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desérticos. la asunción del desierto como desafío práctico y Nazca no encarne sólo un gesto de inmortalidad
La ilusiva imagen de una Lima ciudad jardín llena espiritual: la ciudad sagrada de Caral y las líneas deseada, sino también bien la evidencia de una 11
de densos jardines y chacras reverdecientes, y de Nazca. Caral es una ciudad ubicada 182 km aspiración por resignificar el desierto como un
distante de todo páramo inhabitable, fue una al norte de Lima y su construcción se inició espacio con señales permanentes de vida. Para los
construcción ideológica de la elite limeña del siglo hace casi 5.000 años. Cuna de la civilización nazcas, moches o incas el desierto nunca pareció
XIX. Más que por la constatación de una realidad en América y una de las primeras de la Tierra, ser el averno del que se debía huir. Por el contrario,
que nunca registraría tal cual estos atributos, esta con una complejidad morfológica y funcional incluso en su condición de cementerio –como en
se generó probablemente como gesto alucinatorio incluso bastante más desarrollada que algunas el caso de las necrópolis paracas–, este espacio
en proporción exacta a la certeza objetiva de de las ciudades de Mesopotamia y Egipto, más no dejaba de ser el escenario privilegiado para
saberse parte de un desierto indomable dispuesto o menos surgidas en la misma época. Es una construir una nueva y vital sensibilidad mágico-
a engullirse a la ciudad. En este acto reflejo se ciudad que, al no haberse encerrado como fuerte religiosa. En este contexto, el vacío del desierto
encuentran sin duda los miedos atávicos de la inexpugnable, se hizo espacio urbano y edilicio como sujeto esencial del horror vacui deviene
sensibilidad ítalo-ibérica y su reintepretación en diálogo fructífero con el vacío del desierto y el espacio de llenos construidos o dibujados, una
americana respecto al desierto y el omnipresente valle colindante: todo menos expresión instintiva especie de desierto barroco ocupado plenamente
paisaje moro negado. Tal vez la reiterativa y del horror vacui occidental. por la vida y por la expresividad artística.
artificiosa convicción de una Lima ciudad jardín no Si Caral es construcción urbana que recrea en
desértica sea la mejor prueba de que, efectivamente, sus múltiples montículos, pirámides y anfiteatros La ciudad hispánica
la ciudad nunca fue ni será –desafortunadamente– sagrados la morfología de un paisaje desértico La irrupción del urbanismo hispánico en la costa
una extensa ciudad de jardines. Por otro lado, la reanimado y mitificado, las líneas de Nazca peruana supondrá el advenimiento de otro modo
teoría de la Garden City de Ebenezer Howard representan la aspiración extrema de fijar huellas, de procesar la dialéctica artificio/naturaleza y las
jamás adquirió en Lima ni por asomo el estatus horadar surcos y transformar el desierto en un relaciones entre la ciudad y el desierto. Se trata de una
de proyecto urbano concreto. Pocas veces la razón auténtico lienzo visible, legible e imperecedero. lógica distinta de aquella racionalidad y cosmovisión
proviene del miedo sin razón. Desierto dibujado sobre desierto real: un lienzo existente desde los tiempos preincaicos.
para los gigantescos garabatos convertido en Por tratarse de una ciudad que se constituye como
Desierto sagrado Land Art de vanguardia: el desierto como espacio antípoda verde de la esencia árida del desierto,
Lima se sitúa entre dos extraordinarios hitos de subjetivado y un auténtico desafío humano. la ciudad hispánica es, en su radical y exaltada
referencia que tienen precisamente relación con Tal vez la imborrable presencia de las líneas de artificialidad, una forma de artefacto desértico
with desert space and landscapes. as both a practical and a spiritual challenge. One is The indelible presence of the Nazca Lines
The illusory image of Lima as a garden city the holy city of Caral, the other, the Nazca Lines. is perhaps not just a gesture of longed-for
full of thick gardens and green smallholdings, Caral is a city located 182 km north of Lima and immortality, but also evidence of an aspiration
far from any inhospitable wasteland, was an was founded almost 5.000 years ago. The cradle of to resignify the desert as a space with permanent
ideological construct of the city’s 19th century civilization in the Americas and one of the oldest signs of life. For the Nazcas, Moches or Incas
elite. Perhaps more than a reflection of a reality cultures in the world, it was morphologically the desert was never an Avernus to be fled.
