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What does San Marcos mean to you?
And I don't refer myself to the saint, I am talking about the oldest University in South America: the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.For most of you - unfortunately - San Marcos is always associated with terrorist students, red communist flags, destroyed buildings, and skirmishes against the police.
For those who have studied in San Marcos at least 30 years ago, it probably means the old ideal Villa or Casona of the Parque Universitario, the small and gothic Aula Magna, the lovely Sevillan Patio and the best professors in Peru In short, the prestigious oldest university of South America.
Let me tell you what San Marcos meant to me, a former student from an elite British school in Lima, who hardly knew the reality of her own country and if ever, only saw it through the privileged, pink and carefully built bubble where I, like most of my school mates, lived in.
Before entering San Marcos I had studied at Garcilaso de la Vega, a private university owned by generals and hardly different in approach my British school.
Having passed my Admission Examination in June 1973, I found my classroom with great difficulty, almost a month after classes had began, such was the administrative chaos!
My classroom was number 2A in the School of Liberal Arts at the Campus. A big, then unfenced, area with many new buildings and hardly any vegetation.
I studied there all of my 4 semesters of the Integrated course, so called because students of Sociology, Anthropology, Archaeology and Social Work shared the same curricula, with at least 200 people, divided in two shifts. My shift was from 6 to 10 p.m. because I was then working at the Ministry of Industry and Tourism from 9 am to 5 pm. Most of my classmates also worked.
Our classroom was a big amphitheatre and the professor's desk was in front of the big blackboard, on a platform half of which had been destroyed by a bomb... So at first, whenever our teachers walked along the platform we could hardly concentrate on what they said and rather wondered will he fall, will he fall?
There were no window panes left, and there used to be an intense traffic of playful street children and dogs entering the classroom through the windows and leaving through the door. I remember a big yellow dog who always arrived before 6 p.m. and quietly slept until 9:45 p.m. when she scratched the door to leave.
Sometimes, classes were interrupted by ferocious young political leaders urging us to join their decisive, final, revolutionary demonstration against the fascist dictatorship. This 'violent' demonstration usually took place from one building of the Campus to the next one.
Other evenings we received the visit of union leaders or factory workers denouncing injustice and abuse from the authorities and their employers. And sometimes it was musicians, who delighted us with huaynos and yaravíes from the Andes.
Next to me always sat a girl who lived in Comas, a former huge shanty town that had now become a district. Home of the first wave of migrants in the 1950's, Comas was far from San Marcos, probably 1 hour by bus. She - as were most students of San Marcos - came from the hinterlands of Peru, from a very humble family, who strove hardly to give her a professional education. And this dream has only become possible for thousands of excellent professionals, thanks to San Marcos and other National Universities.
My friend studied Social Work and had hardly enough money to pay for her daily bus fares. She used to count her coins and sighed in relief when she had the right amount.
I saw her listening to the report given to us by the miners' wives who had come to Lima on a walking rally, journeying for days along the central highway from the Central highlands, because their husbands had been unpaid for more than 5 months. We were all shocked by their dignified yet terrifying description of this journey. And I saw my fellow student opening her purse from where she handed out every single coin she had. And she was not at all the exception in my classroom.
San Marcos therefore means to me 'Solidarity'.
In San Marcos there are professors both good and bad: yet I must objectively say that most of them were excellent and yet earned pitiful salaries, hardly enough to pay for their transportation to and from the Campus. Even so, foreign students came to listen to the classes of the Latin American `Holy Cows' of Social Sciences, such as
Anibal Quijano,Our professors were always willing to answer our questions but their greatest contribution in my opinion was the developing of curiosity and hunger for research and reading among their students.
Cesar Germana,
Rodrigo Montoya,
Heraclio Bonilla,
Manuel Burga,
and Luis Lumbreras.
They taught us how to be methodical and analytical: in other words, how to use our minds and brains. Through their example we learnt ethics and responsibility.
They also made their personal libraries available to their students, sacrificed many weekends guiding our research, and some even went with us to folklore arenas.
They taught us to be exhaustive in our work, to be persistent, honest, consistent... and how to read between lines.
They encouraged our interest in our country and in our own future roles in the destiny of our nation.
They arose our pride of being Peruvians, not by learning by heart dates and biographies, nor by repeating clichés, but by motivating us to get in touch with our people and with our veritable culture.
They made me love Peru as I had never realised one could love it.
And even so, during my 10 semesters at San Marcos there were at least 20 activities and collections to raise funds for unpaid professors.Although La Catolica, Pacifico and Lima Universities were eagerly tempting the best of them with adequate salaries and every facility for research in wonderful environments, only the weakest surrendered, and most of the others preferred to keep on giving poor students the opportunity of receiving an excellent education.
So San Marcos means to me generosity and what we call in Spanish 'Amor a la Camiseta': 'full identification'.
But San Marcos also means violence, destroyed furniture, glassless windows, sacked laboratories: and the offenders were not the students, believe me, because we knew all this had been done by policemen and soldiers.
San Marcos also means to me stinking bathrooms, a loathsome bureaucracy, obsolete books and equipment.
This is due to two facts:
1) that the budget allocated to national universities and specially to San Marcos has been relentlessly cut down to a negligible amount, andBut well beyond its shortages, let me tell how do I see the University of San Marcos: it is to me an elderly, generous, wise, and lovely lady, always ready to shelter penniless students and to give them the opportunity of growing as human beings and of becoming better Peruvians.2) because I must admit that San Marcos is administratively a disgrace.
I hope this short presentation will help you get a better image of my beloved San Marcos from now on.
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