Walking around Plaza Bolognesi this morning, I came across a line of people filing into a Socialist Party office for a meeting. I fell in with them and shuffled toward a woman collecting a one sole entrance charge and handing out blue slips of paper. The line moved past bulletin boards of upcoming Party activities, stenciled portraits of revolutionary heroes and posters urging better working conditions for miners. I paid the woman and joined the stuffy back room where fifty-some people were chatting and fanning themselves on plastic Coca-cola and Inka Cola chairs.

“Are you a journalist?” the woman to my right asked.

“No, I’m a student.”

“Well, this meeting is really only for members…” she said, letting me complete the rest.

“Oh. Well, I’m only curious.”

I smiled helplessly, and we sat like that for awhile, watching two men jab wooden poles at the wall-mounted electric fans. I wished I’d sat against the wall.

Five minutes later, a thin man with salt-and-pepper hair and whiskers walked over and touched my arm.

“What time does it start?” I asked.

“Are you a journalist?”

“No, I’m a student.”

He nodded and kindly explained why I couldn’t stay. We walked back toward the entrance together. “Journalists are allowed to be here, but that’s all,” he told me. By that time is too late to try and explain that I’m a quasi-journalist as well.

I traded my blue slip for a refund of my sole, and the man walked me out into the sunshine. “Tuesdays and Thursdays”…”workers”…”I’m sorry that there was a problem.” I couldn’t follow much of the explanation, unfortunately.

As both a quasi-journalist and student, my first instinct had been to admit to the latter. This perhaps comes from spending time working as a journalist in China, where bearing the title “journalist” generally closes more doors than opens them. Moreover, in potentially sensitive or political situations, journalists in China are no strangers to detentions and harassment.

And while my point is not that Peru is some paradise for foreign correspondents, the incident made me reconsider when and where to label myself a “journalist.” Not all Socialists want to keep them at arm’s length.