Heavy rain has caused floods and mudslides in this impoverished regions, which are also the main tourism attractions of Peru, affecting thousands of people.
Extensive areas in Cusco are now covered with muddy water, due to the overflow of rivers, roads are destroyed by mudslides, hundreds are injured, entire valleys are destroyed, people are homeless and displaced, and bridges are destroyed.
In several towns of the southern Andes, families are trying to save their belongings and evacuate to bigger and safer cities. There are not official reports on the numbers of missing people yet, but local sources in Peru talk about people killed.
The government of Lima has declared Cusco in state of emergency for 60 days. Thousands of local residents are trapped in towns of the Urubamba valley known as the Sacred Valley of the Incas, and also those located south from Cusco, are isolated after mudslides cut the only accessible roads.
Peruvian soldiers are helping thousands of tourists evacuate the Aguas Calientes town, near the Indigenous sacred site of Machu Picchu. Helicopters have been sent by the government of Peru, the U.S. embassy and a British company that owns the train service to the site, to airlift people to Cusco. Many others were stranded in the Inca Trail route.
About 80% of the Cusco province residents are now homeless, according to an interview with a Cusco college student who is organizing a relief effort to help the victims. The towns of Urubamba, Calca, Pisac, Urcos, Wasao, Huarcapay, Lucre, Oropesa, Tipon, and Anta are the most affected.
The help is arriving slowly, in part because the media in Peru –centralized in Lima- hasn’t covered this tragedy properly, while the international media are mostly interested in the fate of Machu Picchu and the tourists stranded there.Thank goodness there is social media. Peruvian bloggers, and Twitter and Facebook users –and tourists in Peru- have sent information out every minute, which have allowed the world to know what is happening in Cusco. For instance, there have been complains of slow response, discrimination, and corruption in the rescue efforts in Machu Picchu.
In a Youtube video, a Chilean tourist suggested that a helicopter from the U.S. embassy was turned away because they only wanted to take U.S. citizens, but the U.S. ambassador in Lima has denied this accusation. Also reports from witnesses talk about desperation, chaos, hunger, and abuses from hotels rising prices, and police who received money from tourists to be evacuated first.
Hundreds of tourists have had to sleep on the streets or in train cars in Machu Picchu town, as they wait to be rescued, because help is arriving too slowly. The Peruvian government had intended to finish airlifting everyone by Thursday January 28, but there are hundreds still trapped. The government of Chile has sent a military plane to airlift its 300 citizens from Cusco.
The government of Peru has assured they have enough funding to help the victims, that there are not cases of discrimination, and that all children and elderly have been evacuated first.
The only train service to Machu Picchu have been destroyed, but a press release from PeruRail, the British company that owns the service, states that they are providing tourists with water, food, blankets and supplies and that they are planning on restating the service in less than two months.
Also the government of Peru is being accused of using this tragedy to promote its candidates for the upcoming Regional elections this year. According to CNR radio the candidates are in charge of delivering food to the affected towns in the region.
An Australian couple emailed ABC news, saying that only rich tourists were initially being rescued. "People have been trying to walk out along trails and they have died. An Argentinean girl and a tour guide died in a landslide in the exact place where we camped on the last night of our trail."
Dan Fleege, a college student from Iowa, US, wrote in his Facebook several updates describing the situation by last Monday: “I am stranded in Aguas Calientes, Peru near Machu Picchu due massive flooding of the river. Everyone is panicking but they are sending helicopters to gradually evacuate people. I could be stuck here for up to a week but I should be safe.
Dan kept writing: “I have a lot to say and this will take several messages. The Peruvian government has been lying to us. They said they would send 10 helicopters every hour to evacuate the 2000 tourists stranded in Aguas Calientes. They said their primary concern was to evacuate the sick, weak, pregnant, and elderly but they only sent three helicopters the whole day to evacuate only the wealthiest people! They left everyone else!”
I have contacted Dan Fleege via telephone and I will post an interview in the next hours. Because of his young age, he is still in Aguas Calientes waiting to be airlifted. Now that 75% of tourists are evacuted things are calmer, he said.
Reuters has also contacted witnesses by telephone. "The situation is chaotic," said Washington Farfan, a guide at Machu Picchu. "Unfortunately, the rescue effort has not been organized correctly. People are really upset right now, everyone is fighting for a place on the helicopter”.
Locals have lost it all
There is limited information on the situation of hundreds of thousands of people -mostly Indigenous peoples- who live in the Cusco surroundings and other Andean cities. However, there are some online posts reporting on thousands becoming homeless, a number that will definitively increase as the rain stop and the search efforts continue.
The most affected provinces of Cusco, Calca and Urubamba have a combined population of over 510,000 people, while the region Cusco only has 1,171,000 people. There regions Apurimac and Puno, both combined have a population of 1,600,000 people. These are the most impoverished regions of Peru, and most of its population is Native Americans.
The city of Cusco has grown with little planning and order in the last decades. The tourist industry has benefited only a small sector of the local population, but it still has attracted migrants especially Indigenous farmers, eager to make a living in the city. Unfortunately, gentrification and a massive privatization of the downtown area have pushed poor people to the surrounding hills and creeks, where they have built weak adobe homes in dangerous areas.
Local newspaper El Diario de Cusco writes an editorial stating that “The most affected are those who built in those areas without any kind of technical support, and the municipality, the architects and engineers professionals and students, all are to be blamed. […] We are all responsible for the destruction happening in the region of Cusco.”
Neighbors of Cusco are already organizing themselves and have set donation campaigns in several places in the city. In Facebook, a group of Cusco college students have created a group to collect donations.
The historical sites in Cusco and surrounding areas have also suffered minor damages, but the final assessment will come up after days of evaluation. A small stone wall of the Quechua Indigenous fortress of Sacsaywuaman has fallen down days ago, and there are no official reports of the fate of Machu Picchu so far.
A global warm solidarity
What we see in Peru could be another effect of global warming and climate change. The reasons for this heavy rain season in Cusco –its biggest in decades if not centuries- is yet to be known completely, for sure.
But as we witness around the world, our planet is changing. So must do our priorities, our ways of living, and the way how we prepare ourselves to face this kind of emergencies.
For now, the people of southern Peru needs support and help. The spirits of the Cusco people are high and strong, tells me Juan Pablo Noriega, and they will rebuild their towns. A sign of solidarity from the world will mean so much for them ritht now.
In Machu Picchu town, people from many countries organized themselves at first grouping together by nationalities. At the end, they realized that those differences don’t matter, and then they worked together to help the weak, the elderly and youngest. Tonight, Dan Fleege told me there are only young people in town, they are all happy that soon they will be home.
We humans are facing difficult times because our planet is sick. We need to stand united in finding a cure for our environment, and be ready for the next emergency situation.