'Life Before Debt' Full Report

International Jubilee 2000 Campaign - The Peruvian Experience

As part of its campaign "Life before Debt" the Peruvian Catholic Church collected more than 1,850,000 signatures in just under five months of activity. While fully ninety percent of the signatures came from parish communities around the country, members of the Evangelical and Protestant churches also participated in the campaign as did non-government organisations, mayors' offices, and grass roots groups.

The Peruvian campaign forms a part of the Jubilee 2000 Coalition on a worldwide level. The Peruvian Catholic Bishops' Conference decided in August of 1998 to respond to Pope John Paul II's call for working for a solution to the problem of the international debt, which he described in his apostolic letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 1994, NBA 51. The Bishops requested that the Area of Human Development of their Conference, composed of four commissions (Social Action, Caritas, Communications, and Health) undertake a concrete program of action.

Because the Jubilee 2000 Coalition already existed around the world, and because the Bishops of the neighboring country of Bolivia were already collaborating in the worldwide campaign, the Peruvian Bishops also decided to join Jubilee 2000.

Peru is not considered by the World Bank to be an HIPC since its per capita income is above $US 500 a year, although Peru is one of the world's worst examples of inequitable income distribution, with more than half of the population living beneath the poverty line, and one out of six Peruvians lives in extreme poverty. But the first point of the signature campaign in the case of Peru was to express solidarity with

those countries that are classified as highly indebted poor countries. The other point of the Peruvian petition is a call for the wealthy nations of the world to reduce the unpayable part of the Peruvian debt and that these funds be invested in social development projects.

The enormous success of the Peruvian campaign - second only to Great Britain -- can be explained by a series of factors:

* The most basic reason is because of the confidence which the people in Peru have in the Catholic Church and the importance of the Church as an institution which covers every corner of the country. The fact that it is the Pope himself who is calling for a solution to the problem of the external debt was the reason so many people were willing to sign.

* The fact that the Bishops of the Catholic Church stood behind the campaign also convinced other social organisations, both public and private, civil and religious, to join the effort.

* The issue itself is one which unites all Peruvians. Once people realized that they had no say in the negotiations in which Peru acquired its debt, that every one has to contribute to the payment of the debt through the payment of taxes, and especially when people realize that many social services formerly offered by the government are no longer available because those funds have been re-directed to pay the service on the debt, then the population in general is ready and willing to sign the petition asking the industrialized countries to reduce what is owed to them.

* Still another factor is the fact that the debt issue has been developed in Peru even before the Jubilee 2000 Coalition began its work. Certain academic sectors have been developing the topic since the early 1980s, and concretely the Round Table on Debt and Development, a group formed by various religious and civilian NGOs, have been working on the issue along with solidarity groups in the North since 1994.

* Finally, an important financial factor for the support of the Jubilee 2000 educational and signature campaign were the donations received from Catholic organisations in Canada and the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Germany, and Sweden) which permitted the Coalition organizers to print and distribute materials regarding the debt issue on a national level.

Stages in the Jubilee 2000 Campaign "Life Before Debt" in Peru

1. Planning and coordination with international networks

The following activities were carried out:

Representatives from Peru participated in the Asonag-Eurodad meeting in Tegucigalpa in July 1997 and in the Eurodad meeting in Vienna in November of that same year. Contacts were made there with the CIDSE and Caritas Internationalis groups, and it is from their joint document, "Life before Debt" that the Jubilee 2000 coalition in Peru chose the theme of its own campaign.

Within the Area of Human Development of the Peruvian Catholic Bishops' Conference, the Bishops' Social Action Commission (Comision Episcopal de Accion Social in Spanish - CEAS) assumed the main practical responsibility for the campaign, though the other commissions continue to help (Communications, Health, and Caritas) too. In order to work from an international perspective, members of CEAS established contact with the Latin American representative of Jubilee 2000 UK. The contact was established through CAFOD in London, the first organisation to support CEAS financially in the campaign.

