The Central Andes

The central Andes, which includes the countries of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, consists of a high and wide convoluted cordillera that carries 70 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers, a narrow coastal lowland in Ecuador and Peru (Bolivia has been landlocked since its mineral-rich Atacama Desert coastline was annexed by Chile in 1884), and a wide interior apron of lowlands in all three countries (Figure 3.36) that drains east into the Amazon. On the eve of the Spanish conquest (1532), the coast and mountainous zone was home to the Inca Empire. The legacy of the Incas is still prominently reflected in the landscape: in the thousands of miles of paved trade footpaths; in the numerous massive stone ruins, such as those at Machu Picchu in Peru (see Figure 3.13B); and especially in the roughly one-half of the population that is indigenous—the largest proportion in South America.

FIGURE 3.36 Central Andes subregion. (A) Cusco, Peru, was once the capital of the Incan Empire and much Incan stonework has survived since the city fell to the Spanish in 1533. Many Spanish structures were built on top of the Incan walls, such as the street shown above. These walls have withstood the earthquakes that have often hit the Andes much better than the Spanish structures built on top of them. Courtesy George Holton/Photo Researchers/Getty Images

After the fall of this area to the Spanish, a tiny group of land-owners who were descended from Europeans prospered, while the vast majority of indigenes and mestizos lived in poverty and servitude, working on large haciendas and in rich mines (copper, lead, and zinc in Peru; tin, bauxite, lead, and zinc in Bolivia). Most of the twentieth century was marked by failed efforts at social change and the violence resulting from those failures. Now the growing political involvement of the large indigenous population may help create greater social equity.

Settlement Patterns

Settlement has a distinct lowland/highland pattern in this region. The Pacific coast is home to large and modern cosmopolitan cities, including Peru’s capital and commercial center, Lima, and Ecuador’s leading industrial center, Guayaquil. The lowland people are mainly mestizo, some with African heritage. The majority of indigenous people live in the Altiplano (high-lands). At least 40 percent of the area is rural, but there are several large cities: Quito in Ecuador, La Paz in Bolivia, Cusco in Peru. The interior lowland is less densely settled, mostly with indigenous lowlanders, but that is changing with the development in the western Amazon lowlands of mining and of oil and gas for export.

The coast is also a zone of productive agricultural land where, despite the often-dry climate, plantations and other agricultural enterprises produce crops for export. The irrigated production of export crops such as bananas, cotton, tobacco, grapes, citrus, apples, and sugarcane has increased dramatically, with most of the profits going to large commercial agriculture, or “agribusiness,” firms. Irrigation and other aspects of export-oriented agriculture are funded with IMF loans that must be repaid.

The nutrient-rich ocean off Peru currently nourishes a rich fishery. The vibrant export-oriented fishing industry is funded with international loans and aimed at European and North American markets. Corporate shrimp farms supply this market as well. Because corporate farms and fishing industries producing for the export market are displacing the small traditional farmers and fishers who once served the local market, local working people who once fed themselves are dealing with food insecurity.

Climate Change, Water, and Development Issues

The main environmental issue in the central Andean region is climate change. The glaciers of the Andes are melting at a fast rate, having lost 22 percent of their surface area over the last 35 years. Though general public awareness of this approaching hazard is still low, the loss of Andean glaciers threatens most of the region’s rivers because they are fed by the normally slow seasonal glacial melt. The annual melt is now faster than winter replacement; thus the rivers have less volume and their ability to irrigate and generate hydropower is diminishing. Furthermore, the water supply of 30 million people is at risk since highland cities and rural villages derive most of their water from glaciers. Water shortage is already affecting highland crops; the deterioration of pastureland is curtailing sheep and llamas’ production of wool.

Agricultural Restoration in the Peruvian Highlands

In the mountainous interior, the indigenous Aymara and Quechua people are using traditional crops to help create sustainable agricultural change. Support for this movement comes in part from the United States, which would like coca farmers to find a profitable alternative crop. In 2004, the then oil-rich Chávez government in Venezuela provided development funds to indigenous farmers in the Altiplano to help them develop their traditional crops for North American organic and gourmet markets. The Venezuelan grant encouraged the market production of quinoa, a 5000-year-old domesticate that produces a grain-like kernel extraordinarily nutritious and palatable for those with wheat gluten allergies. Quinoa has since become increasingly popular with European and North American fair trade advocates.

