An as-yet unannounced candidate for president in Peru?s 2011 election ? an Amazon tribal native educated at Stanford and Oxford universities ? already has a campaign base in western Sonoma County.
If that scenario seems mind-boggling, you?d have to consider the resume of the candidate, 39-year-old Miguel Hilario-Manenima, who speared giant catfish in the Ucayali River as a boy, got an education in Sonoma County and is now completing his Ph.D. in anthropological sciences at Stanford.
From hunting with a blow gun in the jungle as a Shipibo-Konibo tribesman to handling cell phones, computers and honing a doctoral dissertation, Hilario-Manenima?s life spans cultures and continents.
But his Christian faith and commitment to preserving Peru?s biologically rich rainforest and protecting 10 million indigenous people never wavered.
?It?s a message of change,? Hilario-Manenima said in a Sebastopol coffee shop, wearing a Peruvian folk shirt. ?We have the dream of changing Peru. We want to bring hope.?
Working at the Inter American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. and serving as minister of indigenous and ethnic affairs, a Peruvian cabinet post, ushered him from campus life into the realm of bureaucrats wearing suits, ties and leather shoes.
But it left Hilario-Manenima feeling inadequate. The budget for his ministry was $600,000, enough to cover the staff salary and operating costs. Change would have to come ?from the bottom up,? he decided.
He started grass-roots organizing five years ago in Peru, and in October founded the Pluralist Party of Peru, dedicated to sustainable development, fighting corruption and bringing social and economic justice to the Amazonian people.
He envisions Peru as a ?capital of eco-tourism,? drawing millions of visitors to the Andes mountains and the vast rainforests, where rampant mining and clear-cutting for cropland would be largely replaced by selling carbon credits to industry.
?If we do that, everybody wins,? Hilario-Manenima said. ?What happens in the Amazon has implications for the world.?
Does he sound like a West County liberal? ?Well, I am a West County liberal,? Hilario-Manenima said with a smile.
?His message makes sense,? said Pat Parks, a former Petaluma police chief who lives in Freestone and met Hilario-Manenima in Lima, Peru in 1990. ?He struck me as someone who wanted to make a difference.?
Parks, who pastors a small Christian congregation in Bodega Bay, and his wife, Denise, became Hilario-Manenima?s sponsors and his ?extended family.?
His American studies began at Santa Rosa Junior College in 1993, and he graduated from Sonoma State University in 1999, the first man from his tribe to graduate from a U.S. university.
?We will hear about Miguel Hilario for years to come,? SSU President Ruben Armi?na said on graduation day.
A thoroughly modern man, fluent in English, Spanish and his native tongue, Hilario-Manenima found that his village of Nueva Samaria, where about 500 Shipibo-Konibo live along the Ucayali River, had been transformed as well.
It still lies far upstream from Pucallpa, the jungle town where Hilario-Manenima first went to school at age 12, the start of his odyssey into western civilization. But the ancient ways were no more.
Commercial fishing has nearly depleted the food source the Shipibo-Konibo thrived on, while oil exploration and gold mining are soiling the once-pristine region.
Men no longer hunt and fish, but work in rice and papaya fields for money to buy tuna fish and pasta to eat. The currency-free reciprocity economy of the village, in which all shared and everyone had enough, has been transformed into a market economy.
Instead of greeting a visitor with gifts, Hilario-Manenima said, ?people want to sell you things. They need money now in order to survive.?
Battered by political and economic instability, including a two-decade war with the Shining Path guerilla group and a period with inflation as high as 8,000 percent a year, Peru is now on a track of sustained growth and a return to democracy.
But mining, logging and damming the Peruvian Amazon, a region about twice the size of California, is a flashpoint. In June, Peru?s Congress overturned two rainforest development decrees by President Alan Garcia after violent protests by indigenous groups.
Garcia cannot seek re-election, and the field for the 2011 race so far is dominated by familiar faces, including former president Alejandro Toledo and the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a prison sentence for corruption.
A Peruvian journalist, Augusto Alvarez Rodrich, wrote in March that the ultimate front-runner may be from outside the pack. ?There are indications that people are eager for something new,? he wrote, suggesting it might be ?a strong character who is considered center-left with close ties to the poor.?
Hilario-Manenima plans to officially launch his campaign in January. He intends to raise $20 million, some of it in California. Arron Parks, a son of Pat?s, is heading his campaign in West County and already has 32 volunteer staffers.
?He is starting to get rolling,? Pat Parks said. The world is ripe for social change, and Hilario-Manenima ?has the heart to do it.?
In 2005, neighboring Bolivia elected Evo Morales, a socialist, as president, the nation?s first fully indigenous head of state.
Hilario-Manenima said he relishes the role of an underdog. ?I?ve always been a longshot,? he said, a man born in a dugout canoe who studied at Oxford.
?I beat the odds with my faith in God, hard work and the support and love of friends,? he said.
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