Improving the Future: The Girls of Yapatera Take Their Revenge

CHULUCANAS, Peru – When the 2017 Census published its results, the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI as its initials in Spanish) revealed that the population of Piura Department had surpassed 1.85 million inhabitants. Estimates for 2023 consider that this figure is around two million.

 

The same 2017 Census showed that out of the entire population of the department, 125,000 people identified as Afro-descendants.

 

Statistically, Piura is the second most populous department in Peru. At that time, another indicator was added: it has the second largest Afro-Peruvian community, with three out of every 20 inhabitants being Afro-descendants, speaking in purely Piura terms. Proportionally, this means three out of every 20 inhabitants in the second most populous department of Peru are Afro-descendants.

 

 

 

Of the entire Afro-descendant community in Piura, 47% are women.

 

According to NGO Kaikuna, Afro-descendant women are vulnerable to poverty and abuse, especially sexual abuse; additionally, teenage pregnancy and child marriage disrupt their life plans.

 

Kaikuna launched the project Flore Ser, which used introspection and a journey to the ancestral past to reconfigure the identity of adolescent girls in the town of Yapatera, located 4 km or 2.5 miles north of Chulucanas City.

 

According to INEI, Yapatera is the largest Afro-descendant community in whole Piura.

 

 

 

Yapatera has about ten thousand inhabitants. According to the 2017 census, 90% declared themselves as Afro-descendants. This predominance has not guaranteed better living conditions, and women might bear the brunt of it.

 

During the first half of 2024, the Flore Ser project brought together teenage women from Yapatera. Through art, it sought to explore their past with the purpose of giving greater meaning to their individual and collective identity.

 

On June 8, 2024, they unveiled a mural that expresses how they hope their town will be recognized. From Flore Ser, they say this is just the beginning.

 

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