Market Sights

Human Rights Colloquium

Well, most of my early days here so far have been spent partly in recovering from the travel and getting some basic things squared away.  However, on Thursday evening last, I attended a colloquium on human rights and the right to protest at the nearby Hotel Meliá. 

The colloquium was hosted by the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (Association For Human Rights, APRODEH), which has been one of the leading defenders of human rights in Peru for many years, including right through the internal war years of the 1980s and 1990s. The colloquium featured a panel of speakers from human and civil rights organizations from Peru, Mexico, and Colombia.

The similarity of the challenges faced by critics of governments across the continent in trying to exercise their right to social protest was striking; as was the similarity with the challenges faced by critics in the USA.

Across the continent, members of civil society wishing to exercise their right to public protest -a right enshrined in international law and in the constitution and legislation of every nation- face an ever increasing set of obstacles.  On one end, there has been a trend toward requiring previous notice of the intent to protest, the requirement that time, place, and manner of protest be pre-approved by the government, and holding organizers responsible for the actions of any and every individual who attends.  On the other end, there is the tendency to view critics and protesters as an "internal enemy" of the state, and thus to use heavy-handed responses to protests.  Particularly after 2001 there has also been a trend toward applying anti-terrorism legislation to social protest situations, thus turning many activities that are part and parcel of street protests, and which had not previously been considered illegal in and of themselves or aren't illegal outside the context of a protest, into criminal offenses meriting prison terms.

 Needless to say, it was an interesting event, with much to reflect on.

In Lima ...

I’m in Lima and, oddly for mid-winter, the sun is shining this afternoon.  Taking advantage of that, after lunching at my uncle’s house, for my first outing of this trip, I walked the few blocks over to Plaza San José, the main plaza of the Lima district of Jesus Maria, and made my way to Heladería Palermo.

Palermo is one of Lima’s most venerable ice-creameries. It’s been there since the 1950s, and in it’s heyday of the 1950s to 1970s people would come from all over Lima for a cone during the summers.

I remember having to stand in a line that went out the door on a hot afternoon the first time my parents took me there.  Back then the ice cream was made on-site –the machinery was visible behind the counters- using seasonal fruits.

I don’t think that it is still made there, but it might be.  The back part is now blocked from view, and I forgot to ask.  The ice-cream, however, still as good as ever, with native fruit flavors such a camu-camu, aguaymanto, guanábana, lúcuma, and maracuyá.

Back in San Felipe

I've been in Lima just over a week, and am settling into the apartment and back into San Felipe.  

For those unfamiliar with Lima's topography, the Residencial San Felipe (to residents usually just, San Felipe or "la Resi") is a large housing development inaugurated in 1966 (but finished in 1968) during the presidency of Fernando Belaude Terry, who was an architect by trade.  Belaunde was determined to build housing for Lima's growing middle class and assembled a team of several hundred architects and engineers to design it.

The result, built on land that had housed the San Felipe horse racetrack, is a unique community within the city, with 30-some building in five different styles.  Despite housing for 1,085 families, and containing three nursery schools and a commercial center, close to 70% of the Resi is open space, with many and ample tree-filled gardens.

Of course, those gardens require frequent maintenance, which occasionally means pruning of trees and shrubs.  The debris, of course, must be gathered in one spot so it can be hauled away, as in the photo below, from this week.

Seeing that pile, I was reminded of an incindent from my childhood in the Resi.

In the 1970s the gardens usually were surrounded by low hedges --no more than two or three feet. In 1977 many of those were drastically pruned or removed, and many shrubs cut back, in order to deal with an infestation of rodents that had made them their home.  The resulting green waste was deposited in a single pile many times larger than the one above, in one of the parking lots.

It so happened, if I recall correctly, that this came around our midwinter school break, but it also coincided with a period of unrest against the military dictatorship headed by Gen. Francisco Morales Bermudez.  The major labor confederations went on strike, and so the debris was not hauled away from some weeks.

