Christmas In Iquitos

Maverick and his unstoppable Big Truck.

Holiday greetings from Jungle Love, hope you and yours had a good one. Corrina and I spent Christmas Eve at her sister’s house. It is the tradition here in Peru to stay up until midnight, then set off fireworks in the streets and then eat a big meal and open presents. Her sister baked a whole turkey and we sat around and talked and although some of the cousins spent most of the night plugged into their smartphones, texting and surfing the net, which would be a breach of protocol worthy of mockery where I am from, I think my behavior was even worse. I didn’t want to stay up until midnight, with a toddler, waiting to eat dinner, I wanted to pop in for a social call and then be back in my own house.

But you may know how it goes here—you get there late, which turns out to be early according to the hosts’ schedule, and you stand around making the small talk of the in-between hours and before long it’s too late to leave early. So we sat around and stood around and I’m afraid I became a bit sullen and withdrawn, because I was having one of those nights where I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be inside or outside, like a dog on the step when the rain is falling.  Corrina’s brother in law mercifully came outside and engaged me in a conversation about soccer, American football, and volleyball, a lifeline that I was grateful for. It was one of those moments in conversation where you are pretending that something boring is interesting, but you have so little else to talk about that is just about does become interesting on its own. Perhaps in part because all this was in Spanish, my second language, which I speak just enough of to be bored in situations like that. Finally midnight passed, fireworks were shot, turkey was eaten, and an honorable exit was made.

A few more impressions, from the holidays here in this jungle city. In the days leading up to Christmas, the violence in the city increased. Most of the criminals appear to be foreigners, coming to Iquitos to commit crimes and then leave. It used to be that Iquitos was the exception to this rule. Now people here are wondering if this trend is temporary or something that has come to stay. My heart is full of dread for this outbreak of random violence in which innocents were harmed. Old-time locals are saying they’ve never seen it like this. I hope this is not the beginning of a pattern, because the laid back, it-takes-a-village ethos of this city is a big part of why I felt comfortable starting a family here.

Canastas for sale in Belen market

Anyway. There’s a tradition here, and all across Latin American, of giving canastas (baskets) for the holidays. A canasta is a basket or plastic bucket loaded with all the things you would need for a complete Christmas dinner: cans of fruit, cartons of milk, tuna tins, packages of rice and beans, bags of salt and sugar, cooking oil, chocolate, coffee, condiments, even bottles of champagne.  Corrina and I made canastas for our nanny, our housekeeper, and our handyman. These are people who have very little money, who work for twenty soles (about seven dollars) a day. Corrina and I are far from wealthy, but we could at least afford to give them each a canasta and also a whole chicken, so they could all have a nice dinner on Christmas.

To get the chicken, we went down to Modelo market to a place that has the freshest chicken in town. You walk in the while tiled entrance and you say, I’d like a two-kilo chicken, please. Normally they already have it processed and behind glass, nice and neat. But around Christmas, the demand gets so high that they bring in truckloads of live chickens. So they tell you, walk to the back and pick your chicken. I walked back there, past the processing room where they have a cylindrical centrifuge that plucks the chickens within minutes. A Chinese guy in an apron was herding a small fleet of chickens with a broom up to a gate in the hallway. I said, I don’t want to pick my chicken. I want one already prepared, just nice and neat. But they were doing so much business, they were killing them to order right there on the spot. So Corrina said, OK, you don’t want to do it, I’ll go pick them out. So she did, and we watched them go into the centrifuge, with feathers pouring out a spout on the side, and within minutes our three birds were plucked and ready, gutted and all, but with heads and feet still on. It was fifty soles ($18) for three birds weighing four pounds apiece, and as fresh as you’d ever want to witness.

I don’t know what the ‘real’ meaning of Christmas is, or how we are supposed to celebrate it in a way that best honors the intent. But recently I discovered the limits of my own generosity and discerned the boundaries for my own comfort level for compassion.

There is a local woman here who had a child with a wealthy young gringo who blazed a cocaine-addled trail through Iquitos a few years back. The child is now two and a half. The gringo was the wayward son of a billionaire, a guy with serious addiction issues, a guy who was likeable in so many ways, despite his problems. But he never came back to see his kid.

I see the child sometimes, playing in the street, in a medium-poor neighborhood on the way to Cabo Lopez. He is a handsome boy, blonde-haired, healthy, engaged, fully gringo-looking. He shows a lot of potential. Recently there was some discussion of who should take the child in, should the mother ever take a turn for the worse with drugs and partying and whatnot. Corrina brought all of this up recently, after a lot of internal discussion with her girlfriends, and she asked if I would be willing to take in this child, if his extended family were unable or unwilling to. And I had to admit that I wasn’t.

