By Nicholas Asheshov
✐ OP-ED Special to the Peruvian Times ☄
From some dusty official shelf, the burghers of Cusco have created a billion-dollar nightmare, the Chinchero airport.
Thousands of tourists travel every day across this patchwork kaleidoscope of thousands of rolling acres of ancient potato and quinoa fields and grazing land, with oxen-drawn ploughs attended by Quechua family groups. The tourists are on their way to Machu Picchu and already they are absorbing the medieval mystery of a great, little-known civilization. They are in the cloud kingdom of the Incas.
It is a great sight. The Chinchero massif is dominated by a jewel of a colonial church atop an Inca palazzo and terraces, with an Indian town below that was the setting for Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper’s 1971 classic “The Last Great Picture Show”.
Indian weavers and their agriculturalist menfolk are today’s inheritors of a two thousand year tradition.
This will all be destroyed the day the bulldozers and dump trucks move in, watched by the sad, bleak snow peaks, a few miles away, of the cordilleras above Machu Picchu . The inhabitants of Chinchero know it. Everyone in Cusco knows it. Most of them know, too, that the airport is not even needed, even if it were to be, in the words of Roger Valencia, Cusco’s top guide and thoughtful ecologist, “properly managed.”
But, again, as everyone here knows, it will be badly done. The quality of the regional and municipal administrations of Cusco and Urubamba, of which Chinchero is a district, is Third World incompetent with a well-entrenched tradition of corruption. It is not for lack of cash, though. Cusco gets more than a billion dollars just from Camisea gas royalties, and much more these days from tourism, which is booming.
But the crowded roads are thin and poorly designed. All three of the heavy-duty bridges into the Valle Sagrado have collapsed. The Vilcanota River leaves an embarrassing flotsam of plastic, raw sewage and chemicals as it surges through deep canyons past silent stone terraces on its way to Machu Picchu. The previous President of the Cusco Region is in jail for theft and today’s Mayor of Urubamba was thrown out by the authorities for corruption, and then promptly re-elected.
Forget the Ministry of Culture, the former Instituto Nacional de Cultura, whose Cusco office is a 3,000-strong gorilla. The Environment Ministry is just a butterfly flapping its wings, here as elsewhere in the country. These are the people who have encouraged the runaway growth of the illegal slum of Machu Picchu pueblo, Aguas Calientes, home to carpet-baggers and scalpers.
The INC has, even worse, overseen the virtual destruction of Ollantaytambo. This once noble stone-built Inca town has been a screaming traffic jam of tourist buses and heavy trucks since Perurail was allowed to turn the tiny country station into its terminus for the million tourists it takes to Machu Picchu, 25 miles down valley.
The Sacred Valley has become a conurbation of million-dollar maize fields among the hotels and weekend dachas.
The World Bank and the Finnish government have washed their hands of their Save the Vilcanota and Save Machu Picchu projects.
As if it mattered, the airport is a sleazy financial disaster for nearly all the 12,000 inhabitants of Chinchero, most of whom are Quechua-speaking comuneros. In a deal that was quietly railroaded through at the turn of the year, S/.138mn ($56mn) was handed to a group of under three percent of Chinchero’s inhabitants.
That’s it. That is what Chinchero will receive for being destroyed. The scheme is so badly designed that this cash S/.138mn has gone to just 426 people, the ones who happen to own the 350 hectares, out of the district’s 70,000, where the airstrip is to be laid.
This is the comunidad of Yanacona which, a couple of days after the money from the Regional Government was received, was taken over by Humberto Huaman, who won by 326 against 325 votes. Humberto had just been sentenced to four years’ jail, suspended, for problems when he was alcalde of Chinchero three years ago. Huaman is a member of Tierra y Libertad, a son of Shining Path. He will be helping the Yanacona folks to share out S/11mn in communal cash.
Half of the Yanacona owners, despite the S/.138mn windfall, voted against. “The old men, none of them wanted to sell,” says the alcalde of Chinchero, Juan Carlos Gomez. A bright, engaging 32-year-old, Gomez lives in Chinchero with his mum, and is trying to save what he can of Chinchero.
