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When Peruvian officials set out to spread the wealth, they probably didn't mean mayors should build extravagant town halls and heated swimming pools. And they almost certainly didn't expect this wind-swept hamlet high on the Andean plateau to spend its windfall on an erotic sculpture park.
The sexually explicit creations in this isolated village 100 miles northeast of the capital have become the focus of a furor over public spending that is dominating Sunday's nationwide local elections and posing a political headache for President Alan Garcia just four months after he was elected in a stunning comeback.
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People in Huayre are bemused by the uproar. National rulers, they figure, have been squandering their riches for centuries, so what's the big deal if Mayor Wenceslao Alderete hoped to attract tourists by gracing the village's central plaza with outsized images of genitalia and of the maca root, a tuber traditionally consumed as an aphrodisiac?
The federal government had hoped for more attention to priorities in communities like Huayre, which still lacks paved streets or a sewage system — typical among Andean towns in a country where half the population lives on less than $2 a day.
Alderete, an independent who is not running for re-election, said he is aware that his $158,000 park is being skewered in the media as typical of towns that are misspending their money.
But he says it's the job of the regional government, not the mayor's office, to build infrastructure such as sewer systems so that people don't have to rely on outdoor toilets.
"It pains me to watch my fellow villagers having to take care of their bodily needs that way," he said.
