Peru Inequality

Today in Peru there is massive amounts of inequality. When Che went on his journey there was a lot more but it has been on the decline lately. One of the main things that the trip did to him was, change the way he looked at South America. He hated the inequality more than anything he experienced. He wanted to change that.

Currently in Peru the inequality has been on a decline due to labor markets growth. Also the per capita is increasing and the lower standards of living are increasing which is more important. The results are astonishing because over 500,000 people were lifted out of poverty in 2012. In 2009 UNICEF calculated that 78% of children whose first language was Quechua or Aymara lived in poverty, compared to 40% of those whose mother tongue was Spanish. In Che’s journey he encountered a family of Quechua who were living in a run down town. They were sitting by a brick building eating leaves from a plant. Che first hand encountered raw inequality. Each time he encountered a different perspective of inequality it changed him a little. When Che and Alberto were walking to the coal mine, they meet a couple that was homeless. They spent the night with them and realized how many people lived in poverty. Since Che and Alberto lived in the upper class in Buenos Aires, they never realized what the inequality was like.

Near the end of their journey they stopped at a leper colony in San Pablo, Peru. The sick people would stay on one side of the river while the healthy doctors and nuns stayed on the other. The lepers were treated as less equal and even not human. Che had a big problem with that but could tell that not many, if any at all, of the healthy people did. He ended up swimming across the river one night to spend his birthday with the lepers. I believe this is what changed Che’s life to the turning point where he had to do something about it.