Death in the Andes

Early that morning, as she did whenever she was leaving on a trip, Señora d'Harcourt woke while it was still dark, just seconds before the alarm went off. And with the same tingle of excitement she felt each time she traveled to the countryside, either for work or for pleasure (they were indistinguishable as far as she was concerned), even though she had been doing it for nearly 30 years now. She dressed quickly, tiptoed out of the room so as not to wake her husband and went down to the kitchen to make coffee. She had left her packed bag by the front door the night before. As she was rinsing her cup, Marcelo appeared in the kitchen doorway, wearing his bathrobe and yawning, his feet bare, his hair tousled.

"No matter how I try, I always make noise," she apologized. "Or does my unconscious mind betray me? Perhaps I really want to wake you."

"I'll give you anything if you don't go to Huancavelica." He yawned again. "Shall we negotiate? I have my checkbook right here."

"The moon and stars, just for openers," she laughed, handing him a cup of coffee. "Don't be silly, Marcelo. I'm safer up there than you are going to the office. Statistically speaking, the streets of Lima are more dangerous than the Andes."

"I have never believed in statistics." Yawning and stretching, he watched her, observing the orderliness with which she arranged cups, saucers and spoons in the cupboard. "I must say these trips of yours are going to give me an ulcer, Hortensia. If they don't give me a heart attack first."

"I will bring you some nice fresh cheese from the sierra." She brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. "Go back to bed and dream about me. Nothing will happen, don't be silly."

Just then they heard the Jeep from the Ministry pull up outside, and Señora d'Harcourt hurried to leave. She kissed her husband, reassuring him that there was nothing to worry about and reminding him to send the envelope with the photographs from Yanaga-Chemillén National Park to the Smithsonian. Marcelo accompanied her to the door, and when he said goodbye, he told Cañas, the engineer, what he always told him: "Bring her back safe and sound, Señor Cañas."

The streets of Lima were deserted and wet. In a few minutes the Jeep reached the central highway, where traffic was still fairly light.

"Does your wife get as nervous as my husband does when you travel, Señor Cañas?" asked Señora d'Harcourt. In the milky glow of dawn, they were leaving the lights of the city behind them.

"A little," the engineer said, nodding. "But Mirta is not very good at geography, and she has no idea that we're going into the lion's den."

"The lion's den?" said the driver, and the Jeep bucked. "You should have told me before, Señor Cañas. Then I wouldn't have come. I'm not going to risk my neck for the miserable salary they pay me."

"Pay us," Cañas laughed.

"Pay the two of you," declared Señora d'Harcourt. "I don't earn a red cent. I do all this for the sake of art."

"You know you love it, señora. You would pay them to let you do the work."

"Well, yes, that's true," she admitted. "It fills my life. It must be that plants and animals have never deceived me, but people sometimes do."

When they reached Matucana, the sun was beginning to break through between the hills. It was a dry, cold morning, and for the rest of the trip, as they crossed the frozen peaks of" La Oroya and the temperate Jauja Valley, the engineer and Señora d'Harcourt were planning how to obtain new backers for the reforestation project in the Huancavelica sierra, which had been sponsored by the FAO and Holland. They were now going to inspect the early results. It was a victory they had celebrated together a few months earlier at a Chinese restaurant in San Isidro. Close to four years of meetings, memos, conferences, articles, letters, negotiations, recommendations, and finally success. The project was under way. Instead of being limited to herding and subsistence farming, indigenous communities would begin to raise trees. In a few years, with adequate funding, leafy queñua forests would once again give shade to those caves filled with magical inscriptions, drawings and messages from remote ancestors. And as soon as there was peace again, archaeologists from all over the world could come to decipher them.

They reached Huancayo in the early afternoon and stopped to have a quick lunch and allow the driver to fill the Jeep's tank and check the motor and tires. They went into a restaurant on a corner of the square.

"I almost persuaded the Spanish ambassador to come along," Señora d'Harcourt told the engineer. "He couldn't because he had to meet with some kind of delegation from Madrid. He promised me he would come the next time, and that he'd make inquiries to see if the Spanish government will help us. It seems ecology is becoming fashionable there, too."

"I'd like to visit Spain," said Cañas. "My maternal grandfather came from Galicia. I must still have relatives over there."

