It started a long time ago, around 1986, when I grabbed a Skateboard for the first time. Well it was my brother’s but we were really happy with it and we just used it to go around.
One day, we were waiting for my parents in a store by our house when these two guys with really nice American skateboards jumped onto the sidewalk. We were like “WHAT!!!! that’s impossible!”. That was the first time we saw an OLLIE. I was really shocked. We lost them and we were trying to figure out how they did it, but we couldn’t. About one week later my brother told me that this guy from his class just came back from California and he was doing the same thing. He called it an “OLLIE” and the guy tried to explain to my brother how to do it. This was the beginning. We tried and tried and we finally started jumping. It wasn’t really high but we were still happy. We only had one skateboard for the both of us and that was a big
problem. Without the approval of our parents, we sold our bikes and got another skateboard. (Which happened to be a bad one) At that time in Peru nobody made real skateboards. One day, we were jumping this little ledge by my house and we saw a guy on the other corner. He had a skateboard (a nice one). I don’t remember if we met before, but his name was Renzo. He was able to do kickflips at that time and we started skating together. After that we made more friends that skate in our neighborhood. Skateboarding had become really popular in Peru.
My dad took us to the Skatepark; which happened to be the first one inPeru called LA RAMPA SKATEPARK. I saw a lot of people there who waited in line to try one jump. One guy was jumping over 6 skates. His name was Jose Carlos Moran. We weren’t friends at that time. He was part of a team called CHONGO, from a part of Lima called San Antonio. He was really good! Then I saw the two guys who jumped into the sidewalk a long time ago. They were amazing…. After we went to the Skatepark we were inspired and much more into this Little Skateboard. Close to our house we met this little kid who had a ramp set up in the park. He performed a super big Christ Air. His name was Christian Spano. We then met Juan Carlos Flores (who we called Happy Monkey). We ended up calling him MONE, then Rudy, and Lalo. We used to skate everyday in a park by Higuereta and we started getting better. Then we met Jean Pierre (who was really competitive).He was part of the team Chongo. But he started hanging out with us everyday. We learned a lot skating with him. We called ourselves “DISCORDIA.” One day we decided to go around Lima to look for places to Skate. We found a lot of people who skated, but none of them were good enough. We wanted somebody to push us to the limit and finally one day, we skated in San Antonio. The first time I saw all these guys together “El Team Chongo” they were all good. But this one guy was amazing. He did a 360 kickflip, first try! His name was Julio, but everyone caled him CHULION. We ended up calling him CHUYO. He was the most technical guy I’ve ever seen.
"CHUYO". 180 Frontside, Circa 1993. Miraflores, Lima-Peru.
We skated with them but we felt this was some sort of a competition. We didn’t have the skills to compete with them. So we decided to practice more and we skated day and night. (From 8am to 11pm. This is NO JOKE) So we started getting better but these guys were practicing too and some new guys joined their team. Rick Noriega,he was super fast and solid. Sometimes we were street skating and we found each other (the Teams) and we started a little competition between all of us. Nobody said anything, but we were pushing each others limits. We used to go to the skatepark too,that was the center of a lot of things. (You need to know that I’m talking about street skateboarding in Peru) In the skakepark we met guys (ramp guys) like Alberto Montes. Everyone called him Naranjito because he always used an orange helmet. He was one of the best Ramp guys in Peru as well as Lalo Peralta. They were doing things that
nobody even tried at that time. We also met Ricardo Navarro “Cayo”. He was super good in “La Besitos” spine that only few people attempt to hit those days. We saw this super tiny guy who was really good. Everybody was looking at him (because he was tiny). His name was Daniel Ferrari “El Chubi”. He was smooth. We saw alot of teams from different parts of Lima. All of them wrote their names on a ledge by the stairs over the fullpipe. Those were good times for us…..
We used to go skate away from our house looking for teams.That’s how we met the team “Legaña,” the “TNT”, the” +Turbo “, the “Oxiurus”. We made a lot of friends….
One day when we were all at the skatepark, one of us gave the idea to put the teams together. But, what should we call it? We were the two best Teams of Peru at that time: CHONGO and DISCORDIA…Somebody said it almost as a joke, “Why don’t we call it “CHONCORDIA.” Everybody laughed, but the name was good. Since then we were called CHONCORDIA.
After that year, skateboarding lost popularity in Peru. Some of us went to college, some of us went to other countries and some of us just lost contact. But all of us keep skateboarding because it is a natural feeling. You can’t leave it, because you love it, and the friendships that result from all these years, is big….
Well that’s my history. There’s more to tell, more to say. Someone probably knows/remembers something that I don’t. But that’s the way I remember it….CHONCORDIA 4 EVER!!!
Gunther Estrada. Rock and Roll Frontside, 2007. Costa Mesa, California.