Lima Beach; Landscapes of an Urban Seacoast
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Translations The aristocratic families of Lima who In that place, the sea is very calm and the Lima Beach; moved to the village in the first summers waves never reach the lake. The nearness of the republican era acquired, in time, of freshwater offers a great advantage to Landscapes of an the habit of renting the fishermen´s bathers, most of who go and wash them- dwellings or “ranchos” for the whole sea- selves when the come out of the sea, so urban seacoast son. Moving to Chorrillos by cart from as to remove the salt particles adhered to Rafael Zamora P. Lima took a whole day. The caravan also their skin. The place is very uncomfort- carried the furniture that would be used able to bathe in. With a little investment in the primitive seasonal houses. it could be made as nice as the bathing Open landscape places in Dieppe. If Chorrillos continues At the end of the colonial period, the aris- Thus, Chorrillos becomes a small leisure to be fashionable, perhaps the Lima tocracy of Lima changed the habit of cold town: sea bathing in the morning; nap- people will think about this one day(6)”. river bathing (in the city in the water of ping, hammock and reading in the after- the Rimac) to bathing in the sea(1) (Smith, noons; dancing in the evenings, music As we can see, the characteristics of the 1839). This process of change was encour- and betting games by night. According natural scenario in which Chorrillos is aged by the recommendations of medical to travel chronicles written by Europeans located, explain the habits emerging in treatments coming from Europe and by who visited Peru during the republic, it is the resort. The Morro Solar is the geo- the first works produced by Peruvian doc- a rustic reflection of the western habits(4) graphical factor determining the climatic tors, such as Hipólito Unanúe(2) (Unanúe, (von Tschudi, 1854). conditions. With 281 meters in height, it 1805). One of so many rearrangements confronts the coastal winds of the south Robert Proctor, British, visited Chorrillos of habits in the new creole aristocracy, east, as well as detours the fog that oc- in 1924 and confirmed that the habits linked to an illustrated feeling, more casionally covers Lima. The morro dimin- in these primitive summer resorts of the interested in what was in practice in ishes the force of the waves and allows Pacific replicated the European practices England France and Germany than in the accumulation of sand on the coast. of the 19th century. One of his travel the national directives that would end up The rest of Miraflores bay is affected by stories is called: “Chorrillos, the Brighton being discarded after national inde- wind; it is constantly cloudy and most of of Lima”. pendence in 1821(3) (Del Águila 2003). it lacks sand due to the strong surge. Sea bathing is one of the practices that The chronicles also revealed how rough In Chorrillos there was a more subtle fac- characterised the new ruling classes of and precarious the resort was. The same tor (already mentioned by F. Tristán) that Lima and the rest of America “liberated” Proctor doubted the good judgment allowed the birth of the resort: the fresh- from Spain. and taste of the people of Lima choos- water jets. The agricultural production of ing Chorrillos for sea bathing(5) (Proctor, Set on the left bank of the Rímac, Lima the Rímac valley required watering wide 1835). Some ten years later, Flora Tristán was thirteen kilometres west of its main areas through canals, most of them of was incapable of understanding the rela- port, Callao. Thirteen kilometres south prehispanic origin, which took the river tionship of the people of Lima with this was the fishermen´s village, San Pedro de water to the cliff plateaus. These infiltra- arid and unpleasant coast. los Chorrillos, located by a promontory tions were the emergence of the phreatic of rocks and earth called Morro Solar. “I have said that I could not conceive the aquifer on the edge of the cliff. The village was on the upper part of the predilection of the people of Lima for The German painter J. M. Rugendas, well gorge, at one end of the wide bay of Mi- Chorrillos. That word means sewer. It known for his representations of Ameri- raflores. It was the port where the forces has been called so because of the water can landscapes, drew and portrayed this of the Liberation Army disembarked (the jets that fall from the top of the rocks scenery during his travels in Perú. In port of Callao was under Royalist rule). surrounding the beach, which form a “Los baños de Chorrillos” (1848) (“Baths freshwater lagoon in the lower part. It is Chorrillos”), Rugendas condensed all the in that small lake where they go bathing. 