Aldo, el taxista del barrio

It’s ten to seven in the morning and Aldo is waiting for me. I stop to cross the road. He notices me and stops polishing his green Volkswagen Beetle. I shake his hand and he opens the door of his pride of joy, indicating that I should get in. The People’s Car of 1930s Nazi Germany is alive and well in 21st-century Peru. Aldo is the taxista del barrio, the neighbourhood’s taxi driver, and every morning this dapper septuagenarian drives me through the streets of Surco, the district of Lima in which I live. The journey can take as little time as five minutes, normally around seven and never more than ten.

Taxis are not hard to find here. A report in the respected newspaper El Comercio earlier this year claimed that there are 200,000 taxis in Lima, over twice as many as the city needs and five times more than in any of the other capital cities of South America. The city’s authorities claim that roughly 80,000 of those are registered taxis, meaning that more than half of the total number are informal. A lack of public transport means that even if you spend only a little time in this city, it is more than likely that you will have to take a taxi or ten. It isn’t just that Lima is full of taxis, but they come in all shapes and sizes. And colours, too. Whilst many are yellow, others are black. Some have taxi roof signs and license plates, but the majority don’t. Some are modern, but most are old. Some like’s Aldo’s are very old.

As I sit down, I have a quick glance at the day’s edition of Correo, the newspaper Aldo buys every day as he likes doing its crossword. He starts the car and turns on the music. Aldo often puts on a Ray Conniff cassette, though sometimes he listens to some of his favourite boleros. Though he has never left Peru, he is curious and asks me questions about life back home in England. Sometimes we hit on a topic of conversation that he likes, though the shortness of the journey means that we never talk about anything in any great depth. Despite that, I feel that I know him well. Aldo dislikes football and was one of the few Peruvians who showed no interest in their national team’s return to a World Cup after 36 years. Deciding against watching any of their three games, he went fishing instead. Fishing and his car being his two major passions.

Aldo’s Beetle was made in 1972, the same year that the Bug overtook the Ford Model T as the world’s best-selling car. The Beetle was a model that seemed to celebrate that moving around town should be a joyful experience. Though Aldo was attracted to its design, he also liked the fact that if it broke you could pull the engine out and fix it on your kitchen table.  By the 1980s, sales of the Beetle were in fast decline in the US and Western Europe, where bigger cars were starting to dominate the more affluent markets. In South America, however, the model remained popular; a viable, relatively cheap car able to withstand all different conditions.  

Frequent holidays in Arequipa, Peru’s second city located 2,335m above sea level, show the People’s Car was clearly not adversely affected by the altitude, either. However, as she approaches her 50^th birthday, Aldo is nowadays reluctant to take his Beetle on such long journeys. After dropping me off, he will then take a young girl to a nearby school. He will also take an old lady who lives in the opposite building to and from church, where she goes for a daily visit to mass. Aldo works six days a week, though tells me that he has slowed down given his advancing years. Working days are only eight hours long now, rather than twelve.

Production of the Beetle continued in Mexico’s Puebla plant until 2004, when the last Bug was rolled off the production line. In total, 22% of all the Beetles ever made were produced in Latin America, where you can still see them driving around the region’s cities. The 1972 Beetle has become somewhat of a collection item and Aldo often receives offers from strangers who approach him to enquire whether he would sell them his. “I would never sell it, though”, he once told me, “I am in love with this car”.

We arrive at Avenida Alfredo Benavides, one of Lima’s main avenues named after a former President. Moving around Lima is generally torturous, but this short ride is one of the highlights of my day. Perhaps not joyful, but very pleasant nonetheless.  ‘Hasta mañana’, I say, as I give Aldo his seven soles (£1.60). ‘Si Dios quiere, Michael’, he replies, as he does every day. ‘If God is willing’.

Lima, November 2018