A Hall of Mirrors in a House of Cards

About two weeks ago, the engineer in charge of a water project in Rama Guzmán (a sector of Callanca), the treasurer of the water committee (the group of residents responsible for the project—president, treasurer, secretary) and I went to the office of the Alcaldesa, my buddy Rita, to ask the Municipalidad to help Rama Guzmán with a big problem that had arisen with the water project. The dumbfuck engineer had not measured the voltage at the site of the well and it turned out that because of the poor condition of the electrical lines in Rama Guzmán only 110 volts of the 220 volts necessary in these parts was arriving to the site of the well and the electric pump installed therein. Rita listened to our story but seemed altogether unsympathetic. She said that she would look into the possibility of having ElectroNorte, the electric company, correct the problem. Don’t call me, I’ll call you, in other words. At this meeting I happened to hear Rita say that tomorrow she’d be in a caserío called Pómape to participate in the celebration of their anniversary.

A few days earlier a couple of friends had invited me to Pómape, the same celebration. The night before the anniversary they called to remind me. We in fact went to Pómape, but just to hang out and see what the celebration of the anniversary of the caserío was like. When Rita showed up she invited me to join the dignitaries on the dias. She then invited me to lunch there at the celebration—they’d set up some temporary structures housing restaurants. The pepian de pato was first-rate, by the way. During lunch I decided what the fuck, and asked Rita if she’d thought any more about that electrical problem in Rama Guzmán. To my surprise, she said no problem, she could take care of it right away “con un documento.” That means, if you write an oficio soliciting my assistance and deliver it to my office on Monday or Friday, the days when I attend the public, I can help you.

I reported this the next day to the engineer, the president and secretary of the water committee, and the teniente gobernadora, a State official who’s supposed to look out for the interests of the sectors in which she lives. The secretary and the teniente seemed to take me seriously, the president and the engineer couldn’t have cared less. That’s when I began to sense where the lines were drawn in this battle.

The teniente wrote the oficio, I typed it up on my laptop and printed it in Chiclayo. I came back late from Chiclayo and really didn’t feel like doing anything else that day but in spite of that fact I rode my bike to Rama Guzmán and asked the teniente to sign it. It was fortunate that I did. While I was at the house of the teniente, the secretary of the water committee showed up. She said that the entire committee was meeting at that very moment in the house of the treasurer. A perfect chance to get everybody to sign at once so that we could deliver the document to Rita the following Monday.

I took the document to the treasurer’s house. There, the committee and the engineer were in the process of signing paperwork that would terminate the project, that is declare it to be successfully completed. This seemed odd to me in light of the fact that there was no electricity to run the pump but I figured what the hell, this is probably just a paperwork thing and they’re going to sign the papers but keep working on the electrical problem until it was fized. So I asked everybody to sign the oficio so that I could take it to Rita on Monday.

The treasurer looked it over and signed. The secretary, too. The president looked it over, shrugged, and handed it to the engineer—but without signing. The engineer looked it over and seemed concerned. The “asunto” of the oficio was this: “Se solicita apoyo para culminación del proyecto del pozo artesiano del Sector Rama Guzmán.” (“Seeking assistance for the completion of well project in Rama Guzmán.”) The engineer wasn’t on board with that wording. It indicated that the project was not complete and he and the president and treasurer were insisting that the project was indeed complete. Their responsibilities were at an end and it was up to somebody else to fix whatever problems remained.

The engineer and president refused to sign the document without a change to the “asunto.” They concocted a new one on the spot and scribbled it onto the document I’d spent two days getting written, typed and printed. They wanted it to read: “se solicita apoyo para funcionamiento del pozo artesiano del Sector Rama Guzmán.” (“Seeking assistance to allow the proper functioning of the well…”) They also redacted the body of the oficio where it referred to “culminación del proyecto.” While they finished their meeting I took the document to an internet cabinas nearby (I didn’t have my laptop with me) and the kid in charge laboriously typed the new document from scratch. It took about an hour due to interruptions, customers arriving and leaving. But because the kid obviously understood as he typed the document that I was helping out Rama Guzmán he only charged me for printing the document, a few céntimos to cover the cost of the ink.

It was getting dark and the meeting was breaking up when I got back to the treasuer’s house. But before they left everybody signed the document. The teniente, the secretary and I talked outside the treasurer’s house. That was when I found out that the engineer had failed to complete a great deal of work on the project. I wrote down everything they told me and later typed up and printed a list.

