The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (21 page)

“Comrade Mayta has been castigated. He knows it, and so do we,” added Comrade Medardo. “He will not come back to the RWP(T), at least not for now, not as long as current conditions last. But, comrades, he's said it. Vallejos's plans are still in effect. The uprising will take place, with or without us. Whether we like it or not, it's going to affect us.”

What was Moisés's point? Mayta was surprised to hear Moisés refer to him still as “comrade.” He suspected what the point was, and in an instant all the depression and anger he had felt when he saw all those raised arms in favor of the motion disappeared: this was a chance he'd have to take.

“Trotskyism will not participate in the guerrilla war,” he said. “The RWP(T) has unanimously decided to turn its back on us. The other RWP isn't even aware of the plan. But the plan is serious and solid. Don't you see? The Communist Party has a great opportunity here to fill a vacuum.”

“To stick its neck in the guillotine. A great privilege!” growled Blacquer. “Drink your coffee and, if you like, tell me about your tragic love affair with the Trots. But don't say a word about that uprising, Mayta.”

“Don't make up your minds now, not even in a week—take all the time you need,” Mayta went on, paying no attention to him. “The main obstacle for you all was the RWP(T). That obstacle has vanished. The insurrection is now the sole property of a worker-peasant group of independent revolutionaries.”

“You, an independent revolutionary?” Blacquer said, enunciating carefully.

“Buy the next issue of
Workers Voice (T)
and you'll see for yourself,” said Mayta. “That's what I've become: a revolutionary without a party. See? You've got a golden opportunity here. To run things, stand at the head of it all.”

“That was the resignation you read,” Blacquer says. He takes off his glasses to breathe on them and clean them with his handkerchief. “A decoy. No one believed in that resignation—neither the guy who signed it nor the ones who printed it. So why did they bother? To trick the readers? What readers? Did
Workers Voice (T)
have any readers beyond the—how many, seven—the seven Trots in the party? That's the way history is written, comrade.”

All the stores on Avenida Larco are closed, even though it's still early. Because of the news about the invasion down south? Around here, there are fewer people than on the Diagonal or in the park. And even the gangs of beggars that overrun the streets and the cars are thinner than usual. The side of the Municipal Building is covered with an enormous graffito in red paint: “The People's Victory Is Coming Soon.” It's decorated with the hammer and sickle. It wasn't there when I passed by three hours ago. A commando came with paint and brushes and painted it right in front of the cops? But now I realize that there are no police guarding the building.

“Let's at least give him a chance, then, to do a little less damage to the party,” Comrade Medardo went on cautiously. “He should resign. We'll publish his resignation in
Workers Voice (T)
. Besides, it would be proof that the party bears no responsibility for whatever he does in Jauja. A reconsideration in that sense of the word, comrades.”

Mayta saw that various members of the Central Committee of the RWP(T) were nodding in approval. Moisés/Medardo's proposal might be accepted. He thought it over quickly, balancing the advantages and disadvantages. Yes, it was the lesser of two evils. He raised his hand: Could he speak?

At Benevides, there are as many people waiting for buses as there were at the Tiendecita Blanca. Blacquer shrugs: patience. I tell him I'll wait with him until he gets on. Several people near us are talking about the invasion.

“Over the years, I've come to realize that he wasn't so crazy,” Blacquer says. “If the first action had lasted longer, things might have turned out the way Mayta planned. If the insurrection had caught on, the party would have been forced to enter and try to take over. As it has with this revolt. Who remembers that, for the first two years, we opposed it? And now we're fighting the Maoists for control, right? But Comrade Father Time shows no pity. Mayta was twenty-five years too early with his plans.”

Intrigued by the way he talks about the party, I ask him if he was readmitted or not. He gives me a cryptic answer: “Only halfway.” A lady with a child in her arms who seemed to be listening to him suddenly interrupts us. “Is it true the Russians are in it, too? What did we ever do to them? What's going to happen to my daughter?” “Calm down, nothing's going to happen. It's a lot of baloney,” Blacquer consoles her as he waves at an overloaded bus that just keeps on going.

