The Latin-American Legacy of Tambograndé

I joined a webinar on March 16^th, 2022. It was summoned by Beyond 2020 Solidarity and Acción No Violenta en las Americas. It was a chance to share experiences about how non-violence can prevent or stop natural resources extraction. Other panelists were in Bolivia, Brazil, Honduras, and Ecuador. Coming next, I transcript my exposition.

 

Tambograndé is located in Piura, Northwestern Peru. It’s mostly dedicated to exporting agriculture. It forms San Lorenzo Valley, a Peruvian government’s project established 1950.

It’s surrounded by the equatorial Dry Forest, a very sensitive endemic ecosystem that provides other economic activity – cattle. It also allows apiculture or little food industry. Algarrobina or carob syrup is one of the most famous natural food supplements in Peru. Water comes here from Piura River, quiet from fall to spring, huge in summer.

 

The conflict

Tambograndé’s people  opposed to a proposed mine that was going to be operated by former Vancouver-based Manhattan Minerals Corporation, (Manhattan).  Farmers feared it might pollute San Lorenzo Valley, the dry forest, and Piura River.

Pollution might affect negatively the mango exportation. San Lorenzo can sell abroad until 300,000 tons in a good season. United States, Canada, and Europe are the most important markets. Peru is the third main mango exporter in the world.

The other hazard was going to be Piura River’s pollution. During el Niño events, heavy rains can overload it, becoming destructive. On March 22^nd, 2017, it flooded Piura Downtown, the regional capital city.

Fight in San Lorenzo Valley began in October 1999. People at the croplands discovered Manhattan was drilling the soil to get mineral tests. The problem was it didn’t ask the people for an authorization to enter. San Lorenzo valley is basically private property established 1960.

People demanded the national and local government to rule Manhattan. They had no answer. Then, people demanded Manhattan to leave the town. It couldn’t because it had much to lose. All its money was invested in three poly-metallic deposits:

• B5, amid the nearby dry forest.
• TG3, just beside Piura River across Tambograndé Downtown.
• TG1, just underneath Tambograndé Downtown.

This last one was the most critical because it demanded to move about 20,000 people. Underneath Tambograndé Downtown, it lays a deposit of gold, silver, cooper, zinc, and iron. The problem was Manhattan didn’t guarantee a clean operation to San Lorenzo farmers

When activists translated Manhattan’s info from its website, they discovered the company was probably cheating. This was the first reason why San Lorenzo’s people didn’t want it. You cannot build good relationships about anything if you lie – a deal was not possible.

As the government didn’t support Tambograndé’s demand, people decided to protest. Demonstrations were raising each time. On February 27^th to 28^th, 2001, Tambograndé went to a general strike. There were struggles between farmers and the Police in Manhattan’s camp at Tambograndé Uptown. Amid the protest, the facility was destroyed and burned.

But the real plot point came one month later. On March 31^st, 2001, a killer gunshot San Lorenzo’s leader Godofredo Garcia. The farmer, an agricultural engineer and professor, died bleeding.

 

The non-violent solution

After Godofredo Garcia’s murder, Tambograndé issued a pacific strategy, a multi-strategy actually.

Organizational: Tambograndé and San Lorenzo already revived its Front of Defense, a civil organization created to fight a former enemy, French mining company BRGM. In 1970s, it was to exploit iron deposits next to Tambograndé Downtown.

The Front of Defense had already an ally, Diacony for Justice and Peace, a human rights office managed by the Catholic Church, that connected to other non-profit organizations across Peru. They formed the Mesa Técnica, the Technical Panel. It linked other organizations and individuals around the world. The local cause of Tambograndé became global.

 

Educational: The Front of Defense and the Technical Panel summoned many workshops and seminars. Their goal was to inform and to educate the people about benefits and risks of having a mine amid an agricultural valley . They happened in Tambograndé City as well as the countryside.

The Front of Defense leaders also went to town halls and even Peru’s Congress. The presentations were based upon science. In 2001 and 2003, American scientist Robert Moran conducted a field research. The hydro-geologist and geo-chemistrian gave reasons instead of slogans.

In 2003, the time for Tambograndé was getting over. Manhattan had to present its environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). A government agency, a recognized private university, and even a volunteer chemistrian reviewed the document. They all found more than a hundred errors and mistakes.

 

Legal: In June 2^nd, 2002, 7 of every 10 voters freely attended to a popular consultation.

People were asked if they agreed or disagreed the mining activity in Tambograndé and San Lorenzo Valley. Nine of every ten said no. Peru’s Government never recognized it as legal. However, it was a Latin American milestone.

