Being summertime, and having the schools closed, work has been a little slow in the last few weeks. The good news is that I’ve had more time to work in the library, and will be picking up the next set of books from Promolibro at the end of the week to supplement our collection.
We had a really scary and tragic incident in my town last week. A large attraction here are the crawdads, which are served almost year round. Right now they are in their time of reproduction, or “veda” and it’s illegal to harvest them. However, people do it anyway. Two men approached 2 15-year-old boys and offered them 100 soles if they would pick a certain amount of camarones. The kids said sure, and went to the river with the men. Once there, the men pulled out huge knives and cut the boys. One got a cut from his wrist up to his elbow, but managed to escape, ran home, then jumped on the first bus to Arequipa. His friend was not so lucky. The men cut up his arm, cut off one hand and one foot, slit his throat, then removed his kidneys, small intestine, heart and eyes. They covered him with large rocks on the low bank of the river, where he was uncovered and found 7 days later by some people working in the area, and, overcome by the stench, looked for the source. The boy who escaped came back after 3 days and has been working with the police, giving as much detail as possible about the incident. It seems to be illegal organ trafficking, and further analysis is being done on the corpse in Lima to determine better the time-span of the crime. I was in the municipality yesterday when the mother came in, trying to file the papers for her murdered son. She is so overwhelmed with all the paperwork coming from the government, police, lawyers, and hospitals, and barely seems to know what to do. This was one of my students, and it’s really hard to digest what happened to him. It’s really scary that illegal organ trafficking has been brought to this small town, as well. Parents are right: Don’t talk to strangers.