The campaign was officially launched in Peru with a press conference on November 14, 1999 in which the key speaker was Cardinal Augusto Vargas, then President of the Peruvian Catholic Bishops' Conference and Bishop Miguel IrEDzar, General Secretary of the Conference. At the press conference the Cardinal was asked if young people under the age of 18 could also sign the petition. Originally this had not been the idea. But Cardinal Vargas reflected that since the younger generation would be strongly affected by the cost of repaying the debt, it was only fair that they could sign too. So at that very moment the Coalition began a separate campaign - with petition sheets prepared in another colour (green) for youth. In fact, of the total of 1,850,000 signatures, nearly 300,000 belonged to young people.

Shortly after the beginning of the campaign, members of the Development and Debt Round Table participated in the Jubilee 2000 Coalition meeting in Rome, and they presented a paper entitled, "Presentation to the international campaign 2000 concerning the reality of the Peruvian foreign debt and alternatives".

2. Educational stage: consciousness raising and information for the general public

To let the country know about the campaign, the donations received from the European and North American Catholic organizations were employed to print educational materials. A folder was prepared with five separate articles that explained the Biblical basis of the Jubilee campaign, the historical causes of the foreign debt, the current situation of the repayment of the debt, alternative solutions, and practical suggestions for carrying out the campaign. 31,000 such folders were printed and distributed. In addition 25,000 posters were published whose themes were the different aspects of the Great Jubilee for the year 2000 promulgated by the Pope. Another poster concerning the debt and children was prepared and 8,000 copies printed. 105,000 sheets for the signatures were distributed (80,000 for adults, 25,000 for youth). Also thousands of bumper stickers, 100,000 two page announcements, and 20,000 one page announcements. These materials were distributed free of charge to NGOs, grassroots organizations, labor unions, some mayors' offices, universities and schools, mothers' clubs, and soup kitchens. But the principal recipient of the materials were 980 Catholic parishes all over the country since the members of those parishes were the primary source of signatures.

Once the materials had been distributed, then the people working at CEAS, CONAMCOS (the communications commission), DEPAS (the health commission), and CARITAS gave over one hundred talks, mainly through the network of parishes but also at schools, religious and civic groups. The real success of the signature campaign depended on the network of lay volunteers within the parishes and grassroots organisations who set up tables to receive the signatures and who went from door to door. We conservatively estimate that 2,500 people dedicated significant amounts of time to support the campaign.

3. Mobilization at the Local Level:

The campaign "Life before Debt" worked out best in those dioceses where everyone co-operated, from the grassroots catechists up to and including the local bishop. In many dioceses the bishops called the people together for some special activity, either directly related to the debt, or they made the debt issue the central topic at some other religious or civic event. In the parishes the pastors called together the leaders of the various apostolic movements so that they would coordinate the signature campaign, the principal time being before and after the Sunday Masses. But some of them went beyond that and asked their laypeople to take part in a door to door campaign.

At the beginning of the campaign CEAS offered workshops for all of the diocesan co-ordinators, and in the case of the dioceses near Lima, for many parish co-ordinators too. Then during the rest of the campaign both CEAS and members of the Debt and Development Round Table offered everything from short talks to full day workshops around the country.

Since the Jubilee 2000 Coalition is a consortium of civil society, we decided that it would be best that some civilian organization in Peru would be the official counterpart for the world coalition. Therefore, the Round Table for Debt and Development created an even wider circle of civilian and religious organizations which officially became Jubilee 2000 Peru. And Jubilee 2000 Peru coordinated with Church and civilian organizations, with schools and universities, with political groups and labor organizations, and with local level governments to promote the campaign.

In March of 1999 Ann Pettifor from Jubilee 2000 UK visited Peru, and we took advantage of her presence for the official inauguration of the Jubilee campaign in Peru, though of course the signature campaign itself, "Life before Debt", had already begun in November.

