Just two days before a new electoral process in Peru, the memories do not come as ordered thoughts, but as machine gun bursts that shake my body. They say that there are crises of three, seven or twelve years in marriage; They say that menopause brings hot flashes and that forty years demands a “rebirth.” I didn’t feel those crises. My “anniversaries of concern” were neither biological nor domestic; They were political, they were social, they were Peruvian.
My memory has the sound of a phone ringing non-stop. He was 15 years old when Velasco took the diaries. While my brother went out to the streets of Miraflores to defend freedom, I stayed at home, in charge of writing down names, recording incidents, trying to track down the detainees who were taken to El Potao. At that age, I learned that in my country you don’t always know where people are taken.
Shortly after, I celebrated my quince in Washington and Philadelphia. I remember sitting with an American family watching the news: the “Limazo”, the police strike of ’75, the chaos and looting in my Lima. I felt a desperate urge to call my uncles, to pick me up, to be close. I don’t know if it was patriotism or simply the need to feel protected in the face of a country that was crumbling from a distance.
At 16, at a school retreat, I heard that Velasco had been dismissed. The nuns said everything would be fine, but I asked to be picked up. I wanted to understand. I have always wanted to understand.
Then came adult life and with it, the first government of Alan García. My eldest daughter was born in 1985, between endless lines for a jar of ENCI milk and the desperate search for American disposable diapers because her skin couldn’t handle local cotton. It was a daily struggle for the basics, a war economy in peacetime.
In 1992, another burst: the photo of Roberto “Bobby” Ramírez del Villar behind the bars of his house after Fujimori’s self-coup. He was 33 years old and that look of his, firm but captivating, still shakes me. It was visual testimony that our democracy was once again under lock and key.
Today, the list of presidents runs through my mind: Vizcarra, Merino, Sagasti, Castillo, Boluarte… seven names in a historical sigh that still shakes us.
But this electoral process is different. It is the first one I face without my friend, my partner, my manager. I was widowed a few months before turning 40 in a marriage that did not know the crises of books because I always had my own life plans in parallel. However, today I am missing that hug. I feel the same fear as the girl who answered the phone in ’74; that need to be sustained in the face of uncertainty.
And adding to this fear is the absence of Francisco, my son, who left 12 years ago. I think about him, his refusal to accept an unjust country, his genuine curiosity that led him to tour Cusco and then get on a bus to Puno alone, with a book in hand, to get to know the communities. Francisco not only traveled through Peru, he thought about it, suffered about it and wanted it differently.
Days before voting, my memories and my absences sit with me at the table. Peru has given me a tough skin in the face of crises, but my heart continues to look for the hug that will protect me from the next blast.