Basically, what the list said was this: besides the obvious and glaring problem of the absence of electricity, the engineer only had run pipe to the “caja” of each family included in the project (to the box similar to what we have in our yards in the U.S., a valve that allows you turn on and off the water supply for the entire house). They were supposed to install “caños” (a spigot or standpipe) and “tubería domiciliaria” (an indoor pipe to the kitchen or bathroom) in each house. The engineer was also supposed to have provided “capacitaciones” on how to care for the well and the pump and how to treat the drinking water with chlorine. Instead his assistant had collected signatures under false pretenses indicating that pobladores had attended these sessions and the engineer had charged the project for having supposedly taught the workshops. Furthermore, three thousand soles had disappeared from the bank account. (Later the treasurer admitted that he’d taken a “loan” from the account.) The engineer had installed a small provisional pump in the well that would run on 110 volts but had never even tested the larger pump, the pump that would run the system once an adecuate source of electricity was available. The provisional pump was running off a wire that the engineer had spliced into the electrical line of the resident nearest the well. There was no meter measuring how much energy the pump was burning. The unfortunate resident was going to receive an electric bill of 200 soles instead of 20 the following month. Materials left over from the project had disappeared without explanation. The engineer had all the seals (stamps that Peruvians affix alongside their signatures when they sign official documents) in a plastic bag in his briefcase and wouldn’t let the members of the water committee sign any document without his approval. And, finally, the engineer refused to turn over to the secretary or the teniente gobernadora the “expediente” (project plan) that would have allowed them to verify that all of the missing elements I’ve mentioned had in fact been promised in the project.

A bit of corruption perhaps? Let’s say that yes, there was a good possibility of that. The following Monday, the secretary of the water committee, the teniente gobernadora and I paid a visit to the mayor’s office in Monsefú, the District captial. We brought with us two letters, the original oficio that stated that the project was not completed, signed by me, the teniente and the secretary (“Secretaria del ORNE” handwritten under the signature since engineer had the secretary’s seal in a plastic bag in his briefcase) along with the redacted version of the letter signed and sealed by the entire committee plus the teniente and me. We also brought with us my typed list of the unmet provisions of the project.

I had no idea how the Alcaldesa would react to this. Corruption being rampant in Perú, for all I knew the Alcaldesa was in for her cut of embezzled funds from the project.

She looked over all the paperwork. Fortunately, I’d brought with me our original letter, all the redactions insisted upon by the engineer and the president of the water committee scribbled in the margins, all references to the incomplete status of the project crossed out or written over. This document seemed to impress the Alcaldesa. I had to keep reminding myself that the purpose of the letter was to petition for an adecuate supply of electricity to the well and pump. Justice in the form of some type of reprimand or denunciation of the crooks would’ve been gravy but that wasn’t really what we were there for. The Alcaldesa said that she’d speak personally to ElectroNorte and write a letter asking them to fix the electrical problem. She kept a copy of the list of complaints and also kept the redacted letter. We told her that a meeting had been scheduled for a week from today by the president and the engineer; they were going to close the project at that meeting. The Alcaldesa said not to worry, she’d call in the engineer for a little chat well before the meeting.

Verónica, the secretary of the water committee, is a woman I work with frequently on many projects. She’s honest, trustworthy and tireless in her efforts to improve conditions in a community that often doesn’t give much of a shit whether its conditions improve or not. There are many reasons for this, among them poor education and the fact that everybody has to work 24 hours a day in order to eat and can’t concentrate on much of anything else. At any rate, I check in with Verónica several times a week at her house in Rama Guzmán because she never has any saldo on her cellphone to call me when there’s a problem with some project. And there’s always a problem with some project. On the Thursday following our Monday morning meeting with the mayor, I rode my bike to Vero’s house in Rama Guzmán. She wasn’t home so I rode to her grandmother’s house and found her there sorting freshly picked basil with her relatives. “Ai, don Carlos,” she said, “se armó un gran lío.” There’s a big mess.

Verónica and her son, Andy.

The Regidor (city councilman) from Callanca, who’d also been present at the meeting with the Alcaldesa, had called the engineer and told him that we’d come to Rita’s office to spill the beans. So now we knew that the Regidor was probably in on the graft. After hearing about our denunciations, the president of the water committee had gone to Verónica’s house and when he didn’t find Vero at home had thrown a shit fit in the presence of her husband, accusing Vero of “andando con el gringo” (running around with the gringo, me) and accusing Vero’s husband Pablo of having a woman on the side and in short engaging in the strategy preferred by all crooks—the best defense is a good offense. If your own character is under assault, attack the character of your accusers. Furthermore, the engineer and the president and the treasurer had moved up the date of the meeting to close the project. It was now scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

Coincidentally, I had another meeting with the Alcaldesa scheduled for the following morning. I was going to accompany the teniente gobernador of another sector, Rama Alicán, to the mayor’s office to ask for repairs to the road. The road entering Alicán was so bad that no motos wanted to carry passengers there. The teniente and I waited an hour or so and the Alcaldesa called us in. Engineers employed by the Municipalidad joined us and we agreed upon a plan to repair the road. I then took advantage of the opportunity to inform Rita about the meeting scheduled for that afternoon and again showed her the list of unmet provisions for the project. She asked why nobody had invited her to the meeting. “No quieren que venga,” I said. Because they don’t want you there. That was all Rita needed to hear. She said she’d see me at meeting.