A friend and I started playing in it, and soon had devised a shelter in it complete with a "secret" exit. In the course of a few days we were joined by more and more neighborhood kids, and for a couple of weeks we had great fun expanding our warrens with extra rooms, hidden entrances, and long, winding tunnels, all practically invisible to the casual passerby.

We were much saddened when the government finally managed to get the place cleaned up.

Squirrel!

Yesterday, I happened to look out the window at just the right time to catch a few glimpses of a newish denizen of San Felipe: a squirrel.

Squirrels are not native to the Lima area and were not present in this part of the city when I was a kid, though there were some living wild on the zoo's grounds.  This squirrel is an example of the Guayaquil squirrel (Sciurius stramineus), which is native to southern Ecuador and northern Peru.  Their home range ends several hundred miles to the north of Lima, but they have been introduced to the city accidentally or intentionally, probably on more than one occasion, at least as far back as 40 or 45 years ago.

Some years ago --maybe five or six-- I spotted a squirrel in San Felipe, but it was being hunted by a hawk.  Subsequently, I neither saw any more nor did I hear a ny further reference to any squirrel here until late last year,  when a neighbor posted a photo of one to FaceBook, indicating that it was the only one.

It may be the only one or one of a small number, but I had seen neither hair nor hide of any until yesterday, when I spotted this fellow (girl?) drinking nectar from the blooms of a balsawood tree.

Anyway, it is interesting to me to observe the changes in the local fauna over time.  Not only is the bird population that lives here different in many ways from when I was a kid, but now I have confirmation of a new mammalian presence.

Craft Beer Stand at the Lima Book Fair

I had a hard time at the book fair, I must say.

The fair is set up under a tent erected over the central part of park, covering a fountain and a number of steps.  The floor is thus of plywood sheets over a frame, and covered with carpeting, all of which makes in a bit uneven in many spots.  With my aching and sensitive knee, it made walking difficult, and even a bit perilous.   It was also very hot under the tent, and my off-gait was causing me to expend extra effort as it was.

Fortunately, there is a craft beer stand in the food court, set up and run by a small distributor representing four small breweries - three from Lima and one from Cusco.

I chose two beers to try.

First, I opted for the Ayrampo Roja from the Sacred Valley Brewery, whose beers I had never tried before.

The Ayrampo Roja (6% ABV, 35 IBU) is a red beer (hence the roja) coloured with caramel malt and the fruit of the ayrampo cactus, which is native to the Peruvian Andes and has long been used to color foods in the highlands.  The beer was good, and there was no ayrampo flavour (it can taste a bit like red beets).

Next, I went for one from the Cumbres brewery.  I have tried one other of Cumbres' beers, their Quinoa Kolsch, so I was anxioux to try another of their offerings.

I opted for the Maracumanto (6.2 % ABV).   Maracumanto is a Belgian Pale Ale, fermented with maracuuyá and aguaymanto  fruit.   I half expected it to be sour, owing to the presence of the maracuyá, but it was not sour at all.  It was actually very refreshing, and relatively low in fruit notes in the mouth, even though they came through in the nose.

Needless to say, I then felt quite refreshed!

Lima Book Fair

I hurt my knee last week so I've not done much.    It was just yesterday that I've started to go out to places other than relatives' homes, and my cousin's medical practice.

My big adventure for the day was to get dropped off at the Lima International Book Fair after lunch at Toti and Marina's.

Normally, I hit the book fair a couple of times and can easily spend a couple of hours there on each visit.  This time, however, owing to my knee issues, I zipped through only stopping at a handful of stands, most of which I had already decided on visiting anyway.  In fact, I only delved in depth into two of them --those of the Istituto de Estudios Peruanos and of the Instituto Frances de Estudios Andinos-- and I only bought books at IEP's.

An example of San Felipe's fauna

On our way out to the car to go to lunch on New Year's Day, Liz spotted this handsome gal crawling along the ground in San Felipe.  Knowing my love for this sort of thing, and because we had found a dead one of these in Chaclacayo, which I showed the kids, she immediately pointed it out to me.