We had good coverage at the level of the media, thanks to the work of CONAMCOS, the Church communications commission, and people in CEAS with experience as journalists. Articles specifically about the campaign and in general about the debt problem appeared in all of Lima's main daily newspapers and weekly magazines. People from the different commissions were invited to participate in radio interviews and talk shows, and the main television channels participated in the news conferences at the beginning, middle, and end of the campaign. Especially helpful were the

Catholic National Radio Coordinator and the network of youth communicators. CONAMCOS also prepared several video cassettes and television and radio spots.

Another interesting activity was that each Friday during the last couple of months of the campaign, CEAS invited television and public personalities to come to our offices to sign onto the campaign. And we invited the press to the same meetings to give adequate coverage. From the middle of March through the beginning of May, their articles appeared in the newspapers and interviews on the radio almost every day.

One religious television channel (Telejuan 19) provided frequent programming.

4. Monitoring of the Signature Campaign:

In most of the cases the campaign to gather signatures was carried out by the administration of the local dioceses. Every week CEAS called up the person in charge in each dioceses to have a better idea of how many signatures were being gathered. And each week at the press conference on the occasion of the visit of the television stars, CEAS handed out an update on the amount of signatures being collected. A large press conference was held April 30th when the number of signatures passed one million, and the official closing of the campaign on May 19th was marked by another press conference in which the bishops who inaugurated the campaign the previous November officially received the boxes of signatures from the campaign organizers. That gave the campaigners a month to get the packages to Germany so that they could be turned over on the central day of activities in Cologne, June 19th.

The head of the Church campaign, "Life before Debt", Laura Vargas, and the coordinator of the Debt and Development Round Table which headed the Jubilee 2000 campaign, Romulo Torres, went to Cologne for the meeting with the G-7. Laura was part of the delegation, headed by Bishop Oscar Rodriguez of Tegucigalpa, and which included Bono of the Rock Group U2, Ann Pettifor of the Jubilee 2000 UK campaign, and Christiane Overkamp, of Erlassjahr 2000 Germany, which actually handed over the signatures to German chancellor, Gerhard Schroder.

In Peru we held two activities that same day: the Jubilee 2000 Peru coalition staged a march to the German embassy where a delegation talked to the ambassador himself. A thousand people participated in the short march. In the evening -- for those who couldn't make it to the daytime march -- the diocesis of Lurin, on the southern side of the city of Lima, sponsored a religious and cultural feast to celebrate the 1,850,000 signatures. The bishop of the dioceses celebrated the Mass, and a folklore group, Yuyachkani provided the join-in "fiesta" afterwards. 800 people participated.

5. Regional Workshops and Meetings

The question at hand was how to make best use of the enthusiasm created by the success of the signature campaign. Our objective was twofold: in the first place, we wanted to let people know concerning the results of the signature campaign and the meeting in Cologne and secondly we wanted to advance the concrete proposal for debt swaps which was part of the Peruvian proposal for Jubilee 2000.

We decided to hold seven regional meetings on the topic in different places in the country: on the coast, in the mountains, and in the jungle; in the northern, central, and southern parts of the country. The model we proposed was to work intensively one full day in each place. In the morning we would have a workshop for invited guests to talk about the sort of needs and proposals for debt swaps on the regional level. In the evening we would offer to the public in general an information program concerning the Jubilee 2000 campaign and the status questions of the debt issue.

We were able to support the costs of these seven regional workshops through donations received from Catholic organizations in Spain, Sweden, Germany, England, Ireland, Canada, and the United States.

We achieved our goal of offering the seven workshops: three in the jungle (in the cities of Pucallpa, Iquitos, and Tarapoto); on the northern coast at Trujillo; on the central coast in Lima; in the central mountains at Huancayo; and in the southern mountains in Arequipa. Therefore we had an excellent geographic distribution. The workshops in the morning brought together an average of 70 experts per region, and the evening open meetings drew crowds of an average of 400 people.