Further popular consultations were applied in Esquel, Argentina, Sipacapa, Guatemala, and even Piura Highlands, Peru. All cases resulted the majority opposed to local mining projects. They all were inspired on Tambograndé.

 

Political: In 2003, Front of Defense ran Francisco Ojeda for Tambograndé’s Mayor. He wan. The purpose was to shut down the Manhattan’s project but from inside the government.

 

Cultural: The ultimate Tambograndé’s demonstration was November 4^th to 6^th, 2003. Manhattan needed to present its EIA in public hearings. It was a Peruvian government’s requirement to pass from exploration to exploitation. Manhattan only needed to have two of three hearings.

Tambograndé and its allies organized a boycott, but it was a big cultural event. The star was the mango and his buddy, the lime. Manhattan couldn’t do any hearing.

After the last one cancelled, its share in Toronto Stock Exchange brought down 40%. After failed trials, it left Peru mid-2005.

 

Media: The Technical Panel sponsored three books and a newspaper insert. As Manhattan had a website, the fight also moved to the cloud. In October 2000, I launched FACTORTIERRA. In 2001, Technical Panel launched tambogrande.org.pe

In 2007, an emblematic documentary was premiered. Ernesto Cabellos & Stephanie Boyd’s Tambograndé– Mangos, Mining, Murder was awarded around the world. Even, it was broadcast. Other reports were featured on Peruvian TV as well as international. BBC released a multi-platform story in December 2003.

Even a music CD featuring late Somos Tambograndé duo was released too.

 

What we learned

• First, the Tambograndé’s very well coordinated multi-strategy worked terrific. The starting point was its identity, what makes it unique in the world.
• Second, Thinking in long term. Solving the conflict was the first goal. What about the future? Sustainable development has answers. For example, we see Tambograndé as an experiential tourism hotspot. It’s about archeology, ecology, healthy lifestyle, eco businesses. Even in my opinion, a good location for photography, video, and film. Come here, and try it by yourself.
• About this particular, third, a personal reflection: when you use the media for real positive purposes, you can change the course of history. I’m the living proof that it is really possible.

Search the #5 F T peru for more insights about this. Photos featured in this entry are Arturo Peñaherrera. Watch the full webinar here: https://lnkd.in/eUP-xMN8 

  

The price of mango is very low

Tambograndé is the historical place where an emblematic conflict happened. The local community and a Canadian mining company faced for defending their own development models. In the local side, agriculture. In the foreign side, mining.

 

The stage was San Lorenzo Valley. This is a Peruvian Government venture launched in 1960. The purpose was turning a dry forest into rich croplands.

 

In fact, two of the most popular fruits in Peru come from here – mango and lime. Limes are the key ingredient for a Peruvian classic – cebiché. Mango is the sweet fruit that you can consume directly, or in a juice, or as a dessert. What about a mango jam?

 

However, the situation of mango is not the best now. Growers told me the price is very low, and it doesn’t compensate the production costs.

 

The box of fruit for exportation is costing around 2 dollars. Growers say the fair price should be around 4 dollars, the double.

 

The mango for domestic market is costing around 25 cents. Growers say the fair price should be around 2 dollars, 8 times more, indeed.

 

Every box is 44 pounds or 45 mangos.

 

The reason why this low price abroad is the low demand in markets as well as the global recession. In the domestic market, the speculation by dealers and the anti-government protests are bringing down the price. Growers said they have no a clear strategy for impacting both markets for good.

 

The mango season runs from October to March. FACTORTIERRA proposed in 2022 that Tambograndé should build a complementary industry around mango and agriculture by extension. This is the experiential tourism.

 

People in san Lorenzo Valley have a long experience having foreign visitors. People from Canada, Spain, and England have been some of the visitors during decades.

 

The valley is not only agriculture. It has some beautiful touristic spots you can find out. Go to factortierra.blogspot.com for more information.

 

Tambograndé is also a land of advocates. And this is the another reason why I came here today.

 

An organization created a creative campaign to raise funds. They want to gather around 7500 dollars. That’s the cost of a transfemoral protheses.

That one will be used for providing life quality to Jimmy Garcia.

 

This former Peruvian Air Force troop lost one of his legs in a traffic accident. He was riding a motorcycle and it crashed on one of his sides.

 

Jimmy told me in an interview he’s trying to do as well as he can. But he has no enough money to purchase his own protheses. So, a group of local activists encouraged every person to donate around 25 cents. They expect to join 30,000 people donating.

 

If you want to help, just contact me on the social media. Before this lines, you have other donation ways valid only in Peru.

I’m @nelsonsullana on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. As you contact me, I’m going to put you in contact with the fundraisers.

