Lima, 3/23-3/30

As I wrote that title something popped into my head from Cuzco life, something so run-of-the-mill in that city that it never even occurred to me to write about it. In fact, you could say it is the soundtrack of my life and of everyone who lives in Cuzco, and what it is is a guy with a loudspeaker selling fruit door-to-door. Well, I suppose it's not just one guy, but since I've never actually seen one of these fruit sellers and have only heard the loudspeaker monotone that carries for blocks, I imagine it as some larger-than-life omnipresent being, who sits in his perch in the sky saying "plátano plátano, manzana naranja papaya plátano, lima lima naranja lima dulce, mango papaya naranja plátano..."

Lima actually seems like a pretty nice city. It's a pleasant surprise after continuously being told by Cuzqueñans about how much of a shithole it is, but I might be getting that impression only because our group is staying in a hostel in Miraflores, which is the richest, most touristy part of the city. What strikes me most about Lima is its faded quality. By this I mean that, although many of the buildings are painted bright colors, there always seems to be a light mist covering the whole city that is barely noticeable but just gives you the slight impression of being in a cloud. The outskirts of Lima start to feel very desert-like because of the color of the sand, but on the coast there are some beautiful beaches. It's always around 70 degrees and humid, and it never ever rains, even though it looks like it's going to about 50% of the time.

There's definitely a lot to do--Cuzco is tiny in comparison with Lima, which is home to 8 million people, a full third of the population of Peru. One thing that they don't have in Cuzco is good movie theaters, so yesterday Raquel and I decided to take advantage of our week here to go to the movies. We both wanted to see something in Spanish, and naively supposed that anything with a title in Spanish would probably be dubbed into Spanish. So we chose one called "La Película Época Loca" ("The Crazy Epic Movie"?) which neither of us had heard of. For those of you fortunate enough not to have heard of it either, it is basically a spoof of various blockbuster movies and MTV shows, all thrown together in one movie. Needless to say it was totally ridiculous, but the best irony of the whole situation was that we couldn't have picked a movie more chock-full of American culture to see in Peru. Among the more uncomfortable moments were when one of the characters made a comment about how the White Bitch (a play off the "White Witch" from Narnia) doesn't let gay people get married--the audience let out kind of a collective befuddled groan. Then there were a handful of seemingly non-sequiter lines like "I just saved a lot of money on my car insurance" that had to have been lost on the Peruvian audience. The fact that this movie is even shown in Peru tells you how much of our culture is exported. Oh well--I for one laughed so hard in one part that I almost died from choking on soda.

One cool thing about Lima is the Afroperuvian culture--in the era when Peru had African slaves, they were mostly concentrated here on the coast, while people in rural areas used indigenous people to do their work. There is nothing more fun to watch than Afroperuvian music and dance, and the first night we were in Lima we got to see an amazing Afroperuvian band. Then there’s “chicha” and “technohuayno” music, developed by migrants to Lima from rural areas, which is like an electric version of traditional Quechua music, performed in neon-lighted pubs by night and circulated primarily through pirating (unfortunately I didn’t get to see any live music of this kind, but it was interesting enough to put it in here). Another fun fact: the inhabitants of shantytowns surrounding the central part of Lima make up 80% of the city’s overall population—mostly immigrants from the poor rural areas of Peru.

On the second day in Lima, we visited a theater group called Yuyachkani ("I remember" in Quechua), which is also a social activist group that uses theater as a mode of protest. We saw two plays by them, both related to the dark era in Peru's recent history when the country was torn by violence between Sendero Luminoso (a Maoist guerrilla group that claimed to represent indigenous rights but killed mostly indigenous people) and then the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori in the 90's. They were both really good (the theater productions, not the violence). Then we had a mask-acting workshop at the same place in which we were taught how to develop a character working from a mask, and also the movements to act out that character. It was really, really fun.

Another day we visited Chinatown in Lima. The Chinese have brought many things to Peru, the most important of which, obviously, is food—all over Lima you will see restaurants that specialize in “chifa,” which is the Peruvian version of Chinese food. It’s quite delicious, and actually about as similar to actual Chinese food as any “Chinese” food you will get in the states, but the difference is that we have the nerve to call ours Chinese food whereas Peruvians are smart enough to give it a different name. The Chinese migrant population is an interesting topic of conversation considering that in Peru (and in most other countries in Latin America, I’ve heard) anyone who has eyes that are even a little slanted or narrow automatically gains the nickname “Chino.” As a result of this, I estimate that at least ¼ of the Peruvian population is named “Chino,” considering that 10% of the population is actually made up of Chinese descendents, and more on top of that come from other Asian countries like Japan and Korea. However, the word “chino” is never actually derogatory, to the extent that even non-chinese Asian immigrants even refer to themselves in some contexts as “chino.” For example, the former president/dictator Alberto Fujimori, who was of Japanese descent, had a campaign chant composed of the words “Chino, Chino, Chino Chino Chino” and accompanied by a techno-huayno beat. There’s an interesting comment on multi-culturalism for you.

And now for an amusing night-life anecdote: one night Raquel and I went exploring around the beach (which is only a few blocks from our hostel in Miraflores—yes, we spent a fair amount of time after classes on the beach, haha) and when we got hungry, we visited a street that we call “Pizza Street”, because it is chock full of cheap pizza restaurants (the pizza in Peru is decent, but not “the best in the world”, as I’ve heard Cuzqueñans claim). We chose a little joint with outdoor tables and a live band playing some kind of fusion of Afro-Peruvian and traditional Peruvian music. Most of the guys in the band looked Peruvian, but there was one white guy who turned out to be from New York, and another guy whose parents were Guatemalan but had grown up in Europe. They were both incredibly drunk off Pisco sour and got really excited when Raquel told them she was from the Bronx. The guy from New York bought Raquel and I both roses from a vendor, then said he wanted to make a toast to “a world without borders.” Then a few minutes later he laughed and said, “Actually, that’s a lie, I’m a capitalist pig, I like borders.” It turns out he wasn’t lying; both he and the Guatemalan guy were CEOs of some corporate communications corporation, and just play in the band in their spare time. Anyway, within an hour Raquel was being hit on by both of the CEOs, our waiter, and a 70-year-old man who was sitting at the table next to us—at which point I began hinting that maybe we should go.

One last note especially for my Jersey friends: I went to Atlantic City in Peru. No joke, there is a casino in Lima called Atlantic City, right near our hotel in Miraflores. I have to say it didn’t come anywhere close to matching the charmingly offensive tackiness of the real Atlantic City. On second thought though, I don’t miss Atlantic City very much. :)