Talk of the recession is, well, everywhere. And it can get depressing.

So, where are the contrarians? Who’s looking for (and telling others about) the silver lining in this grey economy? Who’s trying to describe an alternate reality?

Well, here are a handful for you to consider.

Graeme Thickins, in The Clear and Simple Solution to the Current Downturn: The Entrepreneurial Economy,  at Tech~Surf~Blog sees salvation in good ol’ entrepreneurism:

The big answer to our current economic plight is not a new one: it is staring us right in the face. It has brought us out of many a recession before this one, and it will do so again. It is simply this: the ingenuity and perseverance of the American entrepreneur.

Graeme also points us to two particularly relevant posts:

• The “Downturn” — Keeping Things in Perspective, by Jay Turo at the growthink blog.
• Fear Kills Businesses Dead, by Brian Solis at TechCrunch

Ben McConnell at Church of the Customer suggests that the downturn, if anything, presents an opportunity for marketers to try ideas they might not have been able to successfully champion during the last boom. Among his more intriguing ideas:

Adopt the simpler and affordable Net Promoter Score.

Evangelize the benefits of Twitter-driven customer support.

Build a customer, supplier, vendor or employee social network on Ning.

Host internal seminars about design thinking.

Speak out against testosterone-driven “barbarian” mission statements. (ed: Kinder, gentler mission statements? I’d like to see that.)

Underlying all this talk of the recession is the question of fear. As Brian Solis’ post puts it, fear kills. It sucks your soul, at at time when you need all the energy and optimism you can muster. If you find yourself losing sleep over the economy, I highly recommend this post by Robert Middleton on his More Clients blog.

Finally, if you’re seeking out the brighter side of the economy (and happen to live in the Twin Cities), be sure to attend the next UnSummit on Sat., March 7. The theme is “Hacking the Recession” and we’ll be discussing ideas and tools that will help us improve our economic well being individually and collectively. Some of the proposed sessions include:

• Social media survival kit — a workshop to get you up to speed
• Getting good ideas when times are tough
• How to increase your employability using community and social media
• Blogging for fun, profit and survival

Photo credit: Alternate realities by James Jordan

At first glance, you could be in any classroom anywhere. The kindergartners are restless. Some have loud sniffles. A few of them crack jokes and laugh until the teacher asks everyone to quiet down and recite their vocabulary words.

Only the vocabulary words are in Quechua. The And outside the one-room schoolhouse, hovering in the doorway, actually, are all the parents. Mothers and fathers are beaming with imperfect smiles as they peer through the doorway, waiting expectantly to see if the kids need anything…a notebook, a pencil, perhaps a reminder to behave.

Even though we’re in the tiny Peruvian village of Hatumpampa, I immediately recognize what these parents are doing. They’re doting! It’s what my wife and I do with our kids back home in Minnesota. Now, I don’t speak a stitch of Quechua, nor raise llamas at 12,000 feet, but wanting to see your children succeed — that I can relate to.

I’ve come with my 10-year-old son Sam to Peru to see what life is like in the remote villages where Comunidad has been working. Places with names like Paccha, Culluhuanca and Corazón de Ñaupas. Places that are barely on the map, and after decades of neglect and civil war, just starting to claw their way back to normalcy.

After a day-long tour of the kindergarten classes at each of the villages, meeting teachers and parents and their adorable children (and eating the filling, multi-course meals that are proudly served to us at each stop) we settle in for a weekend in Corazón de Ñaupas.

“Corazón” is a cozy little town. Except for the three public buildings erected by the government and the oddly-angled soccer field that was literally quarried out of the hillside, it’s a collection of a two-dozen adobe farmhouses.

Hovering over the town on one of the hills are several rock outcrops whose eroded cylindrical shapes loosely resemble human figures. Someone suggests that the rocks gave the town its name, which means “Heart of the Ancestors.”

These “ancestors” have indeed helped keep the town safe over the years. During the civil war of the 1980s and 90s, villagers camped out in the hills above the rocks to avoid nighttime raids by guerrillas.

Today, this part of Peru is peaceful. The hills above Corazón aren’t for hiding, but for sunbathing and napping, as we discover on a lazy Saturday. From the hilltop, we can see the Paccha Valley spread out below us and eagles drifting on air currents above. Occasionally, the braying of a donkey or the bells of a llama caravan drift upward from who knows where.