This is a female specimen of what we used to call "toritos" (little bulls), and are scientifically classed in the genus Golofa. This species is probably Golofa aegeon.   I believe that it is a jungle species that was introduced to Lima decades ago and which has adapted to life in the local climate.

The larvae of these beetles live underground and feed on rotting wood.  When I was a child we would occasionally find the large grubs with massive jaws when digging and in rotten wood posts, but it wasn't until later that I made the connection with the adult beetles.  I'm not sure that the adults even eat.  Though they have palps, they do not seem to have any external mouth parts, and I never had occasion to observe a tongue in one of them.

The adults would appear in spring and summer and it was their habit to fly around at dusk, usually high up near the tree tops but would frequently come buzz closer to the ground, and where then not too hard to catch if one moved fast enough to get to them before they again rose out of reach.

At one time, in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was the custom in San Felipe to surround the gardens with wire supported by log sections, toritos were fairly common, but as that practice was stopped I worried that they might have disappeared from the place.  I was gratified that such was not the case and that, even if in reduced numbers, these handsome insects can still be found there.

New Year's Eve in Lima

Lord of the Fall

On the third block of Av. Republica Dominicana, just down from Plaza San Jose and across the street from the main market in Jesus Maria, resides a local landmark that is, literally, an icon.   

Inside a relatively nondescript archway that looks like it might be the entrance to the several-storey building above it, there is a figure of Jesus that is an object of veneration by locals and even people from further afield, including Mama Pali, my late grandmother.

The story goes that a sculptor named Marcos Huapaya created the image with the intention of selling it, but that fate intervened.    Huapaya had fashioned a previous religious image from wood, cardboard, and plaster, and wanted to create a larger one of Jesus.  He selected to depict a moment from The Passion in which Jesus stumbles under the burden of his cross.   The family thus decided to name the figure the Lord of La Caida (The Fall), a choice that was further cemented by their owning a country estate named La Caida.

Before Huapaya could sell the figure, however, a neighborhood woman gave him a white cord to add to the figure's vestments in thanks for divine aid she said she had received after praying before the statue.  Soon others started to do the same and Huapaya ended up building a sanctuary for it.

Later, when the family moved to Jesus Maria, they built the niche where the statue now resides, and where it receives numerous visitors daily, some of whom leave behind tokens of the "miracles" they say they have been granted after praying to the Señor de La Caida.

Huapaya has since died, but the niche is still maintained by his family, who open it up every morning and close it up every night.

In Lima!

We arrived in Lima late last night, and pretty much just settled in for the night without even unpacking, as it was well after midnight by the time we got home.

Today, we had a lazy Sunday with the family.  Willy picked us up in the morning and we headed to the San Jose Market in the "downtown" part of Jesus Maria, where we picked up the ingredients for a North Coast-style lamb stew (seco de cordero a la nortena).

The lamb and mutton butcher's stall. Note the tuft of wool left on the carcass'
tail in order to show that it is indeed lamb, and not goat.

We then went to Jacho's apartment in Los Eucaliptos to fix the lunch, where we were joined by Mito, Pali, Jose, Carlita, and Tono.

Liz and I took the opportunity between Wordl Cup games and before everyone arrived to head to the Metro supermarket here in San Felipe to get some necessities, some wine for lunch, and to get SIM cards for our phones.

After lunch Liz and I adjourned to our apartment to take care of stuff -unpacking, taking stock of the pantry, and so on- and to watch the USA-Portugal game.

Salaverry and the Huatica

On my way today to the 17th Lima International Book Fair I walked up Avenida Salaverry toward the fair site at the Parque de los Proceres, built in commemoration of the forefathers of Independence.   The park, however, also bears an older name -Matamula- a leftover from the days when it was part of an hacienda with that name.  

