Friday, June 15, 2012

The Invaders

Along the road that leads to the orphanage, there are large amounts of land that are owned by different individuals who don't actually live on the land. Some are chicken farms and some of the land is just empty. If the owner hasn't put up a pretty significant fence, large groups of Peruvians will come and construct villages on the land. These groups of people are known as invaders, for the obvious reason that they are invading the land that is not theirs. Many times the police will come and tear down the houses or huts that the people have built but it doesn't matter to them. The next day, they'll just come back and rebuild what was torn down. Many times they will try to lay concrete so that it is harder for the police to tear down their building and it is easier for them to rebuild where they were before. These people will build entire villages overnight, including roads, trash piles, and everything. The houses are made out of giant logs that sit in piles on the side of the roads until they are used or the police make them move. Another common sight is groups of people camped out across from the land they plan to invade. Many times this is because there are police guarding the land or another group has built make shift huts and they're waiting for the police to tear them down so they can move in and build their own village. These people will camp across the road for weeks waiting for an opportunity to take over the land for themselves, even if it isn't permanent. For most landowners, they have the money to put up a fence that is normally made of stone, so a wall. If the fence is made of wood or barbed wire, the invaders will normally work over them or just tear them down. Many of the stone walls have broken glass on the top of it to prevent people from jumping the wall. Also, the glass prevents people (who have managed to jump the wall) from getting back over the wall and escaping. Normally these walls will work to keep the invaders out until they can figure out how to put a hole in the wall.

1 comment:

  1. It sounds like the U.S. during the Great Depression! People, mostly in large cities, who'd been evicted from their homes would build shanty towns in public parks or vacant land. The largest shanty town during the Depression was in Central Park, in NYC. They were nicknamed "Hoovervilles" after President Hoover, because most Americans blamed him for the Great Depression. The government, and police really couldn't do anything about it because there were so many homeless people during the Depression.

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