On my first day in Lima I watched as a quiet art exhibition in the center of the city turned into a riot when city officials tried to arrest the artists… Read all about this and more of this crazy city.

Two worlds one city!

I had heard Lima was supposed to be a beautiful city but upon arriving I encountered an urban mess of crumbling, half finished buildings, roads filled with garbage and the tuk tuk was back. The well documented eternal greyness in the winter, didn’t help much. The sky was hermetically covered with clouds, not even one ray of sunshine could filter through.

“How long do you think it will take a city like this to look like a modern European city?” a friend I’m traveling with me asked.

“Never, it will have to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch,” I said.

5 hours later standing on the beach walkway of the Mira Flores touristic district in Lima I swallowed my tongue. Never in my travels have I encountered such differences in one city, it felt like a completely different country. Even the rich parts of Mumbai do not manage to hide the third worldiness of it. The noise, the garbage, the smell filter in but not in Mira Flores where there are no tuk tuks, no honking and there are garbage bins at every corner. Even the people look and dress differently.

It was a slow change from one part to the other, buildings grew higher and more modern, sidewalks appeared, tuk tuks and graffiti disappearing.

The Human statue in silver surrounded by the crowd after the attack.

The transition area seemed to be at the old center of the city. There were old European style buildings that had seen better days but still offered charm and beauty. Roads filled with modern stores and hundreds of people going about. It was here on a crowded walkway that I witnessed police brutality, the kind of which I have never seen with my own eyes before. I also stood in awe as I saw the masses stand up to it.

It began with a simple ‘human’ statue. The center of the city is filled with many artist and musicians but for some reason a city official was trying to shut this one down. The artist stayed in character and refused to budge as more and more people gathered around the scene. Then all of a sudden many city officials arrived along with several police men. The pushed the artist outside the circle and began to beat him. One of the policemen took the shovel that the artist was using as a prop and began to beat him with it.

Suddenly almost as one, a roar rose from the crowd. They rushed forwards pushing the police back with their bare hands and surrounded the artist protecting him. The police quickly disappeared. The crowd kept close to the artists, giving him money and tending his wounds. My friend, a local to south America said that the police were the lucky ones to get out of there alive.

Causa – Octopus and a special type of potato!

I have been to many demonstration, and I have witnessed police brutality but I have never seen this type of reaction from the crowd. It wasn’t one or two people that were brave enough to defend the artist, it was every one including old women and young children. I could actually feel the power of the people. My friend tried to explain this by the fact that democracy is quite a new thing here, people still remember overthrowing dictatorship, they remember their power. People do not trust police, they are still considered as little more than thugs. He explained that in the culture here there is a difference between ‘legal’ and ‘legitimate’. Even though the government is the one that decides what is legal it is the people that decide what is legitimate, and on the street it is the people that count.

Somehow I had a very hard time imagining this scene in the clean and modern district of Mira Flores. It is likely that the police there would not have acted as violently but even if they did I doubt that the people would react in the same way.

Rocoto Relleno – stuffed pepper, and a food festival.

I’ll end with a lighter note, as the one thing Lima did live up to was its reputation of food. It didn’t matter if I ate in the poor area or in one of the 50 best restaurants in the world (astrid&geston) the food was delicious and unique. Strangely enough the price differences between the two parts of the city weren’t that big between 5 – 15 dollars, somehow I would have expected more. Then again as a local I was staying with in the poor side of the city told me, “I don’t know which restaurant is good because I eat at home…”