Peru is currently experiencing a time of profound confrontation, massive discontent and polarization, and if there is one thing that Peruvians can agree on, it is that we are in a time of growing confusion.
I have always been an immigrant and I will continue to be one. My father emigrated from China to Peru and when the family was already putting down roots I started again.
The reasons why a person decides to leave their country can be diverse, but they are always motivated by a common denominator: the search for "something" that your country of origin cannot offer you.
In Peru I lived copying the anti-values of my surroundings, blending in with the environment and with some sparks of solidarity, unsuccessfully seeking answers in religion or politics.
But something wasn't right and I didn't know what it was.
It was only when I left my country - more than twenty years ago - that I began to realise many things. It was only then that I realised that beyond hidden racism - paradoxically, we Peruvians want to be truly proud of being a "melting pot" - the majority of Peruvians do not have a real sense of belonging, that feeling of integration into a community, a very difficult task if we reduce "being Peruvian" only to a socio-political and cultural abstraction, attached to a geographical space that is Peru.
As psychologist Jorge Yamamoto would say, [Peruvians] "are not very committed to society unless there is a football match. They look out for their own interests, those of their family and, from time to time, those of their friends. The concept of country and duties to the country is relatively low."
Furthermore, “In Peru there is no awareness of the law. We are not paying attention to the law in order to comply with it. […] we see what everyone does. If everyone does dirty things and corrupt issues, they offer them a shady advantage and they say that is what everyone does, “ah, I'm in.” I never agree with Jorge again.
A friend, also an immigrant, told me that he conceived the idea of national pride as an extension of the feeling of family pride ‒with its respective black sheep‒ where nostalgia is responsible for overshadowing and sugar-coating real events.
It is trivial to feel proud of our food, our folklore and traditions when we cannot have even the remotest attitude of change that guides us towards values and principles with which we can build a nation with faith in its destiny and with an identity - beyond Western canons - that is recognized with something more than a good ceviche.
Paul Lock.
Dad, a habitual immigrant, with studies in Linguistics and Literature at the Catholic University of Lima (never taken advantage of) and almost always exhausted.
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