By Antonio Capurro (Volunteer)

  I should start saying this is a case of real life because this happaned to me and is not a movie is real life as reality shows. Go figure! I don’t want to sound very dramatic but somehow it is. My name is Antonio Capurro and I never really thought that something like this would happen to him, but things happen even when you are not looking for them. I think good things should happen all the time but I got a bad one. Let me tell you my story… I was born in a fishing town called Chimbote (PERU) and I lived there almost my complete life but when I got graduate in May 2001 I decided to move to Lima because I got a very good offering job to work in a open mind web site. I was happy I took my backpack and packed my illusions and wishes, happy not only because to have a job if not to live for the first time my gay life, one I always was looking for. As the guys in my short stories or the feelings in my poems I was reloaded of wishes for the future. Lima, the big city, was a challenge and a place to make a good beginning. I could not believe when I saw a gay couple kissing each other in a gay party, at that moment I imagined the same for me because I had never been kissed before like Drew Barrymoore in that funny movie. They passed four years in Lima, years of hard learning, good and bad moments, tears and joys, a little of everything for a guy like me.

Changes are always welcome and I found love by internet as many people do now. He was Terry Lucas, a 50 years old, born in Salem (Oregon) when I meet him I knew I found the man of my life. It was a difficult time to me in Lima so I returned to homeland Chimbote. I come back to that old smell of fish well known. No pass too much time I got a new job, Luis Antonio Capurro, 36 years, became to be a university professor. I was always a person who spoke out ideas and thoughts without fear. Vehement and passionated, that’s me because I think if we don’t live with all intensity then isn’t a life and that is what we must do and live free without sorrow or regrets. I know it's not easy being gay in a small town as Chimbote and less when there is so much tolerance, but I had no problems. The time coming easy for my life until mid-January this year when Mg. Carlos Mendoza Sánchez, ex former academic director of the Universidad Cesar Vallejo Filial Chimbote called me for that seems to be another appointment to try courses and business. I never felt so discriminated my whole life. He said you you won’t return and we won’t renew your contract. I have been teaching in that study centre two consecutive years, beside I  obtained a diploma for academic achievement and I was respected by his students.

Suddenly I was a bad guy and acussed without a chance to give explanations. I was shocked and not many words came trought my mouth. It came as a bucket of cold water without to have time to say my truth. According to my ex boss the only thing the university wanted was to avoid the scandal. The fact is that I had never hidden who I was, but neither I  made apology of my sexual orientation even. I wonder if I could take to my partner and introduce him at the university social meetings as other straight workers made. Everybody in my internet profile could click and discover the word gay in my sexual preference as the pics with Terry. Just an angry mother went to college because his seventeen year old son revealed her he was friend of me and that fact meant for her a danger to the moral and physical integrity of him considering me as a bad influence. She didn’t stop with her defamation. Even she dared to go my another workplace to pretend I get removed from that university as well. The Universidad Cesar Vallejo’s academic authorities promised this woman to put hands in the business before to be involved in a big scandal. However I am looking to defend by myself knowing that in my beloved country we don’t have gay rights and a legal support because sexual orientation. I was determined don’t surrender or give up and to play their games too. I started my internet fighting and turned to the web and my blogs quickly and effectively. I don’t want that this happen to no one is the reason I am talking with whose were my students (gay and hetero) to build a more tolerant place to live and to study with respect and open mind.

No more victims of homophobia and discrimination. Nobody should be dismissed because being gay, what's going on in people's minds, why so much homophobia and discrimination, why so much intolerance? Learn to live together with diversity and be more human as Vallejo was.

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