Three, two, one… On air! On air? Yes, on air!

When Cable News Network, CNN, was 20 years old 20 years ago, it posted an very understable interactive feature (I did not find the 20-year commemorative but the 25-year one, instead)about how it operated from its newsroom to the communications engeneering that allows it to have global coverage. One of the things I wondered of, how it organizes when there is the famous breaking news.

CNN, which broadcast started on June 1^st, 1980, born as an improbable entrepreneurship, loses wherever you saw, pushed by a neurotic Atlanta, GA-native magnate named Robert Edward Turner III, Ted Turner for friends.

No one gave a dollar for a 24-hour news channel initially broadcasting from a basement. No one impressed of its informative power even when it moved to Omni Hotels compound facilities, partially renamed as CNN Center later, in Atlanta Downtown, the home of the one most popular sodas in the planet. No one belief the small cable market would make a difference.

No one until 1991, when the world realized it was CNN-adict to know what was happening in the Middle East during the Gulf War, the first warlike conflict practically broadcast globalwide on live-TV, and that redefined the notion of journalistic inmediacy, covering the story as it happens in the same instant it is happening. And covering a live-story is not an easy job. If not watch this clip:

Like every respectable newsroom, CNN has the space organized by topics: domestic, international, business, politics, etc. Each one has a section editor, which job is reviewing the work of the entire crew, selecting the most interesting and important, upgrading another level in charge of a senior editor, who sets the agenda we receive everyday.

Nothing extraordinary until here because that is made in every newsroom. When there is breaking news, the thing changes completely right there. The secttion editors give the position to the senior editor, becoming part of the crew they lead, and it’s this senior editor who organizes the whole coverage with an only purpose – checking the news fact as it breaks, and once the fact-checking protocols were accomplished, go releasing, or coordinating to the line producer for addressing the on-air presenter.

According to Live From Baghdad motion picture (HBO, 2002) and a story on Time magazine on January 1992 (which excerpt was lended to me by one of my Journalism teachers, María Luisa Portugal), during the Gulf War, Turner as well as his CEO Tom Johnson took the editorial control of the network during the historic broadcast on January 16^th, 1991 (when the Desert Storm Operation started), because they were aware the entire world –the entire world!—was watching CNN. It was the first time it was happening, so reducing the error margin was their main task. Here is the original broadcast of that afternoon (17:00 EST):

Independently the ideologic criticism it receives everywhere, when the news are breaking in this right instant, many people even tune CNN around the globe to know how the story is developing, and, of course, very few people are aware of the crew behind making that happens.

Indeed, since 1980s-ending and more emphatically in the 1990s, the around-the-clock, around-the-globe news channels offer has multiplied, so options are to choose, but the live-story formula has not suffered from major modifications, except the technology wwhich it is broadcast, smaller each time, enormous each chance. And 40 years later, CNn, the news channels, the journalists have a great story to cover, especially when the world asks more than understands.

Five words to mark the after-quarantine

Just 20 years ago, when the Internet in Peru began to do the transition from the boom of internet-cafés to the slow growth of dial-up home connections, the online journalists were few. To be (then thin) in-cloud, and that  was almost a snob, unnecessary, arrogant act. Who went following you on the net if there were few connected people? Today, the print media are the rare ones.

I’m not saying the ink is over. I think it will have a long life, still, but modifying its display (3D?), and that’s the first keyword in the history of humankind – to modify. Since we invented the writing until we invented the first artificial intelligence algorithm, what changed is the way how we do itbut not the purpose we have – to stay in touch and to solve problems.

Perhaps, what has happened in most recent times is those modifications are happening too fast to understand (psychologist would say to mourn)and add them into our life, but let’s accostum – things are going to modify everytime faster, and that must not scare us because the shapes are going to change almost every minute, but what must not change or rather improve is our essence.

Starting from that premise and taking like an example what happened to journalism during the last two decades, let’s consider that an adaptation factor we have in mind is that we belief as normal or usual (especially before December 31st, 2019), has already left to be. Independently that the Covid-19 quarantine is going to  relax soon, new cultural patterns evolved violently, and they are going to go on among us not in remaining 2020 but long years. And the unadapted species come to extinguish.

Another challenge we are going to assume is how to pass from the overcontrol (or overprotection) and the uncontrol to the self-control. The extremes have been the relevant in humankind’s history, especially in the last 500 years, and they had its critical moment after The Illustration, 300 years ago. I don’t say they were unnecessary. In its historical moment, they served us to go through from hierarchies to equality, and as the coronavirus slammed us on the face with its own anti-discrimination policy, the extremes don’t serve us anymore in this historical moment.

Now, if you insist in looking for a historical reference that eases to understand the actual instant, I’d say it’s a mix of Humanism and Renaissance spiced by the technological advance in something we call now The Knowledge Society. So I consider to be making an arc with a moment in world’s history, 600 years length.

The new world order

We unite defeat the virus but not priviledging social classes. Look, it’s not communism, capitalist-socialism either. It’s something different but powerful than forecast by Smith or Marx & Engels as well. We thank their contribution to the discussion but their concepts are already discontinued to us.

So, the new world order builds based upon those criteria: adaptability, unity, flattered & circling dialogue, urgency sense, humanity, proactivity, creativity, and wisdom. The parties and potencies will not be already led by countries or doctrines but the self-control capability (not self-repression) the individual has, and how this one transcends to the community in a positive, free, and effective way.

