He expresses his political ideas openly and constantly, but refuses to create an power in the 2021 elections. He left Peru 23 years ago, but he assures that his degree of connection was never broken. Diego Trelles Paz (Lima, 1977) drinks a chilcano, the famous pisco cocktail with kion soda and lemon drops, from one of the corners of the Queirolo bar, a sanctuary of Lima’s bohemia, located in a colonial mansion. Literature has brought him back: his latest novel, The loyalty of cannibals (Anagrama), is becoming an editorial success and what better than to talk about it from the space where it takes place, with a couple of toasts. His most recent installment also marks the end of a trilogy about political violence in Peru that began in 2012 with Bioy and continued in 2017 with The infinite procession.
Ask. Why choose a bar in the Historic Center of Lima to talk about Peru?
Answer. For several reasons. The Queirolo It is a Lima bar that I identified as part of my literary world since my first book because of the characters who have sometimes sat in these chairs and because it has been associated with citizen protests. Somehow several of the demonstrations against the current governments have ended up in this bar. For this novel I looked for a space that would be a representation of what drunkenness in Lima was and at the same time a neuralgic point where stories of people who did not necessarily know each other could come together. It is the idea of Beehive by Camilo José Cela and the honeycomb where the bees interact.
Q. One of the protagonists is a Nikkei bartender who believes that art can change things. He lends books to his workers and to give them the job he asks them if they have read, for example, Augusto Higa.
R. The Chinese Tito is a disenchanted man who constantly reflects on the deterioration of the country, but he is also a kind of father to others. He is a man from the past, with a very clear political ideology, which awakens a certain empathy for his cultural references. He criticizes people who live with their heads buried in their cell phones and feels that he must rescue them from the frivolity that surrounds us. And, furthermore, he has a pessimistic vision of Peru; he often says that democracy is useless.
Q. The novel crudely states that a large sector of Peruvians aspires to have a cell phone rather than have access to drinking water, because they are totally disappointed in their authorities.
R. Drinking water is an unmet demand by successive governments. That is why there are those who find in cell phones a way to get closer to their idea of progress. There are still second-class citizens. It could be seen clearly during the pandemic: we had the highest mortality rate in the world. The unfortunate thing is that many people did not die from covid-19, but from lack of privatized oxygen.
Q. His characters fearfully tell that to cross a track in Lima you have to turn your neck as in The Exorcist. You have lived outside of Peru for 23 years. How does he confront this thirsty monster, which is how he defines the capital’s traffic?
R. It costs me a lot. In this country, people walking on the sidewalk have been run over. Crossing the zebra crossing without looking is putting yourself at risk. The social coexistence that normalizes murderous traffic, full of drivers with two hundred tickets to whom nothing ever happens, exemplifies the way in which the country relates. It is a state of latent violence. The first time my wife, French, arrived in Peru and I started driving her, she grabbed my arm because she went into a state of panic. Turning your head like the girl in The Exorcist is a very serious joke. The paradoxical thing is that despite this lack of empathy, there are those who say: but he eats well.
Q. Do you sense resignation?
R. I think so. Our politicians have reached a level of cynicism to cling to their positions no matter what. We have a president (Dina Boluarte) who shows signs of wealth in the face of the misery of the population and who threw candy in Ayacucho among the mourners of those who protested against her. We have had a prosecutor of the Nation (Patricia Benavides) whose thesis was mysteriously lost. And we have to see how Congress behaves, changing the constitution to its convenience. It is a difficult moment to face. We are no longer an example of macroeconomic strength. Everything has become more expensive. The Peruvian will always be happy to be one, eat delicious food and have Machu Picchu, but his possibilities are increasingly diminished.
Q. In a passage of The loyalty of cannibals It is pointed out that Peruvians are amnesiac: we forget quickly and are ungrateful to Alberto Fujimori for having defeated terrorism.
R. It is a discourse that even now many people hold. With his foray into social networks, Fujimori is doing in person what Fujimorism has been trying to do for a long time: rewrite history and present him as a hero and at the same time a victim of the caviarism. They are all political tactics. The most terrible thing is that Fujimori died every two years to put pressure on the pardon and today we see him very healthy, almost in a political campaign. It is difficult to give a diagnosis of why people can accept someone who did not serve his sentence, did not ask for forgiveness, did not pay his civil reparation and has made a theater of his condition.
Q. Be a fujitroll It is also literature, as one of your characters says?
R. Fernando Arrabal is a young man from the upper middle class, whose father was linked to Vladimiro Montesinos, who feels that his destiny is to write the novel of the Bicentennial of Peru. But the truth is that he is only writing it in his head, because he has barely worked on the title. It is the metaphor of failure. We arrived at the Bicentennial believing that we could celebrate something, when the idea of a nation is not cohesive, and we have more than 50 deaths from protesting. For Arrabal, being a fujitroll is a test of creating literature, by pretending to be someone you are not. But it’s all irony. I have tried to delve into what Peru has been like in recent years through a painful humor that also tries to make you think.
Q. The father of another of your literary creatures, the waiter Ishiguro, was murdered by paramilitaries in an event that takes us back to the Pativilca massacre in 1992. Why did you choose this case as a reference?
R. Because of the level of violence that occurred towards that group of people just for having been accused of being terrorists. At that time and to this day, being accused of terrorism is the worst thing that can happen to you. It is a strategy to kill innocent people and steal. Furthermore, it is the trial that Fujimori still has pending.
Q. If there is a threat that runs through your novel, it is the earthquake that will destroy Lima, a prediction that has been going on for decades. Is it the cuckoo we were born with?
R. Indeed. It was the idea. To what extent Peru is a country that seems to be in a constant collapse, falling apart, but that is reborn, although always with the possibility of relapse again. The earthquake will end what we are doing to the country now.
Q. Do you feel that you managed to delve deeper into the human condition?
R. It is a very difficult question. Let’s say that I have tried to be faithful to my characters. As a novelist I try to make them independent of my opinions, my morals and my way of seeing things. One of my characters is a pedophile priest. What is
said there is true. For many years, European priests who were discovered in openly predatory situations were not expelled from their congregations, but sent to Latin America. It is a sordid and unpunished world. It cannot be that a cassock protects you from the law when you have ended the lives of so many people who had faith. I delve into those extreme situations, showing how far cannibalism can go.
Q. It is the first time he has written a book as a father. How have you handled the experience?
R. It has been hard. In the old notion, that of the boom, writers dedicated themselves to writing because they had to write the “great novel” while their wives raised their children. In my case, I was quite clear that fatherhood is as important as literature and that I was not going to stop being a father because I had to write. So I stole many hours a day to create this 400-page novel, with so many narrative entanglements, that I consider a love letter to Lima as paradoxical as it may sound. It is not my intention to produce accessible novels for an audience that seeks to evade reality, but rather to focus on the lack of empathy and the number of monsters that surround us.
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