Latest / Privycast / Ep. 130 The Guano Wars

Transcript

Ep. 130 The Guano Wars · Privycast

0:01
>> Hunter Hoover: Get. We gotta do something more. We
0:04
can't. We can't sell crap forever,
0:07
right, guys? Like,
0:10
right?
0:16
Welcome back to privy. Privy is
0:19
a podcast about bathrooms
0:21
recorded
0:24
from my home bathroom. I'm your
0:27
host, Hunter Hoover, and I love
0:30
bathrooms. Welcome back. Uh,
0:32
welcome back, privy video viewers. Uh,
0:36
I guess if you do it twice, it's a thing. I don't know.
0:39
Maybe it's a thing. Maybe we got a thing going
0:42
here.
0:44
Um, I have to tell you, number one, I
0:47
need to lead, uh, with a joke,
0:50
because. So
0:53
I work with teens, and one of the things that I do each week
0:56
is I tell my teens a bad
0:59
joke from a joke book. And this evening,
1:02
I pulled a joke that I thought was very good, and I was
1:05
told that I am a crotchety, old,
1:08
out of touch man. That's not what any of them said. That's
1:11
just how I. That, you know, you can kind of get a feel
1:14
for it. Um, but the
1:16
joke was, what does a
1:19
rain cloud or.
1:22
Gosh. Oh, I blew
1:25
it. Oh. Uh,
1:27
gosh, what
1:30
does a cloud
1:32
wear under his raincoat? Oh,
1:35
I saved it. We're back.
1:38
Thunderwear. Get it? Cause
1:41
it's like underwear, but because he's a
1:44
cloud, it's thunderwear.
1:48
So that was the joke. And
1:51
because underwear are loosely related, not too
1:53
loose. You're going to be dropping trowel, um, to what
1:56
we do here in the bathroom space. If you're new to the
1:59
show, we don't do this very often, but if
2:02
you're new to the show, I'd be interested at why you're jumping in on
2:05
episode 130 ish or whatever. But
2:08
who knows? Maybe you are a fan
2:11
of Aaron or one of our many other
2:13
guests. Maybe you, like many
2:16
people, found us because at one point, I
2:19
talked about skibity toilet, and
2:21
apparently that episode has been
2:24
clicked on. That's all I'm gonna say. Um,
2:27
it's a regret. I learned
2:30
a lot. I'm still learning a lot, but
2:33
my time with skibity toilet was frustrating, and I'm
2:36
still recovering in many ways.
2:40
We need to talk about something,
2:44
and, kids, maybe just take a lap,
2:47
because this one's gonna be a little bit.
2:50
No, it's not, like, bad. You know, we always try to keep it family
2:53
friendly or as family friendly as we can keep a,
2:55
uh, podcast about bathrooms. But the reality
2:58
is, is sometimes you stumble. Kids,
3:01
just let me just talk to the parent. Let me talk
3:04
to mom and dad here for a second. You know what I'm saying?
3:08
I, um, know, here's what I'm gonna say, I know that as soon as I said,
3:11
kids don't listen, that every kid was like, I will do
3:13
anything in my power to hear what he says.
3:17
So here's the deal, and I'm going to tell you a little story.
3:20
I've been trying to keep the. The
3:22
bathroom check ins to a minimum,
3:25
because I realize I. Not everybody wants to hear about, like, what
3:28
I'm doing on the daily, because what I'm doing is pretty
3:31
significant. But not everybody wants to
3:34
hear that. And I know that's hard to believe, but I get it.
3:37
But this week, my kids are in
3:39
t ball and coach pitch baseball,
3:43
um, um, here in our town.
3:46
And I stopped off. Oh, my gosh. I went,
3:49
and I'll just paint the picture. So
3:52
my wife was cold, and so I went to the
3:55
car to get her, like, a chair and a blanket or something. I don't remember the
3:57
circumstances, but the point is, is I had to
4:00
make a mid t ball run to
4:03
the car. And on my way
4:06
to the car, I'm walking past the porta
4:09
potties, and I've already. I've already
4:11
passed the event horizon of, like, being
4:14
near the porta potties when I hear this lady open
4:17
the porta potty door and go, oh, my
4:20
gosh. And all I could think in my
4:23
brain, the entire walk to the car was,
4:26
when I go back, I have to see it.
4:29
I have to. I will do it.
