Flood & Housing | Itaya River, Peru – Edge of Humanity Magazine

Documentary Photographer and Photojournalist César Campos is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘Belen’. To see César’s body of work, click on any image.

The Belen district in Iquitos, Peru, is flooded three or four months a year by the rising Itaya River. The streets, the sidewalks, the sports slabs, the first floors of the houses, the schools, everything, is under water. Therefore, the place brand is the houses, built on stilts.

The reality is that Bethlehem is not always the same. Villagers build and deconstruct their homes according to the growing. The houses are enlarged or reduced, change of material, distribution, use, depending on the time of year and the availability of materials and labor. Since there is not always room for everyone in the second or third floors, sometimes you have to move to a relative’s house or receive one. This has allowed everyone in Bethlehem to know each other. Several generations of the same families have grown there, in most cases dedicated to the sale of fish, fruits, coal, curichi. But the historical tradition also faces in this case the forgetting of the authorities: the lack of basic services, such as a drainage network, the pollution produced by the disposal of excreta that end up in the river, the same river full of dangerous animals that worry parents when children do not resist, despite everything, to play in those waters.

Oblivion also faces the vitality of its people. The streets full of dirt or water are also filled with children of all ages. Even a disused refrigerator can be converted into a canoe and plastic bottles in floats.