Interview Transcription

Nina Laurie (00:00 – 00:03)
So nice to see you! We met before on a call.

Percy Bayona (00:04)
Ah, right, yeah.

Percy Bayona (00:06 – 01:26)
So, for example, something kind of curious that happened here is that La Islilla wasn’t—well, at the beginning, it wasn’t like the other communities, like Yacila and Tortuga, which were the ones that got infected first. Why? Because fishermen used to come into those places, right? They came in and people there didn’t really resist, not like here.

Here, for example, what did the leaders did, the heads of the fishermen’s groups, the local authorities? They formed committees, like monitoring committees. So, for example, they were watching over the whole town, 24 hours a day. They’d be out in the streets making sure people didn’t go out. There were rumors that maybe some people were going to come in, so they’d go to the town entrances and form groups to keep watch constantly. So it was really difficult for anyone to come in.

And, well, it’s believed that maybe one of the ways the illness might’ve reached La Islilla was by sea. Maybe a fishing boat came in with someone infected, because there was no access by land, so it could’ve come through the sea. And, you know, at night, when it’s dark, you can’t really see. That’s one of the theories people talk about, that’s supposedly how it got here, right? But yeah, that’s how it was.

Nina Laurie (01:26)
But they organized themselves.

Percy Bayona (01:27 – 01:28)
Yeah, they really did.

Nina Laurie (01:29 – 01:32)
And was there still a strong memory here of the 1983 El Niño?

Percy Bayona (01:33)
Yes.

Nina Laurie (01:33 – 02:46)
So that helped too, didn’t it?

Percy Bayona (01:35 – 01:35)
Exactly, yes, yes.

And, well, I think that’s kind of how La Islilla responded to COVID. Like you mentioned, during El Niño in ’83, and then again in 2017, it was the same thing. The town organised itself; people helped each other. If a street had to be fixed because the rain had ruined it, people got together to go help the neighbours and fix it.

And there’s something that, honestly, for me, was a real lesson. Because during the rains in 2017, La Islilla was going through a terrible time. It rained every day; the town would wake up devastated from the rain. But the “advantage,” so to speak, that La Islilla had was the sea. Everything, if you look at the shape of the land, it all ends up flowing down to the ocean. So the town would end up drying out; you wouldn’t see puddles everywhere like you might in the city. But even so, La Islilla still went through a really hard time.

Nina Laurie (02:46 – 02:50)
But the illnesses didn’t hit as hard either, right?

Percy Bayona (02:51 – 03:49)
Exactly, exactly, like dengue, for example. And, just to finish the idea, at that time, we even lost access to Paita. Because the road that exists now, that’s not the one we used before; it’s new. The old one was destroyed. And, well, you can imagine, right? The situation for food, for money was really bad for La Islilla.

Some communities from the north brought food to us by sea; the authorities from Piura also organised some aid and sent provisions to the town. But then what happened? When the floods hit Catacaos and Bajo Piura, when the Piura River overflowed, all the donations we had received here in La Islilla, people gathered everything and took it to the people in Catacaos. I remember people said, “We’re having a hard time, but at least we’ve got something to eat.”

Nina Laurie (03:50 – 03:53)
And how did you get there? How did you manage to reach Catacaos?

Percy Bayona (03:53 – 04:13)
By land. Some people helped repair parts of the road so the trucks could pass, and in pickup trucks, 4x4s, we carried small boats, you know, like balsillas, and supplies. And once we got to Catacaos, everyone split up. I remember that I…

Nina Laurie (04:14 – 04:19)
So, you didn’t…

Percy Bayona (04:19 – 05:59)
No, no, we didn’t take those; we took these, we took them by land, in the trucks. I’ll send you some photos so you can see.

I remember that on the way I posted on Facebook, saying something like, “Hey, just so you know, there’s a group of fishermen heading to Catacaos, to Bajo Piura, to help the people who are flooded. If there are specific places that need help, let us know, and I’ll pass the message on to my colleagues.”

And I remember people started writing to me, saying, “Hey, in such and such place we need people, they’ve been isolated for days, they can’t get out, the water’s reached them.” So we started dividing ourselves up. I remember we were there for almost a week. Those little boats could reach places where people couldn’t normally go. My dad rescued lots of people with their livestock, their supplies, whatever they could save, because they’d lost so much.

And honestly, for me, that was a huge lesson. Because the town here was also suffering, just like Catacaos. It rained here too, the difference was that the water drained into the sea, so the next morning everything would be dry, but the town was destroyed. There was no economic stability, no food; we were getting help from other places. But when people here found out what was happening there, everything we had received, they gathered it and took it to them. They even organised communal kitchens, raised money to buy rice and sugar, and took it as donations. That, for me, was one of the greatest lessons my town has ever given me.

Nina Laurie (05:59 – 06:00)
And then with COVID, that was already a…

Percy Bayona (06:03 – 07:01)
Yeah, it was like repeating something you’d already done, something that worked. It’s always like that.

And, for example, here, whenever something really serious happens, something that might, let’s say, “affect” the town, they gather everyone, the whole community. They call a meeting. For example, when it’s about fishing, we don’t want a certain kind of fishing gear/art to be used, they call all the fishermen and they say: “Look, this resource, for such and such reason, we don’t want this kind of gear/art to be used.”

Or, say, we know that other fishing methods are coming in, like trawling, or boliche, not like before, but before there were a lot of trawlers coming through this area. So the fishermen would organise and go out to defend, you know? Unfortunately, there were clashes, but it was one of the ways the town managed to protect its resources.