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Globalization Transforming How Poor Peruvians Shop and Live
News Feature
By Andres Tapia, Pacific News Service
Businesses are slowly learning that the poor in Latin America have
real purchasing power, writes PNS contributor Andres Tapia. In Peru,
that means shopping malls and fitness centers are the new face of
low-income communities. While credit card debt looms, older cultural
traditions hang on.
LIMA, Peru - September 24, 2004 - "Vamos! Do you have that heart rate
at 80 percent?" I'm pedaling like mad in a spinning class at Planet
Fitness in the lower middle-class neighborhood of San Miguel -- one of
the myriad nodes of globalization mushrooming throughout the Andean
nation of Peru. The internationally certified Peruvian instructor is
playing salsa, but her commands of first, second, and third positions
would be understood by any spinner anywhere on the globe.
Just a few years ago, globalization came to middle and upper class
Peruvians in the form of Blockbusters and Burger Kings set up in
well-off neighborhoods like Miraflores and Monterrico. Gringo-style,
shrine-like shopping malls such as Jockey Plaza rose alongside Lima's
prestigious horse-race track.
But spinning classes like the one in San Miguel, as part of fully
equipped fitness centers, have sprouted in lower middle-class barrios as
well as in low-income shantytowns called pueblos jovenes (young towns),
where wages are commonly just $2 a day. Global chains such as Gold's Gym
opened up equal sweat opportunities to thousands of Peruvians for whom,
until very recently, fully equipped gyms were as inaccessible as country
club memberships.
One of these gleaming gyms sits astride the new and aptly named Mega
Plaza shopping center in Comas, a low-income sector in northern Lima. As
I stand at the plaza's entrance I find it hard to believe that this used
to be a car-grease, mud-caked and garbage-strewn side of the road off
the Pan-American highway cutting through a highly densely populated
metropolis of Peru's working poor.
Today the Mega Plaza is flanked by Toddus, a "hyper market," and Max, a
discount department store. The food and fashion displays at both stores
are picture-perfect images of bounty and beauty. In combination with the
cacophony of price-scanner beeps at the checkout counters, memories of
quaint and dirty Third World open-air markets fade.
Nestled between Toddus and Max are more than 100 boutique stores with
the latest genuine or knockoff shoes, jeans and other apparel. Shoppers
can catch Spider Man 2 at the cineplex and chow down at the
English-named "Food Court," complete with KFC and Dunkin Donuts. There's
even what had been until recently an oxymoron -- fast-food Peruvian --
at Peruanissimo.
In this globalized, homogenized village, Dad can watch the kids at a
10,000-square-foot mini amusement center while Mom gets a plastic
surgery quote at one of three storefronts enticing customers to "Finally
make that change that will change your life."
So how do the poor afford the Mega Plaza experience? For one, the
informal economy, so well documented by Peruvian economist Hernando de
Soto, has created a new entrepreneurial class among the low-income "chichas,"
Andean Indians who have migrated to the city.
Their businesses have generated high revenue, which they have invested
back in these densely populated communities that had been ignored by
mainstream capitalists. They have established private schools and
clinics where people used to suffer decrepit state schools and
hospitals. The other big service business is gyms. Also for the chichas,
the deep-seated Andean value of ayllu, or community, means they pool
their resources to buy in bulk.
But credit-card seduction also contributes. An economic culture that
used to be hand-to-mouth, with all transactions paid in cash, is quickly
becoming an indebted society. Multinationals have discovered Latin
America's emerging market: 250 million low-income consumers, who, due to
their sheer numbers (50 to 60 percent of the region's population), have
an annual purchasing power of $120 billion.
Poor Peruvians are deluged by an unprecedented wave of tens of thousands
of credit card offers with which to fuel the purchasing of middle class
dreams. The advertised interest rate is 2 to 5 percent, but because it's
compounded monthly, the actual annual rate is a stunning 27 to 80
percent.
Now, as poor Peruvians dress in the latest fashions, use sophisticated
deodorants and perfumes and watch the latest flicks, they too are
getting sucked into compound debt like American consumers.
Yet, in the midst of this restless globalization, the ancient Peruvian
Catholic soul still peeks through the Nike swoosh.
In Arequipa, high up in the Andes, where the consumerist dynamic too is
manifest through shopping malls and easy credit, there still beats a
deeply felt fervor for the Virgen del Carmen and the
Twelve-Year-Old-Boy.
Outside the Cathedral, anxious parishioners purchase "milagros"
(miracles) -- two-inch high aluminum molds representing health for body
parts such as hearts and lungs, or desires, such as for happy homes and
relationships -- to be pinned as petitions on the flowing manta (shawl)
of the Virgen saint. When the manta is ceremoniously pulled off the
Virgen and brought down to the supplicants, it is held up horizontally
at the four corners. A dozen people at a time scurry underneath for a
special blessing.
Under the manta the murmur of prayers begins, "...forgive us our
debts...."
Tapia grew up in Lima, Peru. He writes on
cultural, spiritual and political trends.
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