When she saw Mayta and Vallejos kicking the switchboard apart, smashing the machinery with their rifle butts, and pulling out all the wires, Mrs. Adriana Tello tried to run out. But Condori and Zenón Gonzales held her while the lieutenant and Mayta finished breaking things up.
“Now we can take it easy,” said Vallejos. “With the guards locked up and the telephone line cut, we’re out of immediate danger. We don’t have to split up.”
“Will the people with the horses be in Quero?” Mayta was thinking aloud.
Vallejos shrugged. Could anyone be counted on?
“The peasants,” murmured Mayta, pointing at Condori and Zenón Gonzales, who, after the lieutenant signaled to them, had released the woman, who ran, terrified, out of the building. “If we get to Uchubamba, I’m sure they won’t let us down.”
“We’ll get there.” Vallejos smiled. “They won’t let us down.”
They’d go on foot to the plaza, comrade. Vallejos ordered Gualberto Bravo and Perico Temoche to take the taxis to the corner of the Plaza de Armas and Bolognesi. That would be where they’d meet. He went to the head of those who remained and gave an order that left Mayta with goose bumps: “Forward, march!” They must have been a strange, unimaginable, disconcerting group — those four adults and five schoolboys, all armed, marching along the cobblestone streets toward the Plaza de Armas. They would attract attention, they would stop anyone on the sidewalks, they would cause people to come to windows and doors. What did the good citizens of Jauja think as they saw them pass?
“I was shaving, because in those days I’d get up sort of late,” says don Joaquín Zamudio, ex-hatmaker, ex-businessman, and now vendor of lottery tickets on the streets of Jauja. “I saw them from my room and thought they were rehearsing for the national holidays. But why so early in the year? I poked my head out the window and asked: What parade is this? The lieutenant didn’t answer me and instead shouted: Long live the revolution! The others shouted: Hurrah, hurrah! What revolution is it? I asked them, thinking they were fooling around. And Corderito answered: The one we’re starting, the socialist revolution. Later I found out that they went along just the way I’d seen them, marching and cheering, and robbed two banks.”
They marched into the Plaza de Armas, and Mayta saw few passersby. When people did turn to look at them, it was with indifference. A group of Indians with ponchos and packs, sitting on a bench, just followed them with their eyes. There weren’t enough people for a demonstration yet. It was ridiculous to be marching, because instead of looking like revolutionaries, they looked like boy scouts. But Vallejos set the example, and the joeboys, Condori, and Gonzales followed suit, so Mayta had no choice but to get in step. He had an ambiguous feeling, exaltation and anxiety, because even though the police were locked up, and their weapons captured, and the telephone and telegraph knocked out, wasn’t their little group extremely vulnerable? Could you begin a revolution just like that? He gritted his teeth. You could. You had to be able to.
“They walked through the main door, practically singing,” says don Ernesto Durán Huarcaya, ex-president of the International Bank and today an invalid dying of cancer on a cot in the Olavegoya Sanatorium. “I saw them from the window and thought that they couldn’t even get in step, that they couldn’t march worth a damn. Later, since they headed straight for the International Bank, I said here comes another request for money, for some carnival or parade. There was no more mystery after they got inside, because they turned their guns on us and Vallejos shouted: We’ve come to take the money that belongs to the people and not to the imperialists. I’m not going to put up with this, hell no, I’m going to face them down.”
“He got down on all fours under his desk,” says Adelita Campos, retired from the bank and now a seller of herb concoctions. “A real macho when it came to docking us for coming in late or pinching us when we passed too close to him. But when he saw the rifles — zoom — down he went under the desk, not even ashamed. If the president did that, what were we employees supposed to do? We were scared, of course. More of the kids than of the old guys. Because the boys were bawling like calves: Long live Peru! Long live the revolution! They were so wild they could easily start shooting. The person who had the great idea was the teller, old man Rojas. What could have become of him? I guess he’s dead, probably someone killed him, because the way things have been going in Jauja, no one dies of old age anymore. Somebody kills you. And you never know who.”
“When I saw them come up to my window, I opened the box on the left side,” says old man Rojas, ex-teller at the International Bank, in the squalid quarters where he’s waiting to die in the Jauja old-folks home. “That’s where I had the morning deposits and the small bills we used to make change, nothing much. I raised my hands and prayed: ‘Holy Mother, let them believe this one.’ They did. They went right to the open box and took what they saw: fifty thousand soles, or thereabouts. Now that’s nothing, but then it was quite a tidy sum, but nothing compared to what there was in the box on the right — almost a million soles that hadn’t yet been put in the vault. They were amateurs, not like the ones that came later. Shh, now, sir, don’t repeat what I’ve told you.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all.” The teller trembled. “It’s early, only a few people have come in.”
“This money isn’t for us but for the revolution,” Mayta interrupted him. He spoke into the incredulous faces of the employees. “For the people, for those who have sweated. This isn’t stealing, it’s expropriation. You have no reason to be frightened. The enemies of the people are the bankers, the oligarchs, and the imperialists. All of you are being exploited by them.”
“Yes, of course,” the teller said, quaking. “What you say is true, sir.”
When they got out into the plaza, the boys went on cheering. Mayta, carrying the moneybag, went up to Vallejos: Let’s go to the Regional, there aren’t enough people here for a meeting. He saw very few people, and although they looked at the insurgents with curiosity, they wouldn’t come too close.
“But we’ve got to move quickly,” agreed Vallejos, “before they bolt the door on us.”
He started running, and the others followed him, lining up in the same order in which they’d been marching. A few seconds of running eliminated Mayta’s ability to think. Shortness of breath, pressure in his temples: the malaise came back, even though they weren’t running that quickly, but almost, as it were, warming up before a game. When, two blocks later, they stopped at the doors of the Regional Bank, Mayta was seeing stars and his mouth was hanging open. You can’t faint now, Mayta. He entered with the group, but in a dream. Leaning on the counter, seeing the shock on the face of the woman in front of him, he heard Vallejos explain: “This is a revolutionary action, we’ve come to recover the money stolen from the people.” Someone protested. The lieutenant shoved a man and punched him.
He had to help, move, but he didn’t do a thing, because he knew that if he stepped away from the counter, he’d fall down. Propped on his elbows, he pointed his weapon at the group of employees — some shouting, some seemingly about to defend the man who had protested — and saw Condori and Zenón Gonzales grab the man from the big desk, the one Vallejos had hit. The lieutenant pointed his sub-machine gun at him with a menacing gesture. The man finally gave in and opened the safe next to his desk. When Condori had finished putting the money into the bag, Mayta began to feel better. You should have come a week earlier to acclimatize yourself to the altitude, you just don’t know how to do things.