"Perú visits Peru"

At the end of March, Perú launched a new "country brand" with a logo for Peruvian products.  Incorporating a spiral into the P the logo gives a nod to Perú's ancient past, and cultures such as Nasca and Caral.   Modern inhabitants may be reminded of the final part of the old AeroPerú logograph.

As part of the campaign to get Peruvians to adopt and use the logo, the company hired to produce and promote the brand sent a delegation of Peruvian "ambassadors" headed by chef Gastón Acurio to share Peruvian culture with the 569 inhabitants of Peru.

Confused? Watch the video and all will be explained!

Liz and I have got our tickets to Lima.   We've got our tickets to Cusco.   And, we've got a hotel reservation for 3 nights in the Imperial City!

Now, we just have to be patient for a while longer until it's time to go.

Unintended side trip: Costa Rica

On the way home on May 2nd, I was forced to make a small and unintended side trip.   The TACA flight I was catching to make a connection in Costa Rica was delayed on its way to Lima from Cusco.  Despite assurances to the contrary, that put us far enough behind schedule that I, and a number of other travellers, were not able to make our connecting flight to San Salvador.   

Luckily -it being their error- the airline put us up in a hotel near the airport and paid for dinner and breakfast.   Unfortunately, the hotel was near the airport. 

The international airport in San Jose is about 23 km from the city proper, and there didn't seem to be much around there other than our hotel, a small, univiting casino, a couple of chain restaurants, and the usual types of business that surround airports - shipping companies, rental lots, Denny's.

It was evening and by the time I got through taking care of all that I needed to in terms of getting ahold of those who needed to be informed in the US it was past 10 o'clock at night, too late to head into town and hope to find much of anything still open.    I had an unsatisfying dinner near the hotel, using the airline voucher, at a chain place called RostiPollo.   It was basically pollo a la brasa, but served with beans and tortillas instead of the French fries usual in Peru.

The next morning I headed off early to the airport, and in the daylight was able to get some of my first and only glimpses of Costa Rica.

One neat thing about the airport was that at the Britt stores -do they have at all of Latin America's airports?- there was a stand with a guy at each hand rolling cigars from Costa Rican tabacco.  Pretty cool if you ask me.

On the leg to San Salvador, to make a connecting flight to San Francisco, the plane was not very full, so I had three seats to myself.  Not having anyone to be disturbed should I get up, I sat by the window and was able to look down at the passing Central American geology below, something I don't usually get to do.

It was rather neat, for example, to be able to look down upon the volcanic islands and shoreline of Lake Nicaragua.

 

Fortunately, the rest of the trip passed without incident, even though the flight from San Salvador to San Francisco was completely full with Salvadoran families laden with bags of Pollo Campero chicken, and Peruvians grumpy at having been delayed overnight.

At one point the airline representatives offered overnight lodging and expenses, plus a $400 travel voucher, to anyone who'd volunteer to get off the flight and catch it the next day.    As much as I'd have liked to visit El Salvador, when the lady approached, I laughed and told her she was simply asking on the wrong day. Maybe next time?

An old friend

In North America these beetles are commonly known as June beetles or June bugs as they tend to emerge from pupation at the start of Summer.  In the southern hemisphere they also emerge in Summer, but down here that starts in January.

Every January or February, when I was a kid in Lima, these little guys would start turning up, flying in through open windows at night, to whirl around the lights until they fell exhausted on to the floor or the table underneath.   I always had a soft spot for them.  With their golden elytra and metallic green thoracic carapaces they seemed like little walking jewels.

This handsome fellow happened to pop in for a visit one night during this latest visit.  After snapping his picture, I sent him on his way, letting him fly out the kitchen window.

May Day in Lima

Unlike the United States, in much of the rest of the world May 1st is Labor Day and in many places it is an official or de facto holiday.   In the US, until recently, the date has been relatively ignored despite the fact that  it was picked in commemoration of the martyrs of the Chicago "Haymarket Affair" of 1868.

My last full day in Lima was Sunday, May 1st, so I decided I'd take the opportunity to attend the local May Day observance.

This was the May Day rally called by the General Workers' Confederation of Peru (CGTP), the country's largest and oldest labor confederation.    About 300-400 people gathered in the Plaza Dos de Mayo and then marched up Ave. Nicolas de Pierola and then down Ave. Garcilazo de la Vega, to rally at the monument to the founder of the CGTP and of the Peruvian Socialist Party, Jose Carlos Mariategui.

I was a bit surprised, given the bad rap that the Shining Path gave Maoism for so many years, to see Mao's portrait so prominently displayed. At right  is literature praising the programs of reformist general Juan Velasco Alvarado, who, among other things, nationalized petroleum and initiated agrarian reform in 1969.

Kids from the street youths' union.  At right: their representatives at the podium, nect to them, in the white shirt, is Mario Huaman, head of the CGTP

This guys is a left party bigwig, but I can't recall his name.  In the past he was associated withe the United Left (Izquierda Unida) coalition, and maybe Patria Roja.

National Teachers' Union, Lima Region: "In Defense of Teachers' Rights! For Free and Quality Public Education!"

 

Group accusing presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori of being complicit in forced sterilizations of poor women during her father's dictatorship 

Casa Matusita

At the corner of Ave. Garcilazo de la Vega and Ave. Espana there sits a relatively nondescript building which is, nonetheless, believed to be one of Lima's most haunted buildings.   Painted yellow, with blue trim, and four-pane windows it looks far cheerier today than it did when I was a child.   Back then, in the 1970s, the upper story was unpainted and its windows empty of glass and, through them, it was evident that the upper story itself was empty, uninhabited and unused.   It is, after all, the second story that is said to be the locus of the haunting.

Then, and until not that long ago, the ground floor of the building was occupied by a commercial house specializing in home appliances and other electronics, owned by the Matusita family, for whom both the store and the building were named Casa Matusita.

Various stories surround the house and the origins of the haunting.   One is that the building was once home to a man who abused his servants cruelly.  In revenge they laced the food at a dinner party hosted by the man with a drug and locked them in the dining room.  When they checked on the man and his guests the next morning they supposedly found that, subject to the hallucinogen's effects, they had brutally killed one another.

Another story is that a man went mad there, and killed his wife and family before committing suicide.  And, yet a third and similar one, is that the original Mr. Matusita, founder of the business, found his wife was cheating on him and killed her.  He is said, to have then hung himself in grief over that act.

One of the first victims of the haunting was said to be a priest who entered to attempt to put the souls to rest, and died, perhaps of heart attack, in his desperation to leave the place.

The haunting story gained traction in the 1960s when an Argentine radio and TV personality,  Humberto Vilchez Vera, was said to have announced that he would spend the night in the upper story.   He was said to have emerged out of his wits, babbling incoherently and frothing from the mouth.   In fact, I remember being told that very story by my mom, as the bus we were taking home from downtown passed by the Casa Matusita.

Years later and by then back in Argentina, Vilchez wrote that, despite the fact that many people insist that he did, he never spent the night there, and that even though people insist that they saw him go in, he in fact never even entered the place.  He said that he was in a hospital about that time, but it was from nervous exhaustion, not ghost-induced hysteria, and that he was interned before he was supposed to go into the Matusita house.  Apparently, however, at the time of the supposed events, and since, few believed his explanation.

Whatever the origins, and whether haunted or not, the fact is that in many decades no one has occupied, and barely even touched, the second story of that otherwise sound and valuable property.