81 MATERIA ARQUITECTURA #03 Dossier elements that structured the emergence and private agents began to invest capi- Towards 1940, the people of Miraflores in of summer resort practices on the coast tal in a series of important civil works, Lima grew with the habit of daily bathing of Lima. The shaded cliffs show that it important for the construction of a resort in the sea in the summer months. Writer is a morning scene. On the upper part of landscape: piers, walks, parks and new Julio Ramón Ribeyro(7) recalls this new the gorge can be appreciated the silhou- bathing spaces. suburban Lima in his short stories, reveal- ettes of some dwellings. A steep dirt road ing a city linked to the coastal border. The building of piers and walks on the leads the bathers on mules and horses. cliff tops allowed for a scenic relationship Reclaimed landscape The Lima aristocrats appear dressed in with the coastal view. The natural gorges Lima was practically the same size for 400 elegant city clothes that they change for and the “informal descents” communicat- years. From 1940 on, a strong migration bathing suits in the primitive “covachas” ed the city with the small pebble beaches from the countryside to the city marks (“cabins”). These structures, set on ter- at the foot of the cliffs. The coastal the first great impulse of urban growth, races built of stones on the beach, were border began to be inhabited by a set of a process intensified in the seventies and served by the villagers of Chorrillos, Ne- constructions on steel pilots, like docks, surpassing all planning capacity. Today, groes and Indians who helped the ladies that entered the sea providing wooden the population exceeds 8.5 million, in an get into the sea. surfaces and shade. urban area of 840 km2. All the groups that formed the social Towards 1930, the increased number Lima is a relatively new city; 83% of the structure of Peru were represented on of electric tram routes and the grow- urbanised area is not more than 40 years the shore. The area of the baths is next to ing number of automobiles allowed the old. In the geographic centre of this urban an artisan fishermen´s cove, so that the expansion of the urban orbit of Lima conglomerate is Miraflores bay, nowadays scene is shared by elegant people in bath- towards Miraflores, Barranco and Chor- known as “Costa Verde” (“Green Coast”). ing suits and a number of lightly dressed rillos. The resorts suddenly grew and they Indians and negroes. The scene shows a The summer resorts of Chorrillos, Bar- joined the city under a singular subur- beach landscape, without the therapeutic ranco and Miraflores were suburbs in the ban typology of resort-neighbourhoods. atmosphere; they are baths for leisure metropolitan Lima, becoming neighbour- At that time, the provisional coastal and recreation. hoods of a city that reached the coast. The constructions disappear and the first con- capital extended itself over agricultural Landscape in transition crete summer resort buildings appear. plantations isolating the ground and During the 19th Century, Chorrillos con- The Baños de Miraflores (1934-1935), by blocking irrigation and, therefore, the tinued developing itself as the preferred architect Héctor Velarde, is an impor- famous “chorrillos” (water jets). The cliffs summer resort of the Republican ruling tant example of a new architecture by lack vegetation and have become dumps class. The construction of the train in 1858 the sea. It was a building parallel to the and the terminal of the sewage system. In allowed its connection with Lima thus coast, horizontal and symmetric, sitting the process of construction of this large consolidating its condition, until its total on stilts on a small pebbled beach. The city, thousands of tons of landfill made it destruction and plunder by Chilean troops restaurant and the events hall were possible to reclaim land from the sea, a during the War of the Pacific in 1881. in a double height central space; the stretch that, in the sixties, became a free- Then, the interurban electric tram al- dressing rooms, in two lateral wings. The way at the foot of the cliff, burying the old lowed Lima´s reconnection with its three architecture was determined by what structures of the baths that survived practi- main resorts: Miraflores, Barranco y in Lima is known as the “boat style”, a cally abandoned in the polluted water. Chorrillos. The tram shortened travel reinterpretation of the naval forms, a Nowadays, the Costa Verde stretches times and allowed more groups of the reference that the building enhanced by along 20 kilometres of seafront, of which Lima society to have access to the coast, very small steel ladders that indicated only ten per cent is used as a bathing thus consolidating the southern resorts as the entry points to the sea.