A further S/.48mn has gone to another district, Raachi, for the purchase of their land for the northern end of the runway. This means that the Cusco government has already put down $74mn in buying ancient potato fields and rough grazing land. They have achieved the impressive feat of grossly overpaying for a patch of some of the world’s highest agricultural land and cheating, at the same time, most of the people involved.
The present Cusco airport, at 3,300 m.a.s.l., lies on 240 valuable hectares. It will last for another dozen, maybe 20, years with modest extensions of the runway and handling facilities, Corpac officials here tell me. They have already bought the lights for night flying.
Chinchero is 400m higher, a lot at these altitudes This means that Chinchero will not be able to handle direct flights from the United States, much less Europe.
During the December-to-April rains, Chinchero is usually in the clouds. I have to drive through with my lights on high beam on the way to Cusco. Most nights the temperature is below freezing. Hailstorms hit Chinchero on 150 days of the year.
In contrast, the Pampa de Anta, several hundred meters lower, the same height as Cusco itself and 20 minutes nearer to Cuzsco, is a much less damaging choice and used to be a lake. You could land a plane on it tomorrow, not the case with the rolling potato fields of Chinchero.
Before they rush into a non-urgent Chinchero disaster, someone should solve the overcrowding at Machu Picchu, which is even worse than the official computers suggest, as INC people often run rackets selling the same tickets twice.
In Chinchero, Alcalde Juan Carlos Gomez is from another deck of cards to today’s Cusco and Urubamba authorities. He is a lively, studious and seasoned politician and administrator who talks readily about a reasonable solution to an impossible problem.
He says, “I have asked the Prime Minister and other members of the cabinet to form a top-level commission to try to ensure that the ecological resources and cultural traditions of Chinchero are protected.”
He adds: “In Cusco, no one wants to talk to me.”
Nicholas Asheshov lives in Urubamba. A veteran journalist, noted explorer and entrepreneur, he was editor of the Peruvian Times from 1969 to 1990.
This article was first published in Spanish in Caretas magazine this week.
So, from your point of view, this is the worst unnecessary project initiated by the conglomerate of authorities who have created the need for? And, as you indicate, the airport is to be built at an elevation so high –although the runway is over 3 Km. long– It will never allow the Boeing 747-800 or the AN-124-150 to take-off with their full payload. Now, parallel to elevation, what about the runway structure? will it allow the landing of the mentioned of similar aircraft with their full payload? Bringing only tourists to that area of the country is not enough business for that projected investment. Cargo must be a parallel activity. Cargo with small aircraft is not business at all though.
If the project it self-was founded on the insufficiency of the actual airports in Lima and Cuzco, the Nation already has an almost abandoned airfield in Pisco, Ica, an airfield capable to handle big planes for passengers and cargo. Cuzco, as you indicate, still has the chance to extend and implement its runway and facilities. With all my respect, I think this way Lima and Cuzco will use that money to build modern and secured transportation for local and international travelers. (An unmanned elevated monorail from the airfield to the city could be nice.)
Corruption… we know corruption is a disease the Nation must take into serious consideration to eradicate. We also understand the battle for this cure is going to be drastic and perhaps cruel and will take long, long… long, long time to heal; a necessary procedure to take. It will take severe reforms, change of politics and politicians practices, as well as Administration and Judicial systems. Not an easy pursue, but it has to be done.
Yes, there is not a lack of economy. No. It is not either the “ghost riders in the sky” performed by our politicians-administrators galloping… It is not even because a third developing country neither –Corruption is present even in the big civiliced and so-called democratic developed and industrialized countries– It is the lack of knowledge and administrative experience of our People, The People take time and pain to develop. In our case, it may take from two to three female generations in order to avoid bloody quick changes, with the hope of females, to give birth for the Nation honest hard working and respectful generations to come. I know it may sound like a dream, but dreams can also come true.
Allow me to thank you for your points of observations. It gives as –the missing the country guys– to observe and appreciate through the windows you open.
Sincerely yours,
Egroj