I think of all the foster parents who took in innocent children in bad situations, and who spent of their own resources, without asking anything in return, and gave those kids the stability to become normal adults, a stability that they would not have had otherwise, and I feel guilty and selfish. To raise another child as your own, in order to provide them with a better life, is one of the most selfless and decent things I can imagine in life. The people who do it must truly understand what a sacrifice it is. They are something close to saints.

Me, I am still learning that kind of compassion. I still have a long way to go. But sometimes I get glimpses of the way forward. On Christmas Eve, in the afternoon, Corrina and I went downtown to buy a big plastic truck for Maverick. We walked back towards the motorbike, and the streets were a closed off to traffic. I noticed that a blind man was walking down the center of Arica avenue. He was not only blind but seemed to be somewhat mentally impaired as well. A man past middle age, he shuffled in small steps, no cane but with wiggling hands, eyes closed and head upturned to sense what there was to sense. A policewoman approached him and took him by the arm to see if he was alright. I heard him tell her that he was not lost, that he was headed towards the market.

Corrina saw this and approached him. She told him what block he was on, and asked him where he wanted to go. He replied that he wanted to go where all the movement was. He wanted to feel the activity around him. She said, keep walking one more block, and that’s where all the people are. He thanked her, and proceeded up the block, in the middle of the street, with no guide but his instinct. I watched him walk away slowly down the street, feeling his way through the air, and I nearly wept for the heroic sadness of the image.

I have thought of this many times since, over this holiday season when I am more acutely aware of what I have and what those around me have. And to see this blind man, on Christmas Eve, seeking to be among the energy and vitality of the holiday crowds, which is a pretty simple thing to ask. Putting myself in his reality for only a minute, I can see why that could be so important to a person.

Because of him, instead of being sad for what I do not have, I am grateful for what I do have. In the new year, I want to hold onto that—what a gift and a privilege it is to share in the kinetic energy of the world—and seek every day to feel some of that which cannot be seen.

 

The Return of the Tamshiyacu Plant Maestro

A few months back I wrote a piece on the blog about a man named Tocayo, a curandero (traditional healer) from the Amazonian village of Tamshiyaku. He is a second-generation healer who works with ayahuasca as well as many other plants to treat the people in his village.

http://jungle-love.org/2011/07/22/the-plant-maestro-of-tamshiyacu/

He is a great repository for methods of traditional healing as has been practiced in the upper Amazon for centuries, and it is a body of knowledge that seems to be disappearing quickly in the brave new world that has arrived in the river towns of the Peruvian Amazon—a world of fast boats, internet access and even Big Pharma.

When I drank ayahuasca with Tocayo in Tamshiyacu, (say that three times fast!) I was blown away by the revelation that his brew contained only a single ingredient, the ayahuasca vine itself. If you look into the research you’ll find that, in theory, the effect of the vine itself should be only as a purgative and mild sedative, but that without the additives of chacruna or huambisa leaves to provide the DMT kick, you don’t get the visions or ‘downloads from the universe’ or any of the other grand effects of ayahuasca—in theory. Yet this was far from my own experience, nor that of Pete Davidson, who was also there that night.

I first met Tocayo through Pete, and Pete’s first encounter with Tocayo is an interesting story in itself. A few years back, Pete moved to Tamshiyacu (to this date he is the only American living there) and he decided to start a primary school for young children from 1 -3 years old.  His wife is a primary school teacher, and they wanted to provide an opportunity for more structured early-childhood education in the town. Pete is one of those guys who is doing really good work in the world, without asking for any of the accolades, and because of all his hard work, his school has been a great success. But when he first started it, there were those in town who were jealous of his project.

I should also mention that Tamshiyacu is well known in the region as a center for shamanism—there are many ayahuasceros there, and a fair number of brujos (literally ‘witches’ – shamans who deal in black magic) as well. So, one day Pete went to the school and there were two black chicken heads hanging from the door. It was a clear sign of brujeria—a message that someone wished them harm. Pete knew he had to do something about it. As he describes it, it didn’t matter if he or his wife believed in brujeria, because most of the parents of the children did, and if he didn’t use the services of a shaman to clear the bad energy, then the parents would continue to worry.

Pete asked around town for shamans who were known to have abilities in combating black magic and evil spirits. That’s how he got Tocayo as a recommendation. Tocayo came to the school, and said he would need to do three ayahuasca ceremonies to clear the bad energy. First he drank alone, in the school, singing icaros throughout the night and cleansing the space on physical and psychic levels. Then he drank with Pete there watching, and finally, for the third ceremony, they drank together in the school. After the third ceremony Tocayo declared the school to be clear of all brujeria, and the bad mojo was defeated by good mojo, and the parents were happy, and life went on.

