Pobreza y politica

I just got done listening to the last 1/4 of this conference about something having to do with, I don't know, (potential) capabilities of impoverished people and the effects that religion has on (dis)empowering them. Since I only caught a very small part of it, the substance itself wasn't that meaningful. However, what was really weird feeling was that I was sitting in this small auditorium filled with intelectuals from all over the world, who (as a general rule) had a pretty good grasp of the English language- to the extent that everyone articulated complex and educated arguments, comments, and opinions and all were able to share and disagree and comment in a very respectful, captivating way. There were all these people, adults, academics, professionals, taking notes, some on paper, and others on macs, half the people dressed business casual, the other half in everyday clothes... It made me think about the vast and profound gap that exists between the reality of the some, let´s say educated people with access to money, international and instantaneous communication, savings accounts, and a global perspective and the reality of others, for example, people living in a poor neighborhood in a big city with very limited access to the undertsanding of complicated ideas that will shape the world that they are subject to...

Anyways, I also went to this human rights organizations fair where there were a bunch of different groups and NGOs and things along those lines distributing information and pamphlets and such. I got this one Pamphlet, that is roughly translated, entitled as "Lessons so that history doesn´t repeat itself"

Inside it says:

"What happened between 1980 and 2000?
During these years, we peruvians lived during a period of the strongest, most intense, and most extensive violence of all of our history: almost 70,000 deaths, the majority being indigenous poor from the countryside. This figure reflects the horror experienced during the armed internal conflict"

This is, more or less, old news to me, but nonetheless, it is still rather unbelievable how recently such devasting violence impacted the country, and how, for about a decade, people acted like nothing happened.

Ok, well, I´ll have something more interesting and happy to talk about sooon...