The Inquisitors set up here in 1584, after having spent their first fifteen years facing the Church of La Merced. They bought the property from don Sancho de Ribera, son of one of the founders of Lima, for a small sum, and from this spot they watched out for the spiritual purity of what is today Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay. From this audience chamber, behind this massive table whose top is made of a single slab of wood, and which has sea monsters instead of feet, the Inquisitors in their white habits and with their army of lawyers, notaries, secretaries, jailers, and executioners struggled valiantly against witchcraft, Satanism, Judaism, blasphemy, polygamy, Protestantism, and perversions. All heterodoxies, all schisms, he thought. It was an arduous task, rigorous, legalistic, maniacal, that of the gentlemen Inquisitors, among whom there figured (their collaborators) the most illustrious intellectuals of the era: lawyers, professors, theological orators, versifiers, writers of prose. He thought: How many homosexuals could they have burned? A detailed investigation that filled innumerable pages of a file carefully stored away would precede each condemnation and auto-da-fé. He thought: How many mad people could they have tortured? How many simple people could they have hanged? Years would pass before the High Tribunal of the Holy Office would pass judgment from this table decorated with a skull, with silver inkstands with etched figures of swords, crosses, fish, and the inscription: “I, the light of the truth, guide your conscience and your hand. If you do not mete out justice, in your failure you work your own ruination.” He thought: How many real saints, how many daring people, how many poor devils could they have burned?
Because it wasn’t the light of the truth that guided the hand of the Inquisition: it was informers. They were the ones who filled these cells, dungeons, moist and deep caves in which no sunlight enters, and from which the prisoner would emerge crippled. He thought: You would have ended up here in any case, Mayta. For your way of life, of sex. The informer was protected to the utmost and his anonymity guaranteed, so he could collaborate without fear of reprisals. Here, still intact, is the Door of the Secret. Mayta, with a feeling of anguish, peered through the crack, linking himself with that accuser who, without being seen by the accused, would identify him by a simple nod of his head. The accused could be sent to prison for many years, his property confiscated, himself condemned to a degrading life or burned alive. He got goose bumps: how easy it was to get rid of a rival. All you had to do was enter this little room and, with your hand on the Bible, testify. Anatolio could come, spy though the crack, nod, pointing at him, and condemn him to the flames.
A doubtfully spelled notice informs us that they didn’t in fact burn very many: thirty-five in three centuries. It isn’t an overwhelming statistic. And of the thirty-five—a meager consolation—thirty were garroted before the fire devoured their cadavers. The first to have the lead in the grand spectacle of the Lima auto-da-fé was not garroted first: Mateo Salade, a Frenchman, was burned alive because he had carried out some chemical experiments that someone denounced as “dealings with Satan.” Salado? he thought. This poor frog must have contributed the Peruvian expression salado, a person with bad luck. He thought: From now on, you won’t be a salado revolutionary.
But even though the Holy Tribunal didn’t burn many people, it did torture an enormous number. After the informers, physical torture was the most frequently used device for sending victims, of both sexes, of all conditions and states, to the auto-da-fés. Here we see in all its glory a real circus of horrors, the instruments the Holy Office used—the verb is mathematically precise—to “extract the truth” from the suspect. Some cardboard dummies instruct the visitor about the pulleys and strappados—the rope from which the suspect was hung, hands tied behind his back and a hundred-pound weight strapped to his feet. Or how the victim was stretched out on the “pony,” an operating table that used four tourniquets to wrench out the limbs, one by one, or all four at once. The most banal of the devices was the stock, which immobilized the criminal’s head in a yoke as he was beaten. The most imaginative was the rack, of surrealistic refinement and fantasy—a kind of chair in which, using a system of hand and ankle cuffs, the executioner could torture the legs, arms, forearms, neck, and chest of the criminal. The most contemporary of the tortures is the hood—a cloth placed over the nose or in the mouth, through which water was poured, so that the victim could not breathe. The most spectacular was the brazier, placed next to the condemned person’s feet, which had previously been basted with oil so that they would roast evenly. Nowadays, Mayta thought, they use electric shocks on the testicles, sodium-pentothal injections, immersion in tubs of shit, cigarette burns. Not much progress in this field.
