For Peruvians, Christmas Is Held Captive by Rebels

As is her habit, Mariela Assereto started preparing early for Christmas, her favorite holiday.

She bought a huge tree a month ago. For weeks, she has been decking her house in red and green. Everything was going according to plan--until left-wing guerrillas took her husband and dozens of others hostage, enveloping them in what has become Peru’s Christmas nightmare.

On Christmas Eve, instead of buying last-minute gifts, Assereto and relatives of the other 104 hostages held by the Peruvian terrorists lined up outside the Red Cross office here.

They handed over their Christmas presents for loved ones--small white papers scrawled with messages of hope.

“I really like Christmas. I have everything ready,” Assereto, 52, said with a wan smile. “The only thing we’re missing is him.”

With the standoff between the Peruvian government and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement guerrillas stretching into a second week, a pall fell over Lima’s usually joyous Christmas celebrations.

The terrorists did release one hostage Tuesday evening--Tabare Bocalandro, the Uruguayan ambassador. But the guerrillas are still holding 105 VIPs, including senior Peruvian officials, Japanese business executives and foreign ambassadors.

The hostages have been trapped in the Japanese ambassador’s residence since rebels seized it during a fancy cocktail party a week ago.

The Red Cross, which earlier had reported 140 hostages in the compound, said Tuesday that it had miscounted.

The guerrillas gave no reason for freeing the Uruguayan ambassador. But news reports from Uruguay on Tuesday said that a court there had just rejected a request by Peru to extradite two alleged Tupac Amaru guerrillas.

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Led by one of the country’s most infamous terrorists--former union activist Nestor Cerpa Cartolini--the Tupac rebels holding the diplomatic compound are seeking wide-ranging peace talks and the release of hundreds of jailed rebels.

The government has rejected those demands but offered to negotiate if the guerrillas free their captives.

The Red Cross said it was sending the hostages special holiday food Tuesday, as well as Communion wafers and wine for a Christmas Mass.

Local authorities and Roman Catholic Church officials tried to brighten the Christmas of the captives’ families, many of whom were wondering if they would ever see their relatives again.

A priest, the Rev. Justo Gonzalez, comforted the families during a special midday Mass at Our Lady of Fatima church in the upscale Miraflores neighborhood.

But many of those in attendance could not help but turn their eyes to an empty wooden booth where three red candles flickered.

Normally, the Rev. Juan Julio Wicht would be kneeling there, hearing confessions. Not on this day: The Jesuit priest, who volunteered to stay with the other captives, is a hostage.

In the evening, local officials invited the families to a traditional Peruvian Christmas chocolatada, or hot-chocolate party, near the Japanese diplomatic compound. But authorities discouraged another holiday custom--setting off small fireworks--for fear the rebels might mistake the pops and bangs for gunfire.

Spirits were so low in Peru that one local bishop, the Rev. Miguel Irizar, even called for a cancellation of Christmas celebrations.

“We cannot have parties or be frivolous,” he said.

But Assereto was not about to take that kind of advice. Waiting outside the Red Cross office, she said her husband, Juan, would want the family to celebrate--even without him.

True, her daughter Janina, 25, has been crying for days and was in no mood for a party. But Assereto planned to go to Christmas midnight Mass with her daughter and 26-year-old son, her parents and her mother-in-law.

Then, like most Peruvians, they planned to sit down for a late-night holiday dinner.

“We’re not losing hope that he’ll be with us tonight,” she said of her husband of 28 years, who works for the Peruvian government’s privatization agency. “If he’s not there physically, he’ll be there in spirit.”

These have been awful days, she admitted. Normally, she would have spent them putting finishing touches on the family’s ceiling-high tree and doing some gift-buying.

“But I haven’t had the spirit for that,” she said. “It’s not important for us to exchange gifts. The important thing is to be together.”

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She has worked hard to keep herself from breaking down. Unlike the other wives outside the Red Cross office Tuesday morning, she was not wearing sunglasses to hide red-rimmed eyes.

Already that morning, she had been to Mass with friends to pray for her husband.

Between television reports on the crisis, she was watching her slow-roasting turkey, occasionally basting it with a squirt of wine. Preparations for the family’s favorite Christmas salads were laid out in the kitchen: fruit cocktail, tiny marshmallows and cream for one salad; spinach, lettuce, mushrooms and artichokes for another.

Assereto had also dropped by the pharmacy to pick up a vitamin concoction that her doctor had recommended for her husband.

“These can keep his spirits up,” she said, holding up a small box.

Her 57-year-old spouse, she said, had sent a message through the Red Cross reporting that he was in good health. Assereto consoles herself with that--and the knowledge that her husband is a strong person with deep Catholic faith.

“He is a man of few words. But he is a magnificent person,” she said with a smile.

She too is relying on faith to see her through the crisis.

She recalled how, weeks ago, she set up the Nativity scene at home, one of her favorite moments of the holidays. Most Peruvians, she noted, wait until Christmas to put the ceramic baby Jesus in his crib.

Not her. “Jesus is supposed to always be with us,” she said softly. “There’s no reason not to put him there before.”