Peru, a country full of contradictions
The winners of the German Future Prize have arrived in Curahuasi and today, Tuesday, red ribbons will be cut in the presence of three TV crews. I’m sitting in my office late on Monday evening with an official from the APCI. She has traveled to Curahuasi especially to check whether some of the donations in kind have actually arrived at Diospi Suyana and are being used for the benefit of the patients.
I sign many pages and place my stamp next to my signatures.
“Isn’t that funny,” I say to the young lady from Lima, “you’re investing a lot of time here and so am I. It’s about two deliveries of donations in kind, which have been properly used by us for many months. The amounts are small. But five hours away from us, almost 4,000 people are working in an illegal copper mine and defrauding the state of hundreds of thousands of US dollars. And the authorities do absolutely nothing. They remain silent and the employees at the desks earn a lot from the bribes!”
The inspector nods. “Yes,” she says, “that’s the way it is and nobody has any interest in investigating a case like this!”
I go to bed at midnight and tomorrow we will celebrate the donation in kind of a new MRI scanner and a contrast medium pump. In the mountains of Curahuasi, countless men and women will once again be engaged in illegal activities. And the state? It will continue to remain silent and look the other way. And the police and state officials will be bribed and paid off – as they have been for years. /KDJ
