When I was born in 1946, Lima had a population of 640,000. Now that I am about to turn 77 in 2023, Lima is a city of 10 million inhabitants. The population has increased more than fifteen times. In some ways you could say I survived next to the city. I got to know all 43 districts and municipalities, and I can say with real pride that I suffered, but also enjoyed this gray, sleepy city. As Herman Melville describes it in “Moby Dick”:
Nor is it at all the memory of her earthquakes that toppled the cathedral; nor the rush of her hectic seas; nor the tearlessness of parched skies that never rain; nor the sight of her broad field of crooked spires, torn casing stones, and crosses all hanging (like castellated yards of anchored fleets); and its suburban avenues with house walls one over the other, like a thrown deck of cards; It’s not just these things that make tearless Lima the strangest and saddest city you can see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and there is a greater horror in this whiteness of her woe.
Imagine a sandy desert stretching along the Pacific Ocean. This scruffy coastline is bisected by a river, the Rimac. In the middle of the created oasis lies a metropolis – uncertain, cheerful, oh so civilized, somewhat isolated from the world. The lush tropical flora belies the fact that it does not rain here: the proximity to the sea ensures that the moist air produces new buds and shoots all year round.
Despite, or perhaps because of, their many facets and complexities, Lima and Peru have been depicted and imagined in countless ways since the city’s official founding by Francisco Pizarro in 1535, and the ensuing five centuries have seen countless visions, histories, and interpretations. I myself have approached Lima from different angles: I have written stories about young people on the margins, in the working-class neighborhoods of Lima, and also, as the son of Japanese parents who settled in Peru, I have turned Limeñan into fiction.
What should I read before packing my bags?
A number of authors provide valuable insights into the complex past of Peru and Lima. Let’s start with Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616). He was the son of a Spanish captain and a palla – a member of the Inca royal family – which made him a mestizo. Spiritually, he is considered the first Peruvian. Are “Royal commentaries on the Incas and the general history of Peru”, about the origin of the Incas, the Kings of Peru, and Their Ways of Worship, Laws, and Government in Times of Peace and War, was first published in Lisbon in 1609. It was very successful – and is still available today. Today we know that De la Vega’s vision of the Incas was idealized.
Another essential author in the field of Peruvian letters is Ricardo Palma (1833-1919). Are “Peruvian traditions‘ consists of four parts containing crónicas, or accounts, of the Incas, the Conquista, the Viceroyalty period, the struggle for independence and the Republican era, all told from his point of view in Lima. Palma is light-hearted, ironic, funny and anticlerical in nature, and in his writing he pokes fun at the opulent interiorities of viceroys and courtesans.