Union kitchens are perking Lima's women are getting it together. The Globe and Mail, September 20, 1984, 20. Lunch pails in hand, a line of women, children and elderly men chat on a dirt-floored back patio equipped with steaming kerosene stoves, work tables and benches. They glance at the bulletin board for the news, exchange the latest gossip or talk about the problems of Comas, a dirt-and-brick working-class neighborhood which terraces its way up a mountain slope on the northern outskirts of Lima. Cooks are distributing the day's lunch of soup and a tick stew. A soup kitchen in a shantytown makes survival possible. Source: TAFOS / El Agustino 1987. For 50 families, this scene is repeated twice daily at the union family kitchen. Each family shares responsibility for preparing a breakfast of hot cereal and a hot lunch. At 15 cents, the main meal is the best buy in town, but for the participants it takes the bite out of hunger. The union kitchen is the matriarch of a growing grassroots movement. Five years ago, several mothers got together to stretch their food. Today more than 400 family kitchens are following their example, feeding an estimated 10,000 families in Lima's most impoverished districts. The kitchens are spreading like wildfire, sociologist Violeta Sara-Lafose said. Peru is struggling through the worst recession of the century. In shantytowns, meals of tea and bread are common, and an inadequate diet is creeping into the middle class. A pediatrician at Lima's only children's hospital said four patients in five suffer from malnutrition. But the kitchen movement is yielding other dividends by giving women a new self-esteem and awareness in a society dominated by Latin machismo. Social workers say that kitchens constitute the largest women's rights organization in Peru, though its first concern is filling children's stomachs. We're learning that we can get by on out own, says Aide Massone, an energetic black grandmother and co-founder of the union kitchen. We no longer have to hold out our hands for help all the time.. The first triumph for the women was getting out of their own solitary kitchens. Daily meal preparation at home, including outings to market, takes as long as eight hours, while the union kitchens take only one day a week on average, and with the free time the women can become their family's second wage-earner. A recent survey showed that two-thirds of the participating women earn extra income from cottage industries such as washing clothes, street vending or working in Lima's sweatshops. When we were isolated in out homes, problems seemed insurmountable, said Cirila Palomino, a leader of the Comas women's federation. But side by side here in the kitchen, they are cut down to size.. Just joining a family kitchen can be a major achievement, and many of the women said they will not leave even if their economic conditions improve. Hard up as they are, kitchens help out those who are worse off. When a wage-earner loses a job, a major illness hits a household or a husband abandons his wife, a kitchen can issue free rations for a while. Feeling their male pride as breadwinners bruised, husbands have been known to throw the food back in their faces. But when a husband loses a job and the family kitchen gives help, his attitude starts to change, says Ms Sara-Lafose, who has been studying the kitchen phenomena for the past year. The kitchens have also met resistance on other fronts. The police have harassed them for being terrorists because of their mysterious meetings -- at which they plan menus. Political parties have alternately courted them and tried to manipulate them as a potentially powerful political force. At a recent convention of shantytown organizations, the predominantly male leadership relegated the kitchen federation to the status of fraternal observers rather than giving them voting rights. The traditional male leaders are wary of the kitchen federations because they don't know how to control them, said an organizer. Spurred by the economic crisis, representatives of more than 100 kitchens met this year for the first time in a city-wide conference to share recipes, experience and concerns. A co-ordinating committee was set up, and the organization has started to edit a magazine and bulletins, to stage marches against cost-of-living increases and to negotiate with municipal authorities for better public services. It has also got in touch with other cities and consumer organizations in other countries. Peru's communal kitchens have their roots in the Andean heritage of most of the participants, three-quarters of whom are migrants from the Sierra, where communal lifestyles have survived for centuries. The success of the movement, which is self-sustained aside from some food donated by church charities, has finally started to attract the Government's attention. Officials admit that attempts to improve nutritional standards have been ponderous and underfinanced. First Lady Violeta Correa de Belaunde has set up a program to provide building material, stoves, cooking equipment and some food stables for more than 100 kitchens of community organizations. The central bank has given her agency a $1-million grant to get the program into full swing. The leftist municipal government of Lima is carrying out a pilot project, supplying weekly provisions to kitchens on credit and at wholesale prices. Almost all the family kitchens make daily purchases at neighborhood markets. An even more ambitious idea is to put the kitchens in direct contact with farm cooperatives. So far, the family kitchens have provided a vital survival tactic for some of Lima's most neglected inhabitants, a guide to tapping reserves of creative community building. © 1984 The Glove and Mail. All rights reserved. Updated on Wednesday, 16-Nov-2005 23:38:04 EST http://www.gci275.com/news/globe01.shtml

Dangerous Assignment imediaperu did investigative reporting, a rare breed in Peru, during the Fujimori era. The leading impetus, Cecilia Valenzuela, is a young journalist who got her start in Caretas. She did the ground breaking reporting on the Colina massacre. She received the. Courage in Journalism. Award in 1993. She had a political TV program, Sin Censura, that was shut down in 1998 because it took a critical line against the Fujimori government. In September 2000, she was almost run down by a van outside her office. Valenzuela's story is typical of many journalists. Independence is not rewarded and it can have a price. Most media owners don't want strong-minded reporters and editors. It complicates their power games. Blanca Rosales was another Peruvian journalism who won the. Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation in 1998. International News Libraries: helping journalists understand past. How top TV executives sold Peruvian stations' editorial integrity. Peru's news media survived era of corruption, ambassador says. Disclosures of Peruvian media corruption stun even most jaded observers. 