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from the PC office, and seeing a few volunteers friends
stationed there.
On this particular day, we were headed
to the U.S. Embassy for a purpose I can no longer remember.
Lima's streets were crowded and filled with the sound of
frustrated collectivo drivers beating on car doors as an
alternative to horn
honking, which was prohibited. We had
the windows rolled up to protect
against fumes in the
slow-moving traffic.
Things were nearly at a
standstill when a large city bus pulled up on the passenger
side of our vehicle and I heard someone shouting. I looked up;
the bus driver was waving his arm out the window and shouting
something, obviously at me. I rolled the window down to ask
what he wanted, and he said: "Han matado a su
presidente." They have killed your
president. I was
sure I didn't really hear him -- or perhaps I just couldn't
believe what I was hearing. In must have looked very
confused. And again he shouted, "Han matada a su presidente;
han matado a Kennedy."
The traffic began to creep
forward, and the bus moved on. My heart was
pounding; I
told my husband what |
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the bus driver had said, and getting to the embassy
became even more important, to find out if this was true or
just some strange misunderstanding.
As we neared the
embassy, the traffic became more intense; and when the
building was in sight, it was surrounded by throngs of people,
all clamoring to get in the gates. We stopped the car and got
out to become part of the mass on foot, all of us having such
a need to be present. For what? To have the story retracted?
To have our disbelief confirmed? It seemed so
impossible.
I recall little of our Lima activities
after that. I'm sure we continued in a kind of
shock.
My next powerful recollection was the first
morning back in Ayacucho when I went to the central
marketplace to purchase the day's food. I turned down the
aisle to visit the "tomato lady" who always saved fine, red
fruit for me and gave me a "yapita" (a little extra), and
whose babies I loved to tease and hold.
She was coming
toward me, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Mataron a
Kennedy, mataron a su presidente," she wept. She put her arms
around me -- this woman who |
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spoke so little Spanish that we hardly could
communicate beyond counting tomatoes and soles to pay for them
-- and we cried.
The loss of John F. Kennedy was a
tremendous blow to me -- the beginning of a particular kind of
loss of innocence, which would be intensified by the
assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy.
Both of those events occurred when I was later living
independently in Peru, after completion of my
Peace Corps
volunteer service. But the intensity of my dear tomato lady's
response to the killing of JFK, and the enormous, genuine
outpouring of grief by the indigenous people with whom I
worked, have always stood for me as evidence of the importance
of one man's vision and its power to ignite the hopes and
passions of a world. I long for that experience of connection
and hope, across
boundaries, again.
Carolyn
Kinsman
Peru
'63-'65
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For the most part, they by-passed the large US
Consulate offices on the first floor. As more and more
Volunteers came into verify the news, they were put into the
reception lines.
The rooftop was soon too small to
accommodate them and lines extended to the street. Most of us
were asked if this meant we would be leav |
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ing Bolivia. We tried to explain that the permanence of
institutions was a trademark of democracy and did not come and
go with each change of presidents. Most of us, including
non-Catholics went to a Requiem Mass for President Kennedy. In
spite of our extreme idealism, the Peace Corps has had strong
bi-partisan support with a few exceptions (proposed
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budget cuts that almost always have been voted down.)
I did have a secondary negative experience. This
involved the United States Information Service (U.S.I.S) which
the last I heard was known as the United States Information
Agency (U.S.I.A.)
(Continued on page 9)
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