Ten times over, he thought: What are you doing here, Mayta? Is this a time for wasting a single minute? Don’t you have more important things to do? But he was moved even more deeply by the small wardrobe that for months, years, or in perpetuity, the people accused of Judaism, witchcraft, or of trafficking with the devil or of having blasphemed, and who had “vehemently repented,” abjured their sins, and promised to redeem themselves, had to wear. A room full of costumes: amid these horrors, this seems more human. Here is the “crown,” the conical hat, the hair shirt, white, embroidered with crosses, serpents, devils, and flames, in which the condemned marched to the Plaza Mayor—after a stop at the Callejón de la Cruz, where they were to kneel before a Dominican cross—where they would be whipped or sentenced. Garments they might also have to wear day and night, for as long as their sentence required. That’s the final image, the one that remains fixed in my memory, when, my visit over, I head for the exit, the idea of those condemned people who would go back to their normal business, wearing that uniform, which would inspire horror, panic, repulsion, nausea, scorn, and hatred wherever they went. He imagined what those days, months, and years must have been for the people who had to deck themselves out that way and be pointed out in the street, avoided like mad dogs. He thought: This museum is really worth a visit. Instructive, fascinating. Condensed in a few striking images and objects, there is an essential ingredient, always present in the history of this country, from the most remote times: violence. Violence of all kinds: moral, physical, fanatical, intransigent, ideological, corrupt, stupid—all of which have gone hand in hand with power here. And that other violence—dirty, petty, low, vengeful, vested, and selfish—which lives off the other kinds. It’s good to come here to this museum, to see how we have come to be what we are, why we are in the condition in which we find ourselves.
At the entrance to the Museum of the Inquisition, I see that at least another dozen old people, men, women, and children have joined the family in rags I saw before. They constitute a sort of grotesque royal court of tatters, grime, and scabs. As soon as they see me, they stretch out their black-nailed hands and beg. Violence behind me and hunger in front of me. Here, on these stairs, my country summarized. Here, touching each other, the two sides of Peruvian history. And I understand why Mayta accompanied me obsessively on my tour of the museum.
I virtually run to the Plaza San Martín to catch the bus. It’s late, and a half hour before the curfew, all traffic stops. I’m afraid the curfew is going to catch me in between my house and Avenida Grau. It’s only a few blocks, but when it gets dark there, it’s dangerous. There have been muggings, and just last week a rape. Luis Saldías’s wife—they just got married, he’s a hydraulic engineer, and they live right across the street from me. Her car broke down and she was outside after curfew, walking home from San Isidro. Right in those last few blocks, a patrol caught her. Three cops: they threw her into their car, stripped her—after beating her up for fighting back—and raped her. Then they let her out in front of her house, saying, “Just be thankful we didn’t shoot you.” That’s the standing order they have when they catch someone violating curfew. Luis Saldías told me everything, with his eyes filled with rage, and he added that, ever since, he’s happy whenever someone shoots a cop. He says he doesn’t care if the
terrorists win, because “nothing could be worse than what we’re already living.” I know he’s wrong, that it can still get worse, that there are no limits to our deterioration, but I respect his grief and keep my mouth shut.
Five
You get to Jauja by train. You buy your ticket the night before and get down to the Desamparados Station at six in the morning. I was told that the train is always packed, and sure enough, I have to fight my way onto a car. But I’m lucky and get a seat, while most of the passengers have to stand. There are no lavatories, so the more venturesome piss from the steps as the train rolls along. Even though I ate something just before leaving Lima, I start feeling hungry after a few hours. You can’t buy anything at any of the stops: Chosica, San Bartolomé, Matucana, San Mateo, Casapalca, and La Oroya. Twenty-five years ago, the food vendors would pile onto the train at every stop, carrying fruit, sodas, sandwiches, and candy. Now all they sell are trinkets and herb tea.