The meeting was scheduled for three o’clock, I showed up at 3:45 and people were just starting to arrive. Verónica and Roxana, the teniente gobernadora, were there, also the engineer and his assistant, the president of the water committee and the treasurer, plus, by 4:15, about 50 residents of Rama Guzmán. They called the Regidor. He’d forgotten about the meeting. He was on his way, he said. At around 4:30 the meeting started. The Regidor had arrived by then. Rita, the Alcaldesa, never shows up until there’s a full house so I was expecting her in 15 minutes or a half-hour. Meanwhile, the president of the water committee did his tapdance. He said what a wonderful day was today, a glorious project now complete, all promises fulfilled, all beneficiaries content. It sounded like one of Fidel Castro’s May-Day speeches in La Plaza de la Revolución in Havanna. Maybe not quite that long. The president said how proud he was of having participated in the project although he’d received nothing in return and had paid without complaint his taxi fares and other out-of-pocket expenses without seeking reimbursements from the project budget. He told a touching story of how he’d once found 50 soles in the street. His companion had told him that such are the gifts that Heaven bestows upon deserving and selfless individuals.

I suppressed an urge to puke.

The Alcaldesa showed up during the treasurer’s speech. He was explaining the 3000 soles the project had loaned him and swearing that he had bank vouchers indicating the monthly payments he’d made to date. He shut up when the Alcaldesa arrived. Everyone exchanged greeting and then it was the engineer’s turn to explain the costs of the project. They’d prepared a couple of “papelotes”—throwaway paper posters—with all the major categories of credits and debits printed on them in Magic Marker. It came as no surprise to me that they’d spent almost all the money in the budget. Of 90,000 soles less than 2,000 remained. The engineer talked about how they’d gone above and beyond the call of duty in the project, digging to 12 meters instead of the projected 10 meters to find water, installing pipe of ¾” instead of ½” when required, borrowing a ½-horsepower pump from the Regidor to fill the tanks at the well site when they discovered that there wasn’t enough power to run a 1-horsepower pump. He insisted that people misunderstood the scope of the project and were expecting spigots and indoor plumbing when the project didn’t call for these measures.

The meeting.

The Alcaldesa asked a few questions during the presentation but waited to speak until the engineer had finished. She asked if the engineer thought that FONCODES, the firm sponsoring the project, would allow the community to keep the 1,900 soles remaining in the budget and the engineer thought yes, that they would. At that moment I thought we were done for. It didn’t seem as if the Alcaldesa was going to mention any of unmet provisions of the project included in the list we’d given her on Monday. She was going to ask for the 2,000 measly soles leftover from the project and that was it. I thought that surely the Alcaldesa must be in on swindle along with the Regidor, the engineer, the president and the treasurer.

“And if they’ll let the community keep that money,” said the Alcaldesa, “then surely they’ll provide…” and she pulled our list out of a folder on her lap. “…standpipes for all the beneficiaries?...plumbing to a designated area of each household?” And she read off each of our complaints in order and waited for the engineer to reply. He agreed to every one. What else could he do?

In Perú nobody ever really accuses anyone directly of misconduct, they’re very genteel. If the Watergate hearings had occurred in Perú, the interrogators of the White House staff would have said things like, “while I respect greatly the contributions of the Republican Party in furthering the ideals of democracy over the course of our nation’s history, I regret that some individuals in government may have overstepped the boundaries established by the rights and duties of their offices and the in the process of doing so harmed certain institutions of our government, what, sir, is your opinion on this matter?” What Rita had just done was as much of a slam-dunk-in-your-face insult as you’ll ever encounter in Perú. She thanked us—the teniente, the secretary and I—for having brought certain outstanding problems to her attention and made sure that the residents of Rama Guzmán left with the impression that she, the Alcaldesa, had secured all of these additional benefits for them of her own goodwill and voition and not because they were stated provisions of the project and it was her obligation to do so. In that respect politicians in Perú differ not at all from U.S. politicians.

The atmosphere as the meeting broke up was anything but tense or hostile. The engineer and his cohorts weren’t smiling but they weren’t pouting, either. I and the teniente and the secretary were smiling but we weren’t gloating. None of us was sure what would transpire in the weeks to come. In Perú it’s dangerous to claim victory too soon. In Perú it’s dangerous to claim victory ever. That, I think, is why everyone is so indirect in their comments about individuals or situations. We’re supposed to go to FONCODES this week and arrange the details of the culmination of the project. But nobody’s taking anything for granted, neither the apparent winners nor the apparent losers. We all know that everything can change at any time and based upon any whim of any official involved. Such is the hall of mirrors inside a house of cards that’s the political and institutional environment of Perú.