house and returned. He wasn’t at home. He was in Chiclayo. We couldn’t call him because his cellphone was “malogrado”—yestereday he’d dropped it in an irrigation ditch.

The Campos suggested that while we waited we should go out back and indicate the boundaries of the donated property as defined by the plans the engineer had drawn up. This we did and the Campos seemed satisfied with the limits of the property. When we returned to the posta Aldo went again to look for Benjamín and came back accompanied by the Gonzales’ representative. Benjamín had arrived while we were out back defining the property lines and had thought that nobody had shown up for the meeting.

It was time to compose and sign the acta. In Perú “palabras” are necessary at a time like this. Everyone in the room who has taken part in the process says a few words to mark the occasion, restate the history of the action to be described in the acta, and thank the parties in attendance. The doctor, Aldo, Benjamín, César and I spoke while Gisela wrote the acta, which briefly stated the minutes of the day’s activities and alluded to the agreement between the Campos and the Gonzales. We passed around the libro de actas, a book of the official minutes of all past meetings organized by the posta, and each person signed the acta. All seemed relieved and in good spirits. So much so that César suggested that we immediately return to the donated land and stake off the property lines. Aldo, God bless him, had brought in his book bag not only the tape measure we’d used to measure the property but also the stakes and twine we’d need to stake off the boundaries.

It took about an hour to remeasure dimensions and drive the stakes. I shot some photos to commemorate the occasion. By then it was getting dark. We shook hands or kissed cheeks and said good-bye.

And that’s as unequivocally successful a termination to a project as one could ever hope to achieve in Perú, where equivocation is the very definition of the path to success and where giving up is but the first step in finding that path.