Back in town, the soccer field is no longer a place for rounding up frightened villagers. It’s for soccer, volleyball and recreation. Over the course of our stay, we enjoy several heated volleyball matches that pull in seemingly everyone from the village as either player or spectator. To our surprise, NAME, the kindergarten teacher is one of the most feared opponents. Her withering serve usually causes one of us to flail about and fall to the ground in a spectacular but failed defense.

And those government buildings are for schooling. As we learn during our stay, many of the parents of school-aged kids missed out on their chance at education. They grew up during the war, a time in which survival was a higher priority than arithmetic.

That might explain the high attendance in Corazón’s first-ever kindergarten class, which Comunidad has funded. Or the high participation in the breakfast program for kids all ages, which Comunidad also supports. These parents are hungry to see their children do better. It’s like they’ve been given a second chance. And they’re holding on for dear life.

On our last night, we’re asked to sit as guests of honor at a town hall meeting in the school building. The classroom is crowded. Many of the adults are squeezed into children’s desk-chairs. Others stand in back. Yet more adults – many of the same parents who sit outside this classroom every morning while their six-year-olds attend kindergarten – wait expectantly outside the door.

We listen to several speeches, some in Spanish, some in Quechua – nearly all of them emotional and teary-eyed. The speakers describe what the people of Corazón have been through these past years. “Many people have promised many things over the years,” the president of the community says. But with Comunidad it’s been different. As promised, Nancy Maldonado Córdova, Comunidad’s kindergarten teacher arrives every Monday and stays all week to teach class. And when the kids of Corazón arrive in the morning (some of whom have walked two hours to school on an empty stomach), there is hot breakfast waiting. Most importantly, the kids have begun to show progress in school. It’s no exaggeration to say that many of them can now read better than their parents.

All this, he says, is just the beginning of a long and slow journey. But in this forgotten corner of the world, it’s what passes for hope.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider making a small donation to Comunidad.

• NYTimes: Jobless rate at 14-year high
• WSJ: Labor data show pain across economy
• AP: Running on fumes; GM could soon run out of cash

By these accounts, we are headed toward a period of significant unemployment or are already there. Either way, if you don’t already, you will soon have a number of colleagues, friends or relatives who are looking for a job. There’s a better chance than ever that you could soon join them.

I don’t take any of this lightheartedly. I have a deep pang of sympathy for people who are out of work because my father was a victim of the 70s malaise and was chronically underemployed for much of my boyhood. I know from first-hand experience that behind all these grave headlines and numbers lie families and parents who are frustrated and stressed about not being able to fulfill the most basic need of providing for their loved ones.

If I can preach for just a moment, I strongly encourage every one of you who are still gainfully employed to reach out to your unemployed friends and at least offer some words of encouragement. Or how about a free latte? It’s good karma

At the same time, don’t forget to consider your own job security. How safe is your job? How safe is your industry? What should you be doing to increase your “employment security?” (To clarify, employment security is about making yourself more employable and different from increasing your security in your current job, which you may not have much control over). How can you manufacture your own luck in a tight job market?

If you haven’t heard this enough over the years, it’s all about who you know. It’s about the quality of your personal network. According to Paul DeBettignies, managing partner at the Minneapolis IT recruitment firm Nerd Search, between 50% to 80% of jobs are filled based on personal connections.

Fortunately, thanks to new social networking tools, such as Linked In, Facebook and Twitter, among others, you can easily build up a network of colleagues, friends and acquaintances that can help increase your luck in the job market. And the good news for those of you who hate schmoozing, you don’t need to make small talk at cocktail parties to take advantage of these tools. (Check out Commoncraft’s “Social Networking in Plain English” for a great intro to social network tools.)