They could barely talk during the second part of the trip because of the Jeep's violent jarring and bouncing on the ruined highway. The ruts and fallen rocks between Acostambo and Izcuchaca were so severe that they almost turned back. They clutched at their seats and at the roof, but with every pothole they crashed into each other and were almost thrown from the Jeep. The driver was enjoying it, shouting, "Look out below!" and "Wild bull on the loose!" It was dark by the time they reached Huancavelica. They had put on sweaters, gloves and scarves to protect themselves from the cold.

The prefect, who had received instructions from Lima, met them at the Hotel de Turistas. He waited while they cleaned up and invited them to have supper with him in the hotel. They were joined by the two technicians from the Ministry who would accompany them and by the garrison commander, a short, cordial man who saluted in military fashion and then shook hands.

"It's a great honor to welcome someone so important, señora," the commander said, removing his cap. "I always read your page in El Comercio. And I've read your book on the Huaylas Canyon. What a shame I don't have it with me now so you could sign it."

He told them that the patrol was ready; they could start their inspection at seven the next morning.

"Patrol?" Señora d'Harcourt said, questioning the engineer with her eyes.

"I explained to you we didn't want an escort," Cañas said to the prefect.

"I Conveyed that information to the commander," the prefect replied with a shrug. "But the crew doesn't give orders, the captain does. This is an emergency zone under military authority."

"I'm very sorry, but I can't allow you people to go up there without protection," the commander informed them. He was a young man with a carefully trimmed mustache, and he was making an effort to be pleasant. "Señora, it's a dangerous area. The subversives call it 'liberated territory.' I can't assume the responsibility. I assure you the patrol will not interfere in any way."

Señora d'Harcourt sighed and exchanged dejected looks with the engineer. She would have to explain her position to the commander, as she had explained it to prefects, subprefects, captains, majors, commanders, Civil Guards, National Guards and ordinary soldiers ever since violence began to fill these mountains with corpses, fear and phantoms.

"We're not political and we have nothing to do with politics, Commander. Our concern is nature, the environment, the animals and plants. We don't work for this government; we work for Peru. All of Peru. The military as well as those hotheads. Don't you understand? If they see us surrounded by soldiers, they'll have a false impression of who we are and what we do. I appreciate your good intentions, but I assure you we don't need anyone to take care of us. Our best protection is to go alone and prove that we have nothing to hide."

The commander was not convinced. It had been rash enough to travel overland from Huancayo to Huancavelica, where there had been dozens of assaults and ambushes. He apologized for insisting. They might think him impertinent, but it was his obligation and he wanted no recriminations later.

"We'll sign a paper freeing you of all responsibility," Canas proposed. "Don't take offense, Commander, but for our work we shouldn't be identified with the military."

The discussion ended only when Señora d'Harcourt declared that if the officer insisted, she would cancel the expedition. The commander drew up a document and had the prefect and the two technicians sign as witnesses.

"You're a hard man," Señora d'Harcourt commented in a conciliatory way when she said goodnight. "But thank you for your kindness. Let me have your address, and I'll send you a book of mine on the Colca Valley that's coming out soon. It has some very nice photographs."

Señora d'Harcourt went to Mass the next morning at the Church of Saint Sebastian, where she spent some time looking at its majestic colonial arches and antique retables of sleepy-eyed archangels. They left in two vehicles, she and the engineer in the Jeep, the technicians and the prefect in an old black Ford. On the road to the Santa Bárbara mines they encountered a patrol of soldiers who carried their rifles with fixed bayonets and seemed ready to fire. A few kilometers farther on, the road became an indistinct trail, and the Jeep reduced its speed so as not to leave the Ford too far behind. For an hour or two they drove up and down hills through the semidesert, passing a succession of barren mountains. On the slopes, in occasional touches of life and color, a few huts came into view, as did fields planted in potatoes, barley, beans, oca and mashua. The Ford was no longer in sight.

"The last time I was here, there weren't so many painted slogans and red flags," Cañas observed. "What the commander said must be true. It seems they control this area."

"I just hope that doesn't interfere with the reforestation project," said Señora d'Harcourt. "That would be too much. Four years to get the project off the ground, and when it finally happens---"

"I haven't put in my two cents yet, and that's a fact," the driver interjected. "But if you ask me, I would have felt a lot happier with that escort."

"Then they would have thought we were their enemies," said Señora d'Harcourt, "and we're not. We're not anybody's enemies. We are working for them, too. Don't you understand?"

