In Their Shoes: In Their Shoes

10: Peru and Mexico: Latinos Speaking Up for Joy

10: r:J1ru anJJ/fexico: L'inos cJeakinr1Jpfor //0'1 ((Ifind myselftraveling for self-revelation; I reveal myselfto myselfin transit.» - Russell Banks, Continental Drift 11959, I was in New York and spotted an ad. The S.S. Argentina sailed in three days for Buenos Aires. I called and booked passage. Checking out of the Plaza Hotel, with one suitcase in hand, I hailed a taxi. I gave the number of a pier to the Irish driver, a Mr. McGrory. "And who, my dear," he asked, "will be seeing you off?" "You! You!" I exclaimed. At the pier, I paid, tipped and, brimming with joy at a new sense of discovery, embraced Mr. McGrory. Then I walked aboard ship, bound for a new world. But, some friends asked later, why would you want to do that? And alone? I search for logical answers but always end up thinking my madness is right, their desire for a mundane security wrong. Would they say Columbus should have stayed put? Or Magellan? Or that Freya Stark, who in our current era explored places where no other Europeans had been, should have stayed home in England? Like Stark, a desire to know, to see with my own eyes, burns within me. Initially I am not always sure why I go one place and not another. As a writer, living my research, I trust my own vision, ears and heart. 93 94 In Their Shoes The 5.5. Ar;gentina was so luxurious it was like the WaldorfAstoria afloat. After ten days, with stops in Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo, we docked in Buenos Aires. I checked into the Plaza of that grand city, and, after some days of baby beef and tangos, I moved on to Paraguay. Nothing much was going on there, except I discovered a land of beautiful flowers and beautiful people. I continued on to Bolivia, where, landing in the La Paz airport, I was at the height of Pikes Peak and looking up to the snowcapped Illimani Mountain rising more than twenty-one thousand feet. From La Paz I traveled to Lake Titicaca. Boarding a ship, I steamed across the highest navigable waters in the world, on a lake so large it took all night to traverse. And then I was in Peru. It was downhill from there, traveling by train over some of the most rugged and spectacular scenery this side of Nepal. Once at the Peruvian capital and settled in the Hotel Bolivar, I heard an inner voice saying: "Yes, you are lonely here. But stay. Find a place and live awhile." The little house was there, where I looked for it, in the beautiful section of Lima called Miraflores, literally meaning , "look at the flowers." Another day, I entered a building on Union Street, walked up a flight of stairs, entered the editorial offices of La Prensa, a Spanish-language daily owned by a Peruvian, Pedro Beltran. I had learned he was married to an American, Miriam, from San Francisco, who worked parttime at the paper. It was my good luck she was in her office. Meeting her, I said I wanted a job. But, unfortunately , my knowledge of Spanish was not sufficient to write in that language. "I'd like to start a column for you in English," I proposed . Having researched the population, I cited the number of Lima residents who spoke English as their first language ' as well as the number ofPeruvians studying English "who will read my column, to practice their English." Peru and Mexico: Latinos Speaking Up for Joy 95 "It sounds like a good idea," she agreed. Then we settled on my pay. That same day I handed city editor Pedro Cortazar a "Lima Today" column. Later I returned and read proof. I had absolute control over my material, such as the persons I chose to interview, and no editor ever changed my copy. I wrote a total of 1,095 columns for La Prensa-one a day for three years. During that time, 1959 to 1963, I traversed the length of the Peruvian coast, as arid as the sands ofSaudi Arabia. I went on a whaling vessel offthe coast from Paita and watched men shoot whales. This was before a worldwide moratorium, when men were shooting two thousand whales a year, some of them babies. I discovered the beauty of the Callejon de Huayas, with its nearly twenty-two...