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Mónica Carrillo
27 years old
Founder and Director, Center for Afro-Peruvian Studies
and Empowerment (LUNDU)
Peru

>>Available in PDF

In 2001, at the age of 21, Mónica Carrillo founded the Centro de Estudios y Promocion Afro-Peruano (Center for Afro-Peruvian Studies and Empowerment, LUNDU), an organization devoted to advancing the human rights and encouraging the political participation of people of African descent in Peru. In particular, LUNDU works to empower young people in low-income settings who face pervasive discrimination and receive little information on sexuality and reproductive health. For example, LUNDU has trained youth peer educators in El Carmen, in Peru's Ica province—the site of a growing sex tourism industry and the province with the second-highest rate of HIV/AIDS prevalence in Peru—to reach Afro-Peruvian youth. Mónica has also coordinated an international network against racism, and was a founder of the Youth Caucus at the 2000 United Nations World Conference Against Racism in South Africa. Mónica has spoken widely on racism, sexism, sexuality, health, and the African diaspora around the world. She has received many acknowledgments for her work, most recently MADRE's "Tribute to Young Women Fighting for the Future." She is also a trained journalist, poet, and performance artist, and was recently featured in the MTV Europe documentary, "Element."

Jennifer Kidwell, IWHC: How did you get involved in the struggle for women's and young people's rights and health?

Mónica Carrillo: Early on, I recognized the very great needs of young people, especially Afro-descendant young people, who every day live out the intersections of racism and sexism. The way others view Afro-descendant people reflects a lot of prejudice about sexuality and our bodies, and the way Afro-descendant people understand our identities is connected with this kind of prejudice. For this reason, I believe that it's not possible to build a social movement for Afro-Peruvians without thinking about sexuality, racism, sexism, and health.

JK: Why did you found LUNDU?

MC: LUNDU comes from a personal point of view. Since I was a child I understood the need to have an answer against racism. I think there are four ways to deal with racism in your life. One, if you are living in a very difficult context like in Peru, you can go along with the popular racist views and jokes, and be part of the larger misunderstandings of Afro-descendant identities. Second, you can be depressed and sad all the time; or third, you can be aggressive. The fourth approach is to try to change things, working through movements. I chose the last way because I found that there were a lot of people struggling with the same things I was. For this reason, LUNDU was born-because of a real need.

To all of us who formed LUNDU, the organization wasn't just about the physical space where we would work, or about money or income. After I left university in 2000, I was already working in a women's organization, and LUNDU was born at the same time. All of us were cognizant of the need for a new movement, and that was our focus. If we received money for LUNDU, we used it to fund activities, not to pay ourselves. Eventually, then, as we grew, we knew we needed to go through the formal process of becoming a non-governmental organization (NGO).

We still maintain our connections to other organizations and movements. It is important that, because I was working at a feminist organization, LUNDU was born with a gender perspective. We have strong connections with the women's movement and institutions, which makes us different from other NGOs in Peru, and other youth NGOs. For me, it was a mix of my own personal perspective with the process of movement-building.

JK: Who were the other people with whom you started LUNDU?

MC: From the beginning, we were a group of Afro-descendant people who range from an accountant and a lawyer to people who make their living cleaning houses.  This is a direct result of our context, as there are few opportunities for Afro-Peruvian people to study.  The process of building an organization and a movement was difficult for this reason, because it can be challenging to have a staff with such different backgrounds and resources.

JK: Tell me about LUNDU's name, where does it come from?

MC: The word lundu is from the Kikongo language of Angola. It means "successor," the person who comes after. We use this name because our point of view is to improve or to develop new, alternative approaches for an Afro-descendant movement.

While lundu has this meaning in Africa, in South America lundu is also a dance and has a different cultural and artistic meaning. It actually means a provocative dance, often performed by Afro-descendant people living in the North. Actually, there's a funny story about lundu. Once, a town in Northern Peru was flooded and the Catholic Church said the flood was a punishment for lundu, because it's an erotic dance.

JK: So how would you say that both LUNDU's work and your own personal work have changed young people's lives?

MC: It's been so important to build and develop a movement and a grassroots organization for Afro-Peruvian young people. You can have individuals who act as leaders for a group of people, but when that person is gone, or moves on to other things, all the progress stops. Leaders have a responsibility to build a real process for change. I see this as my life's responsibility-not just LUNDU, but building the entire movement. LUNDU symbolizes a new way forward for Afro-Peruvians, especially children and young people who don't get attention or have political capital on their own.

I hope that LUNDU can be a place where young people and children can come to learn about their own identity, and where they can begin to deconstruct internalized racism. I want them to rediscover their multiple identities-whether Afro-descendant, gay, female, and so on. No one is just one thing, or one identity. We are not only Afro-descendant, we are a lot of things. So I'd like for them to learn about and redefine our Afro-descendant identity and culture, and at the same time open their minds to other aspects of the world.

JK: Can you share an example of a girl who worked with LUNDU and came out more empowered, or thinking differently about the world and her identity?