"I do understand, señora," the man grumbled. "I only hope they do. Haven't you seen on TV how brutal they are?"

"I never watch television," replied Señora d'Harcourt. "That must be why I feel so calm."

At dusk they reached the Indian community of Huayllarajcra, where one of the nurseries was in operation. The campesinos came there for the queñua seedlings and planted them around their fields and along the banks of lagoons and streams. The village center--a small church with a tile roof and collapsed tower, a little adobe school, a cobblestone square--was almost deserted. But the mayor and elders of Huayllarajcra, their staffs of authority in hand, showed them around the nursery, which had been built by communal labor. They seemed enthusiastic about the reforestation program and said that until now all the comuneros had lived in the highlands, isolated from one another. But if the plans to bring them together were to become a reality, they would have electricity and drinkable water. In the fading light they could still make out the vast expanse around them, with its patchwork of cultivated fields and a terrain that grew stonier as it rose and disappeared into the clouds. The engineer took a deep breath and spread his arms wide.

"I lose all my Lima neuroses in this landscape," he exclaimed, pointing around him in excitement. "Don't you, señora? We should have brought a little bottle of something for the cold."

Next to the nursery was a shack where meals were served. The family that used to live in the house had been reduced to one old woman, who would not explain where her kinfolk had gone, or why. The place was empty except for a small cot. The woman said nothing and busied herself with tending the fire, stirring the pot, keeping her back to them. The mayor and elders returned to their houses. The two watchmen at the nursery had gone into their hut and barred the door. The little reed corral, where Señora d'Harcourt recalled seeing sheep and chickens, was empty, the stakes pulled out of the ground. A ragged piece of red flannel fluttered on a stick set into heaps of straw on the roof.

By the time the prefect and the technicians drove into Huayllarajcra in the Ford, the stars were shining in a deep black sky. The engineer and Señora d'Harcourt were unpacking. They had set up their sleeping bags in a corner and inflated their air pillows and were heating their coffee on a portable Primus stove.

"We thought you'd had an accident," Cañas greeted them. "I was ready to go out and look for you."

But the prefect was a different person; the helpful, good-natured little man from Huancavelica was beside himself. They had, in fact, had a flat tire, but that wasn't why he was frantic.

"We have to go back immediately," he ordered as he climbed out of the car. "We cannot spend the night here, absolutely not."

"Have some coffee and a biscuit and enjoy the view," the engineer said, trying to calm him. "You can't see this anywhere else in the world. Take it easy, friend."

"Don't you know what's going on?" The prefect raised his voice. His chin trembled and he squeezed his eyes open and shut as if his vision had blurred. "Haven't you seen the slogans painted all along the road? Isn't there a red flag right over our heads? The commander was right. This is sheer recklessness. We can't expose ourselves like this. And you least of all, señora."

"We've come here to do work that has nothing to do with politics," she said, in an effort to reassure him. "But if you feel unsafe, you can go back to the city."

"I'm no coward." The prefect's voice changed and he spoke with wounded pride. "But this is foolhardy. We're in danger. None of us can spend the night here. Not me, not the technicians, not the engineer. Listen to me: We've got to leave. We can come back with the patrol. Don't put other people's lives at risk, señora."

Cañas turned toward the two technicians, who were listening in silence.

They were fairly young and wore poor men's clothing. They seemed uncomfortable and exchanged glances, not saying anything.

"Please, don't feel obliged," Señora d'Harcourt intervened. "If you would rather go back, you can."

"Are you staying, Señor Cañas?" one of them finally asked in a northern accent.

"Absolutely," he said. "We've fought too long to establish this project, to get money from the FAO and the Dutch. I'm not going to retreat just when it's getting under way."

"Then we'll stay, too," said the one who asked the question. "God's will be done."

"I'm very sorry, but I'm leaving," declared the prefect. "I hold political office. If they come, I'm done for. I'll ask the commander to send the patrol for you."

"Under no circumstances," Señora d'Harcourt replied, offering him her hand. "You can go, but don't do anything else. I'll see you in Huancavelica in a few days. Have a good trip back. And don't worry about us. Somebody up there is taking better care of us than any patrol could."

They unloaded the technicians' blankets and packs and watched the Ford drive away into the darkness.

"It's crazy to travel alone at night along these roads," murmured one of the technicians.