Five steps to greater employment security

1. Get a personal home page. The domain isn’t critical, although having “www.bobjones.com” could be easier for your contacts to remember. The important thing here is that you have a consistent place to send your contacts. On your home page, you can provide links to other places, such as your social network profiles, your resume or curriculum vitae, your blog, articles you’ve been quoted in or samples of your work. Please note that you can use your blog as your home page. Update: I just found a great service called extendr which lets you build a free home page like I described above. Check out my page as an example: http://donball.extendr.com
2. Create an online resume - As this article explains, your resume doesn’t have to be a highly-crafted Word doc that you send out to prospective employers as an attachment. Instead, your resume can exist as a page in your blog, where people (and Google) can find it easily. You can even consider the entirety of your Linked In profile to be your resume. Bottom line: you have no idea who is going to find you and your experience relevant, so get yourself out there where you can be found!
3. Get on Linked In - As a business owner, this site isn’t my cup of tea. But I do keep a profile there and it seems to have quite a bit of currency among Baby-Boomer, white-collar professionals (in other words people who are further along in their careers and in a better position to help you), so you probably need to be there.
4. Get on Facebook - If you’re already on Linked In (or, like me, find it a bit to sterile), then you might want to expand your network by joining Facebook, where you will find not only professional colleagues, but friends and relatives. Facebook lets you show more facets of yourself, including personal tastes, interests, hobbies and (if you dare go there) political and religious affiliations.
5. Create a blog - This may be the biggest step in the list because it takes time to write for a blog (this article is taking me well over an hour). But think of a blog as a way to help people get to know you before they meet you. A blog gives potential employers the opportunity to see your views on your industry and your profession. More importantly, it shows them that the front porch light is on and someone’s home. As an employer, I can tell you that I would much prefer hiring someone who demonstrates that they’re actively engaged in their work. The best part about blogging is that it’s really easy to start. I started my first blog at Blogger.com and it took me all of 15 minutes to set up.
6. Get on Twitter - (Hey, what about 5 steps? Well, when you have your own blog you get to make up your own rules! And one of my rules is to provide my followers with a laginappe, a little something extra.) Twitter is turning out to be an incredible networking tool that lets you potentially interact with thousands of people in yours and related fields — instantly. It’s also a great way to tell your contacts about any changes in your situation, new blog posts or to request information on a prospective employer. But there’s a catch. If you create a Twitter account and do nothing else, you’ll be underwhelmed. You have to take the extra step of searching for and following people you know (and then, perhaps, some of the people they know). Feel free to follow me. I’ll follow you back and even ask my Twitter friends to connect with you. Want to learn more? Again, Commoncraft has a great video intro.

Of course, it’s never to late to start, but these are steps you should try to follow BEFORE you are laid off. If you suddenly become the recipient of a pink slip, you will wish that you already had your network in place. And you could lose precious time trying to get all the pieces in place.

What are you doing to soften the blow of a potential layoff? Or, if you are looking for work, what techniques are you using to make yourself more employable? Please share in the comment section below. Good luck!

At the exquisite Thai food blog of photographer Austin Bush, I found this video of the Samut Songkhram market, which is set up over the town’s railroad tracks! Watch how the vendors quickly get back to business after the train passes. Could this be a lesson on how to cope with disruptions in business?

• See the full blog post.
• Visit Austin’s photo blog. Truly stunning photos of a truly stunning country.

Imagine if that was your life. If you had those kinds of experiences, would you feel sorry for yourself? Would you think the world just might owe you something? I’m guessing that I’d be quite bitter and would have a hard time mustering anything resembling a positive mental attitude.

But that doesn’t seem to be the way the Karen are coping with their adversity. At least that’s what my wife reports, after having worked now with a few hundred families.

This summer when my wife was interviewing several Karen people for a highly sought after interpreter job, she noticed something unusual. Despite being desperate to work, the candidates were habitually downplaying their own skills and qualifications. Not only that, they were actually selling against themselves, saying things like, “If you find another candidate who is more qualified than me, please hire them instead of me.”

What got me was how the candidates would close out the interview. With sincere thanks. “Thank you for the interview,” one of the candidates said earnestly as things were wrapping up. “No matter what happens, I have already learned a lot and grown just from talking to you.”

I don’t know about you, but I find this incredibly humbling. Unless it has gone well and I’ve gotten the job, l can’t say that I’ve ever left an interview with the feeling that I came out ahead. And I’m don’t leave discussions with prospective employers and clients feeling that I have grown as a person. Is that a reasonable expectation? Or are these Karen immigrants naive and deluded?

Perhaps they’re on to something. Imagine what your meetings and sales pitches could be like if you truly felt grateful for the opportunity. How would you prepare for such meetings? How would people perceive you? And how might you grow personally from such postive, generous interactions?

social media

But despite the mounting curiosity, there’s still not much action on the part of mid-size to large companies.