The social isolation this new order imposes us doesn’t pretend we become selfishest than we used to be (despite to have 4500 buddies on Facebook), but it’s an opportunity to see ourselves, reconciliate with our real potential, and carry it out for bringing it to everybody in the most original way as possible.

So, if you ever felt you outstood as an astronomer, but they said you to crash down if you didn’t stand onto your feet, good news: the new order gives you a revenge chance. And as every inner world doesn’t look like anyone else, what we will have is an almost 8-billion-possibility offer, if we get to that number.

New paradyms

The age of how much you are, what it serves you for, is not longer. We are in the age of how much you know, how you use it to innovate. And that’s the second keyword of those time. Realise that our need to be healthy, then not to be ill, has made the big fortunes address not to buy luxury but looking for a cure, a treatment at least because the human, the animal, the vegetal are not the enemy. It’s something not matching in any of these categories. Actually, the animal and the vegetal are coming back to recover the space offtaken by the human.

Then, over all this new philosophy of our history, how is the humankind, its star, going to survive? In my latest op-ed, I helped to birth a new professional career, RPSR, that means an holistic vision for managing the risk scenarios in a proactive, mitigating way, and it will be just one of many evolutions (Pokémon style) we are going to attend to.

Other fields to be assessed come innovatively re-assessed, and here we are going to name them, warning they are not exclusive but cooperative in the context that represents the third keyword of this new age – symbiosis, that inmediatly will outbreak a fourth one – synchretism.

• Technoprimary Production (TP)
• Generation of Integral Knowledge (GIK)
• Management of Synchrodiacrhonical Knowledge (MSK)
• Development of Informatics for Daily Life (DIDL)
• Customized Healthy Lifestyle Consultant (CHLSC)
• Promotion and Development of Creativity (PDC)
• Management of People, Resources, and Territories (MPRT)

If you want to know what this is all about, you can go on this.

And what will happen to the jobs as we know today?They won’t disappear. Someones will integrate to others, like others will follow as unique, but the common to all them is to have the authomation like its best ally. And who be the better, will have more market – competitiveness, the fifth word of this new time. So, nothing will turn back to before, but waht left to say is everything will be much better. It will depend on you, on me, on our talent and our attitude to make it happen.

Let’s go chatting on my Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn accounts, or my YouTube channel.

RPRS – The next trendy professional career

Many people are pleasing wondered by the way Peru’s President Martín Vizcarra is managing the crisis caused by Covid-19, the new corona-virus’ strain, at the point that everything seems to be under control. Seems. Well, the fact is all the decisions and protocols are not Vizcarra’s creation, not Ministers Board’s, not the prospective team’s, not advisors’, not shamans’, not gurus’.

The Law 29664 was passed in 2012, that instructs how to manage and to prevent the risky scenarios nationwide. Also, it creates the National Center for Prevention, Estimation, and Reduction of Disasters Risk, Cenepred ias in Spanish, that depends on the Prime Minister’s Office, PCM as in Spanish, that also manages the National Institute of Civile Defense, Indeci as in Spanish. Those three organizations have contingence plans, stores full of relief, and money coming from different social programmes, that was saved for emergency cases.

It’s not about I’m undeserving Vizcarra. Unlike, we are lucky about Peru has already warned to design an action plan, and what the President is doing now is to follow it up. In simple words, that’s called forecast, the action to fast forward the facts, skill we are not made ours, judging our reckless attitude at the time to measure future risks, attitude that becomes bothering beggar when we realize to be amid them.

“Peru comes preparing for different types of disaster 8 years ago,” one of my followers underlined while explaining this fact. The issue, and here it comes the apparent sensation of disorder and annoyance, is that Cenepred activates even provided the regional or local governments request it. My source assured me that none of them has staten nor consulted how to perform it as the crisis has happened. And when I’m talking of performing, I’m not meaning to perform like a costumed soldier even, when I were a mayor )a civile authority).

That would explain why everybody has the impression that Vizcarra and his crew are the action heroes, while our nearbiest authorities are appearing as the most uncapable never chosen. Well, they do, don’t they? Talking on a posible reason for the regional and local governments have not claimed to Cenepred, my source said the answer is simple – they mostly ignore it. I confess I’m also dismissed this detail, but… I’m not an authority.

Each quake, a new institution

Just to make history, Cenepred was created after the fiasco meant by the Fund for the South Reconstruction, the controversial Forsur as in Spanish, founded after the Pisco’s Earthquake, August 15^th, 2007, that left 550 casualties. And it seems somebody has to shake us the soil for we to shake our brain. If not, let’s get back a little more.

May 30th, 1970 – A terrible earthquake erased Yungay, Áncash, out of the map, left around 70,000 casualties according to the official toll. As a consequence, the military government  created Indeci (then, the National System of Civile Defense), and since that time, a doctrine was established – the top local officer, or state’s (regions today), or nation’s turns into the chief of every civile defense system, according to the geographic extension of the emergency. That was in 1972.

And as every rule has an exception, the South Vulcanological Observatory, OVS as in Spanish, depending on the Geophysical Institute of Peru, is a management example that would be worthy to study and reply. It has pages after pages with risk maps, action protocols in case of some volcano between Arequipa and Tacna decides to erupt. The most active ones are under 24/7 surveillance (that can be followed real- time on an open-access website), and it constantly moves local authorities through simulations and contingence plans that currently are used in the eruptive processes of Sabancaya and Ubinas Mounts.

