Taxi driver ...

Taxi drivers can be really interesting to talk to, especially in countries like Peru where drivers have it usually as 2nd or 3rd job. Here, a taxi drive is not expensive (3EUR for a 30 minutes drive in my case) and is much faster than any other kind of public transportation. Many of the drivers, especially the most experienced ones, have an intensive life and an interesting past.

Few days ago I had Elias as driver. He is about 45+ years old and was originally borned in the andean region of Piura in north Peru. He looked as any other typical andes native, the oldest of the many ethnic groups in the country and was very polite. But his accent was not typical; his spanish had a strong "charapa"accent, the one spoken by people from the amazon jungle. The whole ride should take about an hour (it actually took 1 1/2, rush hour in Lima can be a  nightmare) and to brake the ice I asked the few questions needed to wakeup the storyteller in him, it works everytime.

Elias told me his father was a minner that moved around Peru looking for work, and took wife and children with him. His mother tongue was quechua so that as a child Elias would speak quechua at home and spanish at school; but the mines where his father worked were mainly in the rain forest so that he stayed over 10 years moving from mine to mine, mostly illegal ones, between Pucallpa and Madre de Dios in the East edge oft the country, close to the brasilean border.

Its here where he learned to speak shipibo at the age of 13 and met the young shipibo girl that would become his wife a few years later. At that time (late 80's) insurrection and terrorism had brought Peru into a destructive civil war and with an age of 18 Elias was recruited by the army. His ability to speak and understand three languages made him interesting for the army's intelligence service where he was first trained as seminarist and then sent to Apurimac, one of the centers of insurrection. His mission, as he told me, was to use his religious role to influence the most prominent and elocuent members of the communities where he was assigned, undermining the pro-Shinning Path mind set that existed at this time. This propaganda work allowed army and police to re-enter the region with less casualties. It was a dangerous job he said and if he is alive is because God is great and he started working at a time Shinning Path was already desintegrating.

Today Elias has "retired". The little money earned if his life as intelligence agent (my definition) allowed him to buy the car we were driving (a new Corolla, his 2nd one). He lives now with bis shipibo wife and their two children in Lima, where the oldest one has graduated as dentist, and the youngest one is completing the last year of architecture in a private (i.e. expensive) Universität where he won an scholarship. He said he is happy and looked so!

The long ride went fast with all this chat. I don't know how much of it is fiction and how much is real, that's not the point. I was a nice drive.