Waiting and seeing
I can see why some folks are taking a wait-and-see approach to social media. If you wait, other folks will figure out some things for you. One or two leaders in your industry will make a big move and you’ll be able to see whether they fail or succeed. And eventually, some kind of broad consensus will emerge regarding how companies should engage with the user-generated Web.

I believe a consensus already is coalescing, but it exists mostly among brand-me and small-business owners, technology gurus, forward-thinking marketers and their followers – some of the same people who advised us that businesses should embrace the Web way back in the mid 90s. And boy were they right, even if we had a bubble and a hiccup along the way.

An emerging consensus
The emerging consensus on social media simply says that now is the time to jump in. Now is the time to play, to experiment, to make your mistakes and start to form your own professional opinions about which domains (blogging or microblogging, podcasting, wikis, social-networking, etc.) are the most productive and instructive for your company. All while it costs you next to nothing. Think of it as a free or cheap form of education, since very few of these mediums require a huge investment.

In the same way that nobody questions the need for a company to have its own Web site anymore, I believe in a couple years we’ll be at the point where nobody will question the need for companies to be engaged, in some form, in the millions of conversations taking place every minute on the social Web. Not just because a growing number of customers will expect it, but because it could come to represent one of the lowest-cost means of connecting with people who are predisposed toward your products and services.

Price to play
What might you expect to spend getting your feet wet in social media? The good news is that participation is free. It doesn’t cost you a thing to set up a blog (start with Blogger), a Flickr account, a Facebook or MySpace account or a Twitter account. If you’re reluctant to put your company’s name out on Facebook, just set up your own personal account first and see how it goes. Oh, did I mention? Unlike some forms of marketing research, it’s lots of fun!

Now, if you think you’re ready to dip your toes in the tub, but you can’t spare any FTEs, or even a portion of an FTE, consider sloshing over just a little of the cash you’re blowing on TV, radio and print ads.

• For the cost of producing and buying a print ad in a trade pub, you could hire a consultant to establish a passive presence on all the major social networks – or, better yet, an active presence on a couple of select networks!
• For the cost of a radio spot, you could hire a team to build and help you feed your blog for a year.

If you want to get serious and be prepared for the media of the future, you just might have to borrow a little from the media of the past.

Yeah, but what’s my ROI?
With some companies spending money is not the issue, but justifying the spend is. Consequently, I hear a lot about ROI: “What’s the ROI of blogging?” “What’s the ROI of being on Twitter?” And quite honestly, that’s a tough one. For instance, I can’t tell you if this blog has literally resulted in revenue for my business. But I do know that in some cases, we couldn’t have won the job without it. The blog was one of seveal critical pieces that contributed to the sale.

As you think about what kind of return you might expect from social media, keep in mind that the ROI could be entirely qualitative. Comcast maintains a Twitter account, @Comcastcares, staffed by a real guy, Frank Eliason, which they use to monitor conversations about Comcast and then to intervene when a disgruntled customer needs personal service. The ROI? Probably pretty lackluster from a pure financial point of view. But then again, what is their reputation worth to them? And how is that reputation built, if not one conversation at a time. So, what is it worth to Comcast to have thousands of influential technology aficionados – the same people you ask for help when your computer or high-speed Internet goes on the blink – see that Comcast is staffed by real people who actually appear to care?

Give ROI a vacation
Ultimately, it’s not for me or any other consultant to predict what ROI you should expect. The whole question of ROI is an evolving conversation that I believe needs to be left as a big question mark – for now. And given how cheap it is to do social media, why put so much pressure on it to earn its keep? Your company’s potted plant budget is probably ten times more than what you’ll spend on social media…and what’s the ROI on that?

The danger is that if you approach this medium with an immediate need for gain, or to monetize it somehow, you might not have the sensitivity to see how online communities are driven not by taking so much as giving. Yes, it’s a very hippie sentiment, but guess who’s running Web 2.0? Grown up hippies and their philosophical offspring! The point is that in order to thrive in any medium, you need to understand that medium’s unique rules and mores. If you don’t your marketing could come off as clumsy and self-serving and you won’t be able to build a community around your product or service.

One way forward
I know a number of marketing managers who are already familiar with social media and are eager to jump in, but they want to do so thoughtfully. They’re looking for a framework that will lend some sense of professionalism and planfulness to their social media efforts. Fair enough.

