THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY

Peru has had a democratic government since 2000 and a long history of a culture of peace, mega-diversity, multiple ethnic groups, cultures and languages. Peru covers 1.25 million square kilometers, with a population (1 ) of 27,219,264, divided into three geographical zones: the arid coast, the inter-Andean highland valleys and high-altitude mountain areas, and the Amazon basin. Most of the population lives in urban areas (74 percent) with only 26 percent in rural zones. Lima, the nation's capital, has almost 8.5 million inhabitants.

With sustained economic growth over the last seven years, at a rate that has risen from 4 percent to 6 percent yearly, but with inequitable redistribution of wealth, economic development is limited, and patterns of social injustice are reinforced. Peru's main problems at present include the poverty affecting 48 percent of both the rural and urban population; climate change (desertification and loss of biological and cultural diversity, with seriously dependent food supply and market forces); and a national government with strongly centralizing economic and political policies. These characteristics are due to economic and social systems that exclude large segments of the population and favor indiscriminate extraction and exhaustion of natural resources and investment by major trans-national and foreign companies, and agrarian policy that discriminates against small farmers and rural communities, relying on free market forces as the sole mechanism for resource allocation. Nevertheless, this system and these policies are meeting resistance from rural dwellers who practice subsistence agriculture, do not depend on the market and increasingly coordinate with each other to defend their interests.

Lack of equity results in widespread poverty - 48.7 percent (2 ) overall, with 36.8 percent in urban areas classified as poor, a figure that rises to 70.9 percent in rural areas and 77.3 percent in the rural highlands. As a result, poverty is viewed as predominantly Andean and rural. Many city dwellers also live in poverty, however, which requires a special approach.

Peru's rural population is the poorest and least visible, and rural women and youth are the most vulnerable group, a situation exacerbated by prevailing economic development patterns. Poverty, therefore, is said to have "a woman's face."

Despite the decentralization that is currently under way, with the establishment of regional governments, Peru remains highly centralized, with political and economic power, major companies, government agencies, universities, etc., concentrated in Lima This is aggravated because regionalization is coming at a time when rural towns and communities have weak organizations and regional and municipal institutions lack the organizational and technical capabilities for addressing the challenges of the new political, social and economic context. At the same time, decentralization has weaknesses that keep it from being a truly democratizing process, as regional and local participation mechanisms often to not involve rural communities or advocate for them in decision making, and there is a lack of genuine delegation of responsibilities or decisions from the central government to regional and local authorities.

Recent political violence and the Fujimori dictatorship undermined rural movements and organizations during the 1980s and 1990s, with forced displacement and assassinations of leaders and members of rural communities and grassroots movements, destroying the social and institutional fabric, including political parties, labor unions, rural movements, etc. Rural communities have been neglected until recently, in 2007 and 2008, when natural resource extraction (mining) has driven the rural movement to rise again, this time spontaneously and without strong organization, but with stakeholders who believe in the need to become empowered and get their rights and demands onto the public agenda.

An increasingly globalized world that applies neoliberal policies at all levels favors foreign and private capital. In Peru, since the 1990s, not only has state property been sold and auctioned to the private sector (mainly foreign capital), but local private property has also been bought up by foreign private capital. This creates growing differences and polarities (territorial and social), hitting rural areas hardest, (3 ).  as the model assumes that the market is the best way to allocate resources..