Inca Road

I´m reading Rob Gifford´s China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power. I expected a dry account of China´s economic and political policies, but its actually a fascinating and engaging account of a 3000 mile journey across Route 312, China´s "mother road." The author talks to everyone he can, taxi drivers, farmers, engineering students, immigrants, Taoist monks, and communist party members. From all these anecdotes, put into the context of thousands of years of history and culture, you get a great feel for the Chinese psyche.

In Lima, i´m meeting tons of people through couchsurfing.org. Right now i´m staying in a spare bedroom of a family that I would otherwise probably never exchange words with. Besides other travelers, young liberal activist types and circus folks, the people I would normally hang out with, I´m meeting upper middle class families, military types, adventure sport guides, etc. Reading China Road makes me realize what an opportunity this is to get a feel for the Peruvian outlook on their country. Unfortunately, I don´t the encyclopedic knowledge of Latin America that Gifford has of China, so its harder to put things in context and ask the right questions. I never was much interested in history in school, and hardly learned a thing about Latin America. Maybe because the United States is so stable, history never seemed so important. The political situation in South America, in contrast, seems much more raw and young. Peru is on its 5th constitution since 1900, and there are clamors for a new one; Bolivia´s current constitution is 5 months old. And though they´re all technically democracies, its a lot less "civilized" than the US. In the last couple weeks, demonstrations protesting recource extraction in the amazon left 50 dead (23 of them police officers), but did succeed in repealing 2 contraversial laws. It seems much more important to have an understanding of history to be able to sort it all out. Unfortunately, just as I start to learn a bit of the history of the country i'm in, I then move to a new country and have to start from scratch. Of course that is also what is fascinating about South America: there are so many countries side by side, sharing (to a greater or lesser extent) a cultural history, but with so many different models for governance and development. My reading list is huge, the availability of books in English is one thing i´m really looking forward to when I come back to the states. (Of course I should be reading more in Spanish, but its so slow right now i´m sticking with newspapers, novels, and other easy reading.) So much to learn!