Tocayo, as I have said, uses a very traditional method in preparing the ayahuasca brew. He has done it this way for more than a decade and a half. He has told me that the secret is using a large vine, at least five years old, and harvesting it fresh, from his own property. He sings to it while he prepares it, and fills it with his good intentions and positive thoughts. I like this idea a lot. Tocayo really seems to be in touch with the energy of plants on this level. Most curanderos have a stable of six to eight plants that they use for healing—ayahuasca, chacruna, tobacco, chiric sanango, datura, camalunga, and sangre de grado, to name a few of the more common ones. Tocayo uses around thirty five different plants for a majority of the ailments he treats, though he says there are hundreds more plants in the jungle that can be sought out for very specific cures when the need arises.

I got a lot of responses to that other blog article about Tocayo, and I’ve wanted to repeat my experience with him ever since. I even mentioned it to a World Famous Ethnobotanist when he was here visiting, and we were going to try it together, so he could collect a sample for the lab, but he got the flu and the trip never happened. However I remained intrigued by all this, for months afterwards, and so I finally invited him to Iquitos for another go at it. This time, I invited some of my ayahuasca-literate friends along, as a kind of control group, to see if it would have the same effect on them that it did on me.

And so it was that this past weekend, Tocayo arrived on the fast boat from Tamshiyacu and we proceeded out to Amaru Spirit, the natural healing jungle retreat and ayahuasca center run by my good friend Chillum. Tocayo had made a fresh batch of the brew for the weekend, consisting of a single ten-year-old ayahuasca vine that he had harvested, chopped and cooked the day before. I think of Tocayo’s brew as being something like the single malt scotch of entheogens. When I asked him about it, he said that, due to the age of the vine, he already knew it was going to be strong, and so only a small dose would be needed.

On Friday night, we laid down mattresses inside Chillum’s brand-spanking-new maloca, for its inaugural ayahuasca ceremony. This maloca (large round houses that are traditionally built in the jungle for ceremonies or any kind of group meetings) has two levels, both with high ceilings, and is set back among the trees on a bank overlooking a stream– it is one super-sweet piece of construction, I must say. It has a bridge leading to it, for easier access during high water season, and the adjoining bathroom (also brand new) features several tiled showers, two composting toilets in private stalls, and a urinal—all of which are mighty fancy for the jungle, folks.

After dark, we gathered in the maloca and Tocayo poured us each a cup. Besides Chillum and myself, Corrina was there, and Marco the Epicurean, as well as our friend Drew, a British chap who runs ayahuasca tours in Iquitos, and who, peculiarly, has been unable to have visions himself from ayahuasca for a year now despite numerous attempts. Auditing the session was none other than the Smilin’ Dude, who has appeared again recently in Iquitos. The Dude is a former Navy man and electrical engineer who now wanders the earth as a traveling medical intuitive, with the self-professed ability to sense, and correct, other people’s physical ailments with his mind. He says he does this with a combination of deep intuition, prayer, and experimental kinesiology, in order to perceive, and alter, the energy fields he senses around him.

After an hour of silence, trying to find some peace, I found I could not. I was scratching myself like a flea-bitten raccoon. On closer inspection I realized the problem in fact was flea bites, along with chiggers, which is worse. Much worse. I suspect they found their way to my private parts from the straw mattress where I lay down. Chiggers on yer privates are a plague that no person deserves, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies. Scratching just makes it worse. To be so plagued while in search of transcendental bliss and higher knowledge is a terribly awkward and humbling place to find oneself.

But in spite of those maddening distractions, I finally lifted off into space and spent the next four or five hours wading through a swift stream of magnificent visions, to borrow a phrase. During this phase I was shown symbols to look out for in the future, symbols that would appear in the real, physical world–some heralding good luck, and others signifying that danger lurked close by.  I saw dozens, and then hundreds, of faces, etched in great detail, including the faces of ancient indigenous people who had walked the earth where I sat, thousands of years before. I watched a series of psychedelic cartoons on an old black and white television. And I got some good advice, for example, on how to get rid of evil dwarfs when they become unwelcome houseguests (insult them by offering them rotten food, stale bread, uncomfortable chairs, etc. That’d probably work for lots of people, in fact.) The imagination, set loose suddenly from its daily moorings, leapt about with the gleeful abandon of an escaped dog that’s been penned up for too long.

I realize that this might sound like all kinds of crazy, but I’m pretty far beyond caring what other people think. It was a fun night, and one could do worse than pass an evening building castles in the sky. The trip unfolded without much pattern or reason, yet it was nothing if not intriguing, as the whole of the night was suffused with a deeper dialogue I was having with myself, concerning how to live a better life and be a happier person. That’s what I took away from the night, more than all the visions and the silliness, and it really gave me a lot to think about and be thankful for. The experience, regardless of what or whom you attribute the credit to, genuinely helped me to wrap my head around some issues that I had been struggling with lately–and I am very grateful for that.

