Seven weeks after a fire destroyed the largest settlement of urban indigenous people of the Amazon, most of the 300 families are still living in tents or wood cabins, with scarce drinking water and no electricity. Since 2000, the Shipibo-Conibo people of Cantagallo lived in the capital of Peru, two kilometers away from the main square and the mayor of Lima headquarters. Per national law, the citizens who live for 10 years on state-owned land are recognized as the legitimate possessors of the property; this is the case of the community of Cantagallo. The first 15 families started living there in the year 2000, but the population has increased to more than 2,000 habitants lived in more than 300 houses.
For a long time, Cantagallo has been struggling with town hall officials and local authorities to defend their precarious homesteads of wood. But on November 4 they lost everything they had, except the public bilingual public school, where the kids receive education in Shipibo and Spanish languages at once.
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The State’s initial lack of reaction two days after the fire, mobilized hundreds of citizens from Lima who went to Cantagallo to donate clothes, bottles of water, canned food and hygiene items. The citizens used social media to assist in gathering donations.
The Shipibo spent the first two days after the tragedy cleaning the fire wreckage with the help of young Army Soldiers, and rebuilt their precarious housing with pieces of wood, plastic or fabric.
Cantagallo is located by the Rimac River, and was built on top of a sanitary landfill. Some of the community members lost their houses during the construction of a road in 2014 and received money as an indemnization to relocate inside the community.
The anthropologist Oscar Espinosa has highlighted that Peru does not have a legal framework regarding the rights of the indigenous people who live collectively in urban areas, and Cantagallo exposes this legal gap. Peruvian law only recognizes the rights of the Native communities of the Amazon when they live in their ancestral territories.
Cantagallo community was supposed to be relocated by the Lima Municipality two years ago, but the current mayor of Lima decided to use the money assigned to the real state project in the construction of a bypass downtown.
Espinosa describes Cantagallo as an intercultural urban community: “living in community means living together and reproduce, as much as possible, the aspects of life as existed in the communities of origin (in the Amazon) along the river. Mainly, they try to reproduce the space organization, the houses and their daily life.”
The community after the fire
As the days passed, media, social media and NGOs documented the consequences and damages of the fire: Cantagallo was on the public eye. The Rimac town hall coordinated emergency actions with the Executive branch to supply water, tents and notebooks for the students. The Ministry of Health provided first aid services, including mental health emergency specialists.
Even though, the aid was not enough: without energy, cooking, doing school assignments and working, become daily life challenges. Most of the residents are craft persons: women produce bijouterie and textiles inspired on their ancestors’ designs called ‘Kene’, and men are usually visual artists who paint murals.
The bilingual school, that used to be open from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., managed to keep working until five in the afternoon, to receive almost 280 kids in a safe place. The first week after the fire the students played, read or wrote stories, but on November 13 teachers started classes again. “The syllabus after an emergency remarks resilience, the value of life, self-esteem, personal security, among others,” said Liliana Inocencio, head of the Local Unit of Education, who was supervising the school.
After these weeks, women are worried because of unattended health issues among children (like itching and hives on the skin).
Cantagallo residents are working again, selling bead necklaces and bracelets they produce, painting their homes: even when there are no walls, the community stairs are good to draw some colorful words, such as health, dignity and water. Turns are made by women to cook every day in a common pot.
On December the 16th, the president of Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynsky visited the settlement and announced that the residents won’t be moved to another location and property deeds will be provided in the near future.
