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The program involves a desert-irrigation network of heroic proportions. Patterned on the old Inca aqueducts of 500 years ago, it will shift water from the Atlantic side of the Andes to Peru's parched coastal lowlands by diverting the course of three rivers through mountain tunnels. Last week on the northern coast, engineers were at work on a project to channel water from the Chotano River through ten miles of tunnels down to a reservoir near Chiclayo, where 200,000 desert acres will go into production by 1970.
Belaunde has even bigger plans for the interior. At best, Peru's stony Andes can support only marginal farming. Across the peaks lies the great, green montana, Peru's eastern lowland that stretches out to the Amazon and Brazil. The montana represents 62% of Peru's land area, is rich in rubber, jute, fruits, coffee, timber and grass for ranching. Yet it is home to barely 14% of Peru's people. The problem is accessibility. There are few roads and no railroads across the mountains; transportation is by air, or up the rivers.
Belaúnde's grand design is to colonize the montana by means of a 20th century version of the Inca highway network that interconnected the old empire. It will be a 3,500-mile span, hugging the eastern slopes of the Andes and connecting with access roads pushing up from Peru's west coast. Belaúnde's engineers are already pushing penetration routes from the coastal town of Pisco to the mountain town of Ayacucho, from Nazca into Cuzco, from Puno down the rugged eastern slope of the Andes into the southern montana. Estimated cost: $400 million. Like Juscelino Kubitschek's Brasilia, the project will be years justifying itself. "But you know," ventures one Peruvian, "in a hundred years we might look awfully foolish if we don't do it."
The Coop-Pop Way. Still a third Belaunde program is cooperation popular, the great self-help effort that he has been urging on Peru's masses for years. The government supplies technical assistance, materials, some cash. The people do the work. Coop-Pop has already resulted in 3,300 new rural and slum classrooms, 600 miles of country roads, 21 football fields, 40 parks, 36 canals, 21 reservoirs, 65 community centers, 48 churches and chapels. With his flair for the dramatic, Belaunde gave the program a lift just before his 51st birthday in October 1963, asking Peruvians to forget about the birthday baubles. "Just send me shovels," he said. Shovels he got—plus machetes, picks and hoes by the thousands, all of which went to the highlands. A few weeks ago, Belaunde invited a group of Indians to Lima and awarded them a small golden shovel. In one year, they had built an airstrip, dozens of classrooms and 50 miles of road—$300,000 worth of construction. As a further token, he gave them a check for $37,000. "Next year," he says, "that $37,000 will be another $300,000."
Vivan los Beatles! The ideas cost money—and lots of it. But Peru's economy is coming on strong. Nurtured along by Belaúnde's firm hand, the gross domestic product expanded 8% last year to a record $3.5 billion, exports vaulted 23% to another high of $667 million, and per-capita income rose to a record $250 (v. $225 overall for Latin America).