Social Inequalities, Resources, Food, and Social Unrest

Improving living standards for the poorest in the central Andean region is important for humanitarian and environmental reasons. Structural adjustment policies once mandated by the IMF forced the privatization of state-run industries and the streamlining of government. The result was job loss and social turmoil along with only modest economic growth. Governments dramatically increased prices for gasoline, electricity, and transport in an effort to raise funds to pay off debts. Such policies hurt the urban poor whose low wages could not cover the increases. In rural areas, SAPs removed government assistance to small-scale farmers and into this breach stepped Venezuelan President Chávez with a total of $100 million to aid small farmers in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. This new effort is aimed at halting the trend of small farms producing local food being replaced by export-oriented corporate farms and fisheries and other high-tech operations, most of which receive government assistance even though they cause environmental degradation and the loss of livelihood for traditional people.

One result of the growth of export-oriented agriculture is that highland people who could not get access to land or jobs have moved east into Amazon lowland regions. These lowlands, long the home of scattered though occasionally large and dense groups of indigenous people, have undergone rapid and often destructive development of natural resources in recent years. National governments, eager to fulfill SAP obligations, have encouraged private extraction, first of trees and then of minerals and agricultural products, and these activities have severely damaged the home territories of indigenous people (see the discussion that opens this chapter). Roads built to gain access to timber and minerals have also opened this region to waves of landless and jobless migrants from the highlands and coastal zones.

In the twentieth century, various strategies for lessening gross inequalities were tried, with varying success. In Ecuador, CONAIE, a federation representing all of Ecuador’s indigenous groups, was central to anti-SAP protests that brought down Ecuador’s government in 1997. Indigenous demands for an increased voice in national policy have continued. Ecuador declared bankruptcy in 1998 because it couldn’t repay its debts to the IMF and international banks, but since then it has enjoyed a stretch of economic growth based on oil earnings. In 2006, Ecuadorians elected a U.S.-educated economist, Rafael Correa, who favors tariffs on consumer products and substantial government spending to alleviate social ills. He appears to share with Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, an anti-U.S. sentiment, but he has a reputation for being incorruptible and was reelected in 2009.

The gains in political participation by indigenous people are perhaps most impressive in Bolivia. In the 1980s, Bolivia embraced the free market model and sold off state-owned industries to largely foreign interests. These policies, urged on Bolivia by the World Bank and IMF to reduce its debt, enriched a few and brought job losses to the majority and an increase in income disparity (see Table 3.2). Protests in 2003 were spurred by government plans to export natural gas to the United States under conditions unfavorable to Bolivia. Protesters interviewed by New York Times reporter Larry Rohter said they saw an “unbroken line” between the rapacious Spanish colonial policies of the past and modern movements linked to globalization and free trade. In one weekend, the Bolivian military shot to death 50 unarmed protesters who were demanding President Lozada’s resignation. Lozada eventually resigned in October 2003 at a time when income disparity in Bolivia was escalating alarmingly (see Table 3.2). In 2005, Bolivians elected in a landslide the first indigenous head of state in the Americas: Evo Morales, a socialist, former coca farmer, and head of the coca producers union, who has proven to be innovative, independent, and controversial.

Morales began his presidency advocating against the privatization of water (see the discussion) and for coca farmers, saying that they should not lose the right to grow an age-old crop that produces only a mild high in its natural state just because some outsider discovered how to make the powerfully addictive drug cocaine from coca. President Morales, who seems intent on changing how and to whose benefit Bolivia’s resources are used, continued to alarm outside investors and Bolivian elites when he nationalized the oil and gas industries. Most recently, the issue has been the mineral lithium, an essential component in batteries designed for electric cars and other electronic devices. Bolivia is said to have one-half of the world’s lithium, mostly under deserts occupied by salt gatherers and quinoa farmers.