4-18-11
Today, for the first time, I met with my ISP advisor, Jacqueline Fowks. She is a spirited, young academic that works at the PUCP and corresponded with a local news channel to cover the recent elections. She kind of reminded me of Gretchen Heefner, actually. This last week I struggled on my own to proceed with my research, but ultimately felt like I lacked direction and guidance. I emailed Jacqueline most days and requested help from her, Sonia, and various other sources. The thing is that other people’s project deal directly with people. Other students can find their answers through experience or inquiry, while I’m attempting to answer my own questions through extensive reading in archives, talking to academics, and historical research. Therefore I’m much more alone in this project than any of my peers. I don’t even know if I’ll do any interviews at all.
Spending time languishing in the small, dusty archives really stressed me out, especially when I repeatedly failed to find even any mention of the internal conflict (with even fewer mentions of campesinos). Talking to Jacqueline today alleviated so many of my fears and it felt so encouraging to talk to an academic that supports this project. Although she can’t provide me with answers, she can provide with with avenues to find them myself. She critiqued a lot of what I’ve done, but cut down a lot of my work. For instance, I think that I will no longer even look into events occurring in Lima, with Grupo Colina, attacks against police or politicians, or anything occurring in the selva. Actually, I think I might cut out the entire decade of the 90s from my search because most reported events were terrorist attacks committed in urban areas like Miraflores.
My facebook status today is, “Recently I’ve felt that I’m recreating Bel Canto in my own life.” I don’t know how many of you have read Bel Canto, but it is a book written by Ann Patchett about an embassy that’s taken over by “unnamed quechua terrorists” and centers on the experience of an opera singer that is one of the hostages. I was forced to read the book in high school because my high school, that brought in amazing speakers fyi like Martha Nussbaum, brought Ann Patchett to speak to us for a Common Time. Ann Patchett, first of all, is very full of herself and hearing her talk made me dislike the book even more. It took my mom like two years to get through that book. Anyway, I enjoyed what that book taught me about singing and Opera, topics that I found applicable to my high school life. Currently I find myself again thinking about Bel Canto. At the time Ann Patchett said that she based the book on an article she’d found from the 90s about an embassy overtaken by terrorists. She did not name then, nor in the book, the country. The event that she, in fact, wrote about was the 1996 hostage situation in Peru that lasted for four months of the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Peru. Members of the MRTA, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, came to the residence during a large party being held and took everyone hostage. The let most women go within the first few days, but kept quite a few people hostage for four months. What the news fails to mention is that they took the place hostage because they demanded the release from prison of about a hundred MRTA members held in prison.
Fujimori’s dictatorial government organized Operación Chavín de Huantar in which they essentially dug tunnels to the residence, killed all of the MRTA members, and got the hostages out of there. One of the people actually at this party was Alejandro Toledo, which I find fascinating. Fujimori’s brother was also a hostage. There’s a video of Fujimori inspecting the residence the day after this operation and he just walks past the bodies of MRTA soldiers with disgust and no vestige of human sympathy as he ascends the stairs. It’s a fairly powerful scene. (Fujimori’s the one in prison for human rights violations and his daughter might be the next president of Peru. Shit. Several Peruvians have told me that their’s is a family of bandits and robbers hungry for power.)
You all probably don’t care about all this historical stuff, but Ann Patchett’s a crap writer, even if she picks interesting topics. She claimed to have thought of so many things on her own, but it’s obvious that she had to do extensive research not only about opera, but also about the events at the ambassador’s residence and the Peruvian political climate. Why did she leave the country unnamed? Why did she so obviously refer to Quechua speakers and politicians of Japanese heritage which OBVIOUSLY refers to Peru. I remember Ms. Bernard hated her for her flagrant misuse of Opera terminology. Oh I miss Bernard…
Anyways, our director Sonia is coming to Lima today as a stopover to go visit the girls in Iquitos. I’m glad that I have progress to show her and a clearer idea of where I might proceed from here. I feel much more organized and relieved about this entire project and I might actually create an end product that I find both interesting and important.
xoxo,
Claire
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