Tocayo, who had been singing non-stop for hours, finally closed the ceremony by blowing smoke on everyone to clear their energy fields, and then he sat down on his mat and was silent. Corrina was ready to go back to our cabin and lie down, so I went with her, stumbling along the path, muy mareado (dizzy/drunk/unsteady). Corrina was in a perfectly straight mindset. She had purged, but had not had any visions. It had been a very mild night for her. I was amazed. I’ve finally come to accept that I am unusually sensitive to this stuff, which is probably why I don’t do it very often, because I almost always get clobbered by it.

Next morning, we compared notes. Chillum had had some visions, and also a sublime sequence in which he felt himself dissolving into the ether and floating in space.  Marco had himself a full evening of visions, on par with what I had experienced, and he was very satisfied with the way things had gone. Drew got nothing at all, but had sat there patiently nonetheless throughout the evening, waiting for something to happen. The Smilin’ Dude had picked up on lots of things despite not drinking the brew, and he was full of respect for the shaman, who, he could see, was in touch with higher entities that were operating pretty far up the ladder of karmic influence. He said that he and Tocayo had essentially the same method, which was to get in touch with angels, call them down through prayer, and then ask them to carry away the pain and illness of those in need.  Which is interesting, because traditional healers and medicine men/women in many different cultures explain their methods in a very similar way. It’s as though there’s something fundamental, archetypal about the process.

Chillum, making final preparations before takeoff.

On Saturday, Chillum and I decided not to drink again, but to join the Smilin’ Dude in observing and ‘holding the space’ for the others. This left Drew, who wanted to drink Chillum’s medicine the second night in hopes of having some kind of effect. He was joined by two new arrivals, Slim Jack and Pete Davidson. Pete’s wife is about to have a baby any day now, a little boy, which is important to him, I think. His three daughters are grown, and I get the sense that he always wanted a boy. At the age of sixty three, he is about to get his chance, with all the wisdom and perspective that comes with a life fully lived.  He wanted to do a ceremony before the birth, so he could try to talk to his child while it was still in the womb. I should note that, as Pete himself tells it, he first saw his unborn child years ago in an ayahuasca vision, and so he has known for some time that this boy would come along one day.

When darkness fell on Saturday, and the curtain of insect chimes and croaking frogs descended around the maloca, we settling into the circle again and passed around little cups of the chocolate-brown rocket fuel. Tocayo started to sing, and I was just settling into the rhythm of the evening when a figure stumbled from the darkness and headed out the door towards the bathroom. Then I heard a loud thud as a body hit the deck outside. I got up and saw a figure lying on the ground. I wasn’t sure who it was at first. He got up unsteadily to his feet and tried again, only to plow into the second pole on the walkway—thud!—and he dropped again. This time I went outside with a flashlight to find Pete Davidson, trying to get to hands and knees. He said he was OK and so I opened the door for him and he baby-crawled into the bathroom. He was totally mareado, more than that in fact, he was completely borracho, the full-body-drunk effect of strong ayahusca, in which it is difficult-to-impossible to walk or even stand up.  I watched him get to his feet and turn on the sink, cursing lightly. It was obvious that the brew had hit him pretty hard. He splashed some water on his face and then spun towards the toilet, falling again—THUD!–flat out on the wood floor, silent, motionless, receding back into his visions.

I didn’t try to talk to Pete. I knew he would be OK, he’s a veteran with many more sessions under his belt than any of the rest of us. I waited, shining the light near him, until he stirred to all hours, and crawled slowly into the bathroom stall.

“I’ll be right back,” he muttered.

I left the flashlight on the floor and exited the bathroom, closing the door behind me. But even from the maloca, where Tocayo was guiding the ceremony into the night as steady as an ocean liner, I could hear the sound of a mighty struggle happening behind the bathroom door. Finally Pete emerged, and I opened the door for him. He staggered back into the maloca and collapsed onto his mattress. I took the flashlight and noticed that it smelled funny. Worse than funny. It smelled fecal. Not good.

I went back to the bathroom and washed my flashlight and my hands. The sink was still running and there was water all over the floor where he had been flailing around. I opened the door to the second stall, and for the love of Pete, what a sight my eyes beheld. A wet pile in one corner of the floor, scattered brown dime-sized dots like graffiti on the floor and walls, smears on the toilet seat, under the seat, and everywhere else in sight. It looked like a whole family of turds had been murdered by a serial killer. I called Slocum over and we assessed the damage. It was actually worse than it initially appeared.