The workshops confirmed our hypothesis that people working at the grassroots levels on development projects are the ones best equipped not only to make a social diagnostic concerning the region's needs but also to propose the sort of projects that would begin the effort to respond to these needs. The principal issues studied were the problem of unemployment (especially youth unemployment); the ecological issues; the topic of food security; health, education, rural development, and women's promotion.

In several regions a structure was set up for future meetings, especially in terms of establishing a regional consortium of civil society and religious organizations to dialogue with the national government concerning the social investment of the funds freed by bilateral debt reduction.

6. 6th Social Week of the Peruvian Catholic Church

"After the Signature campaign, what are we going to do?" has been the theme to motivate the 6th Social Week of the Peruvian Catholic Church. For the past thirty years the Bishops' Conference of the Peruvian Catholic Church has maintained the custom of holding large meetings, open to the public in general, in which members of the Church, civil society, grassroots organizations, and the government itself can come together to discuss outstanding social questions and look for possible solutions. In the past ten years such social weeks have been organized around the themes of the Church's Social Teaching on Labor (1991) and on Food and Development (1997). The same Bishops who called for the signature campaign also asked the Area of Human Development of the Bishops' Conference (CEAS, CONAMCOS, DEPAS, and CARITAS) to organize a Social Week on the topic of "the foreign debt, poverty and development".

The Social Week is planned for October 13th through the 15th in Callao, Lima.

Like the regional workshops, the Social Week consisted in two parts: in the mornings 150 especially invited guests from all sectors of Peruvian society participated in discussions on how to promote citizen participation in debt negotiations: not only the use of funds freed from the reduction of the bilateral debt but also participation in future debt negotiations. On the three evenings the public in general was invited to hear three speakers: on the first night Bishop Diarmuid Martin, the secretary of the Vatican's Justice and Peace Council, and the highest ranking Church official who participates in negotiations on international debt issues, spoke on the debt issue from the point of view of Church Social Teaching. The second night Ann Pettifor, the coordinator of Jubilee 2000 UK, informed the participants in the social week concerning the progress and plans of the Jubilee 2000 coalition on the international level and the preparations for Okinawa; and on the final night the Peruvian economist, Javier Iguez, commented on the results of the morning workshops to the public. The Social Week was a real success in which more than a thousand people participated each evening, with fully 80% of the people returning all three nights.

A couple of weeks before the Social Week, Jubilee 2000 Peru had the real privilege of visiting the Pope. Jubilee 2000 UK with the support of five rock stars arranged the visit, and the Pope met with them in Castelgandolfo on September 23rd. On that occasion the Pope explicitly thanked the people of the Coalition for all of their efforts. Laura Vargas, our Peruvian director, was invited to participate because of the importance of the Peruvian campaign. We handed out copies of the Pope's statement to all of the participants at the Social Week.

7. Future Directions

Although the activities for 1999 (signature campaign, regional workshops, and national Social Week) will have concluded, the Jubilee 2000 coalition in Peru in general and the Area of Human Development of the Catholic Bishops' Conference in particular, will continue to work on the issue of debt in the future. In addition to finding ways to promote dialogue with the government on the issue of debt negotiations (the objective of the Social Week), we are also planning on holding a seminar with participants from the three Andean countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru) on the issue of insolvency cases. We hope to work on this issue in collaboration with Jubilee 2000 UK, Erlassjahr 2000 Germany, and the Jesuits for Debt Relief and Development (JDRAD).

8. Achievements and weaknesses of the campaign

* The campaign worked almost exclusively within Church circles. It is true that the system of organization of local civilian groups has been greatly reduced during the past decade, but it is nevertheless true too that in the future we need to think of ways of strengthening contacts outside of the Church circuit. The success of the campaign within the Church had much more to do with the confidence with which people believe in the Church than because of interest in the specific topic of the debt. Much work remains to be done at the education and conscientization levels.

