First, a few facts to give us some context. Bill Gates has so much money that if he declared an independent republic for himself and had his wife as his only fellow citizen, the volume of his new country’s economy would surpass the national reserves of Peru by a long shot. Bill Gates has enough money to pay off all of Peru’s foreign debt right now and to finance its entire 2013 federal budget. This is due, among other things, to the fact that Gates has been wiser with his finances than the Peruvian State has been with its own.
Bill Gates is the second wealthiest man on the planet and likewise – this is crucial to remember, because the last thing I wish to do is demonize this person – he is the second greatest philanthropist of the United States and also one of the most generous donors to humanitarian and developmental causes in the history of humanity. This gives him a specific power and also a symbolic power that other billionaires do not necessarily have: Bill Gates, perhaps more than anyone else, influences the way in which international aid gets distributed throughout the world.
That is why many Peruvians were surprised and even dumbfounded by the recent statement made by Gates, who, referring in particular to the case of Spanish aid, but alluding generally to the way in which humanitarian aid gets directed into the international circuit, said that the economic situation of Peru is such that the country should no longer receive the amount of economic aid that it is currently receiving. The key figure that he cited is the average per capita income of Peruvians: nearly USD 10,000 per year (which, nonetheless, places it 79th in the world). However we should also mention that members of the Peruvian executive branch have observed that this figure is deceitful and that, when calculated in actual terms, the average income does not even reach USD 6,000 per year.
I believe that a person in the position of Gates should be a little more cautious before making this sort of recommendation. First, and this is obvious, because there is the likelihood that the international community might do as he says. And second, because no one better than he ought to know that the average income of a country is far from being a legitimate measurement tool, if three facts are not considered first: how the wealth is distributed in this country; what the state is of the average per capita income when it is considered only in relation to the population that lives on the other side of the gap between the upper and lower classes; and the simple fact that those who die of malnutrition and destitution in a country like Peru are just as much victims of poverty as those who die for the same reasons in countries like Rwanda or Haiti.
Of course, no country that is just starting to step forth – statistically – from the group of the poorest countries in the world should accept that its future is to depend on foreign humanitarian aid. And it is clear that, if Peru is emerging from poverty, albeit very slowly, it is not due to humanitarian donations, but to factors of a different breed. Yet one must remember facts like those brought up by the ex-minister of production in Chile, an unapologetic proponent of the free market economy, who, studying the case of Peru, recently stated that, with our growth rate and our prevailing economic model (with which none of our politicians seems too inclined to meddle), only in one century could Peru see a drastic reduction in poverty and extreme poverty, and that the only way to modify this terrible fate (the fate of secular poverty) would be to implement social development and assistance programs which Peru cannot afford to get off the ground without international aid.
That is why the recommendation of Bill Gates should be carefully discussed. And the moral behind the suggestion should receive special treatment: it is one thing for an almighty philanthropist to decide where he would like to direct his aid; yet it is a very different thing to propose that one country in particular, whose internal situation that philanthropist has never studied with scrutiny, be suddenly impacted by the will and the projects of a single person. The real estate boom in the upper-class neighborhoods of Lima has not especially altered the situation of the rest of the country; foreign investments contribute to the country’s (at least statistically) less poor appearance, but many times those investments do not help the poorest of the poor, but rather run them over and destroy their right to a certain minimum quality of life (mining investments, for example, tend to annihilate the habitat of rural communities). There are half a million children with chronic malnutrition in Peru, and that only 6% of those children lives in the capital makes very clear that the figures from Lima substantially alter the national averages: if Lima was excluded, the result would be that the average of chronic malnutrition in the provinces of the country as a whole is perfectly comparable with those of some of the poorest countries of the world.
And that is what I was referring to when I wrote, a few lines above, that it is necessary to discuss the moral behind the suggestion of Bill Gates: because human life is not a question of national averages, but has an individual value, and, individually, counting them one by one, in Peru there are more children with chronic malnutrition than in many African countries. (Even if we stay within the statistical realm, the average Peruvian consumes fewer calories than inhabitants of Suriname, Ivory Coast, Mali, Bermuda, Honduras, or El Salvador.)
I do not say this because I’m inclined to take the discussion to a different plane, but because I want to carry on the discussion in the terms that Gates himself used to make the claim: “All lives have equal value”, he said. And later, he added that it makes no sense to “give aid to countries like Peru, a middle-income country, while there are children dying of malaria and people who do not get medicines for AIDS...” And again, “When you help these countries with a sufficient level of wealth you have to ask why, why do you support it?” This should be the answer: Because all human lives are of equal value and the children that die of hypothermia and tuberculosis in the Andean winters are of no lesser value than any other.
It’s not that Peruvians want to avoid the responsibility for resolving our own problems and depend on foreign aid; this we are not doing. It’s that there’s an infinity of disparities and injustices, including an ethnic divide and several forms of marginalization that Gates cannot find by looking at a statistical chart and that he should know about prior to calling upon the international community to take Peru off the list of aid recipients.
By Gustavo Faverón Patriau
Translated by Joseph Mulligan