Back in Lima I meet up with Mayra at La Posada del Mirador in Barranco. We arrive in the late afternoon to get a seat on the balcony.
“That morning in Calango, unable to sleep, when I looked out of the window before dawn to see the Pleiades rising above the horizon, I realised that I was conceptually blind,” I tell Mayra. “The Pleiades mean little to me, but they were, and are, pivotal for farmers and fishermen here. There could be whole worlds that I am not seeing, and I do not know where to look.”
Spread out before us is the Pacific ocean, with surfers riding the evening waves, and yachts coming in to harbour.
“It seems like you should look at the sky,” she replies. “You can’t appreciate the beauty of a sky full of stars, when we are living in a bright lit city or under perpetual cloud. Lima is both. But Caracas has clear skies, and better still, when we moved out of town, I learned to love the stars.”
On a patio of beaten earth below the balcony, a steady stream of visitors come to enjoy the view, take each other’s photos, buy bracelets and pay to have their name engraved on a grain of rice.
“I remember that the sacred rock in Calango was called the star stone, or the skin of the star,” I say, “and the mounds you showed me at the zoo and around Lima, were all oriented in a similar direction. It suggests an important underlying belief, or awareness.”
“You think you won’t understand the stones, unless you understand the relationship of these people with the sun and stars. But how can you see that from the perspective of the semi-industrial, colonial, hierarchical, proto-society that is Lima. What is more, you are European.”
“Exactly,” I reply. “That is the blind spot, the unknown unknown, that I want to overcome. So much of the indigenous culture has gone, from loss of life and then systematic destruction. The chroniclers of the invasion, mostly writing from a colonial perspective, give us just a few tantalising clues.”
“The culture lives on. You just have to know where to look. Have you ever travelled to the Selva?”
The Amazon forests are just over the hills from Lima, albeit that “the hills” are the 5000 metre high Andes.
I tell her of my short visit to Pucallpa, of the road to the edge of the river, the fruit market at the frontier with another world.
“I stood there and watched these little boats drawn up on the bank of the river, unloading brazil nuts, camu-camu and plantains. And I realised this was a boundary. There was no bridge. On the other side of that river, I could walk through a thousand kilometres of forest without hearing a car or seeing a road.”
“And the Spanish, too, stopped at that river,” says Mayra. “The Peruvian government made little attempt to govern there. In fact, in the 1940s, they signed over the management of the entire region to a group of evangelical missionaries from Texas.”
“So, in the forests on the far bank, the culture lives on? But those are Amazon indians, not Peruvians from the Sierra.”
“What is the difference? Climate of course, and crops, but we know from the images of jaguars and caymans at Chavin, from the macaw feather tapestries of the Chimu and the Wari, that these peoples have always been close. From Paria Caca to the Amazon basin is barely 200 kilometres.”
I am reminded of an account in the Huarochiri Manuscript, of how the original people of the highlands, or at least their god, was driven to the forested lowlands, the Antis. I open the pdf on my i-phone and read it to Mayra.
“And five days after his prophecy, Paria Caca did begin fighting Huallallo Caruincho. Paria Caca, since he was five persons, began to rain down from five directions. That rain was yellow rain and red rain.
“Then, flashing as lightning, he blazed out from five directions. From early in the morning to the setting of the sun Huallallo Caruincho flamed up in the form of a giant fire reaching almost to the heavens, never letting himself be extinguished. . . And Paria Caca kept flashing lightning bolts at him, never letting him rest.
“Finally Huallallo Caruincho fled toward the low country, the Antis . . . Another of Paria Caca’s offspring chased after him. He stays at the pass down to the lowlands, the Antis, today. “Lest Huallallo Caruincho return” as he says.
“This brother of Paria Caca is known as Paria Carco, the Manuscript tells us. “Paria Carco remains there to this day in the form of a snow capped peak.”
“That’s it,” says Mayra. “If the people of Huarochiri moved, or were driven, down towards the Amazon, then they may have retained the culture and beliefs that those closer to Lima lost, or learnt to hide. I have a friend from University who was born down there, in Iparia.”
“Do you think he would be willing to talk to me, give me some perspective?”
“He is passionate about his family’s history and culture, and he loves talking about it!”