4:33
So, sure enough, I get the chair and the stuff,
4:36
and I'm walking back, and I walk up to the porta pipe. I've got my
4:39
phone out, ready to fire. Um,
4:42
I'm always ready to fire. Uh, and I'm
4:45
walking up to the thing, and
4:49
I just open the stall door, and the guy
4:52
standing next to me, he keys in that. I've opened it. He's like,
4:55
oh, oh, that one's bad. You're not going to want to use it. And
4:58
I'm like, oh, really?
5:01
Oh, my gosh. And then I walk away,
5:04
and he realizes that I essentially walked up
5:07
to this porta potty, pulled the door open,
5:09
and snapped a picture of the
5:12
absolute disaster.
5:15
Hellscape. That was a strawberry
5:17
smoothie that went reverso on someone. The
5:20
biggest problem here is the person did
5:23
not get the porta potty lid open
5:27
before that went reverso. So
5:30
naturally, it went everywhere.
5:33
So welcome to privy.
5:36
I'm glad you're here, kids.
5:39
Welcome back. All we did was talked about
5:42
vegetables. We talked about fruit. It's not
5:45
wrong. We did, um, this
5:48
week in honor of Cinco de Mayo. Last year, in honor of
5:51
Cinco de Mayo, we talked about the history of Cinco de Mayo,
5:54
and we talked about the ancient incan, or I think it was incan
5:57
or aztec bathrooms.
5:59
Um, and it's a little bit on
6:02
the nose. I. You know, Cinco de Mayo is one of those.
6:04
Those. Those celebrations. I don't
6:07
know. That's kind of weird for America to even be a part
6:10
of. Like, it's kind of like a mexican
6:12
thing, and. I don't know. But. But in
6:15
honor of Cinco de Mayo, we're going to be a
6:18
bit too on the nose again, and we're gonna be. We're
6:21
stretching this one. It's, like, stretched farther than stretch
6:24
Armstrong out here.
6:27
Oh, it's mayan. We learned about mayan restrooms last year,
6:30
but it's pretty neat what we learned about. And
6:33
we're going to be looking at a
6:36
somewhat related part of the world in that
6:39
the Spanish came in and, you know,
6:44
got their hand on the ball in many ways,
6:47
but it's. It's really only related in that they
6:50
share some language and history with one another. You know
6:52
what? This year, in celebration of Cinco de
6:55
Mayo, which is, of course,
6:58
Spanish for tacos, in May,
7:01
we're going to be looking at the weird little section
7:04
of south american history in a number of
7:07
complex, which became known
7:10
as the Guano wars
7:19
in South America. In the land of
7:22
Peru, in the southern part of
7:24
Peru, along the Pacific
7:27
Ocean, in the little coastal area,
7:32
there is a strip of land that
7:34
is home to the Chincha
7:37
culture. Chincha
7:40
are native Peruvians. That is where
7:43
the present day city of
7:45
Chincha Alta hails its name
7:48
from. I'm also going to
7:51
say,
7:53
hi, I'm Hunter. Um, I
7:56
regularly pronounce some crap wrong, and this
7:59
episode is going to be one of those episodes where I'm definitely
8:02
going to pronounce some things wrong. And you just got to bear with me.
8:06
Just suffer along with me. I'm
8:08
struggling. That's it right there.
8:12
That's it right there.
8:15
I know. You know, the orange
8:18
vanilla is just a delight to my soul. It's very, very
8:21
good. But the
8:24
Chincha people are an ethnic group of the
8:27
Quechas. Quet. Quechuas. Quechuas.
8:30
Quechuas. Quechuas.
8:32
Quechuas. People,
8:34
indigenous South Americans. Essentially what we got
8:37
going on here. The Chincha people were
8:40
at their peak from the year 900
8:43
to 1400 ad, and
8:46
that is when they settled in this lower
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left portion of Peru.
8:53
As a culture, the chincha were a
8:55
ruthless people. They worshipped a
8:58
jaguar God a. Ah. Jaguar.
9:01
Um, and they themselves believed
9:04
that they, as a people, descended from
9:06
the jaguar. They were
9:09
also fairly advanced. Though many of the
9:12
spanish reports and historical
9:14
writings, uh, reported about the
9:17
people, didn't paint them as that advanced. They
9:20
were pretty advanced as a people.
9:23
Like, and that's because, like, as these Spanish are
9:26
writing, you can't have the people that you
9:29
eventually. Spoiler alert here. Eradicate.
9:32
Whoops.
9:35
Spain. Dang it. Spain.