In an atmosphere totally unlike that of the meeting a few minutes earlier, the secretary general whispered that Comrade Medardo's proposal was reasonable. It would keep the divisionists of the other RWP from taking advantage. He looked at him: there was no problem about having the central figure comment. “You have the floor, Mayta.”

“We talked for quite a while. In spite of what had just happened to him, he became euphoric, talking about the uprising,” says Blacquer, lighting a cigarette. “I found out that it would take place in a matter of days, but I didn't know where. I would never have imagined Jauja. I thought maybe Cuzco, because some groups were seizing land there. But a revolution in the Jauja jail—who'd ever think of a thing like that?”

I listen to his flat laugh again. Without thinking, we start walking again, toward the bus stop on 28 de Julio. Time passes, and there he is, sweating, his clothes wrinkled and filthy, shadows under his eyes, his stiff hair all messed up. He's sitting on the edge of his chair in Blacquer's poor, tiny, crowded living room. He talks, waves his arms, and punctuates his words with decisive gestures. In his eyes, there is an irrefutable conviction. “Is the party going to refuse to enter into history, refuse to make history?” he berates Blacquer.

“Everything about this incident turned out to be contradictory,” I hear Blacquer say half a block later. “Because the very RWP(T) that expelled Mayta for wanting to involve them in Jauja threw itself into something even more sterile: the ‘expropriation' of banks.”

Was it Fidel Castro's entrance into Havana, which had taken place in the meantime, that transformed the prudent RWP(T), which had slid out of Mayta's conspiracy, into a bellicose organization that set about emptying the banks of the bourgeoisie? They attacked the branch of the Banco Internacional that we've just passed—Joaquín was captured in the operation—and then, a few days later, the Banco Wiese in La Victoria, where Pallardi fell. These two actions disintegrated the RWP(T). Or was there, as well, a modicum of guilty conscience, a desire to prove that, even though they'd turned their backs on Mayta and Vallejos, they were capable of risking all on a single toss of the dice?

“Not remorse, not anything even like it,” says Blacquer. “It was Cuba. The Cuban Revolution broke through the taboos. It killed that superego that ordered us to accept the dictum that ‘conditions aren't right,' that the revolution was an interminable conspiracy. With Fidel's entrance into Havana, the revolution seemed to put itself within reach of anyone who would dare fight.”

“If you don't take them, the guy who owns my house will sell them all off in La Parada,” Mayta insisted. “You can pick them up after Monday. And there aren't that many, anyway.”

“Okay, I'll take the books.” Blacquer gave in. “Let's say I'll store them for you for the time being.”

At the 28 de Julio stop, we find the same mob we found at the earlier stops. A man wearing a hat has a portable radio, and—nervously watched by all those around him—he's trying to find some station broadcasting news. He can't find one. All he gets is music. For almost half an hour, I wait with Blacquer. Two buses pass by, packed to the roof, without stopping. Finally I say goodbye, because I want to get home in time to hear the message of the committee about the invasion. At the corner of Manco Cápac, I turn around: Blacquer is still there; I can make out his ruinous face and his air of being lost as he stands at the edge of the sidewalk, as if he didn't know what to do or where to go. That's the way Mayta must have been that day after the meeting. And yet Blacquer assures me that after leaving him his books and showing him where to hide the key to his room, Mayta left exuding optimism. “He grew under punishment” is what he said. No doubt about it: his resistance and his daring became stronger in adversity.

Although all the stores are closed, the sidewalks in this part of Larco are still crowded with people selling handicrafts, trinkets, and pictures: views of the Andes, portraits, and caricatures. I thread my way around blankets covered with bracelets and necklaces, watched over by boys with ponytails and girls wearing saris. The air is filled with incense. In this enclave of aesthetes and street mystics, there is no perceptible alarm, not even any curiosity about what's going on down south. You'd say that they don't even know that in the last few hours the war has taken a much more serious turn and that at any minute it could be right here on top of them. At the corner of Ocharán, I hear a dog bark: it's a strange sound that seems to come from the past, because ever since the food shortage began, domestic animals have disappeared from the streets. How did Mayta feel that morning? The long night had begun in the garage on Jirón Zorritos with his expulsion from the RWP(T), then moved on to his agreement to disguise it as a resignation, and ended with that conversation with Blacquer, which transformed him from an enemy into a confidant, a shoulder to cry on.

