40th Anniversary of the General Strike of 1977

Last week I attended a commemorative meeting marking the 40th anniversary of the nationwide general strike of July 19, 1977.

At the rally at Plaza San Martin, the previous week, someone had handed me a flyer for the event, and it immediately piqued my interest because I distinctly remember the strike.

At the time, Peru was ruled by a military junta presided by Gen. Francisco Morales Bermúdez. Morales Bermúdez and his allies had, a couple of years earlier, deposed his predecessor, Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado.  They then set about undoing the structural and social reforms initiated by Velasco. They introduced monetary adjustments which dealt severe blows to people's standard of living, at the same time that they froze wages and let prices rise. They countered protest of these measures with states of emergency, night-time curfews, jailings, exile, and worse.

I was in grade school at the time. I remember that things were tense in the days leading up to the general strike, and everyone wondered how big the walk-out would be, how successful.

I have vivid recollection that on the morning of the 19th Lima, then a city of almost five million people, seemed absolutely silent and still. Not one store was open, not one bus or taxi circulated. No one, it seemed, went to work that day. 

Photo from a display at the event.

Speakers at the event, held at the headquarters of Patria Roja --one of Peru's largest communist parties-- explained how 23 unions had decided to work together and established a unitary struggle committee at a secret meeting at the offices of the water utility workers' union.

They talked about how the struggle committee --which even included the government-sponsored state employees union!-- reached out by word-of-mouth to other unions and tried to bring them on board, first to the idea of a national one-day general strike, and then to the specific date.  All of this, of course, had to be done clandestinely.  The risks were highlighted by the fact that 18 unionists had already lost their lives to the repression in the first half of the year.

As it was, the government arrested many top union leaders and leftist party leaders in an effort to thwart the strike organizing and to cow the movement into submission. It did not work, of course.

The strike was nearly total and paralyzed the country. The people, and specially the working class, had flexed its muscle. In one day the military lost all claim to legitimacy and popular support.  Within a year it had begun the process of transitioning the country back toward representative democracy, with elections to a Constituent Assembly.

Those were heady days, which I well remember. We all, even us middle-class children, felt that the return to democracy was also our victory.

However, as Alfredo Velásquez --then head of the public school teachers union (SUTEP), and part of the joint struggle committee-- explained, the workers' movement paid a heavy price for having spearheaded the opposition to the military regime.  On the day of the strike a number of workers and peasants lost their live in Lima and in other cities, including 13 marchers who were gunned down in the Lima district of Comas.  In the days following the strike the military government passed a law authorizing the summary firing of workers, and in one swoop over 4000 unionized workers were dismissed, decapitating nearly every industrial union in the country. It was a blow, Velásquez said, from which the Peruvian labor movement has never recovered.

Unionists who participated in the strike pose for a group photo.

Tarata Street

Strolling through Miraflores last week, Liz and I stumbled across Tarata Street, which I had known about but had never visited.

Before 1992, Tarata was just a quiet Miraflores side street -much as it is today- but on the night of July 16, 1992 - 23 years ago today, in fact- a powerful Shining Path car bomb exploded there.

There were one or two reports at the time (which I cannot find now) that indicated that the carbomb was actually intended for the banks on the main avenue a block away, but the car collided with a pickup truck at the intersection where the monument now stands and was abandoned minutes before it exploded.  

Those reports were buried or swept aside by the horrendous toll: 183 homes, 400 businesses, and 63 automobiles were either damaged or destroyed, and 25 people were killed and another 155 wounded that night.

People connected with the Shining Path have a t various points corroborated those initial reports that the bomb was not targeted at the civilian population, that it was intended for the banks, that it was a mistake, that the charge was too large.  However, it is hard to see how that one short block would have made any difference given the size of the charge used.  The shockwave would have still travelled down the canyon formed by Tarata's buildings and blown in very window, showering residents with flying shards of glass and other debris.  Either way, it is of little comfort to those who were hurt or lost loved ones.

Of martyrs and popular memory

As we here, in the United States, are now soul searching in the aftermath of the civil unrest and heavy-handed police response in Ferguson, Missouri, I am reminded of an encounter I had recently in Ayacucho and what it revealed to me regarding a set of events that took place in Ayacucho in 1969.

In Huamanga -i.e. the city of Ayacucho-  four students were shot dead by the Sinchis -the police's specialized counterinsurgency battalion- during protests.  In nearby Huanta the toll was higher.

