A gringo in my neighborhood after the earthquake

A GRINGO IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE

Mister Clinton (Clinton Wilkins) 1970

No one knew how it happened that he arrived in the neighborhood four weeks after the earthquake on May 31,1970. But the fact is that he did appear on the dusty streets of San Isidro (my neighborhood) while they were still filled with rubble and had more than one dead dog decomposing out in the open on them. Chimbote (my city) still smelled of death in those days. But the ominous stench of pain had already begun to give way to the light of hope.

He was a tall, handsome gringo, and about twenty-five years old. He wore plaid shirts, blue jeans, and brown work shoes. He walked with great strides through the streets of San Isidro and 21 de Abril neighborhoods, and a cloud of kids would follow him almost running. He had an easy smile, a noble heart, and a hard-working nature. He was always helping out with something, and soon he won the affection of both adults and children.

"My name is Clinton” he had said, without adding further details. So we called him "Mister Clinton”. And despite the good friendship he forged over the next few weeks with the neighborhood, we never really knew anything else about him other than this name and his American nationality.

And just as he appeared out of nowhere in June, he also disappeared in September. I was then a nine-year-old boy, and his presence, and later his memory, was nothing more than an anecdote. But when I became an adult I felt the need to find him, to thank him for everything he had done for my neighborhood at a time when misfortune marked us forever.

For years and decades I asked people who might have known him from those weeks in 1970 if they remembered him. When the internet arrived I used this service to search for him. I went through every available Peace Corps file, because I always thought Mister Clinton had been part of that organization's volunteer work in Peru. And in recent years, given how much time had passed, I was troubled by the idea that perhaps life might have played a trick on us without my gratitude having ever reached its destination.

I never knew that Mister Clinton had been a school teacher. I only learned about it on the night of Saturday, December 14, last year. But the funny thing is that during some of the weeks he was in Chimbote in 1970, the good gringo was my teacher. At that time I was in the third year of primary school (fourth grade). 1970 was a strange year for me, not only because of the earthquake, but also because instead of having only one teacher as I should have, I actually had five. 

Let me explain this. For my first three years of school, starting in 1967, I was taught by the highly regarded educator, Mrs. Eva Carbajal de García. Then, when we attended the first day of school in 1970, we were welcomed by a new teacher, Magda González Martell, who was the daughter of the School Principal, Mr. Felipe González Olivera. She was only there for a few weeks and was replaced by Mr. Hidelbrando Gavidia Carbajal, son of teacher Eva, and he also stayed there for only a short time. Next came Mr. Macedonio Rodrigo Cordero Macedo, who was not yet a teacher but studied education in the Normal Indoamérica of Chimbote. And then the earthquake struck and completely disrupted the school year. 

When classes were restarted on Monday, August 3, the school principal informed us that Mister Clinton was going to teach us for a few weeks, which brought great joy to the students. Finally, in September, we had another teacher who was also a student from the Normal Indoamérica. It was Mr. Leonardo Severo Rashta Rojas, and with him we ended the school year.

In late June, when Mister Clinton appeared in the neighborhood for the first time, I had no idea that the reason for his presence was to help out in the vacant teaching position needed for our Third Grade of the School for Boys No. 3151, located on the corner of Aviation Avenue and Huáscar Street, one block from my house. Unfortunately, at that time, the restart of classes was not yet possible since the school premises had been destroyed by the earthquake and still remained in that state. 

However, in mid-July a large truck stopped in front of my house. On it were the materials for the school reconstruction. The principal had coordinated with my father so that these materials would be stored in our backyard until the beginning of the work. It was a shipment of reed and cattail mats, reed canes, eucalyptus posts, and wooden beams.

Over the next two weeks, parents rebuilt the school on voluntary working days. The technical part was run by Felipe González Martell, a 23-year-old man, son of the school principal. Mister Clinton also actively helped on this project. During those days it was common to see the neighbors nailing the lower parts of the walls and saving the higher ones for the tall gringo. Then someone would say to him: "Mister Clinton, you don't need a ladder, please could you nail this up.” And the good gringo would  reply, "No problem.”

The kids from the neighborhood also showed up, possibly hindering more than helping. I remember that I liked to look for chances to strike up a conversation with Mister Clinton. I was a curious nine-year-old boy. In long talks about politics and history with my father, I had gained a wealth of knowledge about American foreign policy, from a critical point of view. And I conveyed that vision to Mister Clinton. The good gringo only listened to me patiently with a smile on his face.

On Union Street, one block from my house, lived one of the neighborhood founding families, and here our neighbor Marino Ramírez Pinedo ran a small private school with a couple of classrooms and a handful of students. One day in early July, he invited Mister Clinton to teach English in one of his classrooms. And the good gringo accepted.

So, for several days a dozen neighbors of various ages sat in Marino’s seats to listen to Mister Clinton. Most of us went there more to enjoy his presence than anything else. We liked listening to him and we were curious about that tall gringo who looked so different from us. We learned a little bit from the English lessons: good morning, good afternoon, other greetings, and possibly a few more words.

