During the pandemic, the cold waters of Lima’s Pacific Coast became a place of community for a group of women who call themselves Las Truchas.
When Patricia Woyke woke up on June 3, 2020, she looked outside her windows: grey skies and heavy fog—an average winter’s day in Lima, Peru, certainly not beach weather by any stretch of the imagination. But after reading the news, the 65-year-old messaged her friends Karin Scheuch and Soleded Cunliffe. “Let’s go swimming,” she said.
The streets were completely empty; there wasn’t a car or another person in sight. And it had been months since the women had set foot in the water, much less seen each other in person. But when they arrived at the Playa de Pescadores and saw the familiar expanse of the ocean, not even the biting winds or the presence of the local police could stop them. They waded into the water and began paddling ferociously, smiling underwater the whole time.
Among the new recruits: 33-year-old Ana Elisa Sotelo, a documentary photographer and producer who’d spent the first few months of the pandemic working for the Ministry of Health. As part of her job, she visited marginalized communities in Lima and documented the organization’s efforts to distribute masks and educate the public about preventing the spread.
“The stereotype is that the beaches are dirty and not very nice,” she says. “They are thin, with very little sand, and there are usually highways right next to them.” The group included 73-year-old Aida Davis, one of the most decorated swimmers in Peru. She would apply red lipstick before she swam and placed first in freestyle at the Fina World Masters Championships when she was 60 years old. Then there was Maggi Lañas, a 56-year-old journalism professor who discovered her passion for swimming after undergoing ovarian surgery in 2006.Sotelo loved getting to know her fellow Truchas and learning about their lives.
The change was felt on a personal as well as community level. After a few months of swimming together, Las Truchas decided to start coming together for a cause. They organized beach clean-ups and raised money for a new lifeguard tower. They even bought a new boat motor for a fisherman friend and purchased wetsuits and fins for a pair of visually impaired swimmers they’d met on the beach.Slowly, the group has expanded their sphere of influence from Lima to other parts of Peru.