“Choose for yourself.”
“Well, shall we say Wednesday, at one?”
“It shall be done. I shall have something of importance arranged for you. How would this new burglary case do? Or the recent suicide? The burglary? Very good, then, señor; Wednesday at one. Su servidor, adiós, caballero.”
Luckily there were cases pending, thus sparing the judge the trouble of having to arrange to have the crime committed.
An Indian required to pay for the day’s mass proudly clings to his staff of office
Youths from a village near Cuzco, each with a coca cud in his cheek
Jury trial is unknown in Peru, as in most, if not all Spanish-America. In the first place, if the uncle of the accused is a compadre, or his nephew a padrino or a nineteenth cousin of the father-in-law of the judge or anyone else high in authority, the chances are that the matter will be dropped. Favored with none of these advantages, he must let the law take its rigorous, snail-like course. The trial is entirely on paper, back in the recesses of some dingy office. The one I entered at the hour and day set reminded me of some scene from the pages of Dickens. I was bowed to an ancient couch at one side of the dismal adobe room, the secretary, in an aged overcoat of various degrees of fadedness and an enormous neck muffler, sitting at a medieval table. My friend, the “Judge of the First Instance,” in sartorial splendor, sat at another, his silk hat upside down before him. He had “arranged” the case of an Italian shopkeeper who had been robbed the Saturday before. The Italian, being summoned, entered, bowed, remained standing, gave his name, age, religion, and other personal details, took the oath. Then he told his story in his own words to the judge, who asked questions but made no attempt at cross-examination, rather helping the witness in his answers when he stumbled or paused for want of a Spanish word. Meanwhile the secretary busied himself with rolling and consuming innumerable cigarettes. When he had finished his tale, the Italian was shown for the purpose of identification some articles sent over from the Intendencia as taken from the prisoner’s pocket, after which they still remained “in the hands of justice.” Then the witness sat down and the judge himself dictated the story in his own words to the secretary. The latter armed himself with a steel pen, dipped it incessantly into a viceregal inkwell, and peering over the top of his glasses, laboriously wrote in a copybook hand three words at a time, repeating them aloud. Shorthand is unknown in the government offices of the Andes. It would be too much to ask a political henchman to learn stenography, or anything else, for the mere purpose of holding a government position; typewriters are expensive; moreover, typewritten documents are not legal in most governmental formalities; so ultra-modern a system would be lacking in dignity for such solemn purposes, and its introduction would require new effort on the part of secretaries whose only asset is the medieval art of penmanship. The endless task over and the Italian dismissed, one of the prisoners, a half-breed boy of eighteen, of degenerate type, was brought in by an Indian soldier and “testified” in the same manner as the plaintiff had done. He was not required to take the oath, but was warned to tell the truth. Again it was his own story, just as he chose to tell it, with no attempt to trip him up, and even occasional assistance. This the judge redictated in his own more cultured language, that the archives of Cuzco should not be marred by the undignified speech of the masses; and the “trial” was over. A deaf-mute wished to testify in the case, but as there are no schools in Peru for those so afflicted, there was no one who could understand him.
In short, a trial in Spanish-America consists of nothing but the making of affidavits, there called declaraciones. These are seen only by the judge, not even the prisoner’s lawyer being permitted—legally—access to them. Later, if there is found time for it, comes the sumario in which the judge reads in his private study the various declarations and passes judgment and sentence, likewise in privacy, which sentence must be reviewed by the Superior Court of the Department. The curious may ask where the lawyer for the prisoner comes in. I was informed that “he sees the prisoner first and tells him what to say in his declaration.” Thus is the secret, mysterious “justice” of Latin-America, “a joke at so much a word,” as they call it in Ecuador, administered. If one has a man arrested, one must hire a lawyer to find out what happened to him.