 

Scan this QR-code to play my full report on video.

  

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.

#LiveConnection August 28th, 2022

There are many little things we can do at home to save money and care the planet. One of them is checking out how we are using the water. This precious resource allows life in most cases. The problem is that’s not infinite.

Even when ¾ parts of our planet are basically water, especially if you live around the Pacific Ocean, the actual fact is that the amount is becoming shorter for almost 8 billion people living in the planet.

For years, different people around the globe have been advocating for a rational use of water. Maybe you can protect the rivers, lakes, or the sea. But, can we do anything in a smaller place like our home?

In 2005, FACTORTIERRA produced an English-content version website called factortierra2, especially created to serve with original contents to audiences in the United States and Europe. One of our topics was covering environmental issues across Piura Department especially at the highlands where a mining project is still proposed – Rio Blanco.

As we working on that, once upon a day we received an intriguing e-mail from a female from North Atlanta, GA. She said she was a high-school student, she was interested in having information about water saving in developing countries like Peru. After interchanging data and impressions, we decided to join the campaign in North Atlanta and Peru, and focusing it in one simple action as turning off the faucet.

Download the sign the students created to advocate on the water saving. 

Piura in the New Andean Chessboard: Security, Elections, and Geopolitics

In recent weeks, Peru has begun to occupy a different place on the strategic map of the United States and the Andean region. This is not the result of a single event, but rather a convergence of signals: FBI and DEA delegations arriving in Lima, a presidential meeting with Ecuador focused on transnational crime, an ongoing presidential and congressional election process, and—according to Bloomberg—the intention of Washington to designate Peru as a Major Non-NATO Ally.

 

Taken separately, these developments might appear circumstantial. Taken together, they point to a shift in phase in the relationship between security, domestic politics, and regional geopolitics. And this shift directly affects territories such as Piura, a strategic region in northern Peru.

 

Piura is located on Peru’s northern Pacific coast, bordering Ecuador by land. It covers approximately 35,900 square kilometers and is home to about two million people, making it one of Peru’s most populous departments. Its geography—combining border crossings, ports, highways, agricultural valleys, and informal trade routes—turns Piura into a key node for both legal commerce and illicit flows.

 

The organized crime affecting Ecuador and increasingly spilling into Peru no longer follows the traditional drug-trafficking model. Criminal networks have diversified their revenue streams into illegal mining, human trafficking, arms trafficking, and extortion schemes such as the so-called “gota a gota” loansharking system. This diversification allows them to finance operations, control territory, and penetrate local economies. The result is a transnational criminal ecosystem that ignores administrative borders.

 

The December 12 meeting between the presidents of Peru and Ecuador in Quito must be read through this lens. Ecuador speaks from hard-earned experience: armed gangs, ports under criminal influence, and prisons turned into power centers. Peru—particularly its northern regions—still has a window of opportunity to avoid a similar scenario, but only if it acknowledges that the threat is already shared.

 

At the same time, the presence of FBI and DEA delegations in Lima signals a meaningful shift. The United States is no longer waiting for institutional collapse before engaging, as it has in other cases. Instead, it is pursuing strategic prevention, built on intelligence sharing, law enforcement cooperation, and political alignment. In that context, the potential designation of Peru as a Major Non-NATO Ally is not merely symbolic; it would formalize deeper military and security cooperation.

 

An additional, uncomfortable layer cannot be ignored: electoral politics. Peru is heading into presidential and congressional elections, and Bloomberg has reported that the Trump administration has openly pressured countries undergoing electoral processes to align with its agenda, conditioning support and withdrawing traditional cooperation mechanisms such as USAID. There is no public evidence of direct electoral intervention, but there is a clear reconfiguration of the political environment, where hard security policies and international alignment gain prominence over social agendas.

 

This pattern bears resemblance—albeit with important differences—to dynamics not seen since the Cold War. The tools are no longer coups or overt interference, but indirect pressure, selective cooperation, and plausible deniability. The adversary is no longer ideological, but criminal; the logic of alignment, however, remains.

 

For Piura, this is not an abstract debate. As a border region with Ecuador, a commercial hub with ports and road networks, and an area where extortion and illicit economies are expanding, Piura stands at the frontline of this strategic shift. Increased international cooperation may bring stronger state presence and enforcement, but it also carries the risk of overly punitive responses if not paired with economic development and institutional strengthening.

 

The core question is no longer whether geopolitics reaches Piura. It already has. The real issue is whether Piura will remain merely a stage where externally designed strategies are applied—or whether it can become a conscious territorial actor, capable of demanding that security be built not only through operations, but through development, governance, and sustainable territorial control. 

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.