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Downtown Arequipa

Downtown Arequipa is similar to most of the other cities in Peru in that everything is built around the town center - the Plaza de Armas.  In the center is a beautiful park complete with flowers, trees, fountain and thousands of pigeons.  It is a national past time to feed the pigeons and people are selling bird seed to help the cause.  The park is always bustling with people!  There are lots of tourists milling around, guys with manual typewriters typing up letters and such for the locals, shoe shiners, ice cream vendors, people feeding the birds and right now, lots of political rallies.  It is a fun place to sit on a bench and watch the people! 

On three sides surrounding the park are stores, restaurants, municipal offices and such.  The walkways are all beautiful stone arches.  The fourth side is for the largest local Catholic church.  It is my understanding that the church owns the entire Plaza de Armas as well as several of the surrounding streets.  The cathedral is beautiful inside with the typical high ceilings and massive paintings and rectories.  While I was visiting there, several gorgeous young men and women came in wearing sashes with Miss/Mr. Teen of different Central and South American countries.  It was quite a contrast - beauty pageant and religious surroundings.  They made quite a spectacle with lots of picture taking and autographs.  Later that weekend, they had some sort of pageant in the plaza.  I watched the rehersal, but didn't see the actual show. 

Sunday, November 19 is Peru's local elections.  Elections are taken very seriously.  If you don't vote, you are fined upwards of 100 soles or more.  So, there have been tremendous rallies and parades for weeks.  The streets around the plaza have been closed many days around noon for different political parades.  Then there is continous campaigning day and night complete with loud speakers and fireworks.  It has really been heating up this week!  Election day should be interesting.

Last week, Arequipa had a transportation strike.  The combi drivers (small buses) went on strike.  They created a parking lot with their buses in all of the streets around the plaza.  It really put a kink in the transportation system with some streets turning into totally pedestrian walks.  Many people were unable to get to work!  They rallied in the Plaza park making quite a racket.  On one side of the park were armed policemen complete with bullet proof shields, vests and helmets, just in case things got out of hand.  Luckily, the strike was settled in one day, so things were back to normal on Tuesday!

P.S.  The election went off pretty smoothly on November 19.  I was downtown at the end of the day after the polls closed and there was a big march going on.  They were carrying the Cusco flag (Arequipa is part of the Cusco region) and marching and singing.  I could not tell who had won the election, but these people seemed pretty happy.  There were several policemen around the area with all their riot gear (shields, helmets, vests, guns) to make sure things stayed calm.  I later found out that these people were chanting that they wanted Arequipa to become it's own country!  The guys I teach at TECSUP explained that Arequipa is always a bit radical and that the candidates that won were "the best of the worse" and could be considered very socialistic - even Communistic.  They actually used some other language to describe them.....  Well, they'll be around for the next 4 or 5 years.  Interesting to see the politics of a third world country!

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