In fact, the whole area was divided into haciendas and agricultural fundos. What made that possible was a constant 1 m./100 m. slant to Lima from downtown to the edge of the cliffs overlooking the ocean.  The pre-Columbian dwellers of the area had a taken advantage of that and directed water from the Rimac River into irrigation canals that they dug criss-crossing the area.

Jesus Maria fell under the jurisdiction of what became known as the Chiefdom of Guatca, whose lord administered the lands along the canal known as the Huatica River.

One of the branches of the Huatica once emptied into what is today the Campo de Marte, one of Lima's largest parks.  There, on what was once the land of the Hacienda Santa Beatriz, the river formed a small lake, the Estanque de Santa Beatriz, in which limeños bathed and even rowed boats into the 20th Century.

Photo: http://limalaunica.blogspot.com

In the image above, the lake can be seen at the base of the Monument to Jorge Chavez, before the monument was moved to its current location at the junction of Salaverry and Guzman Blanco avenues.

The Huatica then flowed toward the sea, roughly following the path  traced today by Ave. Salaverry and emptied into the ocean at Mar Bella in Magdalena.  The path there can still be traced as it is that which the road follows down toward the beaches at Mar Bella, next to the old orphanage.

The lake, still evident in the 1937 photo, was subsequently drained and filled. The Huatica, however, isn't entirely gone.

Under the streets of Lima, the water still runs to the Campo de Marte, which is criss-crossed with small channels.  Some of these connect to two parallel channels which run the length of Ave. Salaverry, from the Campo de Marte all the way to a park at the top of the cliffs above the sea. 

Several times a month the gates are opened and water sent down the channel to flood, and thus water, the wide median strips of Ave. Salaverry, Ave. Pershing, and parts of Ave. Javier Prado Oeste.

Then, for a brief time, the Huatica still flows.

Lima Book Fair

Last night, after resting up a bit after our return yesterday afternoon from our trip to Arequipa (more on that later), Liz and I walked to the Lima International Book Fair.  The fair -which this year is in its 16th yearly "edition"- has been held for the past couple of years in the Los Proceres park (also known by its old name of Mata Mula) here in Jesus Maria.

As always, the book fair was a great draw, pulling in enough booksellers and publishers to fill almost 140 stands, including representations from Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Turkey, and China.  Even late on a Sunday night it was packed with people and the line of parked cars stretched for a couple blocks from the event site.

I got some nice books there, but I am most pleased with a facsimile edition of Garcilazo de la Vega's 1609 treatise, Primera Parte de los Comentarios Reales, que tratan del origen de los Yncas, reyes que fueron del Peru, de su idolatria, leyes, y govierno en paz y en guerra: de sus vidas y conquistas, y de todo lo que fue aquel Imperio y su Republica, antes que los Españoles passaran a el.  That book, known in English as the Royal Commentaries, was a landmark history and description of Inca Peru as it was the first written by a descendant of the subject of the book - Garcilazo was descendant of Inca emperor Tupac Yupanqui.   Lima's Universidad del Pacifico decided to mark it's 40th year of publishing by printing the full-size facsimile edition of the book.

An original copy of the Comentarios Reales displayed in Garcilazo's childhood home in Cusco

On the way home Liz and I mused about the success of the book fair, which draws people in droves, day after day over almost two weeks, and hat makes such an event possible here, as contrasted to the USA where book fairs are smaller and shorter events, with far fewer publishers represented.

San Felipe turns 45

Forty-five years ago today the first phases of the Residencial San Felipe were innaugurated, and to mark the occasion, there was a small ceremony this afternoon in the plaza of the complex's commercial sector attended by the mayor of the burrough of Jesus Maria, Enrique Ocrospoma, and the students from San Felipe's three pre-schools.

San Felipe is a large residential complex comprised of some 40 buildings amidst walkways and gardens.  It was the brainchild of then President Fernando Belaunde, and is a unique space in this city.  When it was built it comprised the largest collection of tall buildings in the country -"Little Manhattan" it was called- and was visible from almost any point the city.

