The visit of the hero

Everybody was chasing Vargas Llosa but he seemed to chase another remarkable Piura-native man.

 

By Roberto Saavedra (special to FACTORTIERRA).

 

CHULUCANAS, Peru – Imagine that somebody knocks on your door in a shiny morning, you open it and… what a surprise!

• Mister Fernando Barranzuela?

It’s not another guy. It’s about Mario Vargas Llosa, the reknown Peruvian writer, 2010 Nobel Award of Literature. Although the poet Fernando Barranzuela used to had visits of many people, this one marked a before and an after.

 

The missing land

Piura is not a strange land for the novelist, playright, essayist, journalist, and even actor. He spent his childhood and teenage there. He studied at San Miguel School, wrote and produced his first theater play, knew that his father –whom he belief to be died—lived, learned to make love.

 

Vargas Llosa arrived on Monday, March 5^th, 2012, and had two homages, one at the campus of Piura National University and another else at Merino Square, amid Piura City downtown. The press and devoted fans followed him everywhere, but the Nobel-awarded seemed to have in mind another goal.

 

Vargas Llosa revealed he was writing a new novel which actions happened partially in Piura. The title was not definitive yet. It could call The Unknown Hero. The only that even he had clear was to be published on printed and online version. During the visit, he was accompanied by his former wife Patricia Llosa and his cousin Luis Llosa, director of many movie-&-TV blockbusters. Was all in family? Maybe.

 

African heritage

Wednesday, mid-morning, a black car parked in front of Fernando Barranzuela’s house, a reknown Piura cumanana poet who lived in Yapatera. The cumanana is a poetic piece in 10 major-art verses, and its main characteristic is it must be improvised. Barranzuela suggested it was created by slaves who arrived to Cumaná, actual Venezuela, and ended to summon in Suipirá, actual Las Lomas, Peru.

 

With the tondero, it’s one of the two African heritages of Piura and a key part of the regional identity. As the time went by, the tondero finished to home in Morropón City, and the cumanana in Yapatera.

 

Barranzuela was not only an inspired poet but he knew all the recent history of this town, that was originally addressed to be the capital city of Morropón Province, but the interest of estate owners ended putting the political center about 3 miles to the south, in Chulucanas City.

 

The unknown hero?

The fact is Barranzuela got annoyed when he opened the door of his house and Mario vargas Llosa was asking for him.

• What could you say me about Gustavo Mohme?
• Gustavo Mohme? Gustavo Mohme born here.

Gustavo Mohme Llona became a congressman and founded La República newspaper, one of the most important journalistic corporations of Peru up to date, with shareholdings in electronic media like América TV network or Ecuadorian Teleamazonas.

 

During the time of Alberto Fujimori’s dictatorship (1992-2000), Mohme and La República were one of the few independent bastions where the democracy was defended, and revealed multiple abuses committed by a power that today tries to rise the head again despite his lockdown and international bad reputation.

• Don Gustavo was brought to birth by a midwife in the McDonald estate house, that today is occupied by the Yapatera High-school.

 

Barranzuela, Vargas Llosa, and Patricia were sit down at the town’s main square. The speakers surprised when they knew the revelation.

• When Mohme born, his mom brought him out and came him back when he was 8 years old, and he went out to play amid the sugarcane plantations.
• When I was 10 years old, I came here in 1946, invited by McDonald Family to ride a horse – Vargas Llosa remembered.

 

According to the writer, the things have changed in town because there is not longer the factory where the sugarcane was processed, neither the old plantations. “The harvests of Yapatera have changed,” he observed while took notes of everything that Barranzuela said. When the meetting among the literature men finished, one of both did not stop wondering of the pleasant discovery.

 

Is Momhe the reason why Vargas Llosa pilgrimed through Piura? Was he his unknown hero? Or was it, like the cosmopolitan writer said later, “a return to the source”s as the elephants do it? There was no way than waiting the final resultwhether paper or on the screen, but it will be a delight for the senses, for the soul, for the life without doubts.

 

With informations of FACTORTIERRA Archive. © 2012 Grupo La República Publicaciones S.A. All Rights Reserved.