When I was 10 years old, I lived across the street from the University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru. I just had to get out of my house, walk through a small garden and a street and I was already inside the university. It had no surrounding walls, nor entrances with guards (as it currently is). Anyone could stroll through its facilities, walk through the classrooms, and go up to its faculty buildings. The University has a soccer stadium with a capacity for about 40,000 spectators, but at that time it was very abandoned and was not being used.

San Marcos University Stadium

As you can imagine, the University was one of my favorite places to play, not only for me, but also for my friends in the neighborhood. Among our favorites activities were football matches, climbing trees, lighting bonfires, speeding up and down through the stadium bleachers, building makeshift cabins, climbing to the roofs of the faculty buildings, strolling around the stadium, stealing delicious blackberries that grew in some trees of the University.

One night, my friend Mario and me, decided to go to the Faculty of Literature, whose four-story building was the closest to our houses (approximately 120 meters no more). I don’t remember why, but that night we started running. We ran to the building, ran up its ramps (the building had no stairs but wide ramps, similar to ramps in a parking lot), and we ended up on the faculty building roof. The University had its guardian, to prevent children from entering, but he was well known for its absence in the area.

Already on the roof, which is quite large, we continue running. It was dark and it was not easy to see where we were going, because there was no lighting there. To aggravate the situation, the roof did not have any protective walls on its edges; just the floor ended and that’s it. To make the situation even worse, I couldn’t see well from afar; I was nearsighted. But at that time I believed, like many other people, that when myopia is just beginning, glasses are not needed; I would only start wearing glasses two years later. In those conditions we were running, my friend on one side and I on the other, laughing and shouting, when suddenly, I noticed something strange with the floor, as if the floor was moving. Only then did I realize that I was on a rooftop and that the floor I saw moving was the wall of the building beyond. I immediately stood up and realized that I was only a few feet from the edge. I kept moving slowly and could see, four story down, the university students, some walking, others studying, others talking, all of them without even suspecting that they were about to witness a tragedy.

I remember I just turned around, didn’t say anything to my friend, and we went down just like we did before running and laughing. The title of this story is The University; the title could have been “I Almost Died for Being Nearsighted”, but didn’t want to anticipate the outcome.

San Marcos University

A short time later, while visiting the Huampaní resort, I didn’t slow down. Fortunately, I was not on a rooftop. But it was also during the night and I was running with my youngest brother through the resort’s sidewalks, but I didn’t realize that they ended up on some steps down, and continued beyond. I tried to stop myself, but it was too late; I fell and hit my arm and knee. My uncles, who were nearby, ran to help me, while my brother was cracking up. I got up and kept running.

NOTE: The aerial view that is seen at the beginning corresponds to the University of San Marcos and its surroundings. You can see its stadium, its buildings, its “huaca” (place with archaeological remains), Venezuela Avenue, the Neighborhood Unit No. 3 and the nearby urbanizations and parks.

References: None

Photograph taken from the roof that is mentioned in this story. It was taken on a Sunday afternoon (which is why you don’t see many college students), 17 years after the events narrated here. The house where I lived is the one with brown tiles, located exactly in front of the exit (or entrance) of the university. You can also see part of the wall that surrounds the university. Between wall and wall of the wall there is a metal fence but it is not very well appreciated in the photo. This wall has a curious history: When they began to build it, the university students violently opposed its construction, arguing that they were coercing their freedom, that they were being locked up. So much so that when the masons finished a wall, that night the university students knocked it down, threw it to the ground. Weeks passed and the situation remained the same, wall built, wall collapsed. The police had to be present and guard the wall until it was finally finished and the university students had no choice but to accept it.

Many years later, the Municipality of Lima urgently needed to expand the university avenue, for which they had to convert that avenue (named German Amezaga) that passes through my old house (and that can be seen in the photo), into a modern two-lane highway , and the only way to do it was to knock down the part of the wall that runs parallel to that avenue. Again the university students opposed but this time the other way around; They did not allow their precious wall to be destroyed and after many efforts they succeeded.