I land in Lima, and there is a single story that bleeds from the headlines. The Alicia Delgado-Meza killing dominates all types of media. A famous Andean folk singer, who is openly a lesbian, is killed in her apartment by her driver. The confessed killer accuses another famous folk singer—a lover of the deceased—of having plotted the crime. The two formed a pioneering lesbian couple in the media. Delgado-Meza had a romance with a harpist; the other singer dated Delgado-Meza’s sister. The outcome: jealousy and seven stab wounds. How can we comprehend the media’s hottest police case as a symbol of its times?
For quite awhile, Peru has lived through important social changes that have been reflected in the mass media: the boom of cumbia and Andean music (in spaces once reserved for elite or imported forms of expression), greater social mobility in some sectors of the population, and a conflictive democracy that combines the celebration of macroeconomic growth with social protests over the inefficient redistribution of wealth. In the cultural realm, hybridity reigns. The mixing of all types of musical genres has led to new media personalities who don’t belong exclusively to the Lima-focused, well-read, Creole circles. Peru’s media is, more than ever, an amorphous mixture of cultures, strata and prejudices that give the country a measure of itself.
This new cultural and media moment needs its killings. Several misfortunes have already happened, like the traffic deaths of the Grupo Néctar cumbia band and the Andean singer Muñequita Sally, only 14 days later. But that historical moment in 2007 didn’t have all the elements of the made-for-tabloid, Page 1 story: a crime of passion. And the Meza-Delgado police story has seized not only the attention of the working class but has captivated all social strata. The morbid brings cohesion to a country. The media and the press are the best mediators of this sickly reconciliation.
As a symbol of its time, the Meza-Delgado case relies not only on chance. The overwhelming media coverage is suspect. It comes at a critical moment for the government: soon after the killing in the Peruvian Amazon of dozens of indigenous protestors and police, and while strikes and protests have shaken the country. In addition, one of the suspects in the infamous Petroaudio case is released from prison. Even though these defining moments are playing an important role in the manipulation of information, we also have to recognize that the Meza-Delgado case wouldn’t have been so important if Peru hadn’t been ready for it.
From the Peruvian film Tinta Roja (Red Ink), the story of a young police reporter for a tabloid newspaper, comes the line “The Crime section is the ‘Social’ section for poor people.” But things are no longer that simple. You can follow the Meza-Delgado case here to understand Peru.
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