Mi barrio
By claudia luthi
8 July 2008
What city do you live in? What neighborhood?
In Lima, in the district of Miraflores, in the neighborhood of La Aurora.
What are some adjectives that describe your neighborhood?
My neighborhood is nothing special. It is not picturesque, it is not bohemian, it is not popular, it is just another residencial neighborhood in Lima. Anyone would call it boring.
How long have you lived there, and what brought you there?
I lived here for some years in my childhood, when this neighborhood was the edge of the city. Behind my house started the cotton fields, in which we use to play. Then, after 16 years of absence, I came back to live here in 1989. I almost couldn't recognize it, so much it had changed. The cottonfields had disappeared and in their place, the city spreaded endlessly. And it keeps changing and growing and spreading.
What is your favorite thing about this place? Your least favorite?
I like the anonymity of being just someone, living in just some neignorhood with no special interest. The worst part is the construction fury. One by one the old family-houses fall to give place to story-buildings. The noise of machines and the constant dust is the sound track of every-day.
Do you feel that you belong there?
Yes and no.
What is the most common misconception about where you live?
That all who live in this neighborhood are rich.
What is a special fact about your city that you have to live there to know?
The people you will see on the streets, will almost for sure not be the people who live here (those would only "step" on the street in their cars), but people coming each day a long way from some unimaginable district of this endless city, to work for the former.
What aspect of your city do you secretly love?
To keep it to my neighborhood -because if I would start to speak of the city of Lima, I would never end - it is the face it shows on sundays, more precisly, on sunday evenings, between 6 and 7, during the blue hour, which is even blue when the sky is grey. In the Centro Comercial all shops are closed. There's hardly a car driving or somebody walking in the dead quiet streets. The interior of the one bodega that is open, shines bright, like an inviting light in the darkness. And there is also one restaurant that hasn't closed its door. In fact, it never closes the doors: it's the "Chifa", the chinese restaurant, although it is completly empty. That's the moment I tried to capture with my pictures.
Anything else you'd like to add?
I might come up with something later on...
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