Houses of Piura – so many stories to tell

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo. Photographs provided by Antenor Orrego Private University.

 

Photos by Antenor Orrego Private University.

 

Photo by erick Aquino.

 

PIURA CITY, Peru – Without intention,Marcela Temple Seminario became one of the most powerful women in earth, she knew how to use  it – the wife of former United Nations Organization’s General Secretary Javier Perez de Cuellar served the poorest people.

 

Through a prestigious international newspaper, she published a letter asking for solidarity with Timbocttu, Mali, an African country where the kids lived in extreme poverty. She impressed to see the flies putting on the children’s skin.

 

The post was successful, moved the entire world… or that happened in the 1980s, at least. Few people know Marcela Temple born and raised in Piura. Her family’s house is still in the downtown, inside the so-called Monumental Zone.

 

It’s one of dozen  of buildings framed into a photographic collection presented by the Antenor Orrego Private University in Piura’s Communications School  (Upao Piura, as in Spanish) and the Disconcentrated Direction of Culture (DDC Piura), project which start FACTORTIERRA have previously reported.

 

The goal is to use the new technologies for saving that patrimony and promoting local identity. Plus, beginning a images catalogue that allow to identify and study in-depth the artistic & architectural styles that inspired their every form.

 

The field assignment was in charge of the Upao Piura’s Photography Workshops students, supervised by their teacher, Erick Aquino Montoro, MSc, specialist in artistic & documentarian images. What they found was not too charming as we suppose.

 

Photos by Kleider Berrú.

 

A click, a sighting

“We realized the state of Piura Monumental Zone is a mess, rests up to fall down, lots with lawsuits between families for who the owner is, a matter of legal bobbytraps,” Aquino tells. One of the sightings in the field assignment is in Piura, we don’t realize (or we don’t want to realize) when the building we live or work in, or what we attend to, fits to the monumental patrimony classification. The way how the city has been ordered has much to do.

 

The other sighting is what we believe to be flat surfaces are not… how to say so… everything but flat: “It’s the first time in my experience as a photographer that when the tripod is put, we noticed everything was uneven – lanes, sidewalks, walls,” Mr Aquino tags.

 

A third sighting was the odyssey that supposed to find the right shot: “Piura can be an important touristic destination but the estates are badly conserved, no one say nothing about the visual pollution we’ve find – antennas that nobody uses, awful wires, panels with politic issues that nobody take out.”

 

And the fourth sighting is the precariousness many estates are: “The tenants thought we were municipal agents who went to expropriate,” Aquino comments.  “They mistreated us badly, especially some foreigners who have stores right there… Despite we explained the project, certain distrust remained.”

 

Photos by Luciana Saco.

 

We need communication

An urban tale says that La Tina, the supposed mythical location of Matalaché, existed indeed, and it has been sucked now by the modern Piura City. It’s supposed a popular technological college occupies the colonial lot where the forbidden romance between Jose Manuel, the slave, and Maria Luz, the rich girl, developed. If someone reads the novel, Enrique López albújar basted pretty skillful facts and characters of Piura History.

 

The house of the journalist and writer is also part of the exposition, but it doesn’t have residential use neither but financial. A bank occupies it many decades ago, but it still continues on our traditional Main Square.

 

Who turned 70 still could see the original building. The case is that generation has not transferred the fact to the two or three ones after it, and that seems to be the main threat for any conservation strategy – to communicate, then concertating efforts.

 

“People have to understand why the conservation is important,” Aquino emphasizes. “It’s necessary joint strategies to make it real better.”

 

And the problem doesn’t get focused in Piura only. The students who participated of the experience also think it must pay attention to the Sullana Historic Downtown (although it’s not named so). And by extension, the other ones  across Piura Department.

 

Our monumental patrimony has so many stories to tell… like the pretty small and kind Marcela Temple’s, the Piura-native who advocated for the children of Timboctu. The picture of her house and other elses are shown since Thursday, December 15^th in Ignacio Merino Room, Piura Municipal Gallery, on the corner of Sullana Avenue and Huánuco Street, second floor of Vicús Municipal Museum, Piura 20001. The opening is at 6:00 pm.

 

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