In this point, I dreamed this week of an El Niño Warning Center located in Paita, Piura, like the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii Islands, or the Hurricane Warning Center in Florida, both in the U.S. The first entity is the reference for the Asia-Pacific Rim when a 7-magnitude or larger quake breaks and can cause troubles in our shores, while the second one is the mandatory information source every summer across the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Our warning center could be worldwide because El Niño impacts around the planet, and the reason why Paita is because two large water flows of our enormous ocean, warm and cold, meet very near there. I hope that comes true. Let’s continue.

Then, if our frame-protocol gathers almost half a century old and the most specific one is going to be a decade old, why do the mayors and regional governors suffer from nervous collapse and subsequent rigor morbidus every time they have to manage a disaster to prevent or to mitigate? Short answer: a lot of ego, a few neurone.

More than guessing, it’s about forecasting

And that is the ethernal Peruvian error – a mostly reactive instead of proactive system because it doesn’t know to read the past at the point it becomes to convince it will never happen anymore, but it also doesn’t know to fast forward the future and the multiple choices it represents, even the weirdest. Look at the crisis created by the Covid-19 pandemic: we have usually live next to in-progress diseases, but any strucked us fully as a country, discounting to hold us inside our homes for a month and a half.

But as every crisis means and opportunity, this is the time a career I don’t know if exists, and if not we can create it here, should raise bonds – Response Planning for Risk Scenarios, or RPRS, what its name says, it’s in charge of think pretty detailed how we mitigate, avoid, and manage every bad it could happen because of measurable or unmeasureable contending situations .

The RPRS Officer has to be a person with a pretty wide vision but also a teaching ability to explain easily everybody, especially the authorities, about what could happen if nobody acts and how to act for it happens the less or null damage as possible. It’s not the person who avoids a black cat or eludes to pass under stairs, but it’s capable to anticipate how the cat will react and has got available stairs just in case of going to rescue it.

But nota all remains in vision and teaching, it has to be a person whom gets not boring to research in the reality of territory to serve (yes, knowledge on geography, history, statistics, sociology, and psychology are just part of the profile) and write everything down in a compulsively sequential way. Definetly, if you never learned to make flow diagrams, you won’t work on this career.

And the better of RPRS comes here – it will not be only a key career in public management, which the authority’s decisions –theoretically—influence on the life of thousands or millions of people. It also will be required by the private sector, non-profit or commercial, to guarantee if any investment faces unseen potential peril as well as to evaluate if the development projects are actually going to develop something or they will be another money waste just for granting a job to a hand of people.

And still beyond, taking the New Peruvian’s paradigm launched by President Vizcarra, it has to be a person with much empathy and creativity to promote the solidarian spirit among pairs and dispairs. Yes, it has to be a leader with a wide recognizement among the community, but also to be anyone else amid all the persons.

If you see your profile fits this one I describe, go preparing because you’re going to be required in the short-term. If you’re reading me from an university, an institute, a school, or similar, go considering to launch this course, that mixes humanism and science, hard work and pedagogics, communicability and reflection capability.

As I said to a colleague, the future of many proffessions, the mine one included, is they are going to upgrade new setups what are not that we used to know, and that’s a signal of times. Everything changes, and this crisis is underlining it and marking light yellow to us every hour, every minute, every second, and it demands an answer from us. Not asking it would be committing suicide… or another genocide.

And talking about colleagues, I leave you my tutorial for covering news during natural disasters that you can adapt to this crisis for good. Meet me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn for continuing to talk about.

Don’t mistake exactly like Sullana

This is a real story at the Peruvian Northern, where I live. I dont know if it happens to you, but I feel the smallest, furthest towns use to be the most proactive when it’s about recognizing and saving in every sense. It happens me with Malingas, Tambogrande District, it is beginning to happen me with Sapillica again, which I just have a journalistic relationship, where something happened this week that encourages particularily to me.

It was just the last Sunday when checking out the filtered messages on Facebook, I found one from José encalada, whom I have met 19 years ago, and who has been a Radio Cutivalú’s Correspondent in Sapillica during his lifetime. I was introduced to him while a trip with Margarita Rosa vega and the Tambogrande Collective, once we had the first news of non-formal mining activity out there the nascents of Chipillico River.

Then, José was our guide, although that was not my first time in Sapillica. Actually, this year marks two decades since I knew that beautiful place for the very first time. I worked for the Fe y Alegría’s Project in Malingas that time, and only by one school, located in Sesteadero, it was necessary to sspend three hours tripping by pick-up for doing paperwork.

Including the Catholic nuns I worked for, a Mississauga, Ontario-based stock broker named Matthew sammut came with us, whom I browsed many times on Facebook but I have not found yet. And the joke with Matt was he came ignoring much about Spanish, intended to learn Spanish, and got back not speaking more Spanish than some basic greetings and thanks. And as I was the only bilingual guy at the office, discounting the nuns, so match him to Nelson for the man doesn’t feel very isolated in some meaning.

What I remember much of that friendship with Matt is he taught me to read the NBCUniversal’s business channel CNBC stocks ticker running below the screen, and the trip to Sapillica, that was scored by Shania Twain’s hits, whose both resulted to be fans.

Matt didn’t let to take photographs of everything in Sapillica, especially the cattle gracing at the nearby hills to the town.

