Alicia Retto: "We Are Still In A Divided Country, We Have Not Learned Anything"

Interview. The journalist who took over the leadership of “Latina news” makes an analysis of the social and political crisis facing our country.

“It was a difficult decision, but I wanted to take on a new challenge,” Alicia Retto tells us by phone, who after 14 years in ATV changed the channel to join the conduction of “Latina news.” The offer came to him suddenly, in the midst of a “whirlpool of emotions,” because his grandmother passed away in Christmas and the date of the 40th anniversary of the death of his father, journalist Willy Retto, who fell in Uchuraccay in 1983, was approaching.

You wrote a post on Instagram to commemorate one more anniversary of the death of your father…

– Yes, it has been a difficult month. On one hand, she was glad to move on to latin; What’s more, I made the decision days before my mother’s (grandmother’s) departure. When my dad died, my paternal grandparents, Óscar and Gilma, took me in, so I grew up with them until I got married. They were my parents.

In that post you also say that we have a country in shock, with a massacre from which we have not learned. As a journalist, what is your analysis of the crisis we are experiencing as a country?

– We continue in a divided country, where we do not know how to listen, understand and respect each other.. For example, when what happened to my dad, they said it had happened because of the clash of two cultures, because they were people with different idiosyncrasies, but it was all a lie. It is still not known for sure who killed these journalists. Many things were said, blaming only the peasants and saying that there was no understanding, that they did not speak the language. They even had the cynicism to say that the journalists brought red handkerchiefs in their briefcases and that the cameras had been confused by the peasants with weapons, when we all know that at that time the people of the high Andean areas of the country were already seeing the military and terrorist presence. and they knew perfectly how to identify a firearm. I would read all of that and say, “Wow, we haven’t learned anything!” We continue to hear the same hypotheses why Peru does not advance together, we continue to confront and kill each other among Peruvians

History repeats itself, but in another context…

– Yes, and it is unfortunate because I see deaths of people by the forces of order, by the demonstrations, by the violent. So, I say, at this moment there must also be a girl who deprives herself of being by her father’s side, like what happened to me 40 years ago. I couldn’t meet my dad because another Peruvian killed him, and I’ve lived like this all my life, without knowing that wonderful man that everyone who knew him says he was. It is painful because we have not learned from history, from what Peru has suffered, from what terrorism is and what generated all that internal war to supposedly find peace. I feel a lack of harmony between the politicians with the Government and in Congress they have become inflexible with what is happening. They care about their interests and they forgot about their mission to represent their people. Dina Boluarte throws the ball to Congress, Congress to her, and while the dead continue.

And, in the midst of all this conflict, journalism has also lost out.

– Clear. 40 years ago my father died while carrying out his work, and today there are also journalists threatened, displaced from their city in the exercise of their work.