Living in Peru : your everyday companion

When you walk from the Plaza de Armas in Lima along the Jr. Conde de Superunda, past the church and convent of Santo Domingo, you will  then pass the magnificent blue Casa de Osambela.

Next to it is an entrance, number 316. Welcome to the Casa de Las Columnas. You enter a different world. It could be the nineteenth century, or earlier.

It smells of humidity and urine. Laundry is drying everywhere. Women are busy washing clothes by hand in the courtyard.

This place, during the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, was a center where boys learned to become monks within the convent of Santo Domingo. 

Now 61 families live here in 53 rooms, divided between two patios. In total, around 250 people, 50 of which are children, make the Casa de las Columnas their home. Only 20 people have a regular job. A room is, on average, 30 square meters. They don’t have running water or toilets. Around the first patio live 43 families. They have to share two faucets and one toilet. Two other toilets have broken down and have not been repaired. Only seven families use the toilet, while the others use bedpans.

The second patio has better services for its 18 families: three faucets and four toilets. Since the beginning of the nineties people stopped paying their rent, says Iván del Castillo Vélasquez. He moved from Cabana (Ancasha) to Lima in 1984 when he was 17 years old, to study in Lima to become a teacher. Now he teaches Spanish at a secondary school and he is secretary of the Asociación de Vivienda Las Columnas. But he is moving out in December. He is finally eligible his own house. He has a wife and a son of five. “This is no place for a child to grow up,” he says. Many people are drunk and play loud music at night. As they don’t pay rent, they also don’t care for the place. The way of living here is not a good example at all.

On August 5th Iván initiated a talk about the history of the house for the inhabitants, in order for them to better understand where they are living. About 30 people attended. The talk was organized together with the NGO Centro de Investigación, Documentación y Asesoria Poblacional (CIDAP) as part of their campaign Centro Histórico de Lima: Centro Vivo.

Deolinda Villa Esteves of the Investigación Histórica of the Dirección de Patrimonio Histórico Colonial y Republicano of the Instituto Nacional de Cultura (INC) explained the history of the building. Originally it was part of the convent of Santo Domingo. This convent, built in 1541, occupied two whole blocks, with the church and tower on the lower right corner, the monestary on the lower left corner and the refectory on the upper left corner. In the book Tesoros Verdaderos de las Indias written in 1681, the convent is described in detail.

The great earthquake of 1746 destroyed most of Lima, including the church and convent of Santo Domingo. They were rebuilt in the second half of the eighteenth century. To raise funds, the Dominicans sold parts of their block; among others the refectory and the right part of the monestary. The latter was sold to Martín de Osambela, who built his mansion here. The remaining part of the monestary became the refectory. It was used as such in 1810. From 1830-1850 it was used as a police station, and the present entrance was constructed at that time.

As of 1852 a certain Nicolás Rodrigo started to buy and rent these parts from the Dominicans. He constructed dwellings here for people with little means and rented them out. These constructions are what we can see today. They are not very good; they have no direct light and bad ventilation.

I could find two references to a Nicolás Rodrigo. In El Comercio of November 14th 1840 he announced together with Domingo Elías the opening of the colegio Nuestra Señora de Guadelupe in the old building of the Estanco de Tabaco. Rodrigo and Elías had received this building from president Gamarra. And in the 1850s Nicolás Rodrigo was a partner of Manuel Pardo in his guano export business.

After the historical context of the building was presented, architect Antonio Coello of the Escuela Taller de Lima talked about his findings. Main objectives were to see how findings here would correspond with those in the convent and to see if a dating could be made for pottery from colonial times. The arches date to the eighteenth century, and were probably part of the rebuilding of the convent.

Several excavations show that the original red tile floor of the sixteenth century convent is still present 1.20 meters below the present floor. Several seventeenth century tinajas, big earthenware jugs, were found in the soil as well. These jugs were used for the keeping of oil and other liquids, and were found along with remains of pottery from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.

La Casa de Las Columnas should be better maintained. It would be great if the occupants of the house could do this in combination with professionals. Can 150 years of neglect be counteracted quick enough?