 “It’s great!,” he repeated once and once again.

Already in previous days, we tried to hik Malingas Mount,where the nuns have their convent – he was not tired to shot photos.

 “Do you feel this looks like something in North America?,” I asked.

“Yes… like… Montana.”

When we traveled to Sapillica, I didn’t ask him what it looked like but if that motivated him to come back further. He said yes, and that was one of many experiences those convinced me about an additional development possibility for those towns beyond agriculture and cattle – tourism. Of course I was not clear that time what kind of tourism, as I came to learn it 11 years later in Malingas, but there was a chance, indeed, and that increased me the pride about that Piura where the Andes start to rise. [Check out Matt’s YouTube channel] 

As everybody, the next one we learnd about Sapillica was the invasion and the infestation of the illegal mining, that instead to keep beauty the mountains and the forests, drill them with holes and tunnels every size. The today congressman Daniel Urresti interestingly worked for pacification in the zone due to the interdiction policy, for the Farmers’ Patrol took the control of the district later, at the point that nobody comes out to the street after nine at night.

But in July 2016, an urgent call put me over the track of a science I was starting to appreciate – archeology, and that has been one of the recurrent coverages of FACTORTIERRA.NET. Then, my partner Marco Paulini was beginning the journey to decrease the maternal mortality across Sapillica from three per year to zero –what he achieved and held until the Health officials decided not to hire him again—when he found a beautiful trace on the rock that made him to remember the sites we have identified and registered in Malingas. [Check out the full story] 

It’s about a big spiral on a 20-feet-height rock, just at the entrance of Loma Alta Village, Masías Bajo Community, that when he sent it, he put the whole newsroom on alert and eased next to other producer, estany Tineo, I traveled with to verify what seemed to be incredible on the photograph – A petroglyph! A more-than-touchable evidence of the Formative Age’s people needed to picture something on the rocks for marking something we are trying to understand since 11 years ago! [Check out the full story] 

In Malingas, we came to convince that work could be until 4000 years old, much more ancient than the Incas, the Aztecans, the Mayans! Anyway, could it happen the same in Sapillica? The first photographic and spectrographic analysis by the archeologist Daniel Dávila upon high-resolution images we got to take at that place leave the suspicion more than open, and a hypotheses for the moment: they could be part  of the so-called Samanga Tradition, in reference to the site at el Toldo Village, Ayabaca District, where the best conserved traces are located.

My initial reaction during the two trips I did to identify and register petroglyphs was notifying José encalada because, to begin, before than me, I ever tought he is the fair person who has to tell the world what we are finding. It’s his district, isn’t it?, I mean. What matters if I have or don’t have an interchange agreement with Cutivalú! The issue here is it must establish it exists, and it’s there when the journalism does one of its most wonderful works, increasing the science and the knowledge.

I never could met Pepe but I ever kept the connection, we ever have been in touch. I also have known his house and met his beautiful family that had me much kindly, what I will ever thank. And, look what nice the human relations are, Pepe call at my cellphone Sunday night to release me the story: “I was noticed about some petroglyphs in Pampa Verde.”

I confess I tried to hold moody, something it’s not happening while I write this op-ed, that I write pretty enthusiastic, but I was fascinated of the story, because it proves a work hypotheses launched by the same Sapillica people since the first time we arrived: the district is nailed by archaeological evidences. I have mentioned you Loma Alta, now Pampa Verde, that is in the occidental side, add Tunal in the southern side, and Trujillo, very close to the Sapillica Town. Is there much in that territory that is just over 150 square miles? We do suspect that. [Check out the story]  

The good to be in 2020 for Sapillica, for you, for our crew, and for me, is we are not in November 2009 anymore, when we started underground and following fake clues. Today we can say, almost not mistaking, the petroglyphs networks in Sapillica and Tambogrande could be connected, being part of one only way, that also disperses across Quiroz Valley, climbs up through Pacaipampa, reaches Huarinjas (Huaringas), passes over Sang Ignacio and Jaén, in Cajamarca, and could have one of its starting points in Luya, Amazonas, at the Peruvian Jungle highlans.

José, as well as us, has wondered to know more, to understand the message it has been kept (who knows) during four millennia on those rocks, to explain the district, the region, the country, and the world what they all are about and how it can evolve the history as it has been taught for decades. That would be a nice Project, actually, that the people of Sapillica must engine! Look at Malingas, where they are very motivated to retake it.

And while I look at Sapillica encouragingly, when I get back mentally to Sullana and I watch around, I can’t say the same. Here, in the second most important province of Piura Region, we are predating our past rather, as it happens in El Cucho, or we treat it indifferently, despite, as a colleague of mine whom I covered one of those stories told, there is evidence wherever you step on.

If Sapillica (and Malingas) gets to arrange an archaeological research and changes the History books, it will have something real to blame to Sullana everytime it wants because it will be a positive example that everybody will wish to imitate. And if the tourism comes in a planned, ordered manner, it would be much better. They really deserve it, and they have to work since today for that becomes another local economic axis.

Send me your comments to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

As simple as if you cut it off, it will cut you off

Sullana, Peru-based small businessman Mario Sarango is worried because the deforestation and the climate change are risking his business – apiculture. The news is not new but it is crucial from the sustainability point of view of its entrepreneurship as well as our whole life. And when I talk about our life, I’m talking about our life on the Earth.