For some time they worked in silence, making preparations to spend the night in the small house. After serving them a very spicy soup with chunks of yuca, the old woman lay down on her cot. They arranged their sleeping bags and blankets side by side, then built a fire and sat next to it, watching the stars twinkle and multiply. They had ham, chicken and avocado sandwiches, and Señora d'Harcourt passed around pieces of chocolate for dessert. They ate slowly, talking about the next day's itinerary and their families in Lima. The northern technician, who came from Pacasmayo, spoke of his fiancée in Trujillo. Last year she had won second prize in a folk-dance competition. Then the conversation centered on how bright, how infinite in number, the stars were when viewed from the Andean peaks.

Señora d'Harcourt changed the direction of their talk abruptly. "I've been traveling in Peru for 30 years and never dreamed that things like this could happen one day."

The engineer, the technicians and the driver were silent, reflecting on her words. Later they went to sleep, fully dressed.

•

They arrived at dawn, just as the party of travelers was waking up. There were about 50 of them: men, women, many young people, a few children, most of them campesinos but also some urban mestizos, in jackets, ponchos, sneakers, sandals, jeans and sweaters embroidered with crude figures in the style that decorates pre-Hispanic pottery. On their heads they wore mountain caps with earflaps, berets or hats, and some hid their faces with balaclavas. They were poorly armed: Only three or four carried Kalashnikovs; the others had shotguns, revolvers, hunting carbines or simple machetes and sticks. The old cook had disappeared.

"You don't need to point those guns at us," said Señora d'Harcourt, stepping forward. "We're not armed, and we won't try to run away. Can I speak with your leader? To explain what we're doing here?"

No one answered her. No order was given, but they all seemed well trained, for in twos and threes they separated from the larger group and surrounded each of the five, searched them carefully and took everything they had in (continued on page 151) Andes (continued from page 66) their pockets. They tied the travelers' hands behind their backs with lengths of rope or animal gut.

"We're not your enemies, and we're not political. We don't work for the government, we work for all Peruvians," said Señora d'Harcourt, extending her hands to make her captors' work easier. "Our job is to defend the environment, our natural resources. To keep nature from being destroyed so that in the future all the children of the sierra will have food and work."

"Señora d'Harcourt has written many books about our plants, our animals," explained the engineer. "She's an idealist like you. She wants a better life for the campesinos. Thanks to her, this region will be covered with trees. That's a wonderful thing for the Comuneros, for Huancavelica. For you and your children. It's good for all of us, regardless of politics."

They allowed Cañas and Señora d'Harcourt to speak without interruption, but they did not pay the slightest attention to what they said. They had mobilized, placing sentries at various positions that allowed them to keep an eye on the road to the village and the trail that climbed along the snowfields. It was a cold, dry morning with a clear sky and a cutting wind. The high walls of the hillsides seemed renewed.

"Our struggle is like yours," said Señora d'Harcourt, her voice calm, her expression revealing no sign of alarm. "Don't treat us like enemies; we're not your enemies."

"Could we talk to your leader," Cañas asked from time to time, "or with any person in charge? Allow me to speak with him."

After some time had passed, a group of them entered the shack, and those who remained outside had the members of the traveling party go in one by one. The questions were asked in loud voices. Those outside could follow portions of the dialogue. These were slow, repetitive interrogations: personal information mixed with political considerations and occasional queries regarding other people and foreign affairs. The first one questioned was the driver, followed by the technicians and then the engineer. It was growing dark by the time Cañas came out. Señora d'Harcourt realized with some surprise that she had been standing for ten hours with nothing to eat or drink. But she did not feel hunger, or thirst, or fatigue. She thought about her husband, grieving more for him than for herself. She watched Cañas walk out. His expression had changed, as if he had lost the certainty that had animated him during the day, when he had tried to speak with them.

"They hear, but they don't listen, and they don't want to understand what you say to them," she heard him murmur as he walked past her. "They're from an other planet."