2 Peruvian news execs sought in suspected bribery scheme. Media repression eases further in Peru. Video of bribe attempt in Peru called catalyst in unraveling of Fujimori regime. 'Video of shame' unravels Fujimori administration, forces new elections. Peru's press lives in fear of reprisals, journalist says. Fujimori accused of newspaper takeover plot. Journalism in Peru: judiciary of the weak. 'Does Peruvian free press exist or not?'. Fujimori: Peru's press is free, despite critics' charges. Peruvian press group alleges government suppression. Forum on Peruvian Media. Peruvian candidates pledge support for free press. Why does Peru's TV news ignore 8 candidates? Newspapers' watchdog eyes are open in Peru campaign. Linking education, profession in Peruvian journalism. Peruvian TV station manager sentenced to jail. Peruvian news anchor quits over staged interview. Peru's journalists create network to monitor threats against media. Peruvian journalist charged with reading rebel statement freed. Peru orders arrest of TV executive; lawyer claims 'fabricated charges'. Peruvian journalists say anti-media Web site is government financed. Editor of Peruvian newspaper that attacks journalists receives death threats. Press attacks against journalists in Peru becoming 'more and more preoccupying'. Fujimori denies Peruvian government anti-press campaign. Peru's tabloids attack reporters investigating government. How to find Peruvian news on the Internet for more links to Peruvian news outlets. I do not link to Peruvian news stories because I am not confident that newspapers properly managed old links. No single web services provides you with complete coverage of news content. You can use any of the following services and insert Peru as your search keyword: In a country like Peru, the communication media plays a crucial role in reflecting the values and behavior of the people. Just following the rise and fall of publications can tell much about the body politic and the national leaders. For information on my own experience working as a journalist in Peru, check out my. Press, Power and Politics: Peru 2000 for an all-in-one place for news sources. It also has a Spanish news feed from newsmagazine: This weekly has traditionally practiced the best journalism in the country. The owner, Enrique Zileri, is a hybrid of flamboyant legend and U.S.-educated, hard-nosed journalist that has flourished in Peru despite picking fights with military governments and a Nisei strongman. As any journalist who has shared his table and conversation knows -- and almost any correspondent worth his salt makes a courtesy call to Enrique -- he is generous host and great for a quote to put a story in context. I wrote an article for him, about a U.S. agronomist who developed new breeds of rice for the Peruvian jungle. It was one of my goals to finish out my tenure as a Peru-based journalist. I never got paid for it, but I was never turned away when I needed a photograph to go with a story that I filed to a newspaper or magazine. Back in the mid-1980s, Time by naming a Man of the Year in the year-end issue of the magazine. At the time, it looked as if President Alan Garcia would have a lock on the honor for his whole term -- if not longer -- because of Garcia's obsession with dominating the political scene. I suggested to Enrique that he should shift the emphasis away from the big news-maker to the innovative personalities that abound in Peru, the pioneers and trend setters. He accepted my idea and has since sought out interesting innovators and achievers to recognize each year. daily newspaper: Rather sensationalist for U. S. tastes but still does some good work. I worked with this paper when they were just starting up in 1983 and turned the newspaper business on its ears by selling more than 100,000 copies a day. La Republica started up in 1982, Peruvian journalism was still living in the aftermath of six years of military micromanagement of all the major media. Journalists had acquired the mental habits of. (self-censorship). I came on board in 1983 and was teamed with journalist-cum-gadfly to write a political column. We took a reporter's copy of a news event and turned it into a feature-like story, providing background, color and context. Copy that simply repeated the quotes of state ministers coming out of the presidential palace were turned into a good read. We soon discovered that reporters did not want to see their copy reworked. Instead, they went to the trouble of beefing up the quality of their own text so that it would not get routed for reworking by the Lauer-Smith duo. I don't mean to imply that this revolutionize Peruvian journalism because it would have happened anyways, but it is enlightening about how a news room works. By the way, Mirko now writes a good column for La Republica and is often heard on NPR because of his flawless English and deep baritone voice. Columbia Journalism Review's Dispatches from a Forgotten Front. Peru Commando-style Journalism focuses on the investigative unit at. La Republica. The article was written by Robin Kirk, a journalist with lots of experience in Peru. sees itself as the Grey Lady of Peruvian journalism. As the primary medium for print advertising and want-ads, good journalism has usually taken a second place. Even when it was run by a military government in the late 1970s, its darkest era, it was still the most widely read newspaper in the country. As the saving grace of the publications, it has played a key role on environmental issues, which have always receives little attention in Peru. These three publications were recently commended for their stand in defense of freedom during the Fujimori regime. is a young daily tabloid that's trying to introduce a more intelligent tone to news coverage and analysis. Other Online Resources: One of the most telling remarks I heard about Peruvian television was that for the TV station owners the perfect setup would be a transmission tower with a VCR attached at the bottom. That way they could easily broadcast the canned programs and commercials without the need of dealing with the messy work of producing news and other local content programs. remarks about Peruvian football to understand some of the integrating impact of television. News coverage tends to revolve around magazine-format programs, modeled after 60 Minutes. The oldest on is. which appears on Sunday evenings. Another take on the format relies on strong personalities, like Cesar Hildebrandt. Radio was the first alternative media, just as the Internet is now in a broader sense. Back in the 1970s and 80s, radio provided an inexpensive way of reaching the dispossessed, whether they be shantytown residents or peasants in the fields. The Catholic Church was especially important in providing radio news to rura...