But before we go to the very global, let’s try to understand the Sarango’s preoccupation in a most local sphere, and the best way is remembering our high-school first grade little classes, or less, when we learned about ecosystems and food chains.

One of the most remarkable species in Piura Coast is our kind of carob tree, the Prosopis pallida, that is something like our national tree. Native of South-American Central-Western edge, it’s not only is a source of food, fertility, and life, but its complex system of roots allows to fix the soil and capture the underwater that sustains the so-called Equatorial Dry Forest while no rain drop falls from the sky.

And when the sky hugely loads, the carob trees, in alliance with other tree species, prevent erosion and keep the fertility levels, plus being the shelter of a hundred species living among their trunks and branches. Yes, like the waltz sings it.

One of those species are the bees, those within other things don’t only help to pollinate everything, then propitiating the growth of our food, but they also make the whole list of products in their ives, which the honey is just the top of the iceberg. And that list is the sustain of hundreds of people in our community who gain their life by caring the environment and giving jobs to other people and sustaining one of many value chains where even the people who never knew an ive in their lifetime end to benefit.

Let’s get back to the pollination issue, the action through the bee, working to extract the nectar of the flowers for giving to eat its wwwhole community, gets its little paws sticked with pollen, that tiny mostly yellow dust that once carried to other flower of the same kind, fals down inside it and allows the fertilization. So, the formation of a fruit, and that fruit turns in our food… unless the bee enjoys to eat corn.

If we take the bee out or eliminate it of the picture, the natural process of pollination will not be possible, then the formation of fruits either. The human being can artificially intervene pretending to be a bee (and I’m not talking about costuming such as a bee), but if there is already a species that manages this issue efficiently, then there’s no reason why the human being, as it uses to do, break down that balance.

The protection of bees doesn’t only mean not killing the bee, although more than a guy falls in panic because the bite, while others have a justified fear because an overreacting consequence of the body if that accident came to happen – the so-called anaphylactic shock.

The protection of the bees goes through also protecting the spaces it uses like a house and the spaces where it flows through looking for its food not damaging anybody, rather the whole opposite.

Here is where the carob tree plays its part because many bees, due to some good reason, like to form their ives or their ives to be installed next to the carob trees. Even, the existence of carob fruits, which starts other value chain that the algarrobina is another iceberg top, highly depend on pollination that our buddies know to do excellent.

How are we responsing them in practical terms? We are cutting off the carob trees for diverse purposes, but the recurrent ones are the expansion of agricultural surfaces, the horizontal growth of the cities, or the making of coal that it’s usually consumed by the restaurants offering broaster chicken or the BBQ’s through many people are looking for extra money.

Our replacement or reforestation policies of individuals we have cut off are inexistent in practical terms in spite of many people say to have it written, or sstill the worst, when it is reforestated, early or fast-growth species aare used, those are not native of our ecosystem, then what we have is short-term trees but not integrating to the chain set with the carob tree. If the chain cuts off, everything cuts off, especially the natural production of food for human consumption.

And if that is a bit, in times of climate change, the carob trees cut-off also seems to be weakening other carob trees. When they don’t find conducive fertility conditions to blossom their flowers, it’s impossible the individuals replace each another ones in a natural way, like the carob tree itself were letting to die. Bad news for the bees because without flowers, they won’t have pollen to carry. And without pollen, there won’t be fruits neither, so they are also bad news for the humans.

Here is the Mario Sarango’s preoccupation: to protect the carob trees and the bees not much because his business gets protected so, that is a valid purpose since his business is benefitting the whole community, but the protection of bees and carob trees suppose the protection of humankind.

As Sarango has told me, what he has got as an answer are from indifferent attitude to arrogant attitude at any local or regional government office he has presented to expose his arguments. And, look, Mario is not any rookie on the spot because he has experience in funding, authomation, aand where you see him, he has traveled twice to Australia for having internships those allowed him to perfectionate in apicultural management. He is also an enthusiastic advocate of the activity  next to other partners across Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, and Canada, he uses to participate in advocacy and training activities with all them, and he’s a lover of Sullana’s traditional tales and our folklore too. Yes, he doesn’t fit quite in the profile of the average businessman or entrepreneur, as we have in the local market. And that’s good!

The problem with Mario, as I said him many times, is this campaign to protect the carob tree and the beess has not to entirely lay over his shoulders, despite he has stated on his Facebook posts that he is addressing part of his gains to reforestate (and somebody should deduct it from taxes in case of success), but he should be, at least, a province-wide campaign. Forget if the municipality passes a resolution ruling about because it uses to be useless, although if it does it is useless either. It should be a commitment of our whole community.

Now the school is up to begin, for example, a pretty school project could be to reforestate and sponsor a carob tree. I don’t know, and I wonder, for example, and look at me releasing a name  because I meet him, former Bellavista’s Councellor and teacher Hary Piedra whose (yes, he’s going to kill me for uncovering private chatting) I certify the ecologic issue fascinates him and he has tried to hold campaigns about, during his administration in that metro district. I think Mario has an excellent ally there, as he link other district adding to his.

Yes, I know it’s bad education to point out, but, people, keep the shyness for other moment and lift up to the adventure of making alliances, damn it. Let’s continue.