The trip is uncomfortable and slow, but full of surprises. First, there is the train itself, inching its way from sea level to an altitude of three miles. It crosses the Andes at Anticona Pass and stops when it reaches the foot of Meiggs Mountain. Looking at the sublime spectacle, I forget the armed soldiers posted in every car and the machine gun on the roof of the locomotive, in case of attack. How can this train stay in service? The terrorists are constantly cutting the highway to the central mountain range by blasting landslides out of the slopes. Road travel is practically impossible. Why haven’t they blown up the train, why haven’t they blocked the tunnels, or destroyed the bridges? Perhaps the terrorists have some strategic need to keep communications open between Lima and Junín. I’m glad; I couldn’t reconstruct Mayta’s adventure without making the trip to Jauja.
Peak follows peak, some separated by abysses at the bottom of which roar rushing rivers. The little train goes over bridges and through tunnels. It’s impossible not to think of the engineer Meiggs and what he accomplished here. Over eighty years ago, he directed the laying of these tracks in this geography of gorges, snow-capped mountains, peaks buffeted by wind, and under constant threat of flash floods. Did Mayta the revolutionary think about that engineer’s odyssey as he took this train for the first time one morning in February or March, twenty-five years ago? He would have thought about the suffering of the workers as they laid these rails, erected these bridges, and bored out these tunnels—the thousands of cholos and Indians who worked for a symbolic salary, at times nothing more than a fistful of bad food and some coca, who sweated twelve hours a day, splitting rocks, blasting stone, carrying ties, leveling the bed so that the highest railroad in the world would become a reality. How many of them lost fingers, hands, and eyes dynamiting the mountains? How many fell into these precipices or were buried by the landslides that rolled over the camps where they were sleeping, one on top of another, trembling with cold, groggy with fatigue, stupefied with coca, kept warm only by their ponchos and the breath of their buddies? He began to feel the altitude: a certain difficulty in breathing, the pounding blood in his temples, his accelerated heart rate. At the same time, he could barely hide his excitement. He felt like smiling, whistling, and shaking hands with everyone in the car. He was dying with impatience to see Vallejos again.
“I am Professor Ubilluz,” he tells me, stretching out his hand when I emerge from Jauja Station, where, after an interminable wait, two policemen in street clothes frisk me and pick through the bag in which I’m carrying my pajamas. “Shorty to my friends. And, if it’s all right with you, we are already friends.”
I wrote, telling him I was going to visit, and he’d come to meet me. Right around the station, there is a considerable military presence: soldiers with rifles, roadblocks, and barbed wire. And patrolling the street at a snail’s pace, an armored car. We start walking. “Are things bad here?”
“It’s been a bit quieter these past few weeks,” Ubilluz says. “They’ve actually lifted the curfew. We can go out to gaze at the stars. We’d forgotten what they look like.”
He tells me that a month ago there was a massive attack by the insurgents. The firing went on all night, and the next day there were bodies all over the place. They smelled so bad and there were so many of them that they had to be doused with kerosene and burned. Ever since, the rebels haven’t attempted another important action in the city. Of course, every morning you wake up and see the mountains covered with little red hammer-and-sickle flags. Every afternoon, the army patrols yank them out.
“I’ve reserved a room for you over at the Paca Inn,” he adds. “A beautiful place, you’ll see.”
He’s a little old man, neat, stuffed into a striped suit he keeps buttoned up, which makes him look like a kind of moving package. His tie has a tiny knot, and his shoes look as if they’ve been dipped in mud.
He’s got that ceremonious manner typical of mountain people, and his Spanish is carefully enunciated, although from time to time he uses a Quechua expression. We find an old taxi near the plaza. The city hasn’t changed much since the last time I was here. Outwardly, at any rate, there are few traces of war. There are no garbage dumps or crowds of beggars. The tiny houses seem clean and immortal, with their decrepit portals and complicated ironwork. Professor Ubilluz spent thirty years teaching science in the Colegio Nacional San José. When he retired—about the same time that the movement we took for a simple act of terrorism by a group of extremists began to take on the proportions of a civil war—there was a ceremony in his honor attended by all the graduates who had been his students. When he gave his farewell address, he wept.
“Whuddya say, brother,” said Vallejos.
“How are ya’, kid,” said Mayta.
“So you finally made it here,” said Vallejos.
“You said it.” Mayta smiled. “Finally.”
