ONLY IN PERU
When I lived in Peru, I came face to face with a country that is not only home to the Incas, but to the bizarre, the outrageous and the downright unbelievable.
In what other country would one of the most important trials in the country's history consist of verbal-jousting between a balding, megalomaniac mute and his ex, a zebra-print-top wearing former air-hostess with Farrah-Fawcett hair and the fury of a woman scorned?
Where else would the heart-attack-prone vice-president of a nation be challenged to a swords-at-dawn duel by a rival congressman who felt his manhood had been impugned?
And tell me what other country in the world has had not one, but two (successive) presidents who have been forced to admit to being the proud parent of a bastard love-child?
To be honest, when news reached me that the silver-tongued hulk that is President Alan Garcia had owned up to part-owning a child with a woman other than his wife, I wasn't surprised. Just mildly amused. After all, our Alan probably took no little pleasure in joining the chorus of opprobrium directed at his predecessor for the exact same faux pas (Alan argues that his case is incomparable because he recognised the child from day one, compared with Alejandro Toledo's decade-long denial).
Even so, I can't help but feel sorry for Alan Jr. Being outed as a bastard must be a bitch at the best of times. But when papi is president at the same time (and the man that drove Peru to economic ruin in the 1980s) then it must be borderline intolerable. To add to the woes of the poor boy borne by Alan, as well as bearing his father's name, in Peru you also carry the mother's, in this case Cheesman. CHEESMAN!! Poor, poor child.
When I lived in Peru, I came face to face with a country that is not only home to the Incas, but to the bizarre, the outrageous and the downright unbelievable.
In what other country would one of the most important trials in the country's history consist of verbal-jousting between a balding, megalomaniac mute and his ex, a zebra-print-top wearing former air-hostess with Farrah-Fawcett hair and the fury of a woman scorned?
Where else would the heart-attack-prone vice-president of a nation be challenged to a swords-at-dawn duel by a rival congressman who felt his manhood had been impugned?
And tell me what other country in the world has had not one, but two (successive) presidents who have been forced to admit to being the proud parent of a bastard love-child?
To be honest, when news reached me that the silver-tongued hulk that is President Alan Garcia had owned up to part-owning a child with a woman other than his wife, I wasn't surprised. Just mildly amused. After all, our Alan probably took no little pleasure in joining the chorus of opprobrium directed at his predecessor for the exact same faux pas (Alan argues that his case is incomparable because he recognised the child from day one, compared with Alejandro Toledo's decade-long denial).
Even so, I can't help but feel sorry for Alan Jr. Being outed as a bastard must be a bitch at the best of times. But when papi is president at the same time (and the man that drove Peru to economic ruin in the 1980s) then it must be borderline intolerable. To add to the woes of the poor boy borne by Alan, as well as bearing his father's name, in Peru you also carry the mother's, in this case Cheesman. CHEESMAN!! Poor, poor child.
Labels: Cheesman, Farrah, Fawcett, Garcia, illegitimate, Inca, Peru, Toledo
posted by David Cohen at 9:35 pm
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