Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Living in Peru
Jobana Soto

If you’ve strolled along Parque Kennedy during the last year, chances are you probably bumped into a man collecting bags full of bottle caps. He may, at one time or another, have asked you to spare a bottle cap or two for his collection. This isn’t a man with a peculiar taste in collectables but a working artist creating an environmentally friendly sculpture to display publicly in Parque Salazar.

Hanging out at the corner of Parque Kennedy in front of the Municipalidad de Miraflores, Victor Castro embarked on this bottle cap quest a year ago. For months he’s been working with schools, government officials, local shops, and even a curator, to help spread the word on his latest project, Soy un Recolector.

There are various reasons running through Victor’s mind on why he started this project, but his favorite is the way it changes people’s conception of their waste and their connection to the environment.

As Victor tries to explain, one by one friendly visitors drop buy with their bags of bottle caps to give him. They converse, share a few laughs and then go on their way. Some even stick around to see how far Victor’s work is coming along.

“It’s very easy to make a little switch where they can be part of change that the city needs,” says Victor in his first English-language interview.

It’s a project favoring well with the city of Lima, a place where recycling is not common. But because of Victor’s Soy un Recolector project, more people are learning and doing their part one bottle cap at a time, which is good because it’s also his first sculpture where he’s relying on so many people to contribute to his work. 

Victor was struck with the idea for Soy un Recolector five years ago, when he was in Spain finishing his masters in art history. It was this subject in particular that influenced him to convey social changes into his work, which then led to another idea that would soon become the building blocks for Soy un Recolector. 

“If I involve the people [into my work] it changes [the message] because they participate in the process,” he says of his philosophy. The message becomes stronger and the action clearer.

After finishing his studies Victor moved to Lima with his wife, a native Peruvian who also studied in Spain, where he decided on making his next sculpture using bottle caps. His message was to promote recycling.

Befriending local curator Jorge Villacorta gave Victor a lot of support. Villacorta was able to get Victor a meeting with the mayor of Miraflores. What was supposed to be a three minute meeting turned into a half an hour.

The meeting ended with Victor getting permission to set up his stand, which the municipality donated, in Parque Kennedy and to display his finished sculpture on Parque Salazar. Click here for a general outline of what Victor’s sculpture should look like.

And so it was started, in January 2007, when Victor would come to Parque Kennedy every Saturdays to meet the thousands of Peruvians who would help him on this massive social project.

“I’m very happy because I’m not from here (Victor is originally from Mexico), yet I can talk to thousands of people” living in Lima.

After collecting more than 600,000 caps, Victor is ready for the next big step: constructing the final pieces of his sculpture which will be on display on Parque Salazar in October.

With this Saturday coming up, it will be his last day on Parque Kennedy as he bids farewell to all the people who helped him over the months. But while Victor is gone, supporters everywhere can keep his memory alive by spreading his message, to bring all the community together and recycle.

Be sure to visit Victor's blog for more information and to watch his final live video webcast this Saturday!