Diocese helps project to help stabilize homes, communities in Lima

By Mark Saucier

In her 60s, Maria was accustomed to the hard rural life of the mountains. Now, migrating to Lima with her daughter’s family, she lives in a makeshift home on the side of a mountain. She has to walk down for water along a zigzagging path, over and around the “pircas,”­ terraces of piled rock that keep the houses from falling to the valley below. She often needs help climbing back up the steep, precarious route.

Maria is not alone. Lima, a city of over 8 million, has run out of good building land. For the poor, still streaming into Lima to escape the desperation of the countryside, the only unoccupied areas are the nearly uninhabitable plots of rock and sand or the precipitous slopes that border the urban areas.

Ray Feeney knows the pictures well. A 30-year veteran of life in Peru, he now heads a non-governmental agency, Foro Ciudadano, in the district of San Lurigancho. Living and working among the 800,000 people there, Mr. Feeney says his mission is “to accompany the people and help them create the capacity to be agents of their own change.”

Foro Ciudadano is involved in risk management among the 60 communities that make up the district. Focusing on eight communities, the agency has helped establish local committees to do risk analysis assessments. Committee members, primarily women, interview neighbors and document their concerns about community risks such as potable water or electrical access. Many considered the pircas to be the primary risk.

Mr. Feeney explained that shantytowns have a different origin and development process than other areas. In more well-to-do neighborhoods, the land is plotted, services are planned, people obtain legal title, and then they build. On the sides of the mountains, “the people occupy the land and little by little begin to organize it,” Mr. Feeney said. A family will find a vacant spot and, with pick and shovel, they will cut out a building spot, piling rock to shore up the hillside below and above the construction site. They will build their shelter as they can afford or find material, usually estera mats for walls and old pieces of tin for roofing. Only then, when they have some protection from the elements, will they worry about title, utilities, of the inherent dangers of their site.

Foro Ciudadano, with the help of the Diocese of Jefferson City, has undertaken a mission project to help five communities confront the risks involved in this process. The immediate physical threat is the pircas which could give way to a giant rockslide with the next earthquake. There is also the issue of the houses themselves, which lack foundations or access to basic services.

For Mr. Feeney, the capacity building — the community learning to work together to solve common problems — is even more important than the construction. “We could come in here and build better homes for a few families, but what does that change?” he asks. “It is not going to solve all their problems and they won’t be any better equipped to handle the next one.” The first thing, he insists, is to meet the people where they are. The poorest of the poor, “they just live from day to day, and all they earn is just to put food on the table,” he said. So the first task is to open up “the possibility when they can see a better future for themselves and their children.”

The project communities were chosen because they have similar economic profiles and have shown the ability to work collectively. Mr. Feeney said the project tries to build on the cultural experience of faenas, community workdays when members gather voluntarily to help a neighbor prepare a site or engage in a communal project such as a chapel or soup kitchen. Mr. Feeney insists that this local experience has to be expanded across community boundaries if people want to affect the infrastructure.

In their effort to replace the dangerous pircas and improve housing, the people on the mountainsides will need technical help. Engineers and geologists at Catholic University in Lima have agreed to take soil samples and create a topological map of the area. This information is critical to the design and placement of new earthquake-resistant pircas and houses. Lawyers will work to obtain legal titles for the occupied land.

The communities will supply the labor for the construction phase, but new retaining walls on nearly 500 sites will demand more resources than these people could ever hope to have. Mr. Feeney and community representatives have contacted the largest cement producer in Peru, and the company has agreed to donate concrete.

Mr. Feeney reports that some companies in Peru are beginning to discover corporate social responsibility, and this project intends to capitalize on that. Organizers also hope to take advantage of available government programs. The vision, Mr. Feeney explains, “is to bring together private, public, and the people themselves.”

Once the piled rocks are replaced with anti-seismic retaining walls, Mr. Feeney and project leaders want to provide housing support for the families. Underscoring that it is important not to do everything for the people even if money would be available, Mr. Feeney said that they are currently discussing assistance packages to provide for the outer walls of an approximately 40-square-meter home.

Mr. Feeney admits that the number of families benefiting from the project is small compared to the hundreds of thousands who live in similar need. But he insists that it has to be small if it is going to be more about changing people’s lives than just construction. “The process demands intense participation,” he explained. Mr. Feeney is convinced that if the project is successful, the government will take notice. “It is only a drop in the ocean,” he confessed, “but maybe the government can see what is possible and take up the program to replicate it elsewhere.”

While Mr. Feeney does consider the national impact of the project, he is more concerned about what it might mean to Maria and her neighbors. In addition to averting a tragic landslide, it could change the face of the mountain. “When they see things improve, they will be more committed to living in the area and creating human communities in which they feel proud and want to raise their children,” he said.

The Mission Office of the Diocese of Jefferson City is co-sponsoring the Foro Ciudadano project with Trocaire, the Irish development agency. Money to support the project will come from the July 18-19 Diocesan Mission Collection.