If that’s you, let me suggest that your initial success and longer term ROI on the social web will hinge on these three things:

1. Your social media persona – Do you have a clear understanding of who your company is and what it stands for in word and deed? Perhaps you’ve explored this territory in a recent branding effort. If so, dig up the dusty brand book and see what it tells you. Ultimately, you want to determine whether your company is a teacher, a helper, a connector or a [insert a personality type here].
2. Your imagination and sense of play – This is all fairly uncharted territory with very few precedents and formulas to latch onto. You might see that as a curse. I see it as a blessing. It means that the playing field is fairly level. Are you a small bank? You have just as good odds of beating out the top banks to become a real player in social media. There are many right answers and many ways to capitalize on this sea change in online behavior. But you’ve got to explore and find them.
3. Trial and error – Since there’s no script or formula to guide you, it’s reasonable to expect that some things you try might fail or succeed underwhelmingly. Maybe you’ll build an application on Facebook that attracts just 50 installs. Don’t fret. Tweak it and see what happens. With your social media persona as your guide, look for another way to act out your company’s role oline. You’re making omelets, so just commit up-front to breaking some eggs!

Get help if you need it
Of course, you’re not entirely on your own. Without spending a fortune, you could hire a social media consultant to shortcut your learning curve. A consultant could help you clarify your company’s social media persona and explore the many ways that could translate into actions. Or simply help you narrow the field and point you to some sites or networks that your company should consider first.

But ultimately, you have to take a first step, which might be as simple as bringing up the topic with your boss. Perhaps you need to lay out the alternatives:

• Your can jump into social media now while there’s still time to experiment, learn and lead.

OR

• You can wait until everyone else does it and be forced to jump in with little forethought. Because the landscape will be more defined and some of your competitors may have already set a high barrier to entry, you may not have the luxury of picking your battles. When we do achieve this “critical mass” I believe it’s going to be a mad rush. To paraphrase wine and marketing celeb Gary Vaynerchuck: You think social media is big now? Just wait until Oprah gets on Twitter!

It was my cousin Rosa who suggested a trip to the Amazon as a way of salvaging our vacation. I was hesitant at first. For some reason, the jungle never appealed to me nearly as much as the mountains. With all the ancient ruins and adorable Quechua-speaking villagers, the mountains are a dream come true for the frustrated anthropologist and archaeologist in me.

Women of the Bora tribe, performing for tourists. Photo by Sarah Gillespie.

Yet, as I learned two years ago, and was reminded on our trip last week, the “story” of the Amazon jungle is very much a human story. As amazing and abundant the wildlife is, what fascinates me even more are the families that live along that Amazon, Napo and countless tributaries, eking out a living from the water and the forest.

Floating houses along a backwater of the Amazon. Photo by Sarah Guagliardo

There are very few roads in the South American jungle. For instance, Iquitos, a city of 500,000, is not connected to the rest of Peru by pavement. If you want to visit or escape Iquitos, you have two choices: plane or boat. Since virtually nobody can afford to fly, boats are the preferred mode of transportation, whether the destination is Lima (a few hundred kilometers upriver to Pucallpa and then 20 hours by bus) or just to the next village.

So, in essence, the rivers are the highways of the jungle. And like any road, the rivers of the Amazon basin are busy with traffic, from large, double-decker steamships (well, they’re not steam powered anymore, but have changed little in form since the days when they were!) to long, motorized canoes called peque-peque because of the sound they make as they sputter up and down the river. The humblest river craft is a dugout canoe, that even the poorest jungle dweller owns. It rides very low in the water. When laden with an entire family, it looks like it is on the verge of being swamped or capsizing. But knowing how to balance in a dugout canoe is an essential life skill that is second nature. As our guide explained, children in the jungle learn to canoe, swim and handle a machete at a very early age.

Boy playing in dugout canoe. Photo by Sarah Guagliardo

At first glance, you might think that the banks of the Amazon are solid walls of forest. But as you near the shore, you discover that the river is lined with villages, towns and farmsteads of varying sizes. One dead giveaway: clumps of shiny, broad banana leaves. presence of banana plants, which usually indicate a current or recent homestead.

The day’s catch: catfish and sugar cane. Photo by Sarah Gillespie.