Here's what I wrote about it a few years ago:

Today San Felipe has a birthday.

Started as project by President Fernando Belaúnde Terry, who was an archictect in regular life, the Residencial San Felipe was inaugurated forty-two years ago, on July 2, 1966. At the time, with almost 50 buildings in five distinct styles holding apartments for over 10,000 people, it was one of the largest -if not the largest- housing project in all of Peru.

The complex was planned and built, on the grounds of a former hippodrome, as a single huge block with no cross-traffic and interlaced with sidewalks and gardens, and including three preschools and a shopping center. Over time a cooperative school and a chapel were established on the grounds and a clinic was built across the street, meaning that residents could have almost all their needs met within the Residencial itself.

Into the 1980s the Resi was a dominant feature on the Lima skyline, its 15-storey buildings topped only by the former Ministry of Education on Avenida Abancay and the Banco de Credito tower in Miraflores.

its four decades San Felipe has remained a distintict neighborhood, with many of the original families still occupying their apartments. Its mix of buildings and large green areas are unmatched anywhere else in the city, leading to lower levels of noise and atmospheric pollution within its boundaries than is the average in this sprawling city. Its gardens abound with birds and butterflies, and it is even said that they harbor an endemic type of blind snake.

The neighbors recently won an important victory when they defeated a move by the mayor of Jesús María and a grocery store chain to take over part of the parking areas and build a larger supermarket and movie theatre. The neighbors insisted that the project was unecessary and would harm their quality of life by increasing foot and vehicle traffic while reducing parking, arguing that the parking areas -like the gardens- are held in condominium by the neighbors and are not for the municipality to dispose of at will.

Confronted by the organized neighbors, who staged rallies, and weekly cacerolazos in which pots and pans would be banged together from apartments all over the resi at 8:00 pm sharp every Saturday, and a media and internet campaign, the Plaza Vea chain backed out and the mayor backed down.

Such is the hold that San Felipe has on those who live and have lived here, that there is a Facebook group dedicated to it that draws current and former residents from all over the world -as far away from  Lima as Europe and New Zealand.

Tonight the celebration of the anniversary will continue with further ceremony and a dance in the plaza and some of us participants in the group who happen to be in Lima will use the opportunity for a face-to-face meeting and, in some cases, reacquaintance.  Should be fun!

Black clam cebiche in Jesus Maria

Conchas negras - black clams- are one of the most prized ingredients for cebiche in Peru.   Native to the warmer waters nearer the equator, where they grow amidst the mangrove roots, black clams are harvested and shipped daily to Lima, which makes them a bit more expensive than other ingredients - at the market one pays for them by the unit.  However, as their flavor is dominant, other blander fishes can be mixed in without significantly reducing the clam flavor in the dish.

However, the best way to have them is alone in a cebiche.  They have an almost effervescent quality to them which seems to increase alertness -no wonder they are reputed to have aphrodisiac qualities. They also are the only shellfish in Peru that is used entire, with no part other than the shell being discarded.    

Aside from the clams themselves, the cebiche included lime juice, chopped aji limo, salt, aji-no-moto (monosodium glutamate), and chopped onion, with some beans, boiled corn, and toasted corn (cancha) added on top.

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

La Bonbonniere

Just a block from San Felipe, on the fourth block of Burgos street, there is to be found one of Lima's classic cafes, La Bonbonniere. It has been there as long as I can remember and used to be famed for its pastries and, well, its bon bons. As as kid, I would occasionally be taken there by my parents, who would let me pick out a bon bon. To a child like myself the selection of treats, in its many shapes and colors, was as heady as their taste.

In the 1980s, however, La Bonbonniere -like so many institutions- fell on hard times due to the severe economic crisis and the war. It limped on, and was dealt what well could have been its death knell by the hostage crisis at the nearby Japanese ambassador's residence in 1996, which caused the police and military to cordon off the area. La Bonbonniere's owner, a lady from Belgium, was forced to sell the business.