The box of sawdust next to the composting toilet had been used as a toilet by mistake. From there it was clear that he had fallen off the box onto the floor, and things had gone quickly downhill. No part of the ample payload had reached its target. Return to base, pilot. As we did our CSI post-mortem, with Chillum sighing and saying, “well, I guess it comes with the territory,” I just couldn’t stop laughing. Because it occurred to me that, just as we had inaugurated his new maloca the night before, Pete Davidson had just christened his brand-new bathroom. It would never be so pretty again.

And so I concur with Slim Jack that from now on we refer to the second stall as the “Davidson Lounge” in honor of this epic performance.

Anyway. Chillum and I mopped up, and the night went on. Tocayo sang and blew smoke over Pete and he seemed to get his mess back together. Tocayo was in great form the second night—he had sampled a sip of Chillum’s high-octane brew, and you could hear from his soulful singing that he was really feeling good—and the hours passed quickly. I fell asleep after Tocayo blew smoke on me to formally end the ceremony, to the sound of Drew and Slim purging into buckets in the dark.

Next morning, around the mead-hall style breakfast table in Chillum’s lodge, we compared notes again. Slim Jack had very little to report, having gotten nothing from the experience until late in the night. He blamed it on having eaten a large meal too close to ceremony time. Drew, who had drunk not two but three cups of high-test ayahuasca, still had experienced nothing. He believed himself to be blocked in some way and could not account for it. It really belies easy explanation—he ingested enough to knock most people out, and didn’t even feel anything.

Pete, on the other hand, had clearly gotten the Full Experience. After his gastrointestinal apocalypse, he said he felt like the silver thread connecting him to a more grounded reality might snap, leaving him adrift in the night sky of the inner mind, but happily it did not. Tocayo went over and sang some icaros and blew smoke over him, which is what you do when the medicine starts to come on too strong, and Pete did finally settle back into a groove. He even made contact with his unborn son. He noted that it was hard for the boy to hear, as there was fluid around his ears in the womb, but he was able to communicate that they were waiting to greet him in the outside world, which I find really sweet and endearing.

Final thoughts? Well, for one, everyone agrees that Tocayo is the real deal as a shaman—humble, empathetic, finely attuned to the many bewildering frequencies of the spirit world, capable of singing icaros of great depth and power, and able to channel immense healing energy in the process. Second, the pure ayahuasca yielded mixed results across the board—a balance sheet that ranges from knockout punch, to pleasant diversion, to nothing at all. But everyone who attended the weekend’s sessions at Amaru Spirit concurred that Tocayo’s pure brew has great power, and a unique character. And I couldn’t imagine a more lovely and tranquil spot for doing ceremonies than Amaru Spirit. Chillum is using it mainly to host clients interested in detox programs, diet and nutritional therapy, and for artist’s residencies. But it is also an excellent place to do ceremonies (now that the facilities have been properly broken in!) and to explore some of the great mysteries and multitudes contained in the plant medicines here in the jungle, that extend so wonderfully far beyond our understanding of things.

Violence, Rags and Grace

Human nature weighs heavily on my mind lately. Like, why are some people just naturally kind, and others are such ruthless bastards? And why do the bastards win so much of the time? It’s a question that’s been around since the days of Job. Here it is, the thick of the holiday season, a time when people should be embracing the fellowship of our common humanity, but I’m not getting that vibe lately around here.

Iquitos, as I have said, is largely a friendly and hospitable place, but it does have a dark side. I got to thinking about this after hearing the story of my friend Luz, who, as I have said, was assaulted recently in what appeared to be a random attack by a gang of thugs. What is most troubling about this is that it was likely not so random. She was attacked by more than a dozen men who tracked her down a dark street, and beat her savagely despite her willingness to hand over all her valuables. This is the type of thing that happens in Lima, maybe, but it’s surprising to hear about it in Iquitos. There are suggestions that someone was settling a score. Just a couple weeks before, she had traveled back to her home country and reported a man working for her organization in Iquitos, who was taking indecent liberties with underage girls, and they fired him. This targeted, predatory attack has the distinct feel of payback.

I can think of another precedent here. Two years ago, a friend of mine who I’ll call Esther was also the victim of such an attack. She had begun a successful acupuncture and natural health clinic, and another person who had a similar business began losing their customers to her. Esther, who lives out on the road several miles out of town, where it can be a lonely and isolated place after dark, was unexpectedly set upon by a band of armed men one night. They wore masks, and were armed and outfitted in paramilitary style. They were not casual thieves–they had a mission. She too was savagely beaten and robbed, and thought she was going to die, but ultimately managed to escape.

