Raucana

Lima is surrounded by shanty towns. They climb precariously up the barren hillsides surrounding the city. There was one in particular that I've wanted to visit for a long time - Raucana.

 Raucana was founded in 1981 by communist cadres from Ayacucho, Apurimac, and other People's War heartlands. It was a strategic move to begin building a base of support among the poor workers of Lima with the goal of eventually surrounding the city with a mass of revolutionary people. The site chosen was just 1km South of the national highway - the road on which nearly all of Lima's food comes in on each day.

Right from the beginning, Raucana has been a combative place. It takes its name from a man killed fighting the police in the struggle to found the settlement. During the height of the civil war period, it was a no-go zone for police, defended by armed guard towers, and was the site of frequent pitched street fights on the highway.

Reading about these events in Peru had a big influence on me politically when I was growing up, so naturally I wanted to see the place for myself, even though this is hardly the place that gets written up in guidebooks. No surprise since according to the Lonely Planet, anywhere in Lima outside the main tourist areas are lawless death-traps, which is bullshit, but whatever.

What me and Conor saw when we got there was a bit of a surprise. Today, Raucana seems to be a very poor, but basically functioning neighborhood. There were shops selling basic goods, a couple of restaurants, and kids running around in new clean clothes.



The housing is bad, of course, it's mostly cinder-block construction, currogated metal roofs and other improvised-type works. But there's also a concrete soccer pitch and a recently-built small park.



Unfortunately, a lot of our curiosities would go unanswered. Much as we'd like to start doing interviews asking about the current state of politics and the recent history of the place, it probably wasn't such a good idea without really knowing the score.  So instead we settled on a stroll though Raucana, dodging the odd foraging chicken and daredevil kids on their bikes. We had a quick lunch of fried chicken skin, potatoes, and corn kernels and made our way back to Lima as the sun was setting.