Here is what I wrote about them in my university thesis:

"In January, 1969, the military government had passed Supreme Decree 006 which restricted access to free public education by retroactively instituting a 100 sol  monthly tuition of all students who failed a course the previous year.  Naturally, this measure affected the poor far more than the rich as it was already an economic burden for many families to spare the children long enough for them to attend school, and the very conditions imposed by poverty  made it far more likely that they would fail a course.    Not surprisingly, D.S. 006 proved very unpopular and provoked a four-month-long series of protests in Huamanga and Huanta.   In Huamanga the protests were primarily led by the [Communist Party's local committee] through the Frente de Defensa del Pueblo de Ayacucho (Front for the Defense of the People of Ayacucho, FDPA) and the FER [Revolutionary Student Front].   In Huanta, where the degree of organization was lesser, the protests were more spontaneous and also more violent.   At least 18 people lost their lives and many more were wounded during street battles with police in both cities."

The events are memorialized in a popular song, "Flor de Retama", composed by the late Ricardo Dolorier.   Among the lyrics are the lines

Ay! Come all to see.
By the plaza of Huanta
the Sinchis are coming in.
They're going to kill students,
Huantinos at heart

.

Although the military tried to suppress it, the people's memory persisted and in 1974 the Front for the Defense of the People of Ayacucho placed plaques at the spots where each of the four students were murdered.

When I was in Ayacucho in July, attending a colloquium on the role of women in armed conflict and pacification in Peru from 1961 onward, I met a gentleman who had been a student at the time of the protests and continued to be involved in the local movement for human rights.   

He told me about the plaques, which to my surprise had been completely unknown to me.

One of them had been placed on the front of a building that was then torn down and the plaque lost.  This gentleman had managed to locate it after several years of searching and the owners of the new building were persuaded to allow it to again be placed at the spot.  I neglected to note the location of it [It is at the corner of Jiron Munive and Jiron Madrid, in the San Juan Bautista district (1/3/15)], and of one other, but I did remember that one was located at the end of Jiron Tres Mascaras, near the "new bridge" over the Alameda River, which runs through town The fourth plaque was, to my surprise, one I had walked past without noticing on many occasions when passing through the archway near the market, on Jiron 28 de Julio.

On my last afternoon in Ayacucho, I made a sort pilgrimage to that spot, and for the first time beheld what had been so often bypassed by me: the plaque, placed by the people of Ayacucho, in memory of one whom they regarded as a martyr in their struggle for social justice - young Eulogio Yaranga Saune, killed on that spot on the 21st of June of 1969, while defending the right of the people to a free public education.

Callao and La Punta

Last week (I've been a bit remiss about posting updates, I know) Toya and Orlando took me to Callao, Lima's port district.

Officially, Callao is a province, independent of other jurisdictions, and whose existence has been built into successive national Constitutions for years. In practice, it does depend quite a bit on the metropolitan government of greater Lima (although arguments do arise, as is the case now over reform of the city's transportation system).

Until the middle of the last century Callao was a separate city from Lima, although it has served as the capital's port for hundreds of years.  Long ago, however, its fortunes faded and it acquired a reputation as one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods -which it does, I think deservedly, retain to a degree.

Today, Callao's former glory can still be glimpsed in its crumbling early Republican architecture

All of it, presided over by the Real Felipe fortress, erected to defend the city from pirates and English privateers.  Its construction was begun under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de VelascoViceroy in 1746 and completed in 1774 during the administration of Viceroy Manuel de Amat y Junent.

At the far end of the peninsula that comprises Callao, and the northern end of the bay of Lima, lies La Punta, which -as its name implies- is a point of land extending into the pacific.  On its northern side lies the deepwater anchorages that serve the port, and on the southern side, the bay which is overlooked by the city of Lima.

At La Punta's very end, there is a beach which is still used by artisanal fishermen -many of Italian descent-  who supplement their income by giving boat tours when the weather is good.

Off the coast, lie a set of islands, comprised mainly by the large isles of El Fronton and San Lorenzo.  The latter harbors the last of Lima's sea lion population,  a myriad seabirds, and even Magellanic penguins on its far side.  It has also been found to contain Pre-Columbian ruins and traces left by pirates and English privateers - including gravesites.  

El Fronton (at left), San Lorenzo (at center), and the Naval Academy at La Punta (at right)

Unfortunately, the powers that be have dreams of building a causeway between La Punta and the island and turning it into a deepwater port for larger ships or building an airport on it, either of which would devastate the ecology and archaelogy of the island.

