Chicha Papers: How Peru's Poor Get Their 'News'

In a media-saturated land like the United States, it's hard to imagine the isolation from the news experienced by Peru's marginalized poor, even in the midst of the teeming city of Lima.

In the United States, Nielsen Media Research reported recently, 64% of households have at least two television sets, and 23% have four or more. But in Lima, fully 8% of Lima's homes don't have even one TV -- and 2% do not have access to a radio.

Yet, Lima's poor do get news, of a sort, from an assortment of sensational tabloid newspapers known collectively as the "chicha" press. The name comes from the pre-colonial national drink, an alcoholic corn or yucca brew. Peruvians have borrowed the name to describe not only the cheap newspapers, but also a kind of music and even their own mixed racial roots.

"For the 50% of Peruvians living on the edge of poverty, la prensa chicha may be the only source of news they ever get," says Aldo Vásquez Riós, who directs the Professional School of Communications at University of San Martin de Porres in Lima.
Vásquez described the typical way the working poor learn the news from the chicha papers in an interview this October during the Inter American Press Association's annual general assembly in Antigua, Guatemala.

"The typical man working in the city center may not even buy [a paper], but look at it [pinned up] on the kiosks," Vásquez says. "He comes home as head of the family, and tells them. That becomes their only source of news."

Though it's the only source of news, la prensa chicha is hardly taken as gospel. "That's the funny thing, if you ask somebody do you believe it, they'll say no," Vásquez says. "So you ask, why do you buy it? [They say] because it's entertaining."

Peru's chicha papers will seem familiar to anyone who has seen the lurid "red pages" evening papers of Mexico City -- or recalls the gamy roots of today's shiny National Enquirer. Bloody car crashes and unexpected death of any kind are staples, along with cheesecake, political news or near-news reported in a sensationalist style under screaming headlines, and the Latin American newspaper standby known as "farándula" -- lighter-than-air news about celebrities. Chicha papers also eschew the formal Castellan of the quality press in favor of "jerga," or street language.

The chicha tabs delight in reporting the scandals of politicians and pop stars -- but for years during the 1990s, they were themselves part of a massive corruption scheme.

As then-President Alberto Fujimori became more authoritarian and his popularity looked shaky, Vladimiro Montesinos -- a master manipulator who headed the state intelligence service, known by its Spanish initials as SIN -- began paying