“Get out of here or I’ll blow your head off” was the ultimatum Aldair Mejía, 24, gave him on Saturday, January 7, on the outskirts of Inca Manco Cápac Airport in Juliaca. Mejía, a young foreign agency correspondent, had traveled overland from Cusco with some colleagues hours earlier to cover the demonstrations in Peru’s southern highlands, which were about to embark on a path of no return. Tension was in the air. It was enough to bow your head to guess what might happen: reddish spots and shells of tear gas scattered along the route. The social upheavals had not yet claimed the lives of any Juliaqueño, but the hospitals were already beginning to fill up with the wounded.
During the protests in Juliaca, Peru, the police open fire on the press Aldair Mejía
Before the warning, two other police officers, seeing Mejía with a camera hanging from his neck, ran towards him and before he could say anything, they hit him on the shoulder with a jab of their shields. From the ground, Mejía repeated, “press, press,” although the clarification was unnecessary. He showed them his badge, but one of them tried to tear it up instead of ending their animosity. “Press trash, move on,” he says, when they yelled at him. Mejía’s camera, which has the sin of taking bursts of photos in a matter of seconds, was a deadly threat in what would happen just days later on the same street.
Juan Mandamiento, 27, was close to Aldair Mejía that day. Actually, there were four photographers who had left Lima. None work in a traditional medium. They work with independent publications and from time to time with agencies. Mandamiento learned photography in the heat of the streets. In November 2020, he captured the agony of Brian Pintado, one of the two boys who died in the marches against the very short administration of Manuel Merino, a President of Congress who succeeded Martín Vizcarra and whose presidential ligament didn’t last a week on Chest .
More than two years later, Mandamiento was back on the front lines, amid protesters and law enforcement officials. And precisely for this reason he felt obliged to make declarations at every picket line: “We are international press.” People distrust the media. Especially in the regions where they only appear in the event of accidents, public festivals or protests. Mandamiento says after telling them that they didn’t go there to distort reality but to make it visible and give them a face, kindness spread. And that they even felt safer with the demonstrators than with the police. He knew it more than ever when a bullet grazed his head outside Juliaca airport.
Photographers Juan Mandamiento, Javier Maguiña, Aldair Mejía and Connie Calderón leave the hospital. Press and Society Institute (IPYS)
Subscribe to EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe to
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when the tear gas separated Mandamiento and Mejía. By this time agents had already arrested several protesters and they – wearing only helmets and gas masks – had sheltered behind walls and walls. After sending some photos to his agency, Aldair came out of hiding, took a few steps, and then felt an impact on the shin of his right leg. He still didn’t know what had happened, but his leg went numb and then he saw his beige pants dyed dark red. The people around him despaired: “You have harmed the press. They shot him.” The threat had come true.
Aldair Mejía would make headlines in the press for the first time in his few but intense years. His face would spread across the networks, but most of all he would receive a lot of calls from unknown numbers. But there is still something left for that. Then he had a hole in his leg and the bleeding had to be stopped. They took him to a market, made a tourniquet out of his shoelace, and drove him to a clinic on a motorcycle. His companions stopped photographing the conflict and went after it.
“I was quite shocked to see him injured. You never assume the worst,” says Connie Calderón, 26, the only woman in the group. What happened in the clinic was shocking: At first they were not allowed to speak to their boyfriend, instead the military arrived. That intimidated her. After conducting some tests, it was discovered that Aldair Mejía had a broken tibia, but they didn’t say what injured him. “The doctor first said it was an undetermined object, then he said it could be a stone. The version has changed and that seemed cloudy to us,” says Calderón. At that moment they realized that it was best to leave Juliaca as soon as possible. It wasn’t a safe place for her. And although they recommended Mejía stay in the clinic for two or three days, they demanded his release and drove away in a small car. With Mejía in plaster in the front seat, they returned to Cusco at 6 a.m. after taking a hiking trail on part of the route.
Photographer Aldair Mejía is helped by protesters after being injured STRINGER (Portal)
“We were very helpless because we couldn’t report what happened in Juliaca. But we had to go. Now that the days have passed, it might have been strategy. Our presence made the police uncomfortable. They didn’t want us to be there,” explains Juan Mandamiento. On Monday January 9, just two days after the attack on Aldair Mejía, a massacre broke out in Juliaca, killing 17 citizens from gunfire during the protests. A minor would contribute to this fateful account after being in a coma for three days. It was the bloodiest blow suffered by a single region in this conflict, which began on December 7 with the sacking of Pedro Castillo for attempting to dissolve Congress and replacing his first vice president, Dina Boluarte.
Aldair Mejía had to slow down and get used to having his right leg elevated most of the day and using his crutches when needed. They’ve given him 30 days off due to a broken shin and all he can think about is recovering so he can hit the streets again with his camera. Recently, a leader from Juliaca called him, crying, to ask how his recovery was going and when he would be back. “I made you a promise. I will return to continue recording the truth. I feel obliged to them,” he assures with a playful tone that does not do justice to the weight of his words. He is only 24 years old. Nowadays, besides taking all the antibiotics, his big concern is that his comrades in photography get bulletproof vests. The danger is out there and it is unknown when it will end.
Follow all international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.