Love Park

Love Park is laid out on the edge of a Pacific cliff; at its center lies a large sculpture of a kissing couple. Its author first made small figures while watching couples on their way to the beach: they kissed, argued, and made up. From these sketches, he chose the pose of two reclining people and gave the figures his own features and those of his companion. Newlyweds with bouquets now pose beside this couple.

Víctor Delfín, a professional sculptor, called out to a young couple who were running away from here at the sight of the mayor. Delfín and Alberto Andrade, then mayor of Miraflores, were inspecting the cliff edge in search of a site for a large sculpture. The plot was neglected, and an abandoned work by someone else stood nearby. The lovers decided they had been caught doing something forbidden.

According to Delfín’s recollections, in the nineteen fifties police officers really did detain teenagers for kissing or even for holding hands. The girl’s parents were summoned to explain themselves, the young man could be taken to the police station, and both were shamed. Decades later, the old expectation of punishment still made the couple run away.

Delfín stopped them and promised that a place would appear here where lovers would be respected and no one would bother them. Andrade heard these words. That was when they named the future park Love Park.

The idea for the sculpture itself had arisen earlier. From a house on another stretch of the coast, Delfín watched couples heading down to the beach: they kissed, argued, and made up. The artist made sketches, modeled small figures in different poses, and chose a reclining couple joined in a kiss. He modeled the man after himself and the woman after his companion, Ana María Ortiz.

Andrade came to his studio for an entirely different reason: Delfín wanted to know how to landscape the dry ground near his house. The mayor noticed the small sculpture and asked whether the artist could enlarge it. After that conversation, they went to the cliffs, where they met the fleeing lovers.

For Delfín, this was a genuine municipal commission, through which he earned his living as a sculptor: he was paid thirty thousand dollars for the monumental work. On February fourteenth, nineteen ninety-three, Andrade opened the park, kissed his wife, and suggested that the couples gathered do the same.

After the opening, Delfín was told that The Kiss would ruin his career. Some were offended by the naked embrace, others by the barefoot, dark-skinned figures in a district that was used to thinking of itself as white. The sculpture was called crude and provocative. As a result, it was precisely with The Kiss that younger generations of Peruvians came above all to associate Delfín’s name.

At the center of the park, Víctor Delfín and Ana María Ortiz are still kissing—the enlarged couple from his studio. Newlyweds with bouquets have their photographs taken in front of them. Where two lovers once ran away at the sight of the mayor, it is now customary to kiss in public.