They hugged each other. How can the Paca Inn stay open? Do tourists still come to Jauja? Of course not. What would they come to see? All festivals, even the famous Carnival, have been canceled. But the inn stays open because the functionaries who come from Lima stay there, and, at times, so do military missions. None must be here now, because there are no guards anywhere. The inn hasn’t been painted for ages and looks miserably run-down. There is no staff, no one behind the desk: just a watchman, who does everything. After I leave my bag in the small, cobwebbed room, I walk down and sit on the terrace that faces the lake, where Professor Ubilluz is waiting for me.
Did I know the famous story about Paca? He points to the glittering water, the blue sky, the fine line of peaks that surround the lake. This, hundreds of years ago, was a city of greedy folk. The beggar appeared one radiantly sunny morning when the air was clear. He went begging from house to house, and at every one, he was chased away with insults and dogs. But at one of the last houses he found a charitable widow who lived with a small child. She gave the beggar something to eat and some words of encouragement. Then the beggar began to glow and showed the charitable woman his true face—he was Jesus—and gave her this order: “Take your son and leave Paca immediately, carrying all you can. Don’t look back, no matter what you hear.” The widow obeyed and left Paca. But as she was going up the mountain she heard a loud noise, like a huge drum, and out of curiosity turned around. She managed to see the horrifying landslide of rocks and mud that buried Paca and its inhabitants and the waters that turned the town into a tranquil lake filled with ducks, trout, mallards. Neither she nor her son saw or heard anything more, because statues can’t see or hear. But the citizens of Jauja can and do see both of them, in the distance: two rocky formations staring out at the lake from a spot to which processions of pilgrims go to devote a moment to the people God punished for being greedy and insensible and who lie under those waters on which frogs croak, ducks quack, and where, formerly, tourists rowed.
“What do you think, comrade?”
Mayta could see that Vallejos was as happy and excited as he was himself. They walked to the boardinghouse where the lieutenant lived, on Tarapacá Street. How was the
trip? Very good, and most of all, very moving, he’d never forget the Infiernillo Pass. Without stopping his chatter, he took note of the colonial houses, the clear air, the rosy cheeks of the Jauja girls. You were in Jauja, Mayta, but you didn’t feel very well.
“I think I’ve got mountain sickness. A really weird feeling. As if I were going to faint.”
“A bad beginning for the revolution.” Vallejos laughed, snatching Mayta’s suitcase out of his hands. Vallejos was wearing khaki trousers and shirt, boots with enormous soles, and he had a crew cut. “Some coca tea, a little snooze, and you’ll be a new man. At eight we’ll meet over at Professor Ubilluz’s place. A great guy, you’ll see.”
Vallejos had ordered a cot set up in his own room at the boardinghouse, the top floor of a house with rooms lining either side of a railed gallery. He left Mayta there, advising him to sleep awhile to get over the mountain sickness. He left, and Mayta saw a shower in the bathroom. I’m going to shower when I get up and again at bedtime every day I’m in Jauja, he thought. He would stock up on showers for when he’d have to go back to Lima. He went to bed fully clothed, only taking off his shoes before he closed his eyes. But he couldn’t sleep.
You didn’t know much about Jauja, Mayta. What, for example? More legend than reality, like that biblical explanation of the birth of Paca. The Indians who lived here had been part of the Huanaca civilization, one of the most vigorous conquered by the Incan Empire. Because of that, the Xauxas allied themselves with Pizarro and the Conquistadores, and took vengeance on their old masters. This region must have been immensely wealthy—who could ever guess, seeing how modest a place it is today—during colonial times, when the name Jauja was a synonym for abundance.
He knew that this little town was the first capital of Peru, designated as such by Pizarro during his Homeric trek from Cajamarca to Cuzco along one of those four Inca highways that went up and down the Andes in the same way the revolutionary columns snake their way nowadays. Those months when it could boast being the capital were its most glorious. Then, when Lima snatched the scepter from it, Jauja, like all the cities and cultures of the Andes, went into an irreversible decline and servitude, subordinate to that new center of national life set in the most unhealthy corner of the coast, from which it would go on ceaselessly expropriating all the energies of the country for its own use.
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta Page 12