Mario Llosa - The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

“As far as what’s happening today is concerned, no one should do anything that might hinder the great process of unification that is taking place among the democratic left-wing organizations, the only thing that can save Peru in today’s circumstances,” he says softly. “Mayta’s story, even if twenty-five years have gone by, may still make some old wounds bleed.”

He’s a thin man who speaks easily. He dresses elegantly and has lots of gray mixed into his thick curly hair. From time to time, his bad leg seems to give him some pain, because he rubs it hard. He writes well, for a politician. That skill opened to him the higher spheres of General Velasco’s military government, to which he was an adviser. He invented a good number of the high-sounding phrases that conferred a progressive aura on the dictatorship, and he was the editor of one of the confiscated newspapers. He wrote speeches for General Velasco (you could tell which ones, because certain sociojuridical expressions got tangled in the general’s teeth). He and his small group represented the regime’s radical wing. Now, Senator Campos is a moderate personality, attacked by the extreme right, the Maoist and Trotskyist ultra-left. The guerrillas have condemned him to death, and so have the liberty squads. These death squads — a sign of the absurd times we live in — declare that he is the secret leader of the subversives. A few months ago, a bomb destroyed his car, wounding his chauffeur and maiming his left leg, which he can no longer bend. Who threw the bomb? No one knows.

“But, after all,” he exclaims suddenly, just when I think there’s no way to make him speak and I’m about to leave, “if you’ve learned so many things already, you’d better know the main thing: Mayta collaborated with Army Intelligence and probably with the CIA.”

“That’s not true,” protested Mayta.

“It is,” countered Anatolio. “Lenin and Trotsky always condemned terrorism.”

“Direct action is not terrorism,” said Mayta, “but pure and simple revolutionary insurrection. If Lenin and Trotsky condemned that, then I don’t know what they did all their lives. Figure it out, Anatolio. We’re forgetting the most important thing. Our job is the revolution, the first task of any Marxist. Isn’t it incredible that a second lieutenant has to remind us of it?”

“Will you accept at least that Lenin and Trotsky condemned terrorism?” Anatolio made a tactical retreat.

“So long as we take careful note of the differences, I do, too,” Mayta agreed. “Blind terrorism, cut off from the masses, estranges the people from the revolutionary vanguard. We are going to be something else: the spark that lights the fuse, the snowball that turns into an avalanche.”

“You’re waxing poetic today.” Anatolio burst out laughing, with a laugh that seemed too loud for the small room.

Not a poet, he thought. A man with a dream, a man who’s been rejuvenated. And with an optimism he hadn’t felt for years. It was as if the mounds of books and newspapers piled around him were burning with a mild, all-encompassing fire that, instead of burning him, kept his body and his soul in a kind of incandescence. Was this happiness? The discussion of the Central Committee of the RWP(T) had been impassioned, the most emotional that he could recall in many years. Right after the meeting, he had gone to the Plazuela del Teatro Segura, to France-Presse. He translated for around four hours, and despite all that mindless work, he felt fresh and lucid. His report on the second lieutenant had been approved, as had his proposal to take Vallejos’s plan into consideration. Work program, action plan — what jargon, he thought. The agreement was, in fact, transcendent: to carry out the revolution now, once and for all. As he expounded, Mayta spoke with such conviction that he moved his comrades: he saw it in their faces and in the fact that they listened to him without interrupting even once. Yes, it could be done, as long as a revolutionary organization like the RWP(T) directed it — not a well-intentioned boy lacking ideological solidity. He half closed his eyes, and the image materialized, clear and sharp: a small, well-armed, well-equipped vanguard, with urban support and clear ideas about their strategic goals. Their accomplishments would be the focal point from which the revolution would radiate outward toward the rest of the nation — the flint and steel that would spark the revolutionary blaze. Hadn’t the objective conditions existed since time immemorial in Peru, a country with such glaring class contradictions? That initial nucleus, by means of daring attacks of armed propaganda, would set about creating the subjective conditions that would induce the workers and peasants to join the action. The figure of Anatolio, standing at the corner of the bed where Mayta was sitting, brought him back to the present.

“Well, I’m going down to see if there’s still a line.” He’d already gone down twice, and both times he’d found someone waiting at the outhouse door. Mayta saw him come out bent over, holding his stomach. What a good thing it was that Anatolio had come over tonight, what a good thing that today, when finally something important was happening, today when something new was happening, he had someone with whom to share the torrent of ideas in his head. The party has taken a decisive step, he thought. He was stretched out on his bed, resting on his right arm as if on a pillow. The Central Committee of the RWP(T), after approving the idea of his working with Vallejos, had named an Action Group — Comrade Jacinto, Comrade Anatolio, and Mayta himself — to prepare a schedule of activities. It was decided that Mayta would go to Jauja immediately, to see on the spot what Vallejos’s outfit looked like and what kind of contacts he had made with the Indian communities in Mantaro Valley. Then the other two members of the Action Group would also go up to the mountains, to coordinate the work. The RWP(T) meeting broke up with everyone in a state of euphoria, and Mayta remained exalted even as he translated releases for France-Presse. He was still euphoric when he reached his room on Jirón Zepita. Just where the dead-end street began, he saw a youthful figure waiting for him, teeth glistening in the semi-darkness.

“I was so shaken up by all that that I came by to see if we could talk awhile,” said Anatolio. “Are you very tired?”

“Just the opposite. Let’s go on up.” Mayta patted him on the back. “I’m all excited, too — it’s just what our little pal Vallejos says, pure dynamite.”

There were rumors, insinuations, gossip, even a handbill that went around San Marcos University — all accusing him. Of being an infiltrator? Of being an informer? Then there appeared two articles containing disturbing facts about Mayta’s activities.

“An informer?” I interrupt him. “But all of you …”

Senator Campos raises his hand and stops me dead. “We were Trotskyists, just as Mayta was, and those attacks came from the Stalinists, so at first we paid no attention,” he explains, shrugging. “They always called those of us in the RWP half-breed squealers. Trotskyists and Stalinists always fought like cats and dogs. The basic idea was always ‘Your worst enemy is the guy most like you; get rid of him even if you have to sell your soul.’”

He falls silent, because once again a reporter has come up to ask if what they’ve said in another newspaper is true; namely, that because he’s been frightened by the threats on his life, the senator is preparing to flee the country, under the pretext that he is going to have his leg operated on again. The senator laughs. “A pack of lies. Unless I’m bumped off, the Peruvian people will have me around for quite some time.” The reporter leaves, happily writing down that last remark. We ask for another coffee. “I know, I know, we over here in the Congress abuse our privileges by drinking coffee several times a day, while, for people on the outside, coffee’s become a luxury item. But don’t worry, it won’t go on this way. The guy with the coffee concession had a reserve stock, but it’s giving out.” He goes on for a while, discoursing about the havoc the war has wrought: rationing, insecurity, the psychosis the people are living through these days, with the rumors about the presence of foreign troops in national territory.