Right now, Peru is experiencing a time of profound confrontation, of massive discontent and polarization, and if we Peruvians can agree on anything, it is that we are in a time of growing confusion.
I have always been an immigrant and I will continue to be. My father emigrated from China to Peru and when the family was 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 environment, camouflaged with the environment and with some sparks of solidarity, fruitlessly seeking answers in religion or politics.
But something was wrong and he didn't know what it was.
It was only when I left my country? More than twenty years since that? I began to realize many things. I was just able to perceive that beyond the hidden racism? Paradoxically, we Peruvians want to be truly proud of being "a melting pot"? Most Peruvians do not have a real awareness 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, adhered to a geographical space that is the Peru.
As the psychologist Jorge Yamamoto would say, [the Peruvian] “is not very committed to society unless there is a soccer game. He looks after his interests, those of his family and, from time to time, those of his friends. The concept of homeland and duties on the homeland is relatively low.
Furthermore, «In Peru there is no awareness of the norm. We are not attentive to the law to comply with it. [?] we see what everybody does. If everyone does filthy things and corruption issues, they offer him a dark advantage and say that's what everyone does, "ah, I'm in?". Never again according to Jorge.
A friend, also an immigrant, told me that he conceived the idea of patriotic pride as the prolongation of the feeling of family pride ?with their respective black sheep? where nostalgia is responsible for dulling and syruping real events.
And it is that it is trivial to feel proud of our food, of 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 a identity ?beyond western canons? that is recognized with something more than a good ceviche.
Paul Lock.
Dad, a customary immigrant, with studies in Linguistics and Literature at the Catholic University of Lima (never taken advantage of) and almost always exhausted.
You may be interested in: Looking out the window