The hard and distasteful moral of these examples is that there are lots of bad people in the world who are willing to resort to some very low methods in order to settle scores or take advantage of others. Where I am from, in the United States, we have at least marginally the rule of law to fall back on. That is to say, the threat of jail is a reasonable deterrent for most people. Money biases the system, but even if you are poor, you will still get your day in court. Here, sadly, this is not the case. Corruption is so much a part of the system that lawyers, judges, even court records can be manipulated or bought off entirely. While the scale is tilted in favor of the wealthy in the States, here it has tilted off its axis completely. And those gringos here who seek to exact justice for some wrong must pony up with their pocketbooks, or make their peace with those with larger pocketbooks than theirs.

Part of the charm of Iquitos for me, when I moved here, was the laconic, laissez-faire attitude of the locals in their approach to life. And to be sure, these stories of violent revenge are the exceptions to the rule. But they do happen. I was talking about this today with a friend of mine, a gringo who has lived here much longer than me, and he observed that “the people here don’t have violence in their bones. It takes a lot to stir someone up. And violence only meets with more violence. That’s why I don’t stir up the shit with anyone.” He’s a smart man. There’s an element to some of these stories that you hear that suggests a kind of anti-gringo sentiment. And then, on the other hand, it is often the gringos behind the scenes, not the Peruvians, propagating the worst incidents of violence and vengeance.

Over the past few months I have had the dubious opportunity to be witness to some intriguing dealings between two gringos who had gotten sideways with each other. Both were paying a lot of money to get preferential treatment in the courts, to make evidence appear or disappear, that sort of thing.  This is not uncommon here, needless to say. But this one gringo in particular has turned out to be a true menace, someone with time and money and intellect enough to thoroughly manipulate the system from the inside. This entails not only boilerplate fare such as falsifying documents and planting false stories in the press, but also messing with people’s families, threatening their livelihoods, and paving this path with so many lies, bribes and payoffs that, in the words of another friend, “bringing a gringo like this to justice in Peru, for white collar crimes, is going to be just about impossible.”

I have witnessed all of this with something like astonishment, because it’s clear now that he is really going to continue to walk the streets freely, even though every member of the gringo community, and many Peruvians, know full well that he is a criminal. As a con men, he is unparalleled, a marvel of sinister cunning. I have never seen his equal, for deftness in swindling and theft and fraud, in a wide variety of venues and media. And he gets away with it, because in Peru, if you have deep pockets and know the right people, most crimes can be made forgotten.

And why a man so intelligent, and so full of aptitude, chose to use his powers for Lex-Luthor-caliber evil, I cannot say. That’s a question for the professionals. I imagine that this is one of the reasons that he is living here, at the frontier of things, rather than in his home country, where he would likely have landed in prison a long time ago. I wish I did not have to be so vague. I hope that one day I will have the proper space and freedom to tell the whole story as it happened, without having to watch my own back when I walk down the street. Think about this next time you consider the importance of a free press. Think of every journalist who ever stuck their neck out because they believed that standing up to powerful interests would make a difference, that telling the truth mattered. It does! Without people like that, we’d all be telling each other different shades of lies, without even knowing it.

Though I’m in my late thirties, at heart I’m still a boy scout who wants to make sure that the old lady crosses the street safely. Yet I am also old enough to know that sometimes the old lady shows up at the wrong time, and gets mugged, and there’s only trouble in it for you if you start asking questions.

At what point do you shrug and say, not my problem? Conscience is the crucible where saints and sinners alike are forged. That is to say, life itself is a series of decisions between sticking your neck out for others, and saving your own.

And that’s all I am going to say about that. Because, after all, I have to live here too, and I don’t want to stir the shit with anyone either. And it is just that place, where complacency meets fear meets self-interest, where bad seeds like this one slip through the cracks.

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Of course, you can’t save everyone. No one can be the catcher in the rye, and you’d be a fool to try. On an almost daily basis, because there is such a disparity here between the well off and the poor, and the poor and the very poor, reminders of human suffering are everywhere, if you are of a mind to even be receptive to that. It is easy for me to ignore the beggars in the street, the children whose parents cannot provide for them, even the half-dead, open-sore dogs lingering like lepers in the market. I ignore it because I must. I am only there to buy fresh produce, fruit juice, and all the fine and healthy things that market has to offer, and all this suffering is not my fault. Yet I have never been totally comfortable ignoring it. Somehow I still feel implicated, because I know that the pocket change rattling around in my pocket could buy food for the child I just passed who stares out into the street as a ghost that gazes upon the living world.  I deserve no blame for the world being this way, and no credit for doing nothing to change it.

