Email: Jason Woods

Friends,

Sometimes it’s hard living in a place where things don’t always feel hopeful. But sometimes you can find hope in the most unlikely of places.

A few months ago, the biggest instance of my personal lack of hope was the case of La Oroya. La Oroya is a mining town in the mountains about four hours east of Lima. It’s one of the ten most polluted cities in the world, according to a report by the Blacksmith Institute, a New York City-based NGO that works for a clean environment. The air in La Oroya contains alarming levels of lead, copper, zinc, sulfur dioxide, and other heavy metals.

A person is classified as having lead poisoning if they possess at least 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. This amount in a child’s bloodstream can damage that child’s physical health and ability to learn. According to the Center for Disease Control in the United States, no safe amount of blood lead level has been identified.

Approximately 97.2 percent of children in La Oroya have lead poisoning, with an average of 33.6 micrograms/deciliter of lead in their bloodstream.

When you arrive in La Oroya, it looks normal enough, perhaps a little hazy. It looks normal, that is, until you realize that the chalk-white mountains should be covered in greenery, normal until you realize that the river is a pallid shade of orange, and so is the mucus in your sinuses. And, with those realizations, you begin to wonder, “How can a place become so bleak?”

Today, the St. Louis-based Doe Run Corporation operates the metallurgic complex in La Oroya that emits about 1,000 tons of toxic pollution into La Oroya daily. The company has largely delayed major actions that would clean up or significantly lessen the pollution, and the Peruvian national government has been more than lenient with the corporation. Doe Run employs 3,000 workers in La Oroya. The corporation has become a part of the community, and it does not look like that will change soon. Most people in La Oroya would agree that the creation of jobs in the town is a good thing. No one, however, is singing the praises of the avalanche of environmental and health problems that cascade from the industrial complex.

In the middle part of April, the other Peru YAVs and I joined a group of 36 high school students from Allen Park Presbyterian Church in Michigan and a couple of groups of Peruvian youth from Huancayo in an event hosted by the youth of La Oroya. Our goal was to accompany and support the youth in their search for ways to create a healthier environment in their town.

The three-day event consisted of cooperation in smaller work groups with different specialties—mural, music, drama, photography, and publicity. Each group had its own project that would contribute to a final, town-wide event on the third day. The event went well, and among all of the hours of work, our large group was hosted by the mayor of La Oroya. This was no small matter. La Oroya’s mayor was holding an open meeting to discuss the environmental problems of the town with its people. This had never happened in La Oroya’s 85-year history as a mining town. Only a few years before, if a group of people began to talk about the environmental troubles of La Oroya, they would have been taken to jail by the municipal police or met by an unfriendly local committee with a penchant for rock-throwing. And, after this tumultuous history, the mayor of La Oroya was opening a dialogue, all because of our Peruvian-American delegation.

In the end, the mayor basically committed to do all in his power to make sure that Doe Run complies with international health standards. He used strong language, saying it was time for La Oroya to get up off of its knees and stop bowing to the whims of a corporation. Time will tell if he keeps his promises and if “everything in his power” is enough to make an impact against national and international forces, but the meeting itself was a step in the right direction.

On our last night, the youth and an adult or two from La Oroya began to speak, and dry eyes suddenly became a scarcity in the room. The general message of the Oroínos, spoken through their own tears, was a message of gratitude. They said they knew that the actions of Doe Run were unjustifiable and that they deserved to live in an environment that would not poison their bodies. They said they had been struggling alone to gain access to rights they should have already had for as long as they could remember, with no help from the local or national governments or from abroad. And it was an awfully lonely struggle. Lonely until a few people outside of the town and outside of the country lent their ears and voices. And for that, the people of La Oroya said thanks.

In reality, those of us from outside of La Oroya didn’t really do a whole lot. But that wasn’t what was important. What the people of La Oroya needed most wasn’t leadership from an outside organization or monetary donations. The important was that we were there, walking alongside a group of people who needed support as they walked down a long, long road.

And we were as grateful to the people of La Oroya as they were to us. They taught us what it really means to live a life—as opposed to living in acquiescence —in the face of adversity, and they taught us that it is possible to successfully work toward positive social change, even when the problem is a mountain that seems much too daunting to climb. And for that, we said thanks to the people of La Oroya.

All of these things were shared—verbally and non-verbally—over and over that night. But perhaps we were all giving thanks for the same thing that evening. Perhaps we were all giving thanks for the hope that had been brought into our lives. And maybe, through instances of accompaniment and exchange like this one, we will eventually have cause to hope that people will realize Peru is not another world, but it’s a part of the one world we all share, and it is the responsibility of us all to add our voices to the choruses that are already singing for justice.

Jason

P.S. A longer version of this newsletter, with photographs, is also available.