********************************************************
I order gin and tonics, “con limon por favor y poco hielo“, not too much ice. The first time I came here, I was served with a bulbous glass filled with ice, and then topped up with gin.
“What has happened to the tonic water?” I asked the waitress.
“The barman is not here today and we can’t find it,” she replied.
I realise this balcony, at this time of the evening, with this view of the sun slowly subsiding into the ocean, is one of my favorite places and times.
“Cheers!”
We clink glasses, as the sun sinks into the sea.
A little later the first plates of tapas arrive. Nutty garbanzos, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
“So how is Amy?” I ask.
“She has a job, in the coffee bar, which she enjoys. But she misses home and the family.”
“She has not been here long. Does she has any hobbies?”
“She likes drawing and painting. She is still very scarred and vulnerable. She has nightmares.”
“Does she have any friends?”
“She meets a lot of people in the coffee shop, and of course many of them are Venezuelans. But she just goes to work and comes home. It takes time to heal, after what she has been through.”
The waitress brings a tray over to the table. “Buen appetito!” she says as she places a bowl with trozos of battered fish, slices of fried yucca and wedges of lemon in the centre of the table.
“Hermana, usted cuanto tiempo llevas aqui?” asks Mayra. “How long have you been here?”
I realise she has recognised the waitress by her accent.
“Two weeks,” she replies. “I was a lawyer in Caracas. But now . . . well any job is good.”
“Y, que tal? How is it?”
“I am glad to be here and earning money, that I can send home to support my family. I just take one day at a time.”
Mayra nods and smiles.
“Best wishes. I am glad you are here too. My parents are still in Caracas.”
Mayra reaches out and takes her hand.
“Felicidades!“
What is it like?” I ask Mayra after the waitress leaves. “What have they, and your sister, been through?”
“I cannot answer that in a sentence, or a tidy phrase. That is why I do not talk about it. that is why Amy stays at home and draws. Maybe someone will write the story, a powerful writer. Maybe I can tell the story, one day. But not today.”
“I am sorry. Maybe it would help to take Amy out of Lima for a while.”
The waitress brings us some pulpo, with a drizzle of olive oil and a dusting of paprika. I take a purple and white tentacle of octopus and hold it up for Mayra.
” Here, try this.”
She sucks the morsel from my fingertips.
“Yes it would be good for her to get away. Lets go back to Calango and walk up the valley. Amy can take her sketch books and her pastels.”
************************************************************************************
I arrange to meet Mayra’s Yanesha friend a few days later, in an unobtrusive restaurant on the edge of Surco.
I walk through the back streets of Barranco, past the statue of iconic balladeer Chabuca Granda and over the Bridge of Sighs, to the park with its bandstand and Grecian fountain, the ever present balloon seller, and the boys playing football between the palm trees.
Beyond I thread through cool tree-lined streets with elegant colonial houses whose plaster walls are painted blue, red and white. They have ornate gates wrought in cast iron, leading onto tiny tiled patios before a pompous front door, and within, I know, the rooms are arranged in a square around a central courtyard or garden, just as the Moors built their houses in north Africa and Spain.
In the Plaza Antonio Raimondi green parrots squawk as they peer from their nest holes in the palms, or flutter neurotically between the trees. Beyond the Plaza the streets become narrower and more crowded. Whining moto-taxis replace cars, and scabby dogs search for food in the gutters. I reach the entrance to the market with its newspaper kiosk, displaying an extensive selection of football card merchandise. On the opposite side of the road, in an outdoor yard, two children are gutting chickens by the dozen.
Walking through the market, I stop to buy coffee. The old man has twenty or more different roasted beans, from different regions of the cloud forest on the eastern slopes of the Andes. Some of them no doubt are grown by Yanesha co-operatives. I choose four varieties and he grinds them and bags them. Emerging on the other side I see the restaurant, “Las Brisas de Ucayali“.
The Ucayali is a river which rises across the Andes from Lima, and is one of the major headwaters of the Amazon. The Inca sacred river, Vilcamayo, runs down the sacred valley from Pisac and past Machu Picchu before joining the Ucayali.
I see Tonkiri sitting at a table by the window. Mayra has told me that he wears his straight black hair long or in a pony tail. He sports plain black trousers, black leather shoes, and a denim shirt.
