Lima, Politics, Provinces

President Alan Garcia’s policy doctrine:The Dog in the Manger Syndrome

The original title of President Garcia’s article is El Perro del Hortelano, a commonly used phrase to describe someone who begrudges others what they are not enjoying themselves. It is taken from the play with the same title (The Dog in the Market Garden) written by Spanish poet and playwright Lope de Vega (1562-1635).
The same concept is given in Aesop’s fable of The Dog in the Manger.

28 Oct 2007 El Comercio
By Alan García Pérez, President of the Republic
(Translated by Andean Air Mail & Peruvian Times)

The demand for housing titles is great. Every Peruvian knows that his lot can improve if he has a property that is legalized and can be sold, mortgaged or bequeathed to his heirs. But Peru as a whole faces the same problem and does not know it.  Many of its assets cannot be developed or sold, nor can they be invested in or used to create jobs.
There are millions of hectares for lumber that lie idle, other millions of hectares that communities or associations have not cultivated nor will cultivate, as well as hundreds of mineral deposits that cannot be worked and millions of hectares of ocean which are never used for farming or production. There are, also, millions of workers who do not exist, even though they work, because their work does not provide them with social security or a pension later on, because they do not contribute what they should, multiplying national savings.
As a result, there are many unused resources that cannot be traded, that do not receive investment and do not create jobs. And all this because of the taboo of already past ideologies, idleness, laziness or the law of the dog in the manger that says, “If I do not do it, then let no one do it.”
The first resource is Amazonia. It includes 63 million hectares and abundant rainfall. This is where forrestation for lumber can be developed, particularly in the eight million hectares that have been destroyed. But for this, property (rights) are needed, that is to say, guaranteed land on 5,000, 10,000 or 20,000 hectares, since otherwise there will be no formal, long-term and high technology investment.
Today, the only concessions that exist depend on the will of the Government and of the civil servant who can modify them. This is why no one invests or creates one job for every two hectares, as it should be; and there is no wood manufacturing and furniture exportation. For the most part, these have been pillaging concessions that have only served to extract the finest woods, and deforest and abandon the land.
In contrast, the formal property by large collective businesses such as pension funds would permit long-term investments from the planting stage to the harvesting years later.
Those that oppose this say that Amazonia cannot be given out as property (and why, then, can it be done on the coast and in the highlands?). They also say that to grant property of large lots would provide profits to large businesses. Of course. But it would also create hundreds of thousands of formal jobs to Peruvians who live in the poorest areas.  It is the dog in the manger.
Let us respect the virgin and native forests, but let us begin with the eight million hectares that have become desert and have been destroyed in recent years by pillage concessions, coca production and unfettered cutting down.
It is shameful that Chile exports US$2 billion in wood without a single hectare in Amazonia, Uruguay exports US$1 billion and Brazil US$8 billion, while Peru exports barely US$200 million.
A second issue demonstrates the same problem, that of land.  Ownership security is required if there is to be any investment, but we have fallen into the deception of handing out small plots of land to poor families who do not have a cent to invest and, so, besides the land, they must ask the State for fertilizers, seeds, irrigation technology and even price protections.  This model of smallholders and without technology is a vicious circle of extreme poverty. We must encourage medium-sized property, the middle class of farmers who know how to obtain resources, seek out markets and create formal jobs.
But what do we observe throughout the country? When one sees a beautiful beach, it has already been claimed years earlier by someone else who has not invested a single cent to turn it into a resort, and it will have no value for decades more to come. That is the situation of all the hills around Lima, where investment could work miracles. That is the situation of all the quarries and lime pits for cement, claimed but not developed.
There are real peasant farmer communities, but there are also artificial communities that own 200,000 hectares on paper but only farm 10,000 hectares while the rest is idle property, unworked, while the inhabitants live in extreme poverty and wait for the State to give them all the help they need instead of developing the hillsides and lands themselves, or leasing them, trading them, because if the land is unproductive for them it could be productive with a high level of investment or know-how brought in by a new buyer.
But demagoguery and deception say that the lands cannot be touched because they are sacred objects and that this communal organization is the original Peruvian organization, without realizing that it was a creation of Viceroy Toledo to corner the indigenous communities into unproductive lands.
This is the case all over Peru, lands that are not used because the owner has no training and no financial resources, and so his land only appears to be that. That same land sold in large lots would bring technology that would also benefit the communal farmer. But the spider’s web of 19th century ideology subsists as an obstacle. The dog in the manger.
The third issue is that of mining resources, of which Peru has the largest in the world, not only in quantity but also in the variety of mineral resources, which means that if the price of one product falls, the country can compensate with other products.  However, only one tenth of these resources are being developed, because we are still arguing over whether mining technologies destroy the environment. This is an issue of the past century. Of course, mining did once destroy it and today’s environmental problems are basically due to yesterday’s mines, but today mines live alongside cities without any problems; and, in any case, it all depends on how strict the State is in its technology demands of mining companies and in negotiating a greater financial and employment share for the departments where the mines are located.