Along the river, people are can be seen nearly everywhere, fishing, washing clothes, cutting wood, tending animals or simply hanging around. In bigger towns, some people live in luxurious concrete homes. But that’s an exception, as the annual flooding of the river will inundate any home that isn’t on high ground. Thus, the vast majority of homes are fairly open structures made of wood and raised up on stilts.

Girl with sloth. Photo by Sarah Gillespie.

As a parent, I can’t help but to the notice the children. They are nearly all adorable, with beautiful, dark brown skin of many shades and with different looks that hint at differences in tribal origins. Unlike the mountains, where the primary indigenous language is Quechua and most people of native origin call the Incas their ancestors, the people of the jungle come from dozens, if not hundreds of different tribes, each with their own language and customs. Except for the fact that they share a common waterway, similar foods and a country called Perú, many jungle dwellers are foreigners to each other.

A note about the photos: Sarah Gillespie and Sarah Guagliardo are two American women that we met at Heliconia Amazon Lodge. They kindly consented to let me use their photos for this post. I would have wanted have used my own, except that when reviewing my photos I noticed that I didn’t have a single usable photograph of people from the jungle. How odd, given the very premise of the post. But upon some reflection I realized that I am rather gun-shy with my camera and reluctant to thrust a camera in front of locals. Of course it’s all in how you approach it. There are polite and appropriate ways to take pictures of strangers. It’s something I’ll have to work on next time!

Manhole cover advertising.

Grass advertising.

Scholarly books at Starbucks.

Urgent appeals against public urination. (The sign reads: “PLEASE Respect the house of God! Don’t paint this wall. Don’t post bills. Don’t urinate on this street. Thank you.”)

We couldn’t be more different. Yet, I knew from early on that Barry was someone I wanted to meet in person. His photos (please visit his Flickr site if you can!) show that he clearly loves people — of all kinds — despite the fact (in my opinion) that he is slightly introverted himself.

So, this evening, we were able to meet in real life for the first time, in front of Lima’s main cathedral. What ensued was a fascinating evening, which I’d like to share with you via mine and Barry’s Flickr uploads.

After we met at the cathedral, we exchanged portraits, appropriately enough.

Barry, as taken by Sam.

Me and Sam, as taken by Barry.

We visited the Lima Cathedral and viewed the coffin containing the remains of Francisco Pizarro.

Then, on to Lima’s Chinatown, where this family was playing, singing and dancing for tips.

We ate some amazing food at Gran Chino Siu, where we met Alfredo, a former journalist, avid photographer and chemical analysis salesman. He shared our gigantic meal and told us about some of Lima’s many secrets.

While we were eating, Barry spotted this couple, shuffling ever so slowly past the restuarant. I can’t do justice to the poignancy of this sight, so let me quote Barry’s photo description:

“It would be difficult to find a more symbiotic couple. She is blind, and he needs to be supported, as they walk, slower than a snail’s pace, begging for alms. He is almost leaning back into her arms.”

Wow. Think on that, friends. It was at once the most disturbing and most inspiring image of the evening. Hence, the title of this post, which I was reluctant to change, even as the post became broader in scope.

We topped off the night walking through the busy market streets that surround Chinatown and where our visual dessert consisted of these two revolutionary pushcarts.

• Hunting for megalodon teeth with Desert Man of Ica, who was recently written up in the New York Times. (Fortunately, we made our reservation before he became famous!)
• Shooting video in some remote (as in no electricity and little Spanish spoken) Quechua villages above Ayacucho for Fundación Comunidad.
• Meeting with Minka Fair Trade to see what interesting and marketable fair-trade products Peru might have to offer.
• Above all, showing my 10-year-old son, Sam, why the ancestral lands keep calling me back.

To that last point, below are a few glimpses of Peru’s many landcapes. For a really nice slideshow, I recommend searching on “Peru landscape” at Compfight, a great tool for searching on Flickr.

Sunrise in Machu Picchu, by thecsman

Lago Huacarpay, by Don Ball

Dunes outside Ica, by Don Ball

Streets of Pisaq, by Don Ball

Islas Ballestas, by Don Ball

Miraflores by night, by Don Ball

Paccha River Valley from above, by Fundación Comunidad

Nanay, rio Nanay, by pierre pouliquin

Cordillera Central, by La Cronista de los Andes