“This is a very authentic restaurant,” he tells me as I sit down opposite him. “Most of the people who eat here are Yanesha, with some Ashaninka and Shipibo. I have asked them to organise a selection of traditional dishes. I hope you like it.”
We sit at a table and I explain how Mayra and I found the riverside petroglyphs how and we are trying to discover what they represented.
“There are images that I can recognise, and many abstract symbols that mean nothing to me. Spirals, serpentine lines, patterns of dots. I realise that there is a whole world view behind these drawings, which I would like to understand.”
“We, the Yanesha, do have our own world view, as you put it,” he replies, “as do other people living in the forests. We have our own language, similar to Ashaninka, but quite different to Quechua. Whether it would relate to these people in a valley on the other side of the Andes…”
“It might be closer than the Lima world view, ” I point out.
“For sure. Lets start at the beginning. Most Yanesha live on the eastern slopes of the Andes, rather than deep in the Amazon,” he said, as I took notes. “There are only 8000 of my people, it is said. But some live far into the forest. So whether we moved from the forest to the Andes, or from the Andes to the forest, I cannot tell.”
“Whenever my people were threatened,” Tonkiri continues, “they retreated further into the forests. At each contact, they might receive a virus that would kill a quarter of their village, their family. This happened repeatedly. The spanish, the rubber barons, the christian evangelists, the loggers, the gold prospectors. Each of them brought a pandemic. So we have always been on the move, trying to keep our distance.”
The waiter places a wooden mortar on the table, containing chewy yellow balls of roasted green bananas, with strips of smoked and dried pork. There are thin red sausages too.
“This is tacado,” says Tonkiri, pointing to the fist sized balls, “our daily food. And this is cecina, dried and smoked meat. Today it is pork, but at home it could be wild pig, or any forest animal.”
“I am curious to know if you have festivals, important times of the year, perhaps related to night skies?” I ask.
“I am not a farmer. I have been in Lima too long. But I know the dry season comes when a star, that we call Chemuellem, is high in the sky before the sun comes up. It is a red star. This is the time when the vermilion flycatcher comes to the forests. We plant the beans and maize. There is a swallow, the maf, that arrives then too, in April.
“Later, in September, when the Oncoy is overhead at dawn, the rains will come,” he continues. “The maf departs, and another swallow, the Shellmem, arrives.”
“And this is the same Oncoy, the Pleiades, that the coastal people observed?”
“We share many words with Quechua. The Oncoy is a group of drummers in the sky. The Milky Way used to live on earth with the Yanesha. One day he rose into the heavens, joined by flute players and drummers. And there he can still be seen, dancing eternally to sacred music.”
The waitress returns to place a plate of whole grilled fish on the table, with a side dish of diced fruits, a piquant salsa of mango and lemon.
“Before there was the Sun and the Moon,” Tonyiri continues, “the Yanesha existed, it is said. And we did not know death. In those days women gave birth only to foulness, to monkeys, rotten wood, lizards. The Sun and the Moon gave us the gift of children. But we Yanesha lost our immortality. The beginning of childbirth started the age of illness and death.”
“That’s a very powerful perspective!” I exclaim.
“But we do not suffer. Instead, we dance and sing. We have three forms of music and dances, at specific times of the year.”
“I have read that the dancers form a line that undulates and moves across the the dancing area, that seems to mirror the movement of the Milky Way,” I tell him.
I realise as I listen to him talk of their songs and the seasons, that a complex web of ideas links the planting and harvesting of crops, the blossoming and fruiting of trees, the annual cycles of wildlife, the Yanesha dances and music, and the night sky, their celestial clock.
“How did you find moving to Lima?” I ask him.
“When I first came to Lima I was shocked that there were so few fruits here, and that people paid money to buy water. To be honest I still find much in Lima that is shocking.”
“But you look, you dress like a regular Limeño,” I reply.
“When I go back home for the football tournament, the Mundialito, I will dress in the same way as my people, not this Lima style. I will wear the brown cushma and I will paint my face. Here in Lima it is easier, and safer, to blend in.”
I nodded. I had heard, and seen, how native people were sometimes treated on the streets of the city.
“But I am only hiding, like a hunter,” he laughs. “I am not losing my identity.”
