Correspondence
A LETTER FROM Lim A.
f To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—The regally-republican retinue of journalists and photographers and secretaries and secret-service agents who accompanied Mr. Hoover on his State visit to Lima last December saw a new city, American enough to suit any American tastes—a city complete with broad avenues and concrete mansions and a " Million-Dollar " Country Club. The outside, that is to say, of the cup and platter ! But of the true heart of Lima, the old colonial city which is gradually disappearing before the pickaxes of American construction companies, they saw but little.
Yet it is this old Lima which tells more truly the tale of life in other parts of Peru. Peru beyond the limits of Lima, and even within the limits of Lima, has a long row to hoe in matters of social progress. The ten-year reign of President Legula has worked miracles. But it is beyond the range of human miracles to overtake in so brief a time the neglect and corruption of a century of republican independence.
President Legufa aims at making Lima the shop-window of Peru, to attract trade and capital and the tourist. In accordance with this policy he is converting the port of Callao from an open roadstead into a modern harbour wherein shipping can lie alongside the wharves and discharge passengers and cargo with economy of time and money. The contract has been placed with an American firm and the work of building tije two breakwaters is proceeding apace. It would be interesting, if the tale might be told, to reveal why an English
firm failed to obtain the contract. But the failure redounds to the credit of the English firm.
But, if Leguia is spending much money on his capital, lie is not neglecting the potential sources of the country's wealth. The last two years have witnessed a considerable extension of the road systems, largely due to a strict application of the Ley de Conscription Vial, under the terms of which every citizen is nominally under the obligation to work for twelve days in the year on road construction, or pay the equivalent of his labour in cash. It is true that many of the roads which appear as such on road-maps are no more than Nature's roads over sand-swept pampas. For that reason they are only transitable by cars with a high clearance—a fact which, through the supineness of British manufacturers, has left a clear field for American light cars and trollies. In any case, whatever the defects of the majority of the existing roads, it is now possible to motor along the coast from Tumbes on the northern frontier to the borders of Chile and to almost any town of importance on the Pacific side of the Cordillera.
Side by side with road development, commercial aviation has within the last six months made a successful &but. Three lines are to-day operating with marked profit. One of these, under the management of the Peruvian Aviation Corps, links Lima with Iquitos on the Amazon, reducing a month's travel by train and mule and canoe and launch under a grilling sun or torrential rains, to three days by train and hydroplane. A national company has a weekly service to Arequipa in the south, and to Piura and the oilfields of Talara in the north ; while the Pan-American Airways carries passengers and mail from Lima to the Panama Canal and from thence to Washington and New York. Another American company has more contracts than it can handle for cotton- dusting. Yet another is carrying out extensive aerial surveys ; while, to complete the list, German enterprise has a concession to establish further air routes in the republic. British aviation is out of the picture. Roads and aviation are thus opening door after closed door and paving the way for the real future of Peru, which lies in agriculture and not in minerals. The President has started a strong " back to the land " movement ; and the gospel of " ten acres and a cow " which Gladstone preached in the 'eighties, Leguia has adopted as his own. His slogan is, " Every Peruvian his own landowner," and the means to the end is irrigation.
Of the four or five million acres of cultivated land in Peru to-day, probably 80 per cent. are irrigated and possibly 90 per cent. in the hands of a few hereditary landlords. The system of land tenure, therefore, remains almost in the same situation as it did in the days of the Spanish viceroyalty. There exist to this day estates whereon the old evil of " encomiendas y repartieiones " still survives in fact if not in name. That is to say, the Indian goes with the land and is allowed to till a portion of it against a payment of 50 or 60 per cent.. of the crops grown and a percentage of the cattle pastured. In addition. he gives his service gratis to his over- lord, when required. On many sugar estates the peons are deliberately allowed to involve themselves deeply in debt to their masters, debt which their infinitesimal wage could never hope to redeem in the lifetime even of their sons. They are slaves.
The only means of redeeming the agricultural population of Peru from misery and blank ignorance is by means of irrigation and colonization. Those who travel by sea along the west coast of South America see an apparently barren waste of land stretching from Tumbes to south of Antofagasta in Chile. This waste land contains some of the richest agricul- tural soil in the world, as has been proved by the fact that wherever irrigation is possible the desert literally blossoms like the rose. To increase the amount of land available for agriculture, the Government is carrying out extensive irrigation works in the north which will eventually bring under culti- vation some 400,000 acres of new land.
On its picturesque side the scheme involves the diversion of the Huancabamba river from the Atlantic to the Pacific slope of the Andes, by means of a twenty-mile tunnel through the heart of the Cordillera. On its practical side the land thus made available will be sold in small lots ranging from ten to fifty acres at a nominal price, the payment for which will be spread over a period of twenty-five years. Thus, within the next ten years, some thirty thousand families in Northern Peru will be cultivating their own holdings in conditions of complete independence and comparative affluence.
Needless to say, the agrarian movement is intensely un- popular with the great landlords who see in education and roads and colonization the era of dearer and more independent labour. But Leguia will have his way—if life and funds permit. It is a big If " ; for the President is growing old and to carry out his ambitious programmes the resources of the country are pledged up to the hilt. Loan follows upon loan ; and here a little goes to its predestined object, and there a little. The balance follows more devious ways. Loyalty to " Leguiismo " demands its price.
Lima is now sweltering in the heat of midsummer. Despite the dogdays, football flourishes like a green bay tree and vies in favour with the bull-fighting season now in full swing in the old colonial ring of Acho across the Rimac. Your Peruvian is not a sportsman according to northern standards, but he is desperately addicted to the sport of looking on at games. Greyhound racing has added a new joy to the diversions of the Limerlan and competes with the cabaret and the cinema and the roulette wheel in the night life of the city. On the other hand, music and art and the theatre have few " aficionados."—I am, Sir, &c., YOUR CORRESPONDENT IN LIMA.
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