During the interview, Juan Carlos Mas, the firm’s main advisor, also spoke to support his colleague’s version and explain the context in which the photograph was produced: “For us it is an issue of coexistence and fraternity. It is unfortunate to have to justify something that was not normally known, but today the congresswoman has authorized us to tell it.”
The official added in RPP that the team usually helps Vásquez due to her state of health: “We, almost at work, sometimes see the congresswoman arrive unwell, she faints, sometimes we have to help her. And I say, what is the message we have to give? If the message is: ‘wait a little while, I’m going to call first aid because I’m not human’, I prefer to continue being the most human version, the one that corresponds to us.”
Willer Sajami Collantes, the advisor who was caught preparing breakfast at Vásquez’s house, also offered his version of the events that have outraged the population.
“The congresswoman had just come out of a confinement in a cancer center… She was convalescing, but without losing her responsibility she summoned me… When I arrived (at her house) she told me: ‘Comrade Willer, you have already had breakfast’… She said: ‘Master Lucho (her husband) is down there… Prepare something at once for you to eat’. She was on the second floor, where she lives… I grabbed it, I prepared my juice, I cooked some eggs and a couple of breads, but the report says that I was trying hard to prepare breakfast for my boss,” he explained.
The worker Luis Ángel Llaguento Heredia, who appears washing pots inside the office, maintained that the photograph was used with bad intention: “The entire context was distorted. Now it seems like a crime to serve a glass of water or coffee. It was during recess hours, not during working hours. There are people who seek to harm the image of the congresswoman and Parliament.”
Luis Ángel Llaguento Heredia indicated in RPP that there is a sensationalist nuance in the news and bad intentions against the legislator.
Those close to the congresswoman ruled out any attempt to use her alleged illness to confront the complaint.
From rural teacher to congressman
Lucinda Vásquez was born on August 24, 1958 in Buenos Aires, province of Picota (San Martín). He trained as a teacher at the Tarapoto Pedagogical Institute and obtained his degree in Primary Education at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.
For almost thirty years he taught at the Juan Jiménez Pimentel Educational Institution, where he also began his union activity. He was a leader of SUTE San Martín and Fenateperú, a union headed by Pedro Castillo, with whom he shared the 2017 teacher strike.
He began his political career in the Sanmartinense Regional Front (2005–2011) and then joined the Peruvian Nationalist Party, where he remained until 2019.
In the 2021 elections, he ran for Congress for Perú Libre, with number 2 on the list for San Martín, and obtained 8,778 valid votes.
Since then, he has been part of the Teaching Block – Together for Peru, a group made up of teachers and former union leaders.
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