El Cevichito

Dec 8-9, 2023

In that time all the Mediterranean coast was connecting stronger and faster with European markets. Resources from the government and the CE renewed essential infrastructures serving regions -a huge work performed in just a decade. The country was prepared, the economic development had foundation.

The months that followed the transition in the direction of the Museum complex, which included our lovely LIPS boat, started to be smooth thanks to the necessary routines, so that both, the director that F. Miranda had parachuted from Madrid and I, would have some breath. She had the advantage to be learning hands-on the singular unit of the Casa y Corte.

On my part at the secretary, the paperwork was running as usual, and I had the chance to increase my experience in 'central administration.' The most rewarding result or fact in that time, if I have to mention one, was that the number of visitors to see the Museum materials were consistently increasing, the tusks with the Phoenician text being our stars. We had advertised the collection and reached out schools in the time of don Julio, but it was during the post-transition time when a jump in the data was visible.

2

Well, in fact, if I have to tell ALL the truth, it was not difficult that the new director got adapted to her position. She was constantly assisted by her Madrid network in first place, of course. Locally, in the beginning, she had to rely on me as a person “en provincias.” Later on, she would rely on me with absolute conviction. She realized, thus, that I was the bedrock there after don Julio. Perhaps, somehow, I imagined, she was reading my mind. She would have felt that I had the determination to make our research unit, with the lovely collection, continue growing successfully further than Madrid. The Museum was nice as a cultural legacy and for the world sighters to admire, but it was a bigger idea, it was much more since the its very foundation as Patronato.

On the other side, as a researcher herself, she would continue personal projects along her administrative role in/for the Museum of Madrid in Faro de Navidad. In a given moment, not only was she in a very complicated personal situation, and in true need of covering many demanding fronts, but she strongly wished in those critical circumstances to attend, in person, an excavation digg for some months in the north of Israel.

You see?

So that one day she came to start a conversation that would take that direction and emotions. That was an unique opportunity for her. Decisions were so difficult. She knew that I understood her troubles and pressures.

I understood, deeply.

Who was then left in charge of the whole responsibility, of the direction of the National Museum and Center?

You tell.

Keep in mind that I am talking about ministerial offices in Madrid that had been perfectly defined and portrayed by don Benito, do?a Emilia and many others before and after them. The Corte is always avid for street, casino and bar conversation; for the agitation by nets of petitioners, secret intrigues and dedicated se?oritos intrigantes. This is a well known tradition. And in the 80's it had added the unions inside the ministries, one extra layer in order to make feasible the "cultural" mandates "en provincias."

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From all providers, P. Gavilá had been always the more significant and friendly visitor of the Museum. He still would show up two or three times a year to greet, offer help, checking for business plans. As we had been filled up with his pretty, solid wood furniture for the inauguration, he would be paid lately, as usual (like Pedre?o). There was nothing to change in the upper and down floors of the museum, the exhibitors were glass matter, and apart of the Secretary, my office, closed to the Direction office in the Center, four rooms not in use had some metallic items.

There I did most of my thesis writing. Once completed the milestone and earned the master (‘El comercio de El Callao con Espa?a en la época prerrevolucionaria, 1797-1808,’ Sobresaliente Honor), I looked forward stepping in my doctoral plan and taking the mandatory courses, the point with no return.

Months later I earned a grant from the Ministry of Education and Science, the rival monster ministry, which had started an ambitious plan sending predocs and postdoc Researchers Abroad for one academic year (October-June). Thus, I had open all the way to explore, know and study the crude originals that I really, really wanted to touch. The essential sources for my large project.

My plan was squared. Fully measured, cm to cm, inch to inch. I would go straight to Perú, would be engaged daily in the archives checking its old files and they would report me, with extraordinary precision and pressure, facts, objects, people, actions, conflicts, streams of light from Lima for two centuries. I would do my part in the documental conversation, reaching and fixing 'ideas,' 'designs,' 'reasons' and final 'causes' that Lima had preserved in the Archivo General de la Nación from the times of the independence.

C?Pscprght. Hasta aquí.

'Puentecito escondido entre follajes y entre a?oranzas

Puentecito tendido sobre la herida de una quebrada

Reto?an pensamientos tus maderos

Se aferra el corazón a tu balaustres'