Cleaning up Col. Leoncio Prado

photos c. Barbara Drake 2009

As I passed through Leoncio Prado park this morning, I caught sight of this municipal worker cleaning the general himself with a hose.

A hero/martyr in Peru’s disasterous four-year war with Chile (1879-1883), Col. Leoncio Prado opted to be gunned down by an enemy firing squad rather than surrender his arms. A big statue of him sits in the middle of Leoncio Prado park, across from my house in Miraflores.

The Peruvian military owns the park as I found out last July 15 when it was occupied by battalions of soldiers and Masonic dignitaries celebrating Leoncio Prado’s birthday. If you weren’t wearing a uniform or a Masonic apron, you weren’t allowed in the park. It seemed an oddly undemocratic way to commemorate a national hero’s birthday–holding a party in a public space and banning citizens from attending.

The other 364 days of the year anyone can walk into Leoncio Prado park and admire LP’s statue, which is surrounded by six or so lovely palm trees. Not so lovely are the cuculis that like to sit/shit on the colonel’s head and shoulders. The two guys I saw hosing down the statue this morning came with a water tanker and no ladder. One guy climbed on the other guy’s shoulders and shimmied up the base of the statue that way.

In true Peruvian municipal-worker style, they loved having their picture taken.