Fortunately, it was picked up by Marisa Giulfo, one of Lima's most noted restauranteurs and caterers, and La Bonbonniere was revived, although now as a cafe and patisserie. Today the cafe is a bit more upscale than in its previous incarnation, if that can be imagined.

I decided to stop by there yesterday afternoon for a snack, and was well-rewarded with a chicken and mushroom empanada (turnover) and a capuccino.

The price for a prix fixe lunch (s/. 35) at La Bonbonniere is fairly high compared to places not too far away where a 3-course lunch can be obtained for s/. 6 (2 dollars), but the quality of the food is incomparable.

I might suggest that Susana and her friend, Aricia, head over there for the Tea Hour when they'll be here later in the month.

La Bonbonniere
Burgos 415
San Isidro - Lima

The Eye that Weeps

El Ojo que Llora is a singular monument in Lima's Campo de Marte ("Field of Mars") park, a gift to the people of Peru from Danish artist Lika Mutal. Moved and inspired by a photographic exhibit on the civil war which Peru endured throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Mutal designed a monument intended to commemorate the dead of that conflict and to inspire reflection on violence and the passions which lead to it, as well as its effects.

The monument, unveiled in August 2005, consists of an eye-like stone embedded in a larger one, set upright in the center of a labyrinth. From the "eye" -when it is on and open to the public- water drips constantly in the manner of tears. The labyrinth is of crushed purple marble, and is bordered by 32,000 rounded stones, on some 26,000 of which volunteers wrote the names, ages, and dates of death or disappearance of victims of political violence from the war.

It is this latter feature that makes El Ojo que Llora such a singular, and controversial, monument, as it includes and mixes not only civilian victims, but soldiers and police officers, and accused subversives killed in prison by the police. Although this was uncontroversial at the time, and even a feature for which the piece was lauded, in time reactionaries seized upon it to defame the artist and attack her work.

In part that was due to a perplexing dictum from the Interamerican Court for Human Rights in 2006, which -along with finding that the Peruvian state was liable for the extrajudicial execution of several dozen imprisoned Shining Path prisoners in 1992, and that the families were owed indemnizations- ordered that their names be added to the monument, a monument over which neither the Court nor Peru's central government had jurisdiction. That not only brought indignation from Peru's conservatives, but then raised it to a fever pitch against the monument itself when it was revealed that those names had been there all along.

In the context of a generalized offensive against the left in this country, conservative and outright reactionary commentators verbally attacked and insulted Lika Mutal and El Ojo que Llora as "a monument to terrorism," and figures all the way up to Congressmembers called for the removal of the monument. Thankfully they did not hold sway.

In Septemeber 2007, however, El Ojo que Llora was severely vandalized. Orange paint was poured on the central stone and splattered on the name stones, many hundreds of which were knocked loose, scattered, and even broken. The stones were put back in place, but it has proved impossible to fully remove all traces of the paint.

Today, el Ojo que Llora is kept behind locked gates -I had to sneak in through a hole in the fence, and was soon ejected by a guard- and only open to the public on a few days a month. The names on the stones are fading, being barely discernible, which is perhaps in keeping with the country which, it seems, would rather forget rather than remember, reflect upon, and understand the violence which produced those names.

Update on the Graña House

Back in August I made mention of the house above, located on the corner of Av. Salaverry and Jirón Mariátegui in Lima's Jesús María district in relation to its appearing in a 1944 film about life in Lima, Lima Family. In 1944 it was occupied by the Graña Garland family, whose scion, Francisco Graña, was a noted physician and surgeon.

In 2003 one of the last, if not the last, surviving children of Dr. Graña, Mocha, passed away in the house after a long illness. The property, alredy neglected at that time, sat apparently empty for some time thereafter.

I happened to be strolling by this morning and, noticing a plaque near the doorway and a seal above it, I approached to take closer look. Nowadays, it turns out, the grand old house is occupied and used by San Marcos University's School of Letters and Humanities.