“Everything about this incident turned out to be contradictory,” I hear Blacquer say half a block later. “Because the very RWP(T) that expelled Mayta for wanting to involve them in Jauja threw itself into something even more sterile: the ‘expropriation’ of banks.”
Was it Fidel Castro’s entrance into Havana, which had taken place in the meantime, that transformed the prudent RWP(T), which had slid out of Mayta’s conspiracy, into a bellicose organization that set about emptying the banks of the bourgeoisie? They attacked the branch of the Banco Internacional that we’ve just passed — Joaquín was captured in the operation — and then, a few days later, the Banco Wiese in La Victoria, where Pallardi fell. These two actions disintegrated the RWP(T). Or was there, as well, a modicum of guilty conscience, a desire to prove that, even though they’d turned their backs on Mayta and Vallejos, they were capable of risking all on a single toss of the dice?
“Not remorse, not anything even like it,” says Blacquer. “It was Cuba. The Cuban Revolution broke through the taboos. It killed that superego that ordered us to accept the dictum that ‘conditions aren’t right,’ that the revolution was an interminable conspiracy. With Fidel’s entrance into Havana, the revolution seemed to put itself within reach of anyone who would dare fight.”
“If you don’t take them, the guy who owns my house will sell them all off in La Parada,” Mayta insisted. “You can pick them up after Monday. And there aren’t that many, anyway.”
“Okay, I’ll take the books.” Blacquer gave in. “Let’s say I’ll store them for you for the time being.”
At the 28 de Julio stop, we find the same mob we found at the earlier stops. A man wearing a hat has a portable radio, and — nervously watched by all those around him — he’s trying to find some station broadcasting news. He can’t find one. All he gets is music. For almost half an hour, I wait with Blacquer. Two buses pass by, packed to the roof, without stopping. Finally I say goodbye, because I want to get home in time to hear the message of the committee about the invasion. At the corner of Manco Cápac, I turn around: Blacquer is still there; I can make out his ruinous face and his air of being lost as he stands at the edge of the sidewalk, as if he didn’t know what to do or where to go. That’s the way Mayta must have been that day after the meeting. And yet Blacquer assures me that after leaving him his books and showing him where to hide the key to his room, Mayta left exuding optimism. “He grew under punishment” is what he said. No doubt about it: his resistance and his daring became stronger in adversity.
Although all the stores are closed, the sidewalks in this part of Larco are still crowded with people selling handicrafts, trinkets, and pictures: views of the Andes, portraits, and caricatures. I thread my way around blankets covered with bracelets and necklaces, watched over by boys with ponytails and girls wearing saris. The air is filled with incense. In this enclave of aesthetes and street mystics, there is no perceptible alarm, not even any curiosity about what’s going on down south. You’d say that they don’t even know that in the last few hours the war has taken a much more serious turn and that at any minute it could be right here on top of them. At the corner of Ocharán, I hear a dog bark: it’s a strange sound that seems to come from the past, because ever since the food shortage began, domestic animals have disappeared from the streets. How did Mayta feel that morning? The long night had begun in the garage on Jirón Zorritos with his expulsion from the RWP(T), then moved on to his agreement to disguise it as a resignation, and ended with that conversation with Blacquer, which transformed him from an enemy into a confidant, a shoulder to cry on.
Sleepy, hungry, and exhausted, but in the same frame of mind he was in when he returned from Jauja, and still convinced that he had acted properly. They hadn’t thrown him out because he’d gone to see Blacquer: they’d agreed on the pullout before. Their feigned anger, the accusations of betrayal were just a trick to preclude any possibility of reviewing the decision. Was it out of fear of fighting? No, it was their pessimism, their lack of willpower, their psychological inability to break with routine and go on to real action. He had taken a bus and had to stand, hanging on to the rail, crushed between two black women carrying baskets. Didn’t he know that way of thinking all too well? “Wasn’t it your own for so many years?” They had no faith in the masses because they had no contact with them; they doubted the revolution and their own ideas because the intriguing that went on among sects had rendered them incapable of action.
Looking at him, one of the black women began to laugh, and Mayta realized he was talking to himself. He laughed, too. But if that’s the way they thought, then it was better that they didn’t take part, because they’d just be dead weight. Yes, they would be missed, because now there would be no urban support in Lima. But as new adherants emerged, a support organization would spring up here and elsewhere. The comrades of the RWP(T), when they saw that the vanguard was respected and that the masses were joining them, would regret their indecision. The Stalinists, too. The meeting with Blacquer was a time bomb. When they saw that the trickle was turning into a raging torrent, they would remember that the door was open and that they would be welcome. They would come; they would participate. He was so distracted that he forgot to get off at his corner and only realized he’d passed it two stops later.
He reached the alley completely worn out. In the patio, there was a long line of women with pots, all shouting because the first one was taking too long at the tap. He went into his room and stretched out on the bed, without even taking off his shoes. He just didn’t have the energy to go down and get in line. But how good it would have been now to sink his tired feet in a pan of cool water. He closed his eyes and, fighting sleep, chose the words for the letter he was to bring that afternoon to Jacinto so it could come out in the issue of Workers Voice (T) that was at the press.
That issue barely covers four pages, a single sheet folded in four, now so yellow that as I pick it up — sitting in front of the television, where the generals of the Junta have yet to appear, even though it’s eight o’clock — I get the feeling it’s going to crumble in my hands. The resignation is not on the first page, which consists of two long articles and a smaller one, boxed, at the bottom. The editorial, set in small caps, takes up the left column: “Halt, Fascists!” It concerns some incidents that took place in the central mountains regarding a strike over two mining contracts with the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation. When the police removed the strikers, they shot a few of them, one of whom later died. This is not random violence but is, instead, part of a plan to intimidate and immobilize the working classes, a plan hatched by the police, the army, and reactionary groups, in accord with Pentagon and CIA Latin American policy. What’s it all about?
They’ve started playing military music, and pictures of the national emblem and the flag are followed by busts and portraits of national heroes. Are they going to start or what? To halt the advance, every day more powerful and unstoppable, of the workers toward socialism. Those methods cannot surprise anyone who has learned the lessons of history: they were used by Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and now Washington is applying them to Latin America. But they will not succeed, they will be counterproductive, a nutrient fertilizer, as Leon Trotsky wrote: For the working classes, the blows of repression are like pruning for plants. There they are: the Navy, the Air Force, the Army, and behind them, the advisers, the ministers, the heads of garrisons and military units in the Lima region. Their somber faces seem to confirm the worst rumors. The editorial in Workers Voice (T) ends with an exhortation to workers, peasants, students, and progressives to close ranks against the Nazi-Facist conspiracy. They’re singing the National Anthem.