As I mentioned before, our school reopened on Monday, August 3. That day Mister Clinton stood in front of my classroom, and we restarted the school year. He was a fun but disciplined teacher. He spoke good Spanish. His grammar had some bumps, but it was perfectly understandable. In translating the word “everybody” from English, he addressed us with the phrase “todo el mundo” (all the world). One day he asked if “todo el mundo” had finished copying what he had written on the blackboard. And the student César Segundo Del Rio Vasquez asked to speak and said, "Teacher, we don’t say, ‘Has all the world finished?’ we say, ‘Have all the students finished?’ " The good gringo’s face turned red and he smiled.

Many years later, when I began the task of searching for Mr. Clinton, I had very few clues to go on. I remembered him perfectly. But when I asked the neighbors from the time of the earthquake about him, they only had a vague memory of "a tall gringo" and nothing else. Towards the end of the nineties, while I was in Europe, I asked a family member in Chimbote to visit the neighbor Marino Ramirez to find out whether he knew the full name of the gringo who taught English at his home after the earthquake.

Against all odds I received an answer. The gringo was called Gregorio Labusa and was from Boston. But the information turned out to be a fiasco. I wasted twenty years searching for this name on the internet. I used every possible name combination including "Clinton" and found nothing. I looked it up with "Gregorio" in Spanish, English, and other languages, and found nothing. I also explored with "Greg" (short for Gregory) and found nothing. The truth is that the information was incorrect: the gringo’s name never was Gregorio Labusa.

Something was different on the night of Saturday, December 14, of last year. I was sitting in front of my laptop doing my usual stuff. For the umpteenth time I googled "Clinton Gregory Labusa Boston" again, and before the usual results appeared, I deleted it. In five months, the earthquake would be fifty years old. And in eleven months, I'd be sixty years old. Overwhelmed by frustration, I said to myself, "Eduardo, you've written many stories of the past thanks to your good memory. Send Gregorio Labusa to hell, and trust your own memories.” And so I did. At nine fifteen that night I googled: "Clinton Chimbote 1970". 

Life always has its ironies. And it chose that moment... the internet was slow. At a snail's pace the first entries were coming up. Something I hadn't seen before caught my eye, and I clicked on it. A black-and-white document was opening up, it was taking so long that it seemed to be coming from an old typewriter. Suddenly, part of a picture appeared and something inside me told me this was it. First the hair, then the forehead, the moustache, the full face… "Shit, I found it!” I exclaimed. But, instinctively, the other Eduardo, more cautious and skeptical, said to himself: "No, it cannot be possible”.

I went upstairs looking for my wife, with the laptop in my hands, like someone carrying a birthday cake with the candles lit. "I think I found it," I said. "What are you talking about?" she asked. With two words, I replied: "Mister Clinton." She had known the story of the gringo, who came to my neighborhood after the earthquake, since I first met her in Europe and we fell in love. And she knew me well enough to know that I was overwhelmed by emotion. So she asked me for the laptop and took care of the matter. She crossed the information that I had found with other websites and social networks. "It's him, he's a teacher, a great educator, a successful man," she finally told me.

What I found online that night was a newsletter from a New Jersey school, published in the fall of 1970. And there, under the heading “Aftermath of a Disaster”, appeared excerpts from a faculty member diary. In June of that year he had traveled to Peru and was in Chimbote helping to rebuild a school. He then taught the Third Year Class for a few weeks. The teacher’s name was Clinton Wilkins.

That same night I contacted Mr. Wilkins, and during the next forty-eight hours we communicated back and forth with the magical feeling of being young again thanks to our shared memories. I learned that he, unfortunately, did not keep the diary he wrote in during his days in Chimbote, and that he also did not have photos from that experience either. I also found out that he actually traveled to Peru without having any particular place in mind as his final destination. He ended up in my city because he caught a connecting flight in Caracas, and his plane was boarded by some Venezuelan doctors who were going to Chimbote to provide help. They put Mr. Wilkins in touch with a group of priests from the Boston Society of Saint James the Apostle who were already working in Chimbote.

In these conversations with Mr. Wilkins I also learned of something very important to me. In the spring of 1972 the Peruvian embassy in Washington, D.C.  awarded Mr. Wilkins the Daniel A. Carrión medal, a high distinction conferred to him on behalf the Peruvian country, in recognition of his aid to Peru after the earthquake. Finding that out gave me great joy, because  thanking him was the main reason I had been looking for him for so long.

And one more thing. On the night of Saturday, December 14, last year, while reading the New Jersey school newsletter that I had found online, I learned that prior to the earthquake, the seventh graders in Mr. Wilkins' classroom had been raising funds to send their teacher to a South American country to help some school that might need his service. In other words, Mr. Wilkins turned up in my neighborhood thanks to a coincidental chain of events whose initial link was the noble action of that group of students. To them and to their teacher I send my deep thanks… fifty years later!

p.s. - A universal pandemic has hit mankind as I write these lines. The world is a new and unexpected place. For fifty years I never doubted that the 1970 earthquake was the most terrible collective experience I have ever endured. Today I wonder if this is still true. These are uncertain times for everyone. God bless us.

New Hampshire, USA

May, 2020

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