2004 Bridges Summer Research Report Nelson R. Ramírez Spanish & Portuguese "Graffiti: Writing of Transgression and the New Peruvian Novel"

Vischongo, department of Ayacucho.

I traveled to Peru from the end of May to the end of July to conduct research on my project entitled “Graffiti: Writing of Transgression and the New Peruvian Novel.” I arrived in Lima and, as any other city in Latin America and the world, I had no difficulties in collecting graffiti in streets, restrooms, walls, etc. Some examples, taken from Jirón Quilca, show the paradox of political violence, “No escribas en la pared hijo de puta.” Next to it, “Bush=Caca=Toledo,” “Abajo el poder del Perú. Toledo=Bush.” Ilave, a community of Puno, a southern Andean region of Peru, had had an uprising in previous months. The allegedly corrupt major was killed by the townspeople. The graffiti there reads, “Viva la acción revolucionaria del pueblo de Ilave,” “Abajo el poder del Perú. Toledo=Bush. Viva Ilave.” Another, had a conciliatory tone, “Sobre estas calles donde el amor es una palabra que no se ve por ningún lado descubrí un estado de ánimo tan bello como una flor amarilla en la noche: ANARKIA. Tuve k’elevarme sobre ese amanecer y dar pasos tan bellos como un triunfal Nureyev. Tuve k’ desgarrarme mi corazón sobre el asfalto beber alcohol en la noche, gemir sobre un cuerpo ke también gemía.”

Colegio Argentino, Chimbote, Peru.

Afterwards, I traveled to Chimbote, a harbor city in northern Peru. There I collected this sample from the wall of a school, “Halloween, fiesta diabolica, no participe, lea la biblia. Xto,” graffiti that shows its subversive and anti-American spirit. Later, I traveled to Ayacucho, an Andean city that during the 80s and early 90s was marked by the political violence of The Shining Path and counter insurgency forces. Two voices emerged in the graffiti in the men’s restrooms of the Universidad Nacional San Cristobal de Huamanga. Some was in favor of the defeated communist guerrillas and some opposed them. Thus, superinscribed on a grafitti in favor of the “PCP” (Partido Comunista del Perú, Sendero Luminoso), one can read, as a palimpsest, a graffiti against it, written down as an acrostic, “Por Cojudos Perdieron.” There were many others that showed discontent with the Toledo regime and fear that the APRA of Alan García might return to power. An acrostic from APRA, García’s political party, reads, “Alianza Para que Robe Alan.”

Public workers, Ayacucho, Peru.

My objective of reinforcing the depth of the fourth chapter of my doctoral dissertation in which I examine underground writer, Óscar Malca, was accomplished. I argue that Malca’s aesthetics follow those of the suicidal Peruvian poet, Luis Hernández, as a founder of what I call “graffiti aesthetics” in a not-yet-studied poetic tradition in Peru. This is an aesthetics of spontaneity, iconoclasm, brevity, humor, street sensibility and slang. It involves a new semantics of breaking the law and delinquency in which the representatives of the State and the law (policemen, judges, broadcasters, et al.) are presented as morally worse than the grass roots sectors, represented by thieves, drug addicts, unemployed people and prostitutes. For example, one graffiti reads, “Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores, Borrachos, Pillos, Rumbo a la Revolución Satánica.” Another says, “Vurros no zaven escribir, sonsos, vestias, escrivan bien.” And, another, “Qué sabes de idiotalogías.”

Murals of Jiron Quilca, Lima.

Men’s Bathroom, Education Department, Universidad Nacional San Cristobal de Huamanga, Ayacucho, Peru.

Graffiti aesthetics in Peru of the 1990s, I contended before my travel, is a form of art that contests the neoliberal order and its mechanisms: publication, publicity and the market. However, the field research has allowed me to see, that even graffiti aesthetics and graffiti can be used by the market. In a clothing and souvenir store in Lima (La casa de las Bromas), for example, I saw t-shirts that had graffiti stamped on them: “Me gustan los hombres sensibles, que lloren cuando los pateen;” “No soy inútil, por lo menos sirvo como un MAL EJEMPLO;” “Graduado con 20 (Grados de alcohol en la sangre);” “FBI-Fundación de Borrachos Incorregibles;” “No soy perfecto, pero algunas de mis partes son excelentes,” etc.

Student protests at La Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru.

Finally, I visited the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, where Hernández’s notebooks are archived. These notebooks contain poems in a graffiti style that have never been published. I explored them in comparison to Malca’s graffiti aesthetics as a transgressive narrative in neoliberal Peru. Graffiti aesthetics was part of an important subversive tradition in Chile and Argentina during the dictatorship period and afterwards. In Peru it has also been a channel of expression for marginal and repressed groups. Although in some cases, neoliberal ideology is also profiting from it.

Fishing boats, Chimbote, Peru.

Fishing net weavers in Chimbote, Peru.

Market in Ayacucho, Peru.

Monument for the victims of political violence.

Men’s Bathroom, Education Department, Universidad Nacional San Cristobal de Huamanga, Ayacucho, Peru.