Guillermo is 11 years old and his foot was shattered by a bullet. He went out with his parents to buy a cake for his father’s birthday on January 9th. As they were on their way, Guillermo began crying and jumping from pain. His mother, Teodolinda, thought he had stepped on a nail until she saw the blood flowing from her little boy’s foot. Now he is bedridden, and his dreams to one day become a doctor are on hold. “And so they destroyed it for me, my son’s life. To Mrs. Dina I would say: Why don’t you listen to what the people are demanding? The people are asking for what is right. Why, Mrs. Dina, do you have to be like this? Can’t people walk in the streets anymore? Why do you have to say they are ‘terrorists’? That makes people more angry because we are not terrorists. We don’t use weapons, we don’t even know how to use weapons,” said Teodolinda Huancaviri, Guillermo’s mother.
Interview by Ingrid Sanchez and photography by Manuel Ortiz from the series “Peru Resists,” a work of Peninsula 360 Press and Global Exchange.
Baylon Speech: Teodolinda Huancaviri, mother of Guillermo.