that never quite fit the image, it was a gesture and functionally more complex than some of On the contrary, even in its role as a cemetery
as hallucinatory as the objective certainty they the cities of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt –the Paracas necropolis, for example– it was
recognized, of living in an indomitable desert from around the same period. Caral did not considered an ideal space in which to build
which threatened to engulf them. It was an close itself off behind impregnable fortifications; a new and vital magical-religious sensibility.
automatic reflex born, no doubt, of the atavistic rather, it opened itself as an urban space in fruitful In this context, the emptiness of the desert as
fears of an Italo-Iberian sensibility and the New dialog with the emptiness of the desert and the the essence of horror vacui becomes a drawn or
World reinterpretation of the desert and its adjoining valley. It was anything but an instinctive constructed fullness, a sort of baroque desert
omnipresent Moorish landscape it denied. The expression of the West’s horror vacui. replete with life and artistic expression.
deceptive and oft-repeated concept of Lima as a Whereas Caral is an urban construction
garden city is perhaps the strongest proof that that in its multiple mounds, pyramids and The Hispanic city
the city has never been a city of gardens and amphitheaters recreates the morphology of a The irruption of Hispanic urban development
unfortunately never will be. Ebenezer Howard’s desert landscape reanimated and mythified, the on the Peruvian coast supposes the advent of a
theory of the garden city has never even came Nazca Lines represent the powerful aspiration different way of handling the artificial/natural
close to achieving the status of a serious urban to mark out paths, plow furrows and transform dialectic and the relationship between city and
project in Lima. Unfounded fears rarely produce the desert into a genuine canvas, visible, legible desert. It is a logic distinct from that of the
an objective view of reality. and lasting. The Lines are a drawing of a desert rationality and cosmovision that had existed
superimposed on a real one, a canvas for giant since pre-Inca times.
Sacred desert strokes converted into avant-garde Land Art, Conceived as the green antipode of the desert’s
Lima is set between two exceptional reference the desert as subjectivized space and a genuine aridity, the Hispanic city, a radical and exalted
points that illustrate the issue of facing the desert human challenge. artificiality, is a form of desert artifact dominated
by the environmental and esthetic logic of dry but also a squared desert surface converted for urban construction. In the latter role the
urbanism with its Arab-Italo-Iberian roots, a into a dry city that set off a historical process desert also has this dual significance: for those
compulsive way of secularizing the natural of desertification from within. Today, 500 in power, a sort of hellish deterrent for expelling
landscape. It is an urbanism whose supreme years later, Lima has met the real desert. The –or in official language, relocating– the invaders
value, from the times of Ur, Uruk, Eridu and the desert inside has become more desertlike in its of the consolidated city, and for the underdogs, a
Miletus of Thales to the medieval era of square encounter with the desert outside. promise or a challenge to be overcome.
bastides and the geometrized Renaissance ideal The pace and scale of this precarious,
of a city, stems from its ability to locate itself as 20th century Lima: a desert for invasion accelerated urbanization of the desert have
radically as possible as the very opposite of the Since the mid-20th century the desert has shown been extraordinary. Whereas in 1940 Lima had
environmental and morphological essence of itself to Lima in two forms simultaneously: as approximately 660.000 inhabitants and covered
uncertain nature. Buildings right up against the an urban tragedy for hundreds of thousands of about 300 km2, the population in 2004 borders
sidewalk, streets without trees, no urban parks, homeless residents, and as the banal setting for on 8 million people, occupying almost 2.800
squares with empty spaces sculpted to the last the weekend leisure pursuits of a sector of well- km2. If we exclude the ancient valley of Lima,
detail, and tamed and potted gardens inside heeled Lima society. After the establishment, almost two-thirds of the greater urban area has
houses and monasteries are typical characteristics in 1932, of Leticia, the pioneer shantytown, been built on the hills and sands of the desert.