* According to a reputable survey agency, only about 40% of the national population was even aware of the theme of the campaign. On the other hand, that is ten times the number who were aware before the campaign began. And according to the same survey many of the people who had heard about the campaign now believe that the foreign debt is the most important problem facing the country.

* Dialogue and discussion with the national government has been almost nonexistent. The Peruvian government's formal policy with respect to the debt is that Peru should pay all of its debt -- no matter what the cost -- in order to reestablish itself as a good risk within the international financial community in order to be able to receive new credits. In other words, "Peru should pay its debts in order to be able to go even deeper into debt".

Since the former national government (before 1990) announced a policy of a unilateral moratorium on debt payment (though, in fact, that government never did stop paying its service on the debt), and since that government was a fiscal disaster, and the country at that time was characterized by hyperinflation, when current government officials made any comment about the Jubilee 2000 campaign, it was to give the impression that the Church wants to go back to the pre-1990 type of policy. That is patently false. What the Church is calling for is not the non-payment of the debt but rather such solidarity with the wealthy countries of the world that they decide to not charge Peru the debt: but that is the other side of the coin.

Secondly, since the Peruvian government is so authoritarian, the official policy is that it is not necessary to dialogue with the civilian population: that it is enough for the government to do its own research into public opinion. As a result, there is no openness towards any sort of consortium with civil society either for the purpose of monitoring and observation and even less for cooperation in the administration of debt swaps.

* There is no way to predict when the government might show more openness towards citizen participation, but since 2000 will be an election year, this is an appropriate time to raise the issue. While much work still needs to be done in terms of conscientization, the educational work already done demonstrates that it is possible for the population in general to understand a complicated issue like the debt in a deeper way. People -- even illiterate peasants high in the Andes mountains -- understand now that the issue does affect them both in terms of the taxes they pay and in terms of the public services they no longer receive. They also begin to understand that citizen participation is both a duty and a right and not something that the paternalistic central government can reward as a prize.

* Peru has not benefited directly either from the reduced promises of the G-7 at Cologne nor even by Clinton's promises of forgiving the debt in favor of social investment. Peru is not an HIPC and has little possibility of being one according to the current way of defining poverty. Peru's per capita annual income is just above 2,000 dollars.

The problem is that Peru has one of the worst levels of income distribution. One out of six Peruvians lives in extreme poverty: they do not even earn enough for an adequate diet. Three out of four Peruvians live under the poverty line as the government itself defines poverty: both husband and wife together do not earn enough for the five basic necessities of food, housing, clothing, health, and education. So one goal of ours is that the definition of poverty not be based on per capita income but rather on the human development index.

One of the purposes of the Peruvian campaign was to express solidarity with the nations that are considered to be HIPCs. But, of course, we would like to go beyond that. The Peruvian campaign did not ask for the total forgiveness of the debt but rather a significant reduction of the debt in favor of social investment. We were especially thinking of the bi-lateral debt. Because the Peruvian Catholic Church has many ties of friendship with the German Catholic Church, and many solidarity groups in Germany are working for the Peruvian campaign, we had initially hoped for the possibility of a debt reduction through Germany. But at the board of governors' meeting in Washington of the IMF and World Bank in the month of September, the German government reflected the hard line position of offering no more incentives to the poor countries. But with Clinton's offer to the HIPC nations, the alternative of working with U.S. solidarity groups assumes more importance.

Because the Peruvian government shows absolutely no interest in cooperating with the civilian population in terms of establishing a consortium for the administration of future debt swaps, we decided that at the present moment to stress other issues such as that of civil society demanding a monitoring or even watchdog role in the administration of debt swaps made between government and government and also to press for mechanisms for responding to the issue of insolvency.

 

• Full report on the campaign by Jubilee 2000 Peru
• Country Profile of Peru