When she entered the shack, they had her sit on the ground in the same position the three men and one woman inside had assumed. Señora d'Harcourt addressed the one who wore a leather jacket and a scarf around his neck, a young man with a full beard and cold, gray, penetrating eyes. She told him about her life in some detail, from her birth almost 60 years ago in that remote Baltic country she did not remember and whose language she did not speak to her nomadic childhood in Europe and America, moving from school to school, language to language, country to country, until, not yet 20 and recently married to a young diplomat, she came to Peru. She told him of her love at first sight for the Peruvians and, above all, about her awe and wonder at the deserts, the jungles, the mountains, the trees, the animals, the snows in this country that was now her country, too. Not only because her passport said so--she had taken the nationality of Marcelo, her second husband--but because she had earned the right to call herself Peruvian after many years of traveling the length and breadth of this country, studying and fostering its beauty in her lectures, articles and books. She would go on doing this work until the end of her days because it had given meaning to her life. Did they understand that she was not their enemy?

Again they listened without interrupting, but their faces showed no interest in what she said. Only when she stopped speaking, after explaining how difficult it had been for her and that generous, self-sacrificing young man, the engineer Canas, to begin the reforestation Program in Huancavelica, did they begin to ask her questions. Without enmity or antipathy, with dry, mechanical phrases in neutral, routinized voices, as if, thought Señora d'Harcourt, all the questions were a useless formality because they already knew the answers. They asked how long she had been an informer for the police, the army, the Intelligence Agency; they asked about her trips, her inspection tours. She gave them all the details. The Military Institute of Geography had asked her to serve as a consultant to the Permanent Commission, which was redrawing and improving the atlas, and this had been her only connection to the armed forces except for an occasional lecture at the Military Academy, the Naval Academy or the Center for Advanced Military Studies. They wanted to know about her contacts with foreign governments, the ones she worked for, the ones that had sent her instructions. She explained that it wasn't a question of governments but of scientific institutions--the Smithsonian in Washington, the Museum of Man in Paris, the British Museum in London and a few foundations or ecological centers from which she occasionally obtained funds for small projects ("It was never very much"). But while she talked, corrected and specified, and though her responses stressed the fact that none of her contacts was political, that all these connections and relationships were scientific, purely scientific, the expressions and glances of her interrogators filled her with the over whelming certainty of an insuperable incomprehension, a lack of communication more profound than if she had been speaking Chinese and they spoke only Spanish.

When it seemed to be over--her mouth was dry and her throat burned--Señora d'Harcourt felt very tired.

"Are you going to kill me?" she asked, hearing her voice break for the first time. The one in the leather jacket looked into her eyes without blinking.

"This is a war, and you are a lackey of our class enemy," he explained, staring at her with blank eyes, delivering his monolog in an expressionless voice. "You don't even realize that you are a tool of imperialism and the bourgeois state. Even worse, you permit yourself the luxury of a clear conscience, seeing yourself as Peru's Good Samaritan. Your case is typical."

"Can you explain that to me?" she said. "In all sincerity, I don't understand. What is my case typical of?"

"The intellectual who betrays the people," he said with the same serene, icy confidence. "The intellectual who serves bourgeois power and the ruling class. What you do here has nothing to do with the environment. It has to do with your class and with your power. You come here with bureaucrats, the newspapers provide publicity and the government wins a battle. Who said that this was liberated territory? That a part of the New Democracy had been established in this zone? A lie. There's the proof. Look at the photographs. A bourgeois peace reigns in the Andes. You don't know this either, but a new nation is being born here, with a good deal of blood and suffering. We can show no mercy to such powerful enemies."

"May I at least intercede on behalf of Cañas?" Señora d'Harcourt stammered. "He's young, almost the same age as you. I've never known a more idealistic Peruvian, one who works with so much----"

"The session is over," said the young man in the jacket as he rose to his feet.

When they walked outside, the sun was setting behind the hills and the nursery of seedlings was disappearing in a great fire whose flames heated the air and made their cheeks burn. Señora d'Harcourt saw the driver climbing into the Jeep. A short while later, he drove off in the direction of Huancavelica.

"At least they let him go," said the engineer, who stood beside her. "I'm glad, he's a decent guy."

"I'm so sorry, Señor Cañas," she murmured. "I feel so guilty about you. I don't know how to beg your----"

"Señora, it is a great honor for me," he said in a firm voice. "I mean, being with you at the end. They've taken the two technicians over there, and because they hold a lower rank, they'll shoot them in the head. You and I, however, are people of privilege. They just explained it to me. A question of symbols, apparently. You're a believer, aren't you? I'm not, so please pray for me. Can we stand together? I'll bear up better if I can hold your hand. Let's try, all right? Move closer, Señora."