As I said it in other op-ed, behind his house lives a follower of mine and also lover of local folklore called Luis Enrique Curay, who is entrepreneur and athlete too. We also have Sullana Museum’s Carmen Cruz, who Mario knows very well and supports a lot. We have there two more allies. Here, the whole El Regional de Piura and FACTORTIERRA.NET newsrooms, if my senior publisher doesn’t pull my ears, also can join that campaign by publishing and educating, I think.

And so and so, you, you, you, you, and you can also join, and when we have the less awareness, all Sullana is part of the change, and a change able to measure, see, and reply. It’s no other additional promise that never becomes real.

Do you realize? The thing is as simple as understanding the problem and joining. Will the little bees and the carob trees thank it to us? Yes, of course. They will do it. How? By preservating us as a species. A more practical action like that is imposible and is crucial for us to continue living. Of course, we have to link that to a policy of water, energy, and resources saving. Anyway, changing our mind and and that mind that comes us back to the simple life, provides us prosperity.

Rather, and only for satisfying the bureaucracy in Piura and Sullana, Mario and who join that campaign actually should quantify how much we have lost, how much we need, what the loses will be in every sense and every term. You know, the typical bureaucrat, if you don’t overflow with statistic, will feel you are teaching the cathecism – pure good will, zero commitment.

Thus, we already know what our upcoming work is for now: to prevent that the deforestation of more carob and native tree species surface follows up, and we have effective alert systems that allow to preserve out there when we can’t put the eye because they are too far away, like the rural zone. Obviously, the authorities have top lay their part, but we, who are the majority, also have to play the ours. Let’s start.

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Two marketing ideas you can invest in Piura Region

Because of the show I am hosting here in Piura region –well, mostly Sullana City, were I live-,

I have the opportunity to meet some interesting people who are launching and managing diverse entrepreneurships. Although I’m requesting my producer to have some episodes in English, I get no results up to today. Actually, my producer (on the photo beside) says it’s planned but the time is not now yet. Despite, I could make a couple of English-spoken videos about.

In that sense, I noticed some interactions from the U.S. West Coast on my Twitter account, and all from people involved in marketing. And if limes rain from the sky, why not I make lemonade? So, I wondered what ideas here could be interesting for you to develop, especially in terms of funding.

Fortunately, Peru is a free-markett economy, what promotes competitiveness. The problem for many Peruvians, including me, is we have not been educated in what the innovation is. In consequence, we ever are waiting for somebody saying what we have to do, or where to send our resumé for becoming another employee. We name ourselves as entrepreneurs, but we don’t highlight to be ultimately original. And the original ideas are never known because their creators are shy or jealous, ignoring how to pitch them by themselves or via alternative media, as our FACTORTIERRA webpage.

The conditions to be a formal business in Peru are easy. The paperwork is fast and almost free. Establishing a company doesn’t cost more than 150 dollars in the worst scenario, and the title is eased in one month at most. But, how does it connect to the show I’m working on? Simple! There are actually good ideas to invest, but we are understanding through this production the people in charge are not promoting them in the right place, or they are not SIMPLY promoting them. Yes! The promotion is the trouble.

In my case, I have a strong feeling in tourism. I’m convinced, because my job as a journalist, that Piura has a lot of chances for rural tourism because our agriculture, forest management, cattle, and even magic rituals at the highlands (only to mention what I remember now). My problem is I’m not a good salesman, I recognize. However, my huge talent is I can motivate, inspire, pitch before a camera, a microphone, on the keyboard. I speak TWO languages, as you see, and my skill to create copies is the ADMIRATION for everyone who knows me, even when I have to only-speak. I’m an anchor, indeed.

And the show is teaching me I can be an excellent conduit for those ideas to be know for the world, ideas which you can put your money and make real good deals. Just take two of the episodes: one dedicated to the Museum of Sullana and another dedicated to products made of environmentally-sustainable prime matters.

Let’s start with Museum of Sullana. Yes, it combines education and culture, but tourism across Chira Valley (where Sullana City is located) too. The museum hosts a little-but-attractive collection of ancient pottery coming from cultures those flourished around before the Spaniards officially arrived here in 1532 AD, where they founded San Miguel in Tangarará Town, just 15 miles away Sullana City.

First, the museum needs to invest in improving the security and the administration of the space it occupies. The curator Carmen Cruz (on the photo beside here) does it for free, what represents no problem for her, but the only fact to receive visitors and guide them through is a huge job. Plus, many pieces here are still uncathegorized, so urges an archaeological research and survey that needs to be funded too. The entrance to the museum is free, but even charging a dollar or less per visitor, it doesn’t cover what a good research demands. Then, about results, integrating it into a local touristic circuit where the starting point to be this. What about related merchandising? It’s another great idea. Local tourism operators have no plans about, as much as I learned. However, I was talking with the manager of a local hotel, Luis Curay, who is highly interested in exploiting that idea, so he could be a great local partner for you, I promise.

And I think the keyword is that – partnership. And partnership could work perfectly in the second range of marketing ideas. While we were producing the show, we met Medellín, Colombia-native Marlon Lugo (on the photo beside this), who is an exchange student in Piura City. He is involved in all related to sell products manufactured under estrict environment respect rules. Actually, he is representing Dagua, a little entreprenurship based on Marina del Rey, Calif., that is selling teethbrushes made from bamboo wood. The story interested us for the main reason that we use the ones made in plastic, that is producing a global problem because of the pollution, especially to the sea. But the other thing I realized just when my producer told me about it was the fact that Piura crops bamboo, particularily in Andes midlands, but it is used mostly to make rustic furniture and house decoration at beaches and farms. Obviously, Peru doesn’t export that, but what about if a similar industry to the teethbrushes cand base in Piura and use the local resources obtained as part of communitarian projects to avoid deforestation and soil erosion?