9:39
Look what you did. But you
9:41
can't make the people that you kind of
9:44
destroyed their. You can't make them look
9:47
good. So you kind of, when you write
9:50
about them, you kind of diminish some of the things. But
9:52
like the Chincha people, they were skilled
9:55
at maritime travel and
9:58
seafaring and maritime trade
10:01
along their. Their region in the local
10:03
Pacific. They
10:06
were skilled in agriculture. More on that in a
10:09
moment. That's why we're here.
10:11
Uh, they likely had a
10:14
pretty, pretty well used and
10:17
commonplace money system that was likely used
10:20
outside of their area and often held a
10:23
high value in coffer. So do the people ripping
10:26
out catalytic converters out here today, you know?
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Hey. Oh, look at that. Come full circle.
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The Chincha people were hugely
10:34
influential to the region. And in Peru,
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the Chincha people are what? The
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chinchilla is named after the
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Chinchilla, literally meaning the little
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chincha.
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They're native to Peru. I didn't
10:50
know that. That's where they come from.
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These little freaky guys come from down
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yonder, not down under. Down
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yonder. Down under is Australia, and down
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yonder is South America. And that's the best
11:04
way you can remember that the
11:06
Chincha were robust
11:11
and this robust, the. This robust
11:14
tivity. What's the.
11:18
What's the ad? What's the.
11:21
What's the term for when.
11:24
I guess it is just robust
11:26
robustiveness.
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But as it was noted, this peaked in
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the hundreds
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ad.
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In the 15 hundreds,
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something went wrong.
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Things started to fall apart,
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and they started to decline. And that's
11:49
because in the 15 hundreds, the Chincha
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people met a somewhat unforgiving
11:55
force, the spanish
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conquistadors. And with
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them, they brought along all
12:04
just. It's a tale as old as time.
12:08
Disease and plague were
12:11
rife.
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This encounter with the spanish
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conquistadors in the 15 hundreds
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would be the first of many conflicts between
12:25
Spain and the people of South
12:28
America. And by the mid 15 hundreds,
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the Chincha people's decline was imminent,
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as the spanish settlers seemed to be there
12:36
to stay. Now,
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we need to back up a little bit. As
12:42
was noted, the Chincha people were prominent in
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agriculture. One thing which has
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become synonymous with the Chincha people,
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especially as it relates to
12:54
their ongoing struggle against
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the spanish people in the area,
13:00
is guano. Now,
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guano to the layman
13:06
is bat, or bird poop.
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Poo. And this poo
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is often very, very
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rich in nutrients. And the
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Chincha people knew it.
13:21
They regularly fertilize their
13:23
field with dead birds and
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very often bird
13:29
poop. In fact, these
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practices spread to other peoples
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throughout the region, and it became
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very widely known and widely
13:40
held as a practice. That
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is what the Chincha people and the Chincha
13:46
culture kind of offered in their
13:49
world. One of the biggest
13:51
concentrations of these guano
13:54
deposits were on the Chincha
13:57
islands off the coast of Peru.
13:59
Now, these islands, they're not
14:02
very big. I think the biggest one is like a, ah, kilometer
14:05
and a half, like, long. They're not
14:08
big islands, they're small.
14:10
But these islands were originally the
14:13
home of the Chincha people.
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But as they grew in population in the outset
14:19
of their existence, they began to
14:21
inhabit the mainland of Peru.
14:26
The largest of these islands, Isla Chincha
14:29
Notre, as well as the other isla
14:32
chinchas, uh, there's three of them. The chincha, the
14:35
chincha, and the Santa Macintia, um, are made
14:38
up of mostly granite cliffs. So it's like,
14:41
it's like these granite cliff sides. And these
14:44
granite cliff sides are
14:46
home to
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what I like to call flip jillion seabirds.
14:52
Like, all these various type
14:54
of sea
14:57
seafaring and sea traveling bird
15:00
make their nests in the crags and
15:02
cliffs of the Chincha islands.
15:06
There are countless seabirds, including
15:09
gulls and cramorants and the
15:12
like. Now, here's a fact
15:15
I know all too well,
15:18
and I know this fact all too well because there
15:21
is some idiot bird on the side of
15:24
my house that has decided to chaz
15:27
himself right down the side of my house. And
15:30
it's just high enough up where it's kind of a pain in the butt to
15:33
deal with. And it's just high enough up and on the
15:36
wrong side of the house to where, like, spraying
15:38
it down is kind of a challenge. And the rain doesn't hit
15:41
that. And it's like,
15:45
idiot birds.
