GENARO LLANQUI, MY BREEDING DAD
My father hired Genaro Llanqui Mamany in Chaclacayo, to be his driver and collaborator (personal secretary). He wanted, incidentally, to tell him stories of the Aymara, to gradually develop a novel. Two months after helping us, the Deputy dies and Genaro, far from doing like the rest, and leaving us, took pity on our fate and began to work, as a relative would, rather than a friend. He worked without pay for many months, taxed to take something to eat home, cooked cheaply ...
I was, along with Diego, the children that Genaro took care of most, because we touched him especially small. In the Mercedes Benz of Deputy that my father bought, Genaro put a baby seat that included a steering wheel and horn, and on more than one occasion, he took my plump and blond brother Diego de Copiloto. People were fascinated, when it was their turn to haggle the fare (tradition prior to any taxi ride in a Lima without taximeters, back then and still today). Because a blond baby was a co-pilot with his wheelchair and everything.
ANECDOTES WITH GENA
Gena talked to me a lot about the mountains. The few times we went to the countryside I tried to teach how to use the huaraca (the Andean sling). It was my great weakness, I never learned. I was joking with the languages ​​that I studied with fascination in La Recoleta (English and French). He took me and brought me everywhere, threw me into our pool the first day (with a float), helped me raise my dogs, took me and brought me to the College, the British, the typing institute, the Trener Academy, etc. More than once I accompanied him to the market, to haggle with the little houses and carry bags. And among the most beautiful memories of my childhood, there are those long summer vacations, in which the whole family, with Gena at the wheel, traveled through Peru on our Combi (Volkswagen) by land. Together we went to Ancash, Cajamarca, La Libertad, Cerro de Pasco, Junín, Ucayali, Ica, Arequipa, Moquegua, Tacna, Cuzco, Puno.
TRAVELS WITH GENA
The thousands of kilometers were short with our pleasant stories, our illusion to discover, my jokes, etc., etc. The affection for Peru, was inserted in our lives, inch by inch, and kilometer by kilometer, with those beautiful and selfless family trips of low budget but with a lot of heart. With our combi we discover, summer to summer, by land, the cultures, ruins and landscapes of our great and ancient Peru, always alive, always young, teenage nation (as Luis Alberto Sánchez will call him). Wherever we went, we faced the immensity of deserts, pampas, inter-Andean valleys, deep ravines, unreachable peaks and impenetrable jungles that, miraculously, we traversed through trails and ravines, weak bridges and narrow roads, always driven by Genaro. Gena also took me to Ilave, on the edge of Titicaca, with his family.
IN SUMMARY
In the end, between trajín and trajín, Gena became my guide, in this immense, beautiful and complex country that we call Peru. In 1976, when my mother announced her desire to marry Gena, I strongly supported her. Because Genaro had behaved like a second father in my life, and I felt part of his own panaca.
Even today, I ask for your advice, convinced that in your answers, you will find the ancestral wisdom of Rosendo Maqui, the authenticity of the common sense of our people, at times a little intricate, like the hidden secret path that the Aymara say, connects all the chullpas (stone towers) with each other. Because among our compatriots in the Sierra Sur of Peru, it is as if there is also a dark tunnel of time, which communicates them all with the most lost of our glorious past: the great value of our ancestral Andean civilization.
