up onto that platform you’ll end up going into politics, and literature can go to hell. And your family along with it. Can it be that you don’t know what it means to go into politics in this country?”
“I headed the protest against nationalization. I can’t back down now. It’s just one demonstration, just one speech. That doesn’t mean devoting one’s life to politics!”
“Then there’ll be another and another and you’ll end up being a candidate for president. Are you going to leave your books, the quiet, comfortable life you’re living now, to go into politics in Peru? Don’t you know how they’re going to pay you back? Have you forgotten Uchuraccay?” *
“I’m not going to go into politics or give up literature or be a candidate for any office. I’m going to speak at this one demonstration so that it will at least be clear to everyone that not all of us Peruvians are letting ourselves be taken in by Señor Alan García.”
“Don’t you know what kind of thugs you’re picking as enemies? I’ve noticed you don’t answer the phone anymore.”
Because, ever since the day our manifesto came out, the anonymous calls had started. They came in the daytime or at night. In order to be able to get some sleep we had to disconnect the phone. The voices sounded like different ones each time, so that I came to think that every Aprista’s idea of fun, once he had a drink under his belt, was to call my house to threaten us. These calls went on for almost the entire three years this account covers. They finally became a part of the family routine. When the calls stopped, a sort of vacuum, a nostalgia even, lingered on in the house.
The demonstration—we called it A Meeting for Freedom—was set for August 21 in the classic place for rallies in Lima: the Plaza San Martín. The organizing of it was in the hands of independents who had never been political militants or had any experience in this sort of contention, people like the university professor Luis Bustamante Belaunde or the business leader Miguel Vega Alvear, with whom we were to become fast friends. Among the political novices that all of us were, the exception perhaps was Miguel Cruchaga, Belaunde Terry’s nephew, who as a young man had been a member of the AP (Acción Popular: Popular Action) party. But he had kept his distance from active militancy for some time. My friendship with the tall, gentlemanly, grave Miguel was of long standing, but it had become a very intimate one after my return to Peru, after nearly sixteen years in Europe, in 1974, on the eve of the capture of the news media by the dictatorship. We always used to talk politics whenever we were together, and each time, somewhat cast over with sickly melancholy, we wondered why everything in Peru always tended to get worse, why we were wasting opportunities and persisting so perversely toward working for our ruin and our downfall. And each time, too, in a very vague way, we outlined projects to do something, at some time or other. That intellectual game took on, all of a sudden, in the fever and boiling fury of those August days, a disconcerting reality. Because of this background and because of his enthusiasm, Miguel took on the job of coordinating the arrangements for the protest rally. These were intense and exhausting days which, from a distance, seem to me to be the most generously motivated and the most exciting ones of those years. I had asked the shareholders of the threatened companies and the opposition parties—Popular Action and the Christian Popular Party—to remain on the sidelines, so as to make the event clearly a matter of principle, of Peruvians who were not taking to the streets to defend personal or political interests but to defend values that seemed to us to be endangered by nationalization.
So many people mobilized to help us—collecting money, printing pamphlets and placards, preparing pennants, lending their homes for meetings, offering transportation
“I headed the protest against nationalization. I can’t back down now. It’s just one demonstration, just one speech. That doesn’t mean devoting one’s life to politics!”
“Then there’ll be another and another and you’ll end up being a candidate for president. Are you going to leave your books, the quiet, comfortable life you’re living now, to go into politics in Peru? Don’t you know how they’re going to pay you back? Have you forgotten Uchuraccay?” *
“I’m not going to go into politics or give up literature or be a candidate for any office. I’m going to speak at this one demonstration so that it will at least be clear to everyone that not all of us Peruvians are letting ourselves be taken in by Señor Alan García.”
“Don’t you know what kind of thugs you’re picking as enemies? I’ve noticed you don’t answer the phone anymore.”
Because, ever since the day our manifesto came out, the anonymous calls had started. They came in the daytime or at night. In order to be able to get some sleep we had to disconnect the phone. The voices sounded like different ones each time, so that I came to think that every Aprista’s idea of fun, once he had a drink under his belt, was to call my house to threaten us. These calls went on for almost the entire three years this account covers. They finally became a part of the family routine. When the calls stopped, a sort of vacuum, a nostalgia even, lingered on in the house.
The demonstration—we called it A Meeting for Freedom—was set for August 21 in the classic place for rallies in Lima: the Plaza San Martín. The organizing of it was in the hands of independents who had never been political militants or had any experience in this sort of contention, people like the university professor Luis Bustamante Belaunde or the business leader Miguel Vega Alvear, with whom we were to become fast friends. Among the political novices that all of us were, the exception perhaps was Miguel Cruchaga, Belaunde Terry’s nephew, who as a young man had been a member of the AP (Acción Popular: Popular Action) party. But he had kept his distance from active militancy for some time. My friendship with the tall, gentlemanly, grave Miguel was of long standing, but it had become a very intimate one after my return to Peru, after nearly sixteen years in Europe, in 1974, on the eve of the capture of the news media by the dictatorship. We always used to talk politics whenever we were together, and each time, somewhat cast over with sickly melancholy, we wondered why everything in Peru always tended to get worse, why we were wasting opportunities and persisting so perversely toward working for our ruin and our downfall. And each time, too, in a very vague way, we outlined projects to do something, at some time or other. That intellectual game took on, all of a sudden, in the fever and boiling fury of those August days, a disconcerting reality. Because of this background and because of his enthusiasm, Miguel took on the job of coordinating the arrangements for the protest rally. These were intense and exhausting days which, from a distance, seem to me to be the most generously motivated and the most exciting ones of those years. I had asked the shareholders of the threatened companies and the opposition parties—Popular Action and the Christian Popular Party—to remain on the sidelines, so as to make the event clearly a matter of principle, of Peruvians who were not taking to the streets to defend personal or political interests but to defend values that seemed to us to be endangered by nationalization.
So many people mobilized to help us—collecting money, printing pamphlets and placards, preparing pennants, lending their homes for meetings, offering transportation
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