The waitress approaches us again, bearing a salad of black beans and white beans with palm hearts and avocado, seasoned with onion, cumin, coriander, garlic and hot pepper, together with a couple of kebab sticks.
“Do you go back often?”
“Several times a year, for a week if I can. For us, the natural environment is like people – plants and animals are all living creatures. My grandfather would sing to the trees as he walked through the forest. He said they spoke to him. For me, I just know I must walk in the forest from time to time. There is no forest in Lima.”
He looks thoughtful for a moment, then continues.
“These days, when the rains come, it is colder, and the children grow sick. The birds do not sing their songs in the right season. It is too hot to work in the fields all day. The ground is cracked.”
I am dismayed, but Tonyiri smiles and pointed at the food.
“Try the kebab. Suri anticuchos. You are very lucky to get this. They were brought in this morning.”
I am looking at a bamboo stick with five or six swollen white grubs, each with a little brown head atop its pale body.
“They look like giant maggots.”
“They are a larva which grows in the flesh of palm trees. They taste like chicken. Very nutritious.”
They are neatly skewered, their white puckering flesh browned on the grill. I shut my eyes and take a bite.
“Well . . . OK, sort of nutty!”
He grins. “This is not easy to find in Lima!”
“Thanks for taking the time to talk with me,” I say. “It seems you have important periods of the year, measured by the sun and stars and linked to the farming seasons, which you celebrate with a particular group of music, dance and costumes. That sounds very similar to the world of the Huarochiri.”
“I like to talk about my culture. Explaining also helps me understand it. There are many young Yanesha now who do not speak the language,” he says, “they are forgetting who they are. And we are trying to keep Yanesha culture alive, here in Lima.”
“To understand the markings on the stones, I have to accept that a swallow is not just a swallow, a llama is more than a llama. Crosses, concentric circles, and undulating lines may all have several simultaneous meanings or references,” I say.
“That reminds me. Our weaving is symbolic, and full of meaning. Some of the meaning is lost perhaps, and I am not a weaver so I do not know it. But there are symbols that represent a running river, a particular sacred mountain, the mark on a jaguar’s fur, or a ritual day. That is what they represent, but what they signify is deeper still.”
“How do you mean?”
“For example, there is a symbol which the girls paint on their face when they complete the ponapnora, the puberty rites. This takes place over several months. So this simple symbol” –he draws a design for me on a table napkin – “represents not only these rituals, but the whole context of becoming an adult woman. To say so much with one symbol. Your rocks could be telling very complex stories!”
24*********************************25*******************************
3 December 2018. Two time president Alan Garcia’s request for political asylum in Uruguay because of “political persecution” is rejected. He has been in hiding in the Uruguay Embassy in Lima since late November, after he returned from his home in Madrid for a court hearing and was forbidden leave the country. In 1992, after his first Presidential term, he sought asylum in the Columbian embassy and then fled the country, only returning when the statute of limitations freed him from accusations of corruption in the handling of public money.
9 December 2018. The constitutional referendum takes place the same day as the local and regional elections. Vizcarra asks people not to support the two chamber proposal he had made, as Congress has tacked on to it a reduction of the powers of the president to dissolve Congress. The public votes Yes-Yes-Yes-No as Vizcarra requests, with greater that 85% approval.
December 31 2018. A few hours before midnight, the Fiscal of the Nation Pedro Chavarry announces he is removing Fiscals Domingo Perez and Rafael Vela from their Lava Joto investigations. The following day marches are organised in Trujillo, Cajamarca, Arequipa, Chimbote and Cusco under banners such as “Fuera Chavarry – Rata Maldita!” I join the gathering crowd in Lima’s Plaza San Martin late in the afternoon and follow the march to the Public Ministry, where the two fiscals have arranged a press conference at 8.30 pm.
Marches in the city centre are usually treated with indifference, but this time the passing taxi drivers and the private cars sound their horns in support. Even the police, in heavy body armour and carrying guns, seem supportive.
The next day, January 2nd, Chavarry announces the Fiscal’s reinstatement.
23 January 2019. Alberto Fujimori is taken from hospital where he has spent the last three months, and returned to jail. A government medical panel has found there is no reason for him to stay in hospital.
Go back to 24. Wari Wraps and Checas Chacras…
Go Forward to 26. Marker Stones in the Landscape . . .