This is the first part of the (two-part) survey “Por qué no vivo en el Perú…” [Why I Don’t Live in Peru] conducted by the magazine Hueso Húmero in 1981. The magazine initially posed this question to the following ten intellectuals (painters, writers, critics, and essayists) who, for a variety of reason had left Peru: the art critic Juan Acha, the novelist Alfredo Bryce Echenique, the literary critic Sara Castro-Klarén, the poet and artist Jorge Eduardo Eielson, the attorney Gastón Fernandez, the writers Carlos Meneses and Rodolfo Hinostroza, the historian and sociologist Hugo Neira, the painter Carlos Revilla, and the sculptor Joaquín Roca Rey. Acha says that in Mexico, where he now lives, he has found “a high regard for the visual arts with support from the state, an emphasis on museums and symposia, and greater facilities for traveling and being in touch with art produced in other places.” Eielson, in Italy, complains that “I was born in exile and I will die in exile, because exile is my natural, geographic, social, emotional, artistic, and sexual state. Lima is not a city to live in. On the contrary, it is an ideal place to die.” Revilla provides a long list of what is lacking locally, then claims that “there is a deeper cause, which is related to an old nomadic tradition that has always driven artists to travel.” Roca Rey refers to the example set by the Inca Garcilaso [de la Vega], “the first, great exile of the new world,” adding, with some irony, “we who, though absent, have never severed our ties, can also describe Peru in our own way, helping to update its image overseas.”
