Views from around Lima's main square

Lima's Plaza de Armas or, as it is officially known today, Plaza Mayor, is Lima's main square. It was there that the Spanish city of Lima was founded in 1535, on the site of an existing native settlement.

The square is surrounded by the Cathedral, the Presidential Palace, and City Hall. Many visitors mistakenly think that the buildings are colonial, but the only colonial architectural elements still surviving there are the art cast iron fountain, inaugurated in 1651, and the Royal Magistrate's House, also from the 1600s. Over time earthquakes, fires, and "progress" have led to the reconstruction or replacement of the rest.

The plaza and the surrounding boulevards are usually crowded with tourists, local visitors, taxis, and hawkers.  The reason I was able to capture images relatively devoid of crowds was that on the day I went in late July the plaza was closed to visitors.

Public school teachers from the Cusco region had gone on strike for better wages and better conditions, and had journeyed to Lima to press their case. There, there were joined by local teachers, and were staging rallies and marches a few blocks away, near Congress.  The government had decided to close off the plaza to avoid any disturbances or scenes in the vicinity of the Presidential Palace and to "protect the historic center".

Of course, I did not know that when I ventured downtown and found myself cut off from the bookstore I wished to visit.  After being rebuffed at one intersection, I found a spot where the police were letting a few people in. They shut access just as I was about to go in, and asked us to wait a bit. People got verbally belligerent, and the officer in charge --feeling stung after his earlier gesture-- now insisted that access was definitely closed unless one had an ID showing that one lived or worked in the area.  Fortunately, someone called to him that she had some foreign visitors who had "come all this way to know the historic center", so he instructed her to go in at the far end of the barricade.  Hearing that, I quickly followed, and when challenged, I told the officer there that "he said for tourists to come in this way" and handed him my California driver's license.  The cop glanced at it and waved me through.

Thus, I got to stroll around the periphery of the nearly deserted plaza, emptier that I've ever seen it, and on a serendipitously sunny day.

Lima city hall (built in 1944).

Art cast iron fountain (from1651), and the Presidential Palace (1938).

From L to R: Presidential Palace, Mt. San Cristobal, Royal Magistrate's House (17th C.), Archbishop's Palace (1924).

Lima Cathedral, viewed across the Plaza, from Pasaje Santa Rosa.

In the foreground, the monument to Taulichusco the Elder, last indigenous ruler of Lima.

Old Post Post Office & Telegraphs building

Rally against pardon for former dictator

"Peru against the pardon"

Coincidentally following my attending a Thursday-evening colloquium on the right to protest, on Friday evening I exercised that right as a Peruvian citizen by adding my voice to a protest in downtown Lima against President Kuczynski's even considering pardoning or commuting the prison sentence of former dictator Alberto Fujimori.

Fujimori, who was elected president in the 1990 elections, dissolved Congress in April 1992 and, in a "self-coup", abrogated the democratic order and assumed dictatorial powers assisted by his sinister intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos.

The coup was initially widely welcomed by a public weary of political gridlock, economic crisis, and a spiral of criminal and political violence that seemed to be inexorably leading to a national debacle.  Soon, however, the nature of Fujimori and Montesinos' "firm hand" became clear as the press was threatened, muzzled, or bought off, human rights abuses mounted -including the forced sterilization thousands of poor women- and government corruption became the norm. Fujimori unleashed a secret military death squad against opponents who could not be cowed or bribed, and Montesinos went as far as installing kilns on the grounds of the ministry of defense in order to secretly  dispose of the remains of prisoners brought in by the death squad.

The whole apparatus of violence and corruption was propped up by a taylor-made constitution and a coterie of pliant Congresspeople. In time videos were leaked revealing the scope of the bribery and corruption of politicians and public figures. The country was fed up, the proverbial rats deserted the sinking ship, and the regime came tumbling down in November of 2000.