This morning Corrina and I went down to street to our local market. We stopped along the way at the tinker’s shack. The guy repairs shoes and small motors and fixes any little thing that needs fixing—he works from an eight foot square shack with one window, right by the main road, that is packed from toe to top with greasy tools and leather straps and stacks of broken things. She goes there to give him business whenever she has a reason to, and she usually brings along a treat for the man’s son, a boy of perhaps five or six. Today the man was not there, but we found him further down the road, working out of a rented stall in the public market. I watched the man’s son trip up and fall. He rolled over and began to cry. The man went over and lifted him to his feet, swatting him in the process. Neither looked to be having very much fun.

After we left, Corrina asked me if I wanted to know the man’s story, “what had happened to him.”   This gentleman, it turns out, has had nine wives, and he has sixteen children. I don’t know how much you can make on a tinker’s salary, but he bought his most recent wife a house out on the Carretera, but he often had to stay in the city in order to work.  One day he came home and found her with another man, having sex right in front of their two young children.

He took his son, and left the daughter with the mother. Now he works as well as lives and sleeps in this eight-foot square shack with his son, which is hardly large enough to lie down in. Corrina observed that the boy needs a mother, that the family unit is hopelessly splintered, that no one seems to have much money, and that it is a terrible and sad situation all around, and that is why she brings business to them when she can. Corrina is sensitive to these things, because she grew up here and knows that this is how people help each other, by supporting them in little ways like that, making a point to take your business there when you could take it somewhere else, if a person is making an honest effort to scrape out a living for themselves.

I have the very great fortune to come from a stable, nuclear family, with two loving parents who provided for all my means, something that I appreciate even more now as an adult living out in the big, bad world where people sometimes make terrible decisions and children suffer the brunt of the consequences. No doubt being the parent of a young child makes me especially sensitive to this in ways I would not have been in earlier days. My heart goes out to that young boy, sleeping in that shack of rags, with no mother around and a father who seems disinterested at best. I know that each person must tend their own garden, and I certainly have enough problems of my own without worrying about anyone else. But still, I am crying in my heart for them. I feel compassion for the tinker and his son. I wish it could be easier, for them, for me, for everyone. But it isn’t.

I often think of how my parents would quote Zorba The Greek to me when I could complain about trivial things. “Life is trouble,” they would say, “only death is not.”

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I am not the only one who was struck deeply by the story of the woman here in Iquitos who was shot in the street in a random drive-by shooting and then delivered her child while dying in the hospital. The boy’s name is Lucas, and despite some complications, he is going to live. The papers are reporting that many people, most of them strangers drawn by a common cause, have traveled to the hospital to offer gifts of food, clothing, diapers, and other things to the newborn.

It’s a pilgrimage worthy of the holiday season.  I thought about going to see this child myself, and for completely secular reasons—only to see with my own eyes a child snatched from the jaws of death, from a destiny that was so very close to being over before it began. It’s the kind of story that gives hope. It elevates my respect for life above the commonplace, and brings it clearly into view, when I have walked too often in the streets of the city where suffering goes unnoticed for being so plentiful.

Crime and Punishment

I’ve never seen any hard statistics on this, but it’s well-known that incidents of violent crime increase in the weeks before Christmas. This is a truism in Peru, to be on guard against thieves (more than usual) as people need money to buy Christmas gifts for the holidays, and this is surely true around the world wherever income disparities exist.

In particular, home invasions and armed robberies, on the roads and even in the public street, become more common. I’ve seen how, even in the poorer houses in the neighborhoods, most everyone has a Christmas tree on display in the front room. (Most of them are fake, plastic jobs resembling fir trees with their iconical shape, as real firs don’t grow here in the tropics.) There’s great pride involved in being able to provide a nice meal for the family, and have gifts under the tree, not to mention substantial social pressure– to be able to participate fully in the holidays, and not be seen by one’s neighbors as too poor to be able to celebrate with the family. The cost of doing so causes a spike in robberies, muggings and hold-ups every December.

It’s important to note that Iquitos is fairly unique for a large city (more that 400,00), in that it does not have many problems with violent crime as do lots of other cities of this size in Latin America. The reason for this is likely that Iquitos has historically been very isolated from the rest of civilization, as it is not connected anywhere else by road, and this quirk of geography fosters a much greater sense of community. So if you rob someone on the street, chances are good that someone’s cousin is going to recognize you and report it. Iquitos is known for its friendly, tranquil, laid-back jungle vibe. But when the Christmas holidays approach, Iquitos too is vulnerable to human greed.

A few days ago, my friend Luz told me about how she had been mugged on the street outside her house. Two motorcars (the three-wheeled motorized vehicles that are ubiquitous here) full of men pulled up next to hers, and she was beaten up pretty badly before she even had a chance to hand over her valuable. She was lucky to escape without the situation taking an even darker turn. I have no doubt that this sort of thing is not an isolated incident, and that the timing of it, so close to the holidays, is no coincidence.

