Luciana Flores López, 60, is a Quechua artisan from Cusco. As a child she had no school to attend, because her community had none. Illiteracy in Peru has long followed that pattern. It is concentrated among rural women and among people whose first language is Indigenous. In the 2017 census, women were roughly three times as likely as men to be unable to read.
Epifanía Juanita Huamán Guevara, 58, gave a simpler reason for learning. She wanted to handle her own money and support her children without depending on someone else to read the figures for her.
Donato García Juan de Dios was 70 and in treatment for cancer when he took up his studies. During his recovery he learned to use a tablet, and he finished the course.
Lidia Mendoza Pacaya, 44, completed secondary school in July with support from her employer. Her daughter saw her do it and went back to school herself.
The programmes behind the ceremony are run by the business movement Es Hoy and Fundación Dispurse. They include ¡EPA! (Educación para Adultos), a literacy programme and Open Community Schools. Peru's Ministry of Education runs its own track for adult learners, Educación Básica Alternativa, with flexible timetables for people aged 15 and older. These private programmes work alongside it and reach people for whom a classroom was never close enough, or never came at the right time.
The bus tour started at Huaca Pucllana, an adobe pyramid in Miraflores that the Lima culture built between about 200 and 700 AD. Its builders stood millions of small handmade bricks upright in rows, like books on a shelf, and the structure has lasted through centuries of earthquakes. The name is often traced to the Quechua verb pukllay, "to play". Luciana Flores López grew up speaking Quechua.
The tour then went along the Costa Verde, through Parque Chino, and finished at Parque del Amor on the clifftop. There the benches are covered in broken-tile mosaic, and set into the tiles are lines about love by Peruvian poets. Everyone who stepped off the bus that afternoon could read them.