In Search of History
by Jorge Vargas
I have always agreed with those who say that without a past the present is but a farce and the future will always be a great vision. Perhaps it is because I was born in a country that has one of the richest and oldest histories in the world - though the Europeans say that our history goes back as far as that of Egypt we can proudly say that Egypt's history goes back as far as ours. Perhaps it is because I was born in a city that is among the oldest in the world and which boasts the oldest university in the entire continent and which was built upon the ruins of an ancient civilization by an empire that can trace its lineage directly back to the days of Ancient Rome.
Perhaps not. I am far simpler than that and grandiose thoughts are for grandiose people. Let the presidents think of Ancient Rome and comparisons with Egypt.
Maybe it's because I left my home and my story long before I was able to be conscious of just what that entailed. Maybe it's because when I left I was so young and therefore so oblivious that I was not aware of the fact that my destination required an actual airline flight until I was on my way to the airport. And maybe, just maybe, it's because one of the few things that links me to those individuals whom I've loved and whom I continue to love, and whom I left behind in the cataclysmic labyrinth of life's winding paths, is history.
After all, who else knows me if not those people who have known me since my childhood and who still live in the city and in the port that saw me grow up, learn to walk, learn to read and, through smog-covered Winters, taught me that the only color worth loving is the light blue of a summer sky? Those who know my past and who know the street corners on which I used to play and who heard with me the explosions that to this day awaken me in the dead of night can understand me and can comprehend that what foreigners - a foul but fair word - consider my jests are in fact the moments in which I speak the truest of truths. They know, without doubt, that what foreigners consider my 'quirks' are, in fact, natural reactions to the world I grew up.
There are thousands of things that a foreigner will simply never understand about me even after spending a hundred years in my home. There are hundreds of things that even my fellow citizens will never comprehend about me, but they'll come closer than the foreigners.
Thus, no matter how well-established I may be in a foreign land and no matter how well I might seem to fit in amongst foreigners, I am not myself one of those foreigners and that idea, which foreigners think a dream, of a return home to live amongst compatriots is in fact a mission and a plan put into effect several years ago though to some the why may be shrouded in mystery.
What sense is there in returning to a republic mired in poverty and corruption, which at times fails to demonstrate to the world and indeed to itself that it has the abilities to grow to become an economic powerhouse at a global and, as if it were not already, continental level? What sense is there in returning to a nation from which all to want to flee?
Perhaps there is no sense in it.
I can not deny, however, that a large part of my albeit short life has been dedicated to understanding precisely why it is that I have wanted to return to that old city in the heart of that antediluvian country after so many years away from it. I am helped by the fact that such was not always the case. I am assisted by the simple truth that for a while I was still too young to comprehend the meaning of 'home' and its differences with the word 'house' whether that was in English or in my native language, and, being ignorant, I did not see a reason to even bother thinking of anything beyond accepting my location and going on with my life as if my home had been a wonderful nightmarish dream filled with danger, suffering, joy, love, and hope.
Some people can move beyond childish ignorance and view their true homes in just that light but I am not so ungrateful or so lucky. Though I have many talents and strengths, I lack the ability to forget and ignore the people of my childhood, who cared for me when I was unable to care for myself. I am unable to forget that person who learned to walk while pushing my stroller; who tried tirelessly to teach me, a very late bloomer when it comes to bipedalism, those same abilities. I will never ignore that person.
I know not why it is that I am unable to forget, to ignore, and to move on in this new house and forget that ancient home that charged me somewhere around $15 to leave for the very first time.
But then an answer appears to present itself from out of the blur of languages, definitions, and re-definitions of homelands and Motherlands and out of the chaos of airports, airlines, and cab services. This answer is unclear but potent and its strength lies, as does the strength of my home, in history.
It came about when I realized that though my home is physically a beautiful place that, in every single corner of it, merits the name of 'paradise' and which every person living on Earth should see if that person considers oneself a lover of humanity and an admirer of wonder - and I write this as a lover of humanity and an admirer of wonder, not as a nationalist for I've no great respect for nationalism (just ask the nationalist). The reason for why I love my home has little to do with its nature and its aesthetic appeal. I respect both, of course, but they are not enough to make me love a place.
I realized that my love and my respect for the place I call home is related to the people who are there, and what I've in common with them, above all else, is my stories, my jokes, and my experiences. It is the fact that they know my history and I know theirs. I can read it on their faces just as they can read it on mine.
But today the streets of my home, the streets of Lima-Callao, are being swept by strong winds of change influenced by notions of modernity stemming from ancient Greece though, of course, marked by the sense of impending disaster and unstoppable greatness of the Andes. Today the streets of that city are being torn apart by construction workers to demonstrate that Peru is a modern country when world leaders arrive there in November. Sky-scrapers are being built almost monthly while newly manufactured automobiles race through the streets with engines capable of handling both natural gas and gasoline.
Movie theaters boast all of the latest releases from Western Europe and the United States, which has recently dedicated itself to mindless film, while the second largest stadium in South America is being cleaned every day in the outskirts of the city in preparation for the next match. The people are openly debating genetically-enhanced crops with an intensity and depth such that most North Americans would be unable to follow the conversation while enormous by-passes are being built in the heart of the city to alleviate traffic - the North Americans and the Europeans have been reduced to driving taxes when faced with their inability to rebuild their own poorly.
Now any nation can be modern. Chile is modern. Spain is modern. Germany is modern.
But those modern nations are young. The Chilean tribes of old never accomplished much of anything and were still in nascent stages when the Andean cultures were building great civilizations whereas the ancient groups that inhabited Spain prior to the Romans left little behind in the way of 'culture.' And the Germans? And the British?
Those nations are young when compared to a nation that can compare its landmark moments along the same time-line as Egypt and Israel.
Few nations can maintain their history while also advancing toward the future and Peru, along with China and Mexico amongst a handful of others, is one of those precious few. And therein enters the great pride that one can feel for a country not because of its history, (Many nations have long histories: look at the Iranians!) but due to the fact that its people are so true to themselves and to their background that in general (Though there are notable exceptions are there not, Mr. Vargas Llosa?) they refuse to forsake their history in both its positive and negative points.
Peru, to some, is an ancient citadel in the Andes, to others it is a modern and cosmopolitan city nestled between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, to others it is a football team, to others a flag, and still to others it is a President and his Ministers and a Congress. To me, Peru is a story.
Peru is a story of strength, perseverance and honesty in the face of adversity, hatred, and abuse. It is that story that makes me return because though one can read many books and speak countless languages, one can not know a story until it is heard from the story-tellers. It is my oath that I will never fall deaf to those story-tellers because, come what will, Peru's story is one that the entire world must know and remember.
As for the story of the place in which I live now, a place so far removed from my home that I care little for its present and far less about its future and I still question the validity of its 'history' due to the highly politicized tellings and re-tellings of it, let someone else listen to those ghoulish stories of power, control, and dominance. After all, though great warships and warplanes may be impressive and rolling tanks through Baghdad may certainly have been fun for some, I much prefer the story of the orphaned shoe-shiner from a forgotten province who eventually became the man that overthrew a dictatorship and became a democratic President of his country and the story of the indigenous Peruvians who continue to observe their rituals even after five hundred years of repression and of thousands of reasons to have stopped - death being among the gravest of these.
That latter set of stories, in my opinion, hold more significance for me because they are the sorts of tales that I memorized in the Romance language that I learned in my classroom back before I knew of borders and flags and emigration.
However, they are only a part of why I want to return home, perhaps a major part of it, but I am certain that more reasons will present themselves in my never-ending search of the history of that city and that country and, more importantly, the Peruvian people.
