Lifestyles of the rich and the famous

In Cajamarca, I mainly mingle with poor and middle-class Peruvians. In the field, I work with children who live on less than two dollars a day. My friends and colleagues belong to the growing Peruvian middle class; their monthly salary is between 100 and 350 €. They are fairly well-off but far from being rich. Inequality, although visible in Cajamarca, is not striking.

Lima is a different story. Miraflores, home to the city’s rich and famous, brims with cafés, restaurants, shops, movie theaters, bars, discos and the like – all full of consumers. Everything costs twice what it does in Cajamarca. The Larco Mar shopping center on the shores of the Pacific offers an extensive sortiment of designer merchandise and imported European and North American goods. Last week I strolled on Lima’s main shopping streets and wondered how so many people in this relatively poor country could afford such a lifestyle.








The majority of Limans live in poverty, but the city is also home to many people whose lifestyle is more luxurious than anyone’s in Finland – and Miraflores caters their needs. Miraflores and the neighboring bohemian Barranco and residential San Isidro are like any big-city upper-class areas in Europe. Green parks and trimmed lawns, clean streets and pretty buildings, patroling police officers and good lighting, polished cars and elegant citizens. The rest of Lima is a noisy, hazardous chaos where paint falls off walls, cars rattle along indifferent to traffic rules, the streets are filthy, and consumer goods are bought at crowded outdoor markets. After six months in the “real Peru”, Miraflores was a culture shock.

During my first week in Lima an old friend from a language course in France invited me over for drinks. Four of her friends came over, too, so we had a nice little get-together. My friend's tastefully decorated, spacious home in San Isidro, one of Lima’s most prestigious residential areas, looked like an appartment in an indoor design magazine. We sipped imported vintage wine and feasted on Italian sun-dried tomatos. I was asked what I had seen that day in Lima. I answered that I had visited some preschools in the Ventanilla slum. What followed was an uncomfortable silence and a change of subject. I will bet anything that none of the born and bred Limans present had ever been to a slum. They are familiar with the comfortable, upper-class life in Lima, but ignore the reality of the majority of Limans.