Fujimori was arrested in Chile in 2005, extradited to Peru in 2007, and convicted of human rights abuses in 2009.  He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Nevertheless, his administration is widely credited with controlling inflation and stabilizing the economy, advances in infrastructure, and bringing an end to the Shining Path insurgency.  He thus retains a margin of popularity and many still regard him as "Peru's best president".  His children -Keiko and Kenji Fujimori- head a political party premised on his legacy, and which has continually pushed successive presidents for a pardon or commutation of his sentence.

It seems that this time, in the politically weak President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the fujimoristas -who control Congress- have finally hit on a national executive who would seriously consider granting their request presumably in return for political an legislative cooperation.

As on other occasions, when the idea was publicly floated human rights organizations, political parties, labor unions, student groups, victims' relatives, and other indignant citizens, took to the streets, taking over the Plaza San Martin to make our voices heard demanding that Fujimori be made to serve his entire prison term.

Marchers carry photos of some of the victims of the "Grupo Colina" death squad

"La Cantuta" National Education University students' banner bearing the images of the nine students and one professor
killed at Fujimori's order in the 1992 La Cantuta Massacre.

Relatives of Javier Rios, an 8-year old boy killed along with 14 adults in the Barrios Altos Massacre in 1991.

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.

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.

A Few Views of Downtown

From L to R: The Presidential Palace, the House of the Oidor, the Archbishop's Palace, the Cathedral.  In the background, at the end of the street is the old Desamparados train station, and in the distance, Mt. San Cristobal overlooking it all.

The House of the Oidor (member judge of the Royal Audiencia during colonial times).  Built in the early 1700s, it is said to be the oldest house in Lima.

Main door to the Lima Cathedral and Basilica

The church of the monastery of San Francisco

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.

Convent of Santa Catalina de Siena de Arequipa

One of the main attractions in Arequipa is the old Convent of Santa Catalina de Siena. Santa Catalina was built in the 16th century to accomodate the desire of the townsfolk of Arequipa for a convent in their city.  Informed of thi wish during a visit, Viceroy Toledo, granted the necessary licenses for the establishment of a Dominican convent.  A few years later, a young widow, Maria de Guzman, decided to take the vows and enter the nunnery, and in 1580 the convent was formally inaugurated and Maria named "the first inhabitant and prioress of said Monastery."

For four centuries, Santa Catalina was community closed off from the rest of the world, enveloped in a mantle of silence and mystery, which contributed to both idealized imagining of life behind its walls and to lurid rumours.  Pehaps each had some measure of truth.  Santa Catalina, it is true, was a female-run world that lived by its own rules, laws and customs, dedicated to prayer and religious duty.  On the other hand, many of the nuns came from wealthy families and sought to preserve their status and comforts within the convent's walls, bringing servants with them, building -or buying- large personal "cells" with sitting rooms, private kitchens, and running water, and continuing to wear jewelry and gold.  One prioress, who tried to curb these practices, was the object of three separate poisoning attempts during her tenure!

At its peak the convent housed some 400 women, about 180 of them being nuns, and the rest servants, slaves, young women boarded there for their education, and women who had been given asylum by the order.  In the 1870s by order of the Pope, the servants and slaves were released, being given the choice of remaining and taking religious vows, or leaving the convent altogether. 

Several dozen Dominican nuns still occupy  a closed portion of the convent.  However, earthquake damage in the 1960s led the nuns to construct new quarters at the north end of the convent, fitted now with electricity and running water -in accordance with municipal regulations- and the majority of the convent was largely restored to what it looked like in days past (although most of the upper stories and roof accesses are now long gone) and opened to public tours in 1970.

I have to honestly say that the convent was one of the more memorable places we visited.  It is utterly fascinating to imagine the world that its walls must have encompassed, one little changed in the course of the centuries.  A veritable city within the city, the 5 acre convent has streets, plazas, fountains, a cemetery, and districts as any town would, as well as a hospital ward, a laundry, and a communal kitchen. The frequent need for repairs has made Santa Catalina a veritable catalogue of Arequipeno architectural styles through time. I think we took more pictures there than at any other single site