I have no clarity about the Dagua’s business model, but the bamboo comes from Colombia, and it’s purchased from California. What about if you can establish an industry using Piura’s local resources and purchasing from here, taking advantage of free trade agreements we have wit some countries, including the U.S., the European Union,  and the Pacific Rim?

And I’m not only talking about bamboo. Piura crops organic coffee, cacao, and makes organic sugar,all for exportation. I recently learned that a rural community in Sóndor District, Huancabamba Province, in the Andes, is making essential oils from mint and a local plant called lemongrass (yerbaluisa in Peruvian Spanish). And this is just two species from the hundreds with medicinal purpose, even. My contact is called Jesmir Núñez, by the way, and I have a pendant visit to the town to train the people for using the social media in order to marketing their products. Oh! And I remember about the chocolate that Palo Blanco Community, near Chulucanas City, wants to move on. And, in fact, rural tourism could be great choices for both places.

As you look, I am talking about just two ideas. I think that if we explore across Piura Region (around 20K square miles), and we go through each of its 8 provinces (counties) and 65 districts, its two metropolitan areas… well, across Piura, we are goind to find more opportunities, many looking for funding, markets, promotion, placement – marketing.

Indeed, I want to explore, and with your help and your requests, I think we can do a great job together for improving life conditions here and abroad. You tell me where we can start on. Use the comment box, or my Twitter account, or my Facebook account to stay in touch directly with me.

Lon-term love is possible and sustainable

Ayabaca is a lovely place to me because has been the destination of my mid-year vacations. My mother’s parents, as many Ayabaca-natives know, lived at the right entrance, where Piura and Arequipa Streets begin at the same time, just in front of so-called White-Trunk Cross, on a promontory from where you could look at the three emblematic mountains of the Ayawaka people, especially Aypate, toward the Sun rises.

So my earliest memories start in that my grandparents’ big house, now remodeled as a restaurant and  home (after my grandparents passed away, my family sold out the estate), those continue downhill passing beside the cemetery, the long flat sometime called Maracaná, until following down the road to Suyupampa, finding some of those doors, going down through a path to a place called Rosales, where one of the Castillo Family’s acres where located.

To satisfy the curiosity of the one reading or listening to this op-ed, the other acres where located on the path to Montero, just at the site known as The Devil’s Nose, the most complicated place to advance for who pilgrim to the Captive Lord Festival every October.

Then, even when it doesn’t seem, Ayabaca is an issue I’m concerned about by a double reason: first, by my interest as a journalist, second, because of that emotional connection. That’s why when the Ayawaka Cultural Association invited me to join a debate about development chances for the zone, it was impossible to say not. But what development does Ayabaca need?

First step – Think of multi

A couple of months ago, the local people, or a portion of it, demonstrated against a mining project that is being announced 15 years ago, and what, anyway, because an opposition in Ayabaca and Huancabamba Provinces as well, it’s not possible to start. I was wondered about that protest because its advocates insisted of its local development model was based on the agriculture and the tourism. Great, we already evolved!, I said, because monocathegorizing a development model is the same than considering a person as monotalented for the lifetime, and the truth is that’s not true. The persons, if they want, can be multitalented.

The same happens to the development model at any territory. It should be multicathegorized, and the reason why is such simple as the development is built by the people, not the schemes. If you take the person out the scheme, the scheme borns dead.

The agricultural development model for Ayabaca, priorly, has no discussion, and who doesn’t convince, walk just a mile away the city and get without doubts. And the agriculture comes together with the cattle, if not, it becomes unsustainable. And inside the agriculture itself, the idea would be to have a whole stock catalogue this land could grow for good. The question is – which ones?

Second step – Love the numbers

And the interesting thing comes here. Many people defend development models based on slogans, the priorly, but when you ask someone to sustain it in a real way, the problems begin. First lesson: the priorly could motivate me but is not enough to me because in most times, it comes from an anticipated judge, and that’s a big mistake.

The real way to sustain that your development model is the model is based on diagnosis made with field information as well as statistics. Yes, I know that the numbers have nothing romantic, but the numbers help us not to put the chariot before the horse… although almost nobody uses horses.

I remember that after that demonstration, I wrote an op-ed on El Regional de Piura where I left a homework for Ayabaca people, and for everybody who reads me in general, that we start with a key index saying us how much sustainable we are in terms of economy, the gross domestic product. It seems an interesting basis to me to know what the GDP that Ayabaca has got because its agricultural-cattle activity, for instance. Does somebody know it? As I said then, the information is available on the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics, even by clicking. So now, what is it? Just as a clue, the Peruvian agricultural GDP is more than 7%, the double of the Peruvian general GDP projected for 2019 in 3.6%.

OK, if we can’t unfold at that level, at least what the Ayabaca Province’s or the District’s GDP is. Of course, the GDP is not the only index, but it is indeed fundamental, what must complement to  others as the existent land surface, the land proportion dedicated to cropping, cattle, forest conservation. In the end, numbers, numbers, numbers, and you’ve got my number.