15:48
I'm reading a series of books to my son that I grew
15:51
up with, the guardians of Ghul, if you're a fan, shout out,
15:54
gahoole. Um,
15:57
but, like, they call all the birds and aren't
16:00
owls wet poopers? And it kind of seems like, yeah, they
16:03
can't. But, like, when my dude splatter
16:06
cams, the side of my house on the,
16:09
on the daily, it's like, yeah, I kind of get the
16:12
derogatory term. You're flipping loser,
16:14
you dumb bird. Quit pooping on the side of my
16:17
house. But to the chincha people, bringing
16:20
it all back here, bringing it all back,
16:24
these poop deposits that were
16:27
everywhere on the island, because that's what the
16:29
island's covered in, is birds and bird crap.
16:33
These were important for
16:35
fertilizing. In the
16:38
coming 300 plus years, south
16:41
Americans, the incan people, and the peruvian people in
16:43
general would struggle against the
16:46
spanish conquistadors of the
16:48
area. And while spanish control and
16:51
influence in the area varied throughout the years,
16:55
in time, by 1821,
16:58
Peru was granted independence.
17:01
The trouble is, is Spain didn't
17:03
really acknowledge that independence very well.
17:08
While they had been
17:10
independent for some time,
17:13
and trying to stabilize this would
17:16
take somewhere around 50 years to do
17:19
so. And it should be noted
17:23
the Spaniards were not done.
17:26
Uh, they had some
17:28
bird craft that they wanted.
17:36
In 1864, the
17:39
Spanish were back. Under the
17:41
guise of protecting basque
17:44
immigrants to the area. They were
17:47
determined to reestablish dominance
17:50
in previously held colonies. They're coming
17:53
to undo and make what is theirs what they
17:56
believe is theirs. Here we go. The
17:58
Guano wars of the Chincha
18:01
Islands were a key part of this conflict
18:04
against Spain and the people
18:07
of South America.
18:10
In short, there was a conflict at the
18:13
Tilambo hacienda, which led the
18:16
Spanish to
18:19
raising a blockade on the
18:22
Chincha islands, thus cutting
18:25
off much, if not all, of
18:28
the peruvian access to the
18:30
Chincha islands, which is where the huge
18:33
guano deposits were. Now, the
18:36
Peruvians needed the very important
18:39
poop iguano. El poop
18:41
iguano, um,
18:44
because it was key to exports, trade,
18:47
and agriculture. To
18:50
give you an idea of the
18:52
significance of the guano
18:55
situation. How important is this poop?
18:58
You know, I'm saying, I think about that a lot.
19:02
Like, when I drop it, when I. When I drop a
19:04
grumpy and I grow and I drop some
19:07
grumpies, I often think to myself, how
19:09
important is that one? Like, in the
19:12
grand scheme of things, is that the one
19:15
that's gonna change at all? You know what I'm saying? Maybe you don't know what
19:18
I'm saying. I don't even know if I know what I'm saying anyway.
19:20
But the spanish act
19:23
of taking the islands in this
19:26
way is said to have impeded about
19:28
60%
19:31
Peru's trade. Now, when you are a country and you're gaining
19:34
independence, you're gonna
19:37
want to diversify your portfolio
19:39
now, when your portfolio is
19:42
60% shipping crap
19:45
and getting crap, selling it to other
19:48
places,
19:51
like, I'm not saying it's a bad thing because
19:54
it's a good thing. Like, you. You gotta. You gotta shake
19:57
what God gave you. You know what I'm saying? But, like,
20:01
get. We gotta do something more. We
20:04
can't. We can't sell crap forever,
20:08
right, guys? Like,
20:11
right?
20:14
But. But this impeded, like,
20:16
60% of Peru's
20:18
trade during this time.
20:21
Spain also launched campaigns against
20:24
Chile, Bolivia, and
20:27
Ecuador. These
20:30
conflicts included spanish
20:32
ironclads. These were
20:35
giant, big, steam powered
20:37
warships. And it commemorated the first
20:40
time for one of these ironclads to
20:43
circumnavigate the globe. That was during
20:46
the Chincha island wars. The Guano
20:48
wars was the first time spanish
20:51
ironclads circumnavigated the globe.
20:55
While much of the Guana wars, thus named for
20:58
how they started, was fought in the
21:00
1860s, peace
21:03
treaties to officially end these
21:05
struggles were not signed until the
21:08
seventies and eighties.