El Fronton, for its part, was infamous as an island prison over which lurid tales were spun.  In the 1980s it was used  to house prisoners from the Shining Path.  The prisoners rebelled on June 18, 1986, and by the next day, courtesy of the Navy, most had been killed and the prison reduced to rubble.  The Navy demolished the cell block even with wounded prisoners inside, precipitating a scandal and crisis for the government of President Alan Garcia.

(From L to R) Orlando, myself, Mr Peñaflor

Of course, being surrounded on three sides by ocean, La Punta is known as a prime locale for quality seafood meals.   And, of course, we took advantage of that, at La Caleta, a restaurant run by Mr. Rodolfo Peñaflor its friendly and talkative owner.

Cebiche

A bowl of parihuela, a Callao classic

Ayacucho Museum to the Memory of Those Killed and Disappeared During the War Years

The main reason I traveled to Ayacucho last week was to attend a two-evening colloquium on "Class, Gender and the Building of Peace in Peru (1961-2014)".  It's main purpose was to examine the role of women in social movements, guerrilla groups, and in building peace and reconciliation, beginning with the  guerrillas of the 1960s,  but centering on the internal war waged  between the Peruvian state and the guerrillas of the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in the 1980s and 1990s.

Given the political climate in the country at the moment, all doors were closed to the holding such an event in Lima.  However, in Ayacucho, which had been at the center of the violence and which suffered the greatest number of victims -between those killed, disappeared, tortured, traumatized, and displaced- the doors were opened.  And they were opened by no less than the mothers and relatives of the disappeared organized in the Association of Relatives of the Kidnapped, Detained, and Disappeared of Peru (ANFASEP).

ANFASEP was started in 1983, when Angélica Mendoza de Ascarza -"Mamá Angélica"- after fruitlessly searching for her son Arquímedes, who had been taken one night by the army, joined with other women searching for their own relatives who had also been detained.  Mamá Angélica organized them to help each other draw attention to their cause and try to bring pressure on the authorities to release their relatives -or their corpses- and to bring those responsible to justice.  Now, thirty years later, they're still waiting for justice, and the fate and location of many of the victims, including Mamá Angélica's Arquímedes, are yet to be revealed.

Anyway, after thirty years of facing down authorities, threats, and every obstacle thrown in their path, the mothers of ANFASEP are not afraid of much, and they generously co-sponsored the event and got the Jesuit Order to provide the meeting space.

Not only did Adelina Garcia, ANFASEP's current president, open the event on Wednesday evening, but as part of it, they invited those attending to visit the ANFASEP's Museum of Memory, which was the first museum in Peru dedicated to exploring the war and to the memory of the victims.

ANFASEP's building on Prolongacion La Libertad, Ayacucho.

The museum houses photos, documents, and artwork related to the war's victims and their relatives' search for justice and reparations, and clothing and other items that belonged to the disappeared.

ANFASEP's first banner and the cross with the inscription "Do Not Kill", which they bore in their early mobilizations.

Mrs. Lidia Flores -standing before a photo of her late husband, Felipe Huamán, and the shirt he was wearing when he was taken by the police in July of 1984- talks about about the night he was taken, the day, a month later, when she discovered and  then secretly recovered and reburied his corpse, and her continuing struggle to gain convictions of the policemen who murdered him.

To say that the museum is moving, and harrowing and inspiring at the same time, understates the impact  on one caused by the exhibits and the courage of the women -mainly- who established and run it and ANFASEP.

Artwork depicting the kitchen which ANFASEP ran to feed 200 war orphans in the 1990s.

The Cross of Plaza Elguera (once the Plazuela de La Salud)

In a recent post I talked about Jiron Quilca, and mentioned that at the intersection of Quilca and Av. Garcilazo de la Vega there used to be an Inca way station, or tambo.

In time that tambo gave way to a house of healing run by a religious order, and the spot became known as the Plazuela de La Salud (Plaza of Health).  Today it is the Plaza Elguera.

In one corner of said plaza there is a cross affixed to the wall of a building.  No inscription accompanies it and it could easily pass unnoticed.  However, it is not a mere decoration.

In 1884, during the Chilean occupation of Lima resulting from the War of  the Pacific, two Chilean soldiers were attacked in that vicinity.  The Chilean military governor ordered a search and five men were arrested.  After questioning some of them were released, but a couple were kept.  Unable to assign assign responsibility to each, as they would not cooperate, the commander drew lots and put one of the Peruvians up against a long adobe wall that then ran along that spot, whereupon the man was executed by firing squad as a lesson to the populace.

The spot of the execution became a symbol of patriotic resistance and not long afterward a wooden cross was placed upon it.   Decades later, when the modern buildings of downtown Lima were going up, the building company respected tradition and marked the spot with the cross we see today.

