Editors Only Story
El muro de la Vergüenza
A singular case occurred in the city of Lima, between the district of Santiago de Surco and the district of San Juan de Miraflores, where a concrete wall was built in order to physically divide these two opposite realities. The differences between these two districts are visible to the naked eye. On the side of Santiago de Surco, there are luxurious residential complexes with access controlled by semi-permanent vigilance through places of fenced controls, green parks, paved roads and the best municipal services such as daily cleaning of their own roads. On the side of San Juan de Miraflores however, most of the residential areas in the vicinity of the hills are formed by “Asientamentos Humanos” or favelas, almost all the secondary roads are without asphalt and the public services as for example the garbage disposal is precarious.
The aspect of this wall is similar to a small fortress, leads to think that it hasn’t been built only for matters of demarcation, but also for issues of “social separation” since its height varies from 3 to 4 meters, and is equipped with barbed wire. The many families who lives in Pamplona Alta (fraction of San Juan de Miraflores) feel completely forgotten and discriminated by their own state and from people who do not want to be aware of their living conditions. Their greatest desire is being able to give a better future to their sons, different from the childhood that most of the people who are living here had. They would like to give to their children a better life, let them understand that they have the same opportunities of anybody else to realize their dreams.
But all this is very difficult when a wall has been built between you and your ambitions, and that this wall that doesn’t even allow you to see that another reality is possible. Today the aspect of this area of Lima is surreal and reflects the division of modern society. On the one hand, the wealthy social class, with luxurious houses, swimming pools, green parks and state-of-the-art infrastructure and on the other side, separated by a few meters, the most humble social class deprived from even basic services to lead a dignified life. The fact that the division of these two realities is not a geographic boundary, but rather a wall of reinforced concrete and barbed wire built by the will of man, is the symbol of how today’s society is divided. All people have the same rights, however their lifestyle can be different, their social extraction and their philosophy of thought as well. Ignoring the problems or erecting barriers to separate and not seeing the other realities will never help to create a cohesive society where everyone has the same opportunities, but would only help to increasingly widen the gap between human beings.