Office For Global Concerns

The following article was written by Fr. Tom Burns, MM, who has lived and worked in Peru for many years.

On June 5, former army officer Ollanta Humala, with 51.449 percent of the vote, won the second round of Peru's presidential race, beating Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori – now serving a 25 year sentence for crimes against humanity -- who came in second with 48.551 percent of the vote. Even in Peru's normally fickle political climate, no one would have imagined this outcome at the beginning of the year.

In January five serious contenders vied for the presidency, three more or less centrist free market politicians backed in varying degrees by the national and international corporate interests: former president Alejandro Toledo (2000-2005), his former minister of economy and finance as well as prime minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK); and Luis Castaneda, the mayor of Lima who had an 80 percent approval rating in Lima when he entered the race. At the beginning he and Toledo were the front runners. But by the end of March when the first round elections took place, PPK came in third, Toledo fourth and Castaneda fifth.

So what happened? Why did Humala and Keiko come in first and second? The three original frontrunners had campaigned to continue free market policies, promising that the benefits accrued over the past 10 years would continue to "trickle down." Of the three, only Toledo called for more equal redistribution. The others presumed that the seven percent average yearly growth over the past decade had benefitted all. After all, the percentage of people living in poverty in Peru had dropped from the low 50s to the low 30s. Both Humala and Keiko, on the other hand, had campaigned promising change (Humala from the left, Keiko from the right), which the people clearly wanted. Another mistake was that all three stayed in the race until the end; if one of them dropped out, one of the remaining two centrists would have been the leading contender in the second round and would have won.

Following World War II, in the early years of the United Nations, world peace was uppermost on the minds of most people. Given the horrors perpetrated against millions of people prior to and during the war, it was clear that peace would never happen without profound respect for the human rights of all people. It is no surprise, therefore, that by 1948 the UN enshrined as its foundational document the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; it subsequently became the global advocate for social and economic development as the path that would secure the human rights of all people and ultimately support lasting peace.

For a decade Maryknoll Sisters Mary Ann Duffy and Rae Ann O'Neill have worked in San Marcos, Guatemala among marginalized women. Among other projects, they work continuously to help women acquire cooking stoves that are fuel efficient, long lasting and environmentally friendly. Once the woman has her stove, she is free to engage in other activities that may contribute to improving her economic status. Each stove bears a price tag of US$100, a fortune for the women. Therefore, a major part of the work of the sisters is raising money to subsidize the cost of the stoves, a surprisingly difficult task.