21:12
However, the damages to
21:14
nitrate deposits, that's
21:17
what makes the guano poopies really good,
21:20
is the nitrates. Much of what had
21:23
been depleted greatly by the late
21:26
1880s, like, the
21:28
whole poopy, ship it out situation, was greatly
21:31
diminished. And they also had to
21:34
pay for the conflicts that they had engaged in.
21:37
And so to pay off these debts and to
21:39
connect our discussion here about
21:42
the guano wars in commemoration of
21:45
Cinco de Mayo, which is like mexican independence,
21:48
but it's, you know, it's a stretch,
21:51
um, to connect our
21:53
discussion of the guano wars to our time
21:56
discussing fertilizer. The
21:59
answer to the question is, uh,
22:02
of how did peruvian
22:05
bird crap end up
22:08
in european soil for the
22:11
fertilization of european crops?
22:15
The answer is the peruvian
22:17
corporation, which had its
22:20
headquarters in London, England.
22:23
The peruvian corporation controlled
22:25
the railroads in Peru, and it
22:28
would take over 66 years,
22:33
they're going to take over the situation in
22:36
Peru, and they would mine and export
22:39
3 million tons of
22:42
guano to the US and
22:44
Europe, and they would pay over
22:47
2.5 million euro
22:51
in their time. So over the course of
22:53
66 years, the
22:57
peruvian corporation, headquartered in
23:00
London, paid Peru 2.5 million
23:02
euro, uh, at their time, which is a lot of
23:05
money to export this guano for the
23:08
furthering and bettering of european soil
23:11
and the further development of
23:13
fertilizers used today.
23:17
I should say the peruvian people
23:19
hated this deal, but it paid the
23:22
bills. Today,
23:25
there are ongoing endeavors to restore
23:28
and preserve the guano deposits and other natural
23:31
resources and animals on and around
23:34
the Chincha islands.
23:37
But all of
23:39
this, the conflict, the Chincha island
23:42
wars, the Guano wars, the Chincha island
23:45
guano deposits did a lot by way of
23:47
expanding and bettering fertilizer in
23:50
the US and Europe. And I would say, why
23:53
wouldn't it have helped? The fertilizing
23:56
things in Peru
23:59
today? Guano deposits are up.
24:02
They've increased again. But it should also be noted
24:05
that with the further development of fertilizers
24:08
around the world, Peru does little
24:11
to export this poop. They, um, still
24:14
do some, but not to as great a
24:16
degree in
24:19
all the
24:22
spanish, in the peruvian conflicts, in the Chincha
24:25
island wars and the Guano wars was long,
24:27
and it kind of stunk. Happy Cinco de
24:30
Mayo. This
24:33
brings us to the end of another episode of Privy.
24:36
Thank you so much for being here. Thank, um, you for
24:39
joining us. I hope you're enjoying the video. If you do
24:42
go over to the YouTube, subscribe, leave us a comment and say,
24:44
hey, keep the video coming. Uh, it's a little extra
24:47
work, but, um, as podcasts trend that
24:50
way, we want to try some new things. See, um, what we
24:53
do trying new things. I told you guys I'd always keep
24:56
learning. Um, follow the
24:59
show. You can follow privy. It's rivycast. You
25:01
can follow me. I'm Hunter. I'm owlett. Seven.
25:05
Go, uh, follow us on those things. We would love that. Send us an
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email privycastmail.com. We'd love
25:11
to hear from you. Episode suggestions? Ideas?
25:13
Comments? Concerns? Feedback? Uh,
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as always, we would love for you to leave us a rating and review. The
25:19
five star options are preferred. You can go to Apple
25:22
podcasts or Spotify to leave us
25:25
a rating and review. Um, and when you do
25:28
that, as a thank you for leaving us a rating and review, we
25:31
always give a dollar for every rating left to the Wounded
25:34
warriors project and living Waters International. And
25:37
for those written reviews, we'll bump that up to a couple bucks for
25:40
each one of those. And that's just to say thank you for
25:42
leaving us a rating review. We're going to give some money back
25:45
to wooded warriors and living water as a reminder to keep
25:48
pooping in the free world. That free world was not always
25:51
free, and that not everybody has clean water, and we're working for
25:54
cleaner water. For all this has been another
25:57
episode of Privy. Thank you, Kevin and Pontington, for the use of your music.
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Thank you, as always, for being here and listening.
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Happy Cinco de Mayo. Own your
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stank. And now,
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as always, don't forget to
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flash.