Sleepy, hungry, and exhausted, but in the same frame of mind he was in when he returned from Jauja, and still convinced that he had acted properly. They hadn't thrown him out because he'd gone to see Blacquer: they'd agreed on the pullout before. Their feigned anger, the accusations of betrayal were just a trick to preclude any possibility of reviewing the decision. Was it out of fear of fighting? No, it was their pessimism, their lack of willpower, their psychological inability to break with routine and go on to real action. He had taken a bus and had to stand, hanging on to the rail, crushed between two black women carrying baskets. Didn't he know that way of thinking all too well? “Wasn't it your own for so many years?” They had no faith in the masses because they had no contact with them; they doubted the revolution and their own ideas because the intriguing that went on among sects had rendered them incapable of action.

Looking at him, one of the black women began to laugh, and Mayta realized he was talking to himself. He laughed, too. But if that's the way they thought, then it was better that they didn't take part, because they'd just be dead weight. Yes, they would be missed, because now there would be no urban support in Lima. But as new adherants emerged, a support organization would spring up here and elsewhere. The comrades of the RWP(T), when they saw that the vanguard was respected and that the masses were joining them, would regret their indecision. The Stalinists, too. The meeting with Blacquer was a time bomb. When they saw that the trickle was turning into a raging torrent, they would remember that the door was open and that they would be welcome. They would come; they would participate. He was so distracted that he forgot to get off at his corner and only realized he'd passed it two stops later.

He reached the alley completely worn out. In the patio, there was a long line of women with pots, all shouting because the first one was taking too long at the tap. He went into his room and stretched out on the bed, without even taking off his shoes. He just didn't have the energy to go down and get in line. But how good it would have been now to sink his tired feet in a pan of cool water. He closed his eyes and, fighting sleep, chose the words for the letter he was to bring that afternoon to Jacinto so it could come out in the issue of
Workers Voice (T)
that was at the press.

That issue barely covers four pages, a single sheet folded in four, now so yellow that as I pick it up—sitting in front of the television, where the generals of the Junta have yet to appear, even though it's eight o'clock—I get the feeling it's going to crumble in my hands. The resignation is not on the first page, which consists of two long articles and a smaller one, boxed, at the bottom. The editorial, set in small caps, takes up the left column: “Halt, Fascists!” It concerns some incidents that took place in the central mountains regarding a strike over two mining contracts with the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation. When the police removed the strikers, they shot a few of them, one of whom later died. This is not random violence but is, instead, part of a plan to intimidate and immobilize the working classes, a plan hatched by the police, the army, and reactionary groups, in accord with Pentagon and CIA Latin American policy. What's it all about?

They've started playing military music, and pictures of the national emblem and the flag are followed by busts and portraits of national heroes. Are they going to start or what? To halt the advance, every day more powerful and unstoppable, of the workers toward socialism. Those methods cannot surprise anyone who has learned the lessons of history: they were used by Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and now Washington is applying them to Latin America. But they will not succeed, they will be counterproductive, a nutrient fertilizer, as Leon Trotsky wrote: For the working classes, the blows of repression are like pruning for plants. There they are: the Navy, the Air Force, the Army, and behind them, the advisers, the ministers, the heads of garrisons and military units in the Lima region. Their somber faces seem to confirm the worst rumors. The editorial in
Workers Voice (T)
ends with an exhortation to workers, peasants, students, and progressives to close ranks against the Nazi-Facist conspiracy. They're singing the National Anthem.

The other article is about Ceylon. It's true, at that time Trotskyism had taken hold there. The text asserts that Trotskyism is the second most powerful force in the Parliament and the most powerful among the unions. From the way the tenses go, it would seem the article was translated from the French—by Mayta himself, perhaps? The names, beginning with that of Madame Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister, are difficult to remember.