of a landscape that, like the landscapes of colonial and similar settlements that appeared on the Lima is no longer situated in the Rímac Valley:
and post-colonial cities, would with time become slopes of the hills around the center of Lima, 60% of its inhabitants and its surface area are
more arid and dusty. A dramatic advance notice the space chosen for the second generation of located in desert; indeed, it is now one of the
of what would was to come, the dusty Lima and invasions in the 1950s was the arid sandy areas largest metropolises on the planet located in the
its hundreds of surrounding shantytowns. on the far periphery to the north and south middle of a desert.
The checkerboard Lima of Pizarro’s time, of the consolidated city. Neighborhoods like Alongside the typical architecture and urbanism
later to be surrounded by a wall for nearly Comas (1952, north of Lima) and Ciudad de of poverty in the shantytown periphery, Lima’s
300 years, was in reality not just a strange Dios (1954, south), were only the start of a desert coastline has developed a well-publicized
Meccano set construction of almost 214 hectares process that would turn the desert into not only image since the early 80s as the home of poor
superimposed on the Rímac valley through a last refuge for thousands of homeless migrants, style architecture, for the nouveau riche trying to
a violent extirpation of (idol-ridden) nature, but also a real hypothesis for projects and tools redeem the sense of previous local existences with
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de estilo pobre para nuevos ricos con aspiraciones El urbanismo en este escenario –igualmente dedicadas por Mario Vargas Llosa a los arenales
de redimir el sentido de las preexistencias locales: invadido y tomado por agentes sociales distintos al de Piura, o el desierto animado hecho memoria 13
casas de playa, la mayoría de ellas dotadas de otro invasor (el de las barriadas)– es un urbanismo poética por Luis Hernández, Antonio Cisneros o
una seudomemoria histórica. Se trata de una resuelto en gran medida con excesos de insolvencia Edgardo Rivera Martínez. La compleja exploración
arquitectura que, en clave de un regionalismo proyectual e irresponsabilidad ecológica. Posee musical de Manongo Mujica con las antiguas flautas
crítico desprovisto de sentido crítico, no ha tenido todos los atributos de ese típico urbanismo de halladas en Caral es un homenaje desde la música a
otro destino que convertirse en cliché formal frenética especulación inmobiliaria y empleo de los sonidos y silencios del mismo desierto.
previsible. Transformada en moda replicable, la capitales no bien habidos, a tal grado que no pocos Más de 5.000 años después de que los primeros
banalización de su preexistencia primaria, como balnearios y casas de playa (como la célebre casa de limeños decidieran habitarla, Lima ya no tiene
diría Gillo Dorfles, significaría finalmente su Vladimiro Montesinos) surgieron directamente que descubrir el desierto: él está ahí, a la vera de
propia muerte. El redentor devino enterrador. bajo la ética y estética de la gigantesca red de todos sus bordes. Descubrimiento perturbador si se
corrupción montada por este régimen. Aquí el reconoce que en esencia se trata de un dramático
Lima siglo XXI: balnearios y desierto invadido terminaría siendo privatizado al autocercioramiento: saber que en realidad Lima
desierto privatizado igual que el litoral marino, pese a las prohibiciones no sólo es un fragmento urbano desértico, sino
Lugares privilegiados para el despliegue masivo de la Ley. Un urbanismo seriado de criollas gate también una especie de desierto hecho ideal
de esta arquitectura son las decenas de nuevos communities con sus propios policías particulares. urbano y urbe concreta tras su fundación hispánica.
balnearios surgidos entre el desierto y el mar a lo Todo desierto es más que su súbita conversión en Desierto sobre desierto. Arena sobre arena.