Cusco: Celebrations

While we were in Cusco there was celebrated the 100th anniversary of Hiram Bingham's announcement of the existence of Machupiqchu.   As part of the celebrations -aside from a ceremony and concert in Machupiqchu itself- there were musical acts and a concert in Cusco's main square.

Some of the acts were folkloric dance groups, called comparsas.   The first of the below is from Cusco's Paucartambo province, and the sencond, from Puno.

Added to Side Links: "Conquest of the Incas"

I have added links to the video on YouTube of Michael Woods' documentary on the conquest of Peru from the series "Conquistadors."

Though the emphasis early on is on the ostensible subject of the program, Francisco Pizarro and his band, the account shifts toward the Inca's resistance to the Spanish, and the accounts cited become those native chroniclers, including Waman Puma.

I find this documentary moving every time I view it, and Peru's physical and historical landscape are presented in all their depth and breathtaking beauty. It is one of my favorite documentaries on Peru.

Jorge Chavez Monument

This is one of my favourite monuments in Lima. It struck a chord with me when I was a child because my aunts Toya and Segundina, my uncle Orlando, and my cousins Mari and Mariana, lived a block away on Yauyos street. The monument is also on the way to the city center, thus there were many occasions to pass by it. It was also notable to me in that, unlike so many other monuments around, I knew the story of the figures depicted and the event being conmemorated.

The monument conmemorates the 1910 flight of Jorge Chávez from Brig, Switzerland, to Domodossola, Italy, on a specially modified Bleriot XI monoplane. Chávez was a Peruvian aeronaut raised in France and is the hero of Peruvian aviation. On his famous flight he set a world altitude record at 2651 meters (8697 feet) and became the first person to fly over the Alps.

Unfortunately, as he prepared to land, a crosswind sheared off the wings of his plane causing it to nosedive into ground from 60 feet, seriously wounding Chávez, who died from his wounds four days later. Thus, the monument itself depicts the fatal flight of Icarus, in ancient Greek mythology the son of the inventor Daedalus, who designed wood, wax, and feather wings for himself and Icarus in order to escape the isle of Crete where they were being imprisoned by a Greek king. The wings worked, but Icarus, exhuberant and unmindful of his father's warning, flew too close to the sun which melted the wax, causing Icarus to plunge to his death.

The monument depicts four figures of Icarus, one on each face of the monument: Icarus taking flight, rising, rising higher, and finally beginning to fall, such that as one progressed around the traffic circle each stage in Icarus' flight would be revealed. Or, would be if the design and the traffic were aligned.

As it turned out, the monument was designed by a European artist and thus was intended to be viewed from traffic proceeding clockwise, but Peruvians drive on the right side of the road so traffic enters and moves around the circle counterclockwise and counter to the perspective of the monument!

Nishida

After stopping by La Bombonniere I decided to walk a block further up Burgos street to look for another small eatery I had heard about.

My path took me past the long abandoned Clinica Italiana. The clininic, a large edifice in that grand, marble-clad institutional style so common in the first half of the 20th century, was establsihed by the Societa Italiana di Beneficenza e Asistenza and was long counted among the better health care centers in the city.

I have memories of it because my grandfather was interned there at one point in the 1970s. He was so badly off that my parents took my brother and I there to see him in what amounted to an unspoken chance to say good bye. To our great joy h e recovered from that illness, and lived for another decade.

In the 1990s the hospital was forced to shut down as a result of the hostage crisis at the nearby Japanese ambassador's residence. It has since been acquired by the Mapfre company which planned to reopen it with a crematorium, which has not happened due to the neighbors' opposition. Until, and if, that gets resolved, the clinic is left to the vultures which haunt its roof.


At the end of the block, I found what I was looking for: a small, hole-in-the-wall restaurant, without an external sign. This is Bodega Nishida, which began as corner grocery store run, as so many in this city, by Japanese immigrants. The son of the family, Carlos Nishida, acquired a knack for cooking and added cooked foods to the family business. In time this was expanded into Nishida restaurant right next door to the shop.

Nishida is known -among those who know about it- for its sandwiches, and specially for the unique flavor of its glazed pork (lechon glaceado) sandwiches. The pork is slowly cooked with cognac, pisco, red wine, honey, sugar, and aji colorado.


I had never eaten there before so I decided to eat my sandwich plain, without any dressings or condiments, the better to taste the pork. I must say that it was delicious, and well worth the search to be sure.

With Nishida being only two or three blocks from home, it may well get another visit from me at some lunch time.



Nishida
Burgos 310
San Isidro - Lima