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Belaúnde intends to bridge the gulfs not so much by taking from the rich but by giving the peasant masses a stake in their country through massive social reforms and self-help development programs. He offers more food, better jobs, new roads, schools, hospitals, industries. He reminds the Indians of the Inca civilization that once flourished in Peru, talks of "a new renaissance," and challenges them to enlist in what he calls "the conquest of Peru by Peruvians."
Some of his schemes to water Peru's deserts, tame its Andean mountains and populate its Amazonian jungles sound visionary to an extreme. Peruvians are at least willing to let him try. "We must not be afraid of greatness," he says. "We have lost the habit of thinking on a grand scale, of conceiving works that, like the Panama Canal, change the geography of a continent. The hour of the pioneer, the founder of new cities, must be sounded. Nature is our enemy, and nature can be overcome."
Time of Transition. Belaunde's message has a variety of implications up and down the forbidding, 4,000-mile chain of Andes. In some countries the call for reform and development comes through loud and clear. In others, the attitudes of centuries are hard to change. Everywhere, it will be nip and tuck to meet the suddenly rising expectations. As one hacienda owner says: "We have held our Indians in bondage and misery since the Conquest. Now our day is passing, their day is dawning. The transition could be a nightmare."
∙COLOMBIA was once regarded as a showcase of the Alliance for Progress. With massive infusions of U.S. aid ($230 million since 1961), and under the steady hand of former President Alberto Lleras Camargo, the country's Liberal and Conservative parties called a truce in their senseless civil war and pushed through an impressive series of reforms. Under the current President, Guillermo León Valencia, army civic action programs and anti-guerrilla campaigns have sharply reduced poverty-fed banditry in the backlands. That is Valencia's major success. During his 31 months in office, the cost of living has risen 45% , unemployment is up to 10%, and foreign investment to diversify the coffee and mining economy has trickled off. Agrarian reform is at a standstill, with 3% of the people still owning 55% of the land, and the average worker's wage in the cities is only 25¢ per hour.
∙ECUADOR is under military rule, and likely to stay that way for a while. "Power," says Rear Admiral Ramon Castro Jijón, chief of the junta, "does not lure us. Only the circumstances retain us." In the 19 months since the military toppled erratic, hard-drinking Carlos Julio Arosemena, Ecuador's progress-minded soldiers have ground out hundreds of decrees organizing a civil service, setting up a land reform, revising the tax system. New industry (paint, textiles, detergents) is flowing into Quito and Guayaquil. In the highlands, where half of Ecuador's 4,700,000 people (80% of them Indian-descended) still live, some hacienda workers are paid only 50 a day, are often treated with medieval cruelty. "On many haciendas," says a parish priest, "there is neither law nor God."