MC: Take, for example, Olga, who is 12 years old. She's from El Callao, a port city in Peru. She was one of the most persecuted children in her school…for being black, for having a "big nose," for being Afro-descendant. She was having huge problems and she didn't want to go to school.

In Peru, there is this joke that black people can only think before 12:00 in the morning. If you are Afro-descendant and you make a mistake, people will say, "Oh, well, it's because it is afternoon." So Olga went to the afternoon classes at school, and her teacher would tell her she was so stupid because it was the afternoon. The teacher even asked her why she was bothering to do her schoolwork since she could only think before noon. This teacher would never, never call on Olga when she asked a question—she was very, very racist. So people at the school contacted LUNDU, and told me that Olga really needed our attention. For a while, she refused to attend our workshop because it was "black," and she didn't want to be associated with any of that. Finally, she gave in; I think things were just so painful for her. So now, after a year of meetings, she is able to talk openly about what she's experienced and how she felt about it. This is very important, because many people who suffer a lot of racism can't talk about it—it's so embarrassing, or shameful. Now, she can just say, "Yes, my teacher said that to me, and this is how it made me feel." And she says, "Now, I know that I am nice, I am beautiful."

Before, she had always cut off her hair because she didn't like it. But now, she has started to let her hair grow and wear it in braids. She's happier, and she has started to talk about her vision for her life. It is so important that these young people have dreams, and believe they have the right to dream, to believe that they have possibilities. I think that things are going better in school for her now, because she is finally receiving emotional support from other people. She told us that it is very important to know other Afro-descendant people like us, because she can really talk to someone about things that are so embarrassing…and also, they can celebrate who they are, that they are Afro-Peruvian.

JK: What do you think are the major challenges facing young people in Peru today, especially in the places where you work, like El Carmen and El Callao? Also, what are their greatest opportunities?

MC: I think that right now, the challenge is to keep working with them on deconstructing their internalized racism, so that they have the possibility to dream and believe that they can build another kind of life for themselves, their community, and their country. Today, for the first time, I believe that there is a group of young people who have tools, to make political change—after they have gone through the long process of dealing with their own feelings about their identity and how they have been treated in their society. I guess some people would criticize our methodology because we focus so much on individuals...they would say we need to be worrying about our collective rights. But at LUNDU, we don't see the two things as contradictory. Of course, when we work with individuals, we also recognize that we belong to a group and a community. And also, we are a people, a movement, but within that collective everybody has different stories, different ways of understanding and responding to racism. We need to provide tools for everybody.

Another challenge, with children specifically, is to improve their quality of life at the same time they are fighting and trying to learn about political activism. LUNDU, but also society itself, needs to provide them with basic support. Because you can't think about being political if you need to eat. Also, we lose leaders when they are 17, 18, 21, because they need to work and support their families, and they don't have the option of going to school. They might belong to LUNDU for five years, but then what happens? This is a major challenge.

JK: Can you talk about the health challenges that are facing Afro-descendants in Peru and especially young women and young girls?

MC: There are probably three major priorities. First, girls and young women in my context must have the possibility to say both yes and no in sexual negotiations. 

Another priority is for them to be able to exercise the power to decide what kind of relationships they want to have, whether sexual or emotional. Even if they don't want to get married yet, they still have the right to a sexual relationship without guilt.

Third, they must know what methods they can use to prevent sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy. Emergency contraception (EC) is one example, especially because in Peru there was a very strong campaign against it. At LUNDU, we provide a lot of information and workshops about EC. And we teach young people that even though it is a contraceptive, it doesn't protect them from HIV. They must have access and information about all the different methods.

And yes, this third point is important, but it can't stand alone without the first two. We need to work on prevention all the time, but knowing the methods is not enough if girls can't negotiate and they can't choose.

JK: Can you tell me whether HIV/AIDS is a problem for young women living in Peru? I think a lot of people don't believe or know that it is.

MC: Yes, it is a problem, but we need more statistical and empirical information. I mean, we know that it's a problem because we are in the community, and we know who is sick.

Tourists in the community are part of the problem, and many of the young people have sex with the tourists, often for money. But when the tourists leave, people have sex within the community, and they believe that if they've known a person since they were children, they don't need to use condoms.

We need to advocate with regional governments so that doctors are required to collect information on ethnic identity when they treat people living with HIV/AIDS. Right now, they don't collect that information. We have general information about how many people have HIV/AIDS, but nothing on ethnic variables.

JK: What about pregnancy among Afro-Peruvian teenagers and young girls?

MC: In El Carmen, a poor, rural town where we work, for example, I would estimate that probably 80 percent of the women have already been pregnant by the time they are 20 years old. More often at ages 16 or 17, but by 20, most of them have been pregnant or have children. All of my family, my young cousins, they are very worried when they turn 20 or 21 because they think they have crossed some kind of line: "Monica, I am crossing the line! I don't have a husband." This kind of thinking is still very present in the community, especially in rural communities. And in urban communities it's the same, but it's because they are living in very poor conditions, with drugs and violence, so to get pregnant is a way to escape.

JK: Does your family give you a hard time that you're in your late 20s and you're not married, and don't have a child?