When I visit the city of Ilo and I see its urban development, the most advanced in Peru, I know that it is the product of mining and fisheries and it hurts to compare this with the town of Ayabaca, which has more mineral resources than the Cuajone mine in the south, and yet it lives in great poverty. And it is because the old anti-capitalist communist of the 19th century dressed up as the protectionist in the 20th century and changes his colors again in the 21st century to that of an environmentalist. But it is always anticapitalist, against investment, without explaining how, with poor farming, the leap can be made to greater development.
And against oil, they have created the figure of the “uncontacted” native jungle dweller; that is, unknown but presumed, and thus millions of hectares cannot be explored, and Peru’s petroleum must remain underground while the World is paying US$90 per barrel. They prefer that Peru continue importing its oil and getting poorer.
A fourth issue is the sea. Japan has less fishery resources but eats five times more fish per capita per year than Peru because it has developed fish farming. But here, each time a sea zone is to be granted so that an investor can place his cages for artificial breeding, increase production and create jobs, the artisanal fishermen in the nearest cove protest as they see more modern competition arise, and they say their free passage rights are being blocked, that the sea is being polluted, while others invoke the sacred Sea of Grau, instead of accepting this new industry that could create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Also, Peru has enormous wealth in the mountain ranges because of the rainfall. It is estimated that 800 billion cubic meters of water fall on the mountains every year and flow down in the rivers towards the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.  From the water that flows to the Pacific we use a small amount for farming and for hydroelectric power, but we use almost nothing of the water that forms the Amazon and flows to the Atlantic.
How can we make the most of it? Now that the price of oil has increased and will continue to increase, we should think of hydroelectric energy, which is renewable, almost unlimited, and clean. And to think of its use and sale in continental terms. Large hydroelectric plants built on the Marañon River and at the waterfalls of the Lower Urubamba will allow us to sell energy to Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Brazil. But it has to be done by large private or international capital that needs very long-term security to invest billions and to be able to recover the investment.  But the dog in the manger says, “Why should they make money off our waterfalls? Better that the regional government do it.” But they don’t say where the money will come from.
And so, any Peruvian can look around and see how much wealth exists that has not been capitalized.
The fifth issue is that human labor itself has not been made valuable for the worker. Informal jobs, which are the majority, are not incorporated into the economy nor are they legal; there is no social security for the illegal worker, there is no pension plan because he does not contribute to any system. To add value to the job and benefit the worker, the logical solution would be to progress toward first giving the millions of employees of micro-businesses the fundamental minimum rights, health insurance, pension and an 8-hour work day. That is more than they have today. And they would also strengthen the pension fund and the medical insurance fund.
But the demagogues oppose this progressive access and say,  “Rights must be given immediately to the workers of micro family or informal businesses.”  But they do not know (or maybe they do) that the only thing that will achieve will be for the microbusiness owner, incapable of paying those costs, to close the business a fire lots of workers, in which case the cure will be worse than the disease.
There are also others who say, “If workers cannot immediately be given all the bonuses and 30 days’ vacation time, then the State should give them total health coverage without contributions and given them all a minimum pension without paying into a fund.” But it turns out that these are the same people who are against forestry investment in the jungle because it is sacred, against allowing communities to sell their land even if they want to, because the communal lands are sacred, they are against mines being opened because Peru should only be an agricultural country, that there should be no fish farming in the sea.  And even without investment, without new jobs, they believe the State has unlimited funds which can be eternally tapped. And they end up saying, “Reduce the state work day to six hours; pay higher wages, even though Peru does not produce more.”
As a final point I could add that they also do not value the brains of our students and children. Most education is given with the aim of passing students with a grade of 11, instead of encouraging excellence and effort to achieve a B+. A group of poor teachers and civil servants refused to undergo evaluation to hide their mediocrity and so the system continues to produce worthless results.  And the same people say, “Give me more without demanding that I change or that I make any effort.” They are, thus, allies of the informal miner, of the clandestine timber merchant, of peasant misery, of informal employment, and the lack of merit and effort.
Faced with the deceitful philosophy of the dog in the manger, reality shows us that we must develop the resources that we do not utilize and put greater effort into our work. And we are also taught this by the experience of successful peoples, the Germans, the Japanese, the Koreans, and many others.  And that is the choice for the future, and the only one that will allow us to progress.

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