largo de más de 100 kilómetros de litoral al sur de mero objeto valor de cambio. Desde las primeras El cerro lomo de corvina, uno de los referentes
Lima, desde mediados de los años noventa. Este evocaciones a los arenales del entorno limeño en los más emblemáticos del desierto limeño del sur,
fenómeno de urbanización compulsiva del litoral, lienzos de Reynaldo Luza a inicios de los cincuenta, empieza hoy a vestirse de verde con el humus
junto con el proyecto urbano de la República hasta su resignificación histórica y conceptual de la basura doméstica proveniente de las casas
Aristocrática (1895-1919), la urbanización moderna en las instalaciones de Jorge Eduardo Eielson y pobres de una antigua barriada limeña. Aquí el
de los años veinte y el fenómeno de las barriadas, Emilio Rodríguez Larraín o las texturas de Esther desierto, seguramente a pesar de la propia ciudad
puede con seguridad ser considerado uno de los Vainstein, el desierto se ha transformado no sólo y de sí mismo, se revela como un sobrecogedor
más significativos por su magnitud e impacto en en un perturbador referente, sino también en un desafío: una prueba para la capacidad de
la estructura e imaginario urbanos de la metrópoli auténtico soporte artístico convertido en paisaje vital. regenerar las condiciones de la vida. Todo menos
limeña. Es un hijo directo de la década fujimorista. La literatura hizo lo mismo: ahí están las páginas desierto. Desierto barroco sin horror vacui.
beach houses, many furnished with pseudo-history. appropriated by social agents, but very different the animated desert as poetic memory in the
Their design reflects a critical regionalism from those of the shantytowns– is an urbanism works of Luis Hernández, Antonio Cisneros
bereft of critical sense that is little more than characterized largely by the excesses of insolvent or Edgardo Rivera Martínez. The complex
a predictable cliché of form. Converted into a projects and ecological irresponsibility. It has all musical explorations of Manongo Mujica with
replicable style, the banalization of its primary the attributes of frenetic property speculation the ancient flutes found in Caral is a tribute from
preexistence, as Gillo Dorfles might say, will financed by funds of doubtful provenance; the world of music to the sounds and silences of
ultimately mean its own death. The redeemer indeed, a good many resorts and beach houses the same desert.
becomes the gravedigger. (like that of Vladimiro Montesinos) sprung More than 5.000 years after Lima was first
directly out of the ethic and esthetic of the huge inhabited it no longer needs to discover the
20th century Lima: seaside resorts and corruption ring set up by the Fujimori regime. desert, for the desert is there at the city limits.
privatized desert The invaded desert would end up privatized just It is a disturbing discovery once one recognizes
The dozens of new seaside resorts that have like the coastline, despite the legal restrictions, that what is taking place is a dramatic self-
sprung up between the ocean and the desert with a string of home-grown gate communities realization: in reality Lima is not only an urban
along more than 100 km of shoreline south of with their own private police. desert fragment, but also a sort of desert become
Lima since the mid-1990s are ideal locations for A desert is more than what it will fetch as a urban ideal and concrete city since its foundation
the mass propagation of such architecture. This mere object of exchange value. From the first by the Spanish. Desert upon desert, sand upon
compulsive urbanization of the coast is surely evocations of the sands around Lima in the early- sand.
one of the most significant urban development 1950s canvases of Reynaldo Luza to its historical A hill known as Lomo de Corvina, one of the most
phenomena in terms of scale and impact on the and conceptual resignification in the installations emblematic references of the Lima desert to the
urban structure and imagination of metropolitan of Jorge Eduardo Eielson and Emilio Rodriguez south, is starting to turn green with the humus
Lima, rivaling the urban project of the Larraín or the textures of Esther Vainstein, the of household waste from poor households in
Aristocratic Republic (1895-1919), the modern desert become not just a disturbing reference this old shantytown. Despite the city and itself,
urbanization of the 1920s, and the emergence but also a genuine artistic support turned vital the desert has emerged here as an awe-inspiring
of the shantytowns. It is a direct product of the landscape. Literature has done something challenge, a test of the ability to regenerate
Fujimori decade. similar, in, for example, the pages devoted by the conditions of life. Anything but desert. A
The urbanism in this scenario –also invaded and Mario Vargas Llosa to the sands of Piura or baroque desert without horror vacui.