MC: Yes, to them it looks like a problem. Because at 28, you need to have a husband, have children, a family. It is not common that a woman of African descent in Peru would have lived so long just working, so active in social issues.

JK: What do you think that activists, or other groups, could do to so that young people have more say in decision making and what happens in their own lives?

MC: I think one downfall among many youth movements is that they believe they will be young forever, so they build an identity that is only about being young. But what is the limit between young and not young? And what happens after two years or ten when these activists are no longer young?

The result is that political movements can use this to manage young people. "Young" becomes a static identity and young advocates are not respected, they don't really have any power in decision-making processes. If they are involved, it's because it's a "young decision," and if it's a young decision, it's not a real decision. This has become a real trap in the system and it is important that young people and youth movements are aware of this.

Also, it's important to remember that being young is not just one thing. For example, you can be young but conservative. A lot of people assume all young people are liberal or they really want to change everything, but to be young is not the same thing for everybody. And different young people have different areas of expertise. At the Third Conference Against Racism, for example, it was frustrating because there were many young people who had expertise in language, in UN processes. But young people were separated into their own caucus, and not part of the main process.

JK: What would you say your dreams are for the future? Can you describe your vision of an ideal world?

MC: First, my dream is that Afro-descendant people, and all historically excluded communities, have a space in the world to make decisions, to build or lead or inject their particular values into their national and regional processes. And I don't just mean that they are "included," because I don't really like to use words like tolerance. You can tolerate something, or include something, but it's not active enough. Consider quotas, for example. It's not enough to include me in a racist system, in a macho system, in a homophobic system. What we need is to build a new system, which is far more difficult. My dream is that we use our tools to build new processes, new styles of life. I believe that it will be possible because with technology and the internet, we have more possibilities to connect through networks and to exchange our dreams. The problem is that there are still a lot of walls. But I think that we have the possibility, maybe in 50 years, to have a powerful system, a mixed system, a better system.

I want people to know that in the Andean region, there are a lot of Afro-descendant people. We don't have the same visibility as other groups, because historically, we could not develop a community. In places like Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, the Caribbean, people are surrounded by jungles. When slaves ran away, they had a place to hide. And when they ran away, they formed communities, and they maintained their language and religion. In Peru, they could not run. If you ran north there was desert; if you ran South, desert; if you ran east, you ran into the Andean highlands; and west the Pacific Ocean.

Also, the majority of Afro-Peruvians came from slave markets in other countries, so we were all mixed and brought to Peru. People believe that Africa is one continent. But Africa has different languages and religions. Africans brought to Peru couldn't communicate or understand each other, and it was very difficult to develop a cultural identity.
 
Today, attitudes in Peru toward Afro-descendant people are so racist, and this is true across Latin America. Why is it happening? It's important for me to denounce it, so that people can hear about it. They see me, they think I am a leader, I am empowered, but they must know that I have suffered this situation. Not only me, but a lot of Afro-descendant people in Peru. We need to destroy and combat this racism that doesn't let us have a normal life.

I think this is most important to my dream. Also, we must understand, all of us working against discrimination, that our personal discrimination and our personal feelings are not necessarily the worst, or the most important issue in the world. Anybody who experiences discrimination is suffering.  If we work to understand feelings and processes different from our own, we can build a new world together.

JK: How did you first become acquainted with IWHC? Can you describe what your work with IWHC has been like over the years?

MC: I came to know the Coalition because one of the staff here had worked in Peru, where she learned about LUNDU. So we already had a connection, and when she started working at the Coalition, we exchanged communication and started a more formal relationship.

It's important that the organization's name is "International Women's Health Coalition," but that the Coalition does not only work with women. Of course, together, we do some work only with women because it is important that women have the space to talk about their needs. But the reality of a gender perspective is recognizing that gender problems are between men and women. That is why LUNDU works with both men and women, and it is not easy to find organizations that are working with women and that understand that we need to work with men also. In the case of the Coalition, it happens.

Another point is that when we started to work with IWHC, we were a small organization with a lot of dreams, but not a lot of money. To give help starting up, to trust in the grassroots process—as the Coalition does—is very important. It is very important for one organization to trust or believe in another...then other doors open, and it's like a network begins. And at LUNDU, we have always thought of the Coalition's trust and investment in us with a lot of responsibility. There was one point where we had set up a grant schedule, and we realized we needed money sooner, to expand our work in El Carmen with rural people and with indigenous groups in Lima. And we had to balance our agreement with IWHC with the needs of our community. And IWHC supported us in this process, and helped us work through it.

Now, we have decided we need a cultural and political center in El Carmen, for two reasons. One, to provide a new paradigm for Afro-Peruvian issues and identities in this community, because the only cultural center there now is a farmhouse of former slaveowners. Second, we need a space where young people can become leaders and peer educators, focused on sexuality and reproductive rights. Lack of a space like this is perhaps one of the most important problems in the community. So the Center, maybe it will be a space where the community can become organized, with the support of LUNDU. The Coalition supports LUNDU, LUNDU supports the center, and eventually we hope that the Center will become self-sustaining.

We are advancing, but with every step, there is more to do. It's a long process, to change things.