No Time to Retreat

((1980s, Villa Rica, Peru) (part twelve in “The Loro Machaco…” saga))


Alcalde Vladimir Vargas, relinquished his dream to be sent to one of the United States prominent Military Academy’s in the 1980s for the sake of Peru—so he claimed to the media—to put Villa Rica (a dote on a the map, a small town in a valley, in the Andes of Peru) under the guillotine for the sake of mankind, peace, and to restore law and order—not in Villa Rica per se, because the township was tranquil compared to many others, and especially compared to Lima and Huancayo, —but because he felt that was where the Loro Machaco Cartel lived and hid their supply of guns, weapons and ammunition (thus endangering the entire country as a whole, this was all the doings of a green-eyed or spiteful—you might say—Commanding General); that the people of Villa Rica were harboring them, the cartel and its people in particular. It was all speculation of course, and some of it was true, but not all. And had the military or police done a better job on the highways from Lima to Huancayo, they would not have had to contain, or gone to such lengths, gone to the edge of the jungle to Villa Rica to try and accomplish a mission of terrorism that took place on the highways of Peru, not in the little hamlet or township of Villa Rica.

Here was a young man at twenty-three, with peasant and brittle bones, quite intelligent, who wanted to be known permanently in the annuals of warfare, be made general at thirty, who at sixteen had this obsession to go to West Point Academy in the United States—a man with a vast sick pale moon for a face and a deep set of eyes in sockets that looked hungry, who had told his mother at this youthful, and trying age, “Watch, I will be the general of the Peruvian Army some day,” then she died of Cancer.

He picked out a public figure for a wife, at the age of twenty-years old, she being seventeen (and just out of the stage of playing with paper dolls), was unconscious to his obsession; and he became a captain in the Army in two-years; her uncle being a general from Huancayo, assisted in that quick promotion.
His dreams of success was like a painted backdrop—in that he had it planned out, and now they were smashed and he accepted that with a fragile stride to go and root out the guns and terrorist in that impenetrable valley and township of Villa Rica. He knew nothing of the cartel, nor cared to, thus he was stepping into unreality, angry and his mind filled with the beauty of his new shapely wife, and a dream smashed, by a general higher up than Carmella’s, uncle.
Vladimir Vargas now had to prove himself, once and for all, and if intelligence did it so be it, but what he had at the moment was this unfutured, unuttered (by all the military), outpost, to establish himself.

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Whether or not Villa Rica had ever been an actual threat once, is now a mystery, what actually took place, under Captain Alcalde Vladimir Vargas’ command, of which he had a company of 160-men, planted within the city’s limits, and the backing of the Commanding General, and his leadership in Lima, in due time, would bury its ostrich-head from the sight of it all, as the youthful Captain, started taking its liberties away, and throwing democracy into the sewers of Athens, where democracy was born. This atrocity took place for five-years in the 1980s, from that first day he arrived, to the beginning and end of that fifth involuntary year, and day which he had fallen in the eyes of every officer in the Army, and everyman in Peru everywhere, before he noticed it himself: So grave was his defalcating leadership, his wife buried her eyes in shame when she walked the streets of Lima.


Without warrants, or provocation, without the manual of war, he declared war on the township of Villa Rica, he, Captain Vargas, believed he knew the answer in getting all the guns and military paraphernalia, out of the hands of the cartel, by taking them forcefully out of the houses of Villa Rica, and its citizens.
Captain Vargas, he was looking different from what he had looked a year ago. No longer fragile, so much so as incurable, unblemished, by the ransacking of houses, ripping open matteresses at will, and in 99% percent of the search and attack procedures, they found nothing. He broke down house doors when civilians locked them, for avoiding confrontation was not possible unless you actually left the house, the premises, and then, they’d return, the military and question them why they had left, interrogating and torturing them in many cases to gain false information, and when they found out it was false, because there was no real condemning information to give the Captain (they had made it up to appease him), they’d be jailed (thus, building a jail five times the size they had witnessed when they arrived in the township, the only other escape was to sell their houses, or move); he even searched the classrooms to schools, he’d open up student lockers, and teachers desk drawers, In fact they, the soldiers under the captain’s command, if they had no more use for the untiring event, he’d allow his soldiers to rape a virgin at will, a housewife, even a student, he was more feared than the cartel itself, more ruthless, more insensitive, and this is what he thought would bring law and order.
He had his crucifix indeed, his amulet, his reliquary, his theater and boulevard to play his power game—but save that one, who gave the command for him to prove himself, the General, but he knew the answer to this, it was a gesture not to the youthful Captain, but to congress, one of those modest and discrete, but potent and powerful gestures, one they had been waiting for, for a long time, and he gave it to Carmella’s, uncle, in front of a congressional committee, as if it was his doings, plucking an Army officer before he could kneel as a candidate for consecration of saying he did what he did under the orders of the Commanding General.
And so now those who might have been jealous of this young captain, with a general behind him to further his career, who might have hid all his youthful wrongdoings, who might have named his coeval partner, this general who hated him for whatever reasons from the start, and used him to his bitter end, offered his wife’s uncle, the lower general, a pardon for his son-in-law, and should he not take it, god-forbid.

He was vanished to some far-off island (and this I cannot disclose, list I put his life in the hands of some butcher, and thus I become the infamous one, perhaps even claimed to be insensate to his impasse, with hungry eyes); his rank now reduced to sub lieutenant, none knew where he was sent to, except the commanding General (who is now dead), his wife didn’t even want to know; he was vanished from the knowledge of the Army, wrapped in wolf’s skin, to hide his identify, you might say, and to silence him, and those around him, once and for all, his last name was changed to sound more Napoleonic than Peruvian, for he became a villainous legend all wanted to forget.
At first, before they shipped him off to this island post, he even hid his name when he’d look at an Army list and someone was behind him. Now, as for the Army and his wife’s family, and his wife in particular, he was dead. His bones scattered and diffused about the perimeter of Peru, no flag to fly over his head when he’d be buried. And where would he be buried, this is yet too early to tell.

Note: Written after the author had gathered more information from a writer friend who lives in Villa Rica, and has for 35-years, came to stay with him a day in Huancayo . Written in his apartment 12-12-2008.