Just the other day, it was reported in the papers that a woman walked into a bank located in Belen, not far from the city center, produced a handgun and walked out with a bag of cash equivalent to around six thousand dollars.  There were no guards to stop her, no security apparatus in place. She simply walked outside, hailed a motorcar, and rode off into the afternoon.

This woman’s brazen daylight hold-up is far from a normal occurrence in Iquitos, and it caused a city-wide discussion about improving public safety, and doing so quickly in light of the fact that these incidents were likely to increase in the coming weeks.  Then, yesterday, another daylight robbery happened in Belen, and this one took a tragic turn.

A group of four men arrived in Belen, and two waited on motorcycles while two others went upstairs and raided the second-story offices of a family that runs a chicken restaurant. It is unclear why this particular family was targeted, although they are fairly prominent in Iquitos. The owner, Rosalvina Cheglio, ran for a seat in Congress recently.

According to details reported in the Iquitos newspaper La Region, gunshots were heard from upstairs. One of the employees intervened and was pistol-whipped in the head. A motorcar driver who was watching from the street got shot in the leg. Then all four thieves fled on their motorcycles.

This area of Belen is a thriving center of commerce, always full of people—a thriving, bustling place, and normally considered safe. It is where the locals come to shop. The streets here are lined with produce stalls, pharmacies and dry goods stores, and commerce goes on all day long, every day.

The impression given by the newspaper, as well as the locals I spoke to who witnessed the event, is that the thieves were somewhat panicked and firing randomly for effect as they fled, to prevent anyone from giving pursuit. They turned from the main thoroughfare of Arica and headed up Calle Abtao, a side street lined with produce tables, full of pineapples at this time of year.

One of the bullets fired during this escape struck one of the pineapple vendors, 25 year old Melissa Alván Lizárraga. On local radio this morning, witnesses said that they saw her shot at close range as the motorcycles drove past. Ms. Lizárraga took a bullet to the head. She was taken to a nearby hospital where she passed away from her injuries this morning. She was nine months pregnant. Doctors managed to deliver the baby, who survived.

Ms. Lizárraga leaved behind not just an infant delivered in the midst of tragedy, but two young sons as well. I have been thinking about this incident all day long, and I can scarcely think on it without being consumed with a smothering sadness. It seems like the most vile and despicable kind of crime. The arbitrary nature of the violence that took her life is sickening to me.

The mood around Iquitos seems to be about the same. On a popular call-in radio show this morning, locals called in to say that there should be no mercy for these people, and that they hoped that they would put up resistance when the police found them, so that they could be killed outright with justification. The popular sentiment was that no amount of prison time could represent justice for such a terrible crime, and that the person who fired the gun was better off dead. It is also being reported that the police have recovered at least one of the motorcycles and are working urgently to track down its owner.

Corrina and I went to Belen today, and when we found ourselves near where the shooting took place, we stopped to talk to some of the locals. I noticed that many, if not most, of the people passing the pineapple stands were turning to look, pointing out the place, casting a gaze as they passed.

The scene of the crime, a day later.

 

It was on this spot, an invisible space between umbrellas and tables stacked with fruit where, by now the whole city was aware, something terrible had happened the previous day. The whiff of tragedy was certainly still in the air. I wanted to talk to the other women selling pineapples, to ask what they had seen, but found that I could not bring myself to do so.

The main church in Belen stands just a block away. The tiled spire cuts an imposing figure over the market below.  I looked up at the cross and felt my sadness turn to something else. I don’t think I can describe it, but it’s something like a general, sweeping sense of melancholy for all humankind. That desperate people can make terrible decisions in moments of crisis, with consequences that ripple out for years, generations, from the deaths of innocent people. That more suffering is brought into the world, for no reason at all. That this happened just a couple weeks before Christmas . . . well, I think of our need to provide a bountiful Christmas for our families, and what must go through the mind of every person who contributes to the spike in crime around this time of year. And then I think of the words of the Man himself.

“Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

– Matthew 91:21

While it’s an inconvenient truth for some, Jesus was an early proponent of the radical redistribution of wealth. Do you know someone who practices this part of Jesus’ teaching today? I personally do not. Most everyone in Iquitos is focused on taking, not giving. Especially at this time of year! So in a holiday season intended to honor the birth of this wisest of wise man, I can only reflect on the distance between the radical ideas of the man himself, which made him so famous back then, and the ways he is commemorated each year. And it’s quite clear that we’re pretty far from there now.

I can only say, as someone who is not particularly religious, God bless that child plucked untimely from its mother’s womb. May it transcend the tragic circumstances it was born into. As for the murderer, my wish is that the man is possessed of a conscience. Not everyone has one. But if he does, may he live a very long time with the full weight of his act upon him. That is the only punishment I can think of that fits the crime.