“The people who will vote for me will come above all from sectors C and D, from the poor and the very poor,” he assured me, “and the party that I am going to take votes away from isn’t going to be the Democratic Front but the United Left. My own class, the bourgeoisie, has nothing but contempt for me, because I talk slang and because they think I lack culture. However, even though I’m a whitie, mestizos and blacks from the shantytowns like me a lot and will vote for me.”
It turned out the way he said it would. And what he promised me in that conversation was also true, expressed in terms of an allegory that he was to repeat many times: “The municipal elections are the preliminary bout and the Front and I must do our handkerchief dance in them. But the presidential election is the main bout and then I’ll come out in favor of you. Because I share your ideas. And because I need you to be president in order to be a success as the mayor of Lima.”
Belmont’s campaign was very clever. He used fewer television commercials than we and the APRA did, he visited over and over again the humblest neighborhoods, he declared until we were fed up with hearing it that he was in favor of me but against “the parties that are all burned out,” and to everyone’s surprise, in the televised debate with Juan Incháustegui, when we were certain that Juan would steamroller him with his technical marshaling of facts, Belmonte came out very well, thanks to the advisers that he brought with him, and above all to his slangy impudence and his experience in front of the camera.
The municipal elections brought on the break between the factions of the left, held together up until then in a precarious coalition under the leadership of Alfonso Barrantes Lingán. This leadership had been disputed for some time by the most radical sectors of the United Left, who accused the former mayor of Lima of bossism, of having toned down his Marxism to the point of changing it into a social-democratic position and, even graver still, of having put up such a respectful opposition to Alan García’s administration that the two of them gave the appearance of being hand in glove.
Despite inordinate efforts of the Communist Party to avoid the rupture, it took place nonetheless. The United Left presented as its candidate for the mayoralty of Lima a Catholic with leftist leanings, the sociologist and university professor Henry Pease García, who was also to be their candidate for the presidency of the Republic. The sector that supported Barrantes, for its part, under the label of Acuerdo Socialista (Socialist Alliance), put up another sociologist, Senator Enrique Bernales, as its candidate for the first vice presidency on the ticket with Barrantes.
The second anniversary of Libertad was approaching — we had designated the rally in the Plaza San Martín on August 21, 1987, as the event that marked its beginning — and those of us on the political committee thought that this was a good chance to show that, unlike the Communists and Socialists, we had really managed to achieve unity.
We had celebrated the first anniversary of Libertad on August 21, 1988, in the city of Tacna, with a demonstration on the Paseo Cívico. Until just a short while before the time announced for the rally, almost the only people about were a handful of curiosity seekers standing around by the rostrum. I was waiting in a nearby house that belonged to friends of my family, and a few minutes before 8 p.m., I went up to the roof to sneak a look around. On the platform was Pedro Cateriano, with his stentorian voice and assertive gestures, delivering his harangue to empty air. Or just about, since the Paseo Cívico could be seen to be deserted, while on the corners and the sidewalks leading to the Paseo, groups of bystanders were indifferently watching what was going on. But half an hour later, when the ceremony had already begun and we had started singing the de rigueur anthems, the people of Tacna began to congregate, and crowds of them continued to flock onto the Paseo until they filled several blocks. Finally, a crowd accompanied me through the streets and I had to speak again from the hotel balconies.
To celebrate the second anniversary we chose the Amauta Coliseum in Lima, which Genaro Delgado Parker allowed us to use without charge, because it was a vast space — there was room for 18,000 people — and because we believed that it would be a good opportunity to put forward a serious explanation of the aim of the Democratic Front, by bringing together all our candidates for mayors and councilmen in the various districts of Lima. We also invited the principal leaders of AP, the PPC, SODE, and the UCI (a small group, headed by Francisco Diez Canseco, at that time a congressman, which was later to withdraw from the alliance).
The program was in two parts. The first, made up of dances and songs, was entrusted to Luis Delgado Aparicio, who was, on the one hand, an attorney who specialized in labor questions and, on the other, a popular figure on radio and television thanks to his salsa programs, or, as he puts it in his inimitable style, programs of Afro-Latin-Caribbean-American music, as well as a famous professional dancer. The second part, the political one properly speaking, would consist of Miguel Cruchaga’s speech and mine.
The group that we had named Movilización, the youth movement, the district committees, and Solidarity all made a great effort to fill the Amauta. The problem was transportation. The person responsible for it, Juan Checa, had hired a number of buses and trucks and given us the use, for nothing, of others that belonged to his company, but on the appointed day many of these vehicles failed to turn up at the meeting places agreed upon. Hence the men and women of Libertad in charge of mobilization found themselves, in many districts, with hundreds of people who had no way to get to the Coliseum. Charo Chocano, in Las Delicias de Villa, went out onto the highway and hired two buses that were passing by, and in Huaycán, the indefatigable Friedel Cillóniz and her helpers literally took a truck by storm and persuaded its driver to take them to the Amauta. But thousands of people were left hopping mad. Despite this, the stands of the Coliseum were full.
I had been there since seven that night, all ready, in the car, accompanied by the security guards, driving round and round the Amauta. But, over the radio, those inside who were responsible for the ceremony, Chino Urbina and Alberto Massa, held me back, telling me that people were still coming in and that the emcees — Pedro Cateriano, Enrique Ghersi, and Felipe Leno — had to be given time to warm up the crowd. So half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half went by. To control our impatience, we drove all around Lima several times and, whenever we mentioned the Coliseum, the answer was the same: “Just a little while longer.”
When, finally, they gave me the green light and I entered the Amauta, there was a contagious, festive, euphoric atmosphere, with pennants and placards of the various committees waving on the stands, and the supporters from each district competing by way of songs and repeated refrains. But nearly two hours had gone by since the time that had been set! Roxana Valdivieso was singing, on the rostrum, a theme song of the Movement. Just a short time before, Juan Incháustegui and Lourdes Flores had made a triumphal entry that they topped off by dancing a huaynito. And Lucho Delgado Aparicio’s show had long since ended. The daily papers and television channels hostile to Libertad were then enabled to create a scandal, because between the folklore numbers popular dancers in scanty costumes suddenly appeared, dancing a frenetic salsa. According to the press, the sight of those wildly wiggling hips, backsides, breasts, and thighs had caused many respectable members of Congress belonging to the PPC to feel embarrassed and their faces to turn beet-red, and someone said that Don Ernesto Alayza Grundy, the embodiment of probity, had been affronted by the performance. But Eduardo Orrego assured me afterwards that all that was false and that, as a matter of fact, Don Ernesto had contemplated the dancers with perfect stoicism. And it was obvious to me that Enrique Chirinos Soto was brimming over with pleasure at what he had seen.