If you want to pitch your development model to who you want to convince or debunk, I should stand up strongly on those indexes, and honest indexes, not supposed, not guessed, not made-up. It’s going to cost us to work but the true loves are not easy. I’m sure about that.

Third step – Turn-on the fan for refreshing the air

And not only with the agricultural-cattle sector. The same, priorly, I believe that the tourism in Ayabaca has an amazing potential, but it’s priorly, and we already established that holding to the priorly is a huge mistake. If we think of Ayabaca being Aypate, we fall into a dangerous reductionism, very similar to the people have about Talara when they believe that everything is Máncora, or when they believe that Piura is only beaches. And here I pay the attention about why we don’t end to convince everybody that Piura is touristically multicathegorized around and across.

Let’s return to Ayabaca. Reducing the all beautiful to Aypate already means a problem to me as a journalist and more as a tourist, because after Aypate, what? I know as a journalist that there is also Samanga, that I’m personally much interested on, or Huamba, or Cujaca, or Yanchalá, or El Toldo, or Olleros, or Yanta, or Culucán, or very near the city, in Socchabamba, or still pretty near the city in Yacupampa, where that beautiful combo is, composed by the Yantuma, the Chacas, and the Cuyas-Cuchayo clod forest. And I learned around of some waterfalls those somebody wants to launch. Excellent!

And even the Ayabaca City itself is able for beautiful urban circuits those you, at the most, haven’t realize like one that my producers and I were invented, beginning at the Main Square, going through all the balconies of Arequipa Street, reaching my granparents’ former house, resting for a while in the White Trunk Cross, and going down along the Piura Street until arriving to the Main Square again. And there is another through the path to Pampa de Lobo. And look - I don’t live in Ayabaca.

Until there, the existent offer. Now, what services do we have to offer to the tourist considering just two basic aspects like assistance quality and essential services: safe water, adequate management of spaces & supplies, safety. We have to quantify all that. Of course, the romantic ones will say me “the troublemaker is already here”, but if you already convinced that the priorly is not enough, you are ready for upgrading the next level. Once we quantify all, we have to specify which ones apply for minimum quality standards those motivate the tourist to come once, twice, and everytime, and bring more people. Right then, we’ll have a sustainable model!

Fourth step – Project to the world

Once we have all this well fixed, we can put that other component right, that’s my best professional talent – how we release it to the planet. Not your next-door fella, not the Ayabaca-natives living abroad, but the whole planet, where you truly contest, and where even you have to speak in codes we haven’t grown.

And, sure, how to feature all this with a text, picture, sound, hook production of marketing that makes irresistible going to Ayabaca, but once you be in Ayabaca, prove it’s better than they told it to you. And here is when the romance just borns strong and everlasting.

Fifth step – Real goals

In this sense, Ayabaca can place as a brand, the Ayabaca Brand. I know many people have thought on that, but if you pretent to get it by skipping from A to Z not passing along the whole alphabet, you’re going to give up. And the successful way to go along starts from knowing wwhat we have, knowing how it is, knowing what we can improve, knowing how we’re going to feature, knowing how we’re going to react before the response, and knowing how we’re gonna to evolve upon the first results.

In other words, people, strategic planning, because it’s not worthy to me that something is beautiful if I don’t have a whole network behind pointing me out goals, activities, resources, persons, results those allow me to measure if I am advancing through the right way or I am falling down. Yes, something like going madly the Yantuma uphill from Yacupampa, and getting unsteady and releasing you had no liferope once you reach the summit.

Sixth step – Be proactive

So now, I know very well that many people will say this is the authorities job, and notify us when you have it already to see how I take advantage. I’m sorry but I have to inform that in the Peruvian context, that is the simple and fast way to give up.

I understand that the ideal is in the social construction of every community, our leaderships open the way, or at least they say us where it goes, but the reality has proven that our leaderships have shown to be incompetent, selfish, and even corrupt. Then, what do we do? Unmotivate? No, that’s not the choince.

If the formal leaderships are not as high as the challenge that demans to launch a brand like Ayabaca, don’t cry, don’t regret. Let’s bet for our own initiative capability, and in that aspect I consider that the private initiative, even being incipient anywhere, can be the same or the better good than the public initiative. And I’m not talking about corporations. Peru has proven it moves 70% of its economy because the little companies, as well as the many independent entrepreneurs (including me). So, if it rains limes, make a lemonade. I mean, if your productive system is mostly the littlest or the independent, build your social network from there and manage the development model from there.

Yes, the authority is going to feel lost but I think there’s no most punishment for any leader when sees not to have a place in the picture. And that’s what the world demands! If you see the international reality, the governments are not those moving the processes but the people like you or me who do it. It happens exactly to a community like Ayabaca!

Then, when that attitude changes, and moves the things into a most proactive direction, believe me that the human asset will be an irresistible added value for that natural, archaeological, commercial, agricultural, cattle, touristic assets, whatever you decide for Ayabaca, looking for including everybody who wants to work on and get it. In other words, when a community becomes competitive, when it transcends from the priorly to the factually, it’s when it really improves the things, and when the things improve, it’s when we have a good story to tell, and when there is a good story to tell the world, well, it’s when you count on me.

Pleased again for the trust, and how good that the Ayabaca people are looking for solutions everywhere. If you keep that way, I guarantee you have a good portion of the success for sure. And if somebody wants not to join, you know?, don’t lose your time by criticizing. Get focused on the good that you’re getting because you’re going to get so far that way.