Here is the traditional commercial neighborhood of La Victoria in Lima, Peru, as it is today. This video is actually rather flattering and it is fun because of the soundtrack — this is how people really talk.
Here is the same district as it was between 1908 and 1945, with a scratchy soundtrack by the great criolla singer Chabuca Granda. This is how one remembers La Victoria without having even seen it then. Interestingly, it resembles La Victoria as I first saw it thirty years ago more than does the video of La Victoria today.
Axé.
Of course I could only catch a few words, but how fascinating. It’s like so much of the world, I guess. It just kind of happened without much planning and now people have to live with it.
True. I was horrified at the state of La Victoria when last I was in Lima (it looks worse than in the video) but then I just stopped for gas in a bad part of this town, near WalMart, and realized two things: one, that there are very bad parts of this town and they are far from picturesque (I think this gas station might also be a drug front, although I can’t be sure), and two, I subject myself to such areas in foreign countries on the theory that it is educational and yet I do not do it at home!
Yes, we accept the horribleness of horrible places more readily in foreign countries.
So true, and so oddly intriguing that we do.