REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK PERU : In Lima, Violence Underscores a Hotbed of Problems

On a rare sunny afternoon in the Peruvian capital, patrons relaxed in the Queirolo tavern in an old neighborhood called Pueblo Libre, sipping mediocre wine and better beer. Many joined a guitarist in crooning broken-hearted folk songs.

Guns began popping just after 4 p.m. on that recent Saturday, a block away. Several people poked their heads warily out the door of the pub, and some brazenly strode onto the sidewalk. Most pretended not to notice the commotion.

Across a small square outside a police station, officers were firing their machine pistols and handguns as they ran around a corner. There were a couple of dozen shots in all. A few minutes later, calm returned. The patrons, not even curious, returned to their glasses.

A small item in a newspaper the next day explained: Three men on a motorbike had grabbed a street corner money-changer’s purse and raced away; a police patrol saw it happen and gave chase, wounding and capturing two of the three. The third thief got away.

With court workers on strike, no one would wager on the two suspects’ prospects. And if they go to the grim Lurigancho prison, so much the worse. The 5,000 inmates there rebelled recently, complaining that their food rations had been reduced to the value of 20 cents a day.

The violence is likely to continue as Peru prepares to vote in Sunday’s national elections since rebels of the Maoist Sendero Luminoso have vowed to disrupt the polling.

Lima, the seething home to one-third of Peru’s 21 million people, has an unfair share of woes by any standard. Many try not to notice.

The well-to-do have abandoned downtown Lima, moving to the nouveau kitsch suburbs of Miraflores and San Isidro, closer to the Pacific Coast. But some of Peru’s aristocracy are loathe to surrender the elegant old center city.

At a 300-year-old mansion four blocks from the Plaza de Armas, a women’s society of Lima scions offered a concert one recent Saturday evening by William Orbaugh, a prize-winning Guatemalan classical guitarist. The Entre Nous club has resisted pressure to flee to the suburbs and struggles to keep up the splendid house, although the paint is chipped and faded and the mosaic patios of the two inner courtyards are blackened from pollution.

One elderly member paused at the entrance and confronted a dark-skinned Indian girl of about 15 with a squawking baby strapped to her back who, exhausted, had set down her three-legged stool and a tray of meat pies on the sidewalk. The woman complained, “You aren’t going to stop here?” The girl moved on.

The free concert was excellent, even if Orbaugh’s tunes at times competed with the sirens and honking from the new Lima beyond the club’s doors--sometimes eerily in tune with the tuxedoed guitarist’s notes. Afterward, porters in faded uniforms served wine and hors d’oeuvres.

When you park your car in Lima, you not only remove your radio, if you bother to have one, but you store your windshield wipers as well. Although it never rains in Lima, the humidity on the desert coast gets so high in the Southern Hemisphere winter that a mist can develop, so windshield wipers are useful. That has made them a common target for thieves.

Miguel Cruchaga, a senior member of novelist Mario Vargas Llosa’s right-wing presidential campaign, recalls that he returned to his car one night to find the tires gone. He traveled the next day to one of the street markets for secondhand car radios and parts, and saw his own tires on sale. He bought them back.

The downtown has been left to squatters, hustlers, pickpockets and hundreds of thousands of street vendors, known as ambulantes , who account for about 40% of the Peruvian market economy. The informal markets are so large and well organized that they are divided by product. Some streets offer stall after stall of sneakers and shoes, other rows specialize in blankets, sweaters, stationery or muffler repairs.

It is the outdoor Peruvian version of the shopping mall, tax free, although the ambulantes complain that they are gouged by area residents for parking fees for their carts at night.

While they worry about street crime, guerrilla warfare, unemployment, inflation of 25% a month and food lines for bread and other basics, Limenos cite an unlikely problem atop the list: garbage. In a recently published survey, 80% of those polled felt garbage disposal--the lack of it--is the city’s worst problem. Garbage got twice as many complaints as high prices and transport. Crime was the fourth biggest problem at 24%.

In some of the shantytowns that ring Lima, garbage piles up on roadsides, creating an inescapable stench in warm weather. Frequent strikes by inflation-ravaged municipal workers don’t help. But the city’s explosive growth, tripling since 1961 with poor newcomers from the Andes highlands, would daunt even a smooth-running government.

The deluge of problems has set off an exodus of Peruvians, mainly the young and talented. Last year, an estimated 150,000 emigrated, up from just 12,000 in 1983, and the pace shows no sign of slowing.

The government seeks to make the best of it. Although it gave in to pressure recently and reduced the passport price from $55 to $10, it still charges every Peruvian leaving the country a flat fee of $100 per trip--more than double the monthly minimum wage.