(no subject)
My abuelita (grandma) died yesterday. She was the cutest person you could ever meet, very nice, and lived a very interesting life. The saddest part of it all is that I never got to see her when I knew she was dying, and cannot go to her funeral because it is in Peru. My mom was there however, so I'm grateful for that. I am attaching an interview with her that I translated last year for my anthropology class. It is only a portion, condensed, and a crude translation because she also speaks Quechuan, which is a language I don't know. I don't know if anyone will find it interesting because it derives its value from a personal familiarity with the places and people involved, but here it is and I don't want to lose it.
E: Where did you spend your childhood?
T: Chachas (in Peru). I come from the department [state] of Arequipa, the district Chachas, annex Nahuira
E What did your father do?
T: My father was an agriculturist
E: How many siblings did you have?
T: I had an older sister. Three siblings: Estefa, Eulogia, and Juan
E: Yes, and did you play with them? Were they older or younger than you?
T: Older. I was the last one.
E: Did you have animals? Did you have llamas? What else did you raise?
T: No we didn’t have llamas. Sheep, cows, and then there were fruits, apples, peaches, there were plums, there was pomegranate, there were pears too.
E: Oh, you lived in a temperate zone then, not too cold or hot.
T: Temperate
E: What were your parents like? Were they very serious, did they play with you? Did they play with your siblings?
T: My mom was a widow and my dad was a widower, but in his widowhood my dad
managed to find another woman.
E: The two joined together in their widowhood.
T: First he had a woman who was also a widow. Very drunk…an alcoholic. And my father got bored of her.
E: How did your father treat you?
T: I have suffered very much, very much I have suffered.
E: Why?
T: Because of the mother…My father found a woman and the woman absorbed everything. She was an alcoholic
E: He found another woman aside from the first that he left.
T: Yes
E: So your father married three times total. He had children with three women.
T: Yes.
E: And you were the last of them all?
T: Yes.
E: More or less, what was the age difference? How old were they?
T: The oldest brother was from a different marriage…Manuela…and the second of another woman too, Gabriel -
E: Were they 5 or 10 years older than you, or even older?
T: In between; my sister was…she was already married too.
E: Oh. The difference is big then. And did they pay you a lot of attention?
T: No, naturally I suffered.
E: So you grew up in Chachas?
T: My father took me and gave me to a place called Pampacolca. There I grew; I worked ten years, without moving.
E: Pampacolca…
T: In the province of Castilla. When I turned 10 years old, my father came to see me every year and I wanted him to take me with him. I said, “Daddy, lets go. Take me from here.” But he didn’t want to take me; he left me. At 5, 6 in the morning, I wanted to escape since he didn’t take me.
E: Did you attend any school during this time?
T: No, never.
E: They were not accustomed to going to school during these times?
T: And it wasn’t obligatory either.
E: So you lived with a wealthy family -
T: To work in the house.
E: And when you worked for the family they paid you, or only fed you -
T: No, they only gave me food and clothes. I worked like a donkey.
E: What kind of work did you do?
T: All kinds, all kinds. I knew how to wash, I knew how to cook, peel corn, peel barley, make candies, bread, chicharrones. I did all kinds of things.
E: But you must have learned how to cook, sew, and these things, in Chachas.
T: I didn’t know these things. In my land I hardly did a thing. I hardly knew a thing either. My father, blessed soul that peacefully rests, when he brought me, didn’t demand that I do anything. He himself had done these things for me. He left me so. When my stepmother sent me to peel some barely, I did not know. I had never done that.
E: And what happened?
T: I didn’t know how to husk or peel, but my mom made me peel barley. I was turning and turning the grains around. My sister saw me and sent me to bring guano to the field. So she gave me an old blanket to carry the guano. The poor famrmers were working there with my father, blessed soul, and I went carrying everything along the path spreading the guano, and it almost didn’t get to the field at all. Then my father told me, “Why did you come here?” “My stepmother sent me, she said to peel barley, but I don’t know how to peel it.”
E: What did your father say?
T: My father grabbed me, and he sent me inside. “Daughter, leave that” he told me. “Go inside with the animals.” And I went. And they never taught me how to do the tasks.
E: Where was your dad from, if you said [previously] he was tall, white, with blue eyes.
T: Well Chacheño.
E: The chacheñans are not white, nor do they have blue eyes.
T: Naturally no, but my dad did. His brother was even more white, my uncle Eusebio. But my uncle Ezequiel was very black, blacker than me because he caught the black plague. That is why he stayed so black.
E: Let’s return to Pampacolca. You arrived to the family and did various types of work. Obviously it must have been difficult at first because you didn’t know how to do the work well. Where did you stay?
T: In the same house. My patrons in one room, and us [the female employees] here [in one room]; five female employees.
E: And did you become friends with the employees?
T: Naturally yes. We were companions in work. Each one had her obligation. We had to wash, iron, clean the rooms, the general cleaning.
E: You began that at 18 years old.
T: Younger. I began when I was little still, at the age of 6 or 7 years.
E: Did you miss your parents a lot, or did you not care?
T: My father, yes. I didn’t know my mother because she died at my birth.
E: Who took care of you when your mother died?
T: My father gave me to a woman. That woman had me for one year and probably asked my father for more money for milk and such things. So my father brought me back. I knew to sit in the street for a little while and my aunt would pass and give me something little to eat. From there I grew, and grew…a little from here, a little from there, and that’s how I grew. I did not live with my father anymore after that. My father went to visit my aunt, blessed soul. That aunt raised me, but when she told me “Go see your father,” she would send coca leaves with me. When I entered [my father’s house], they were eating lunch, my stepmother grabbed the mote [variety of corn popular in Peru]. My father said to her, “serve my daughter food.” So my stepmother grabbed all of the mote, put it in the pot to cook, then hid it. She did not give me lunch. She was a bad person, my stepmom.
E: And you didn’t tell your father that you wanted to eat?
T: My father was looking on; he saw it all. He didn’t do anything. From there, my sister Manuela gave me to an uncle from Tintamata. He was a true Quijahuaman [family name] but his wife was bad, bad, bad. On one occasion, she started the grill. Then she picked up a lot of wood, combined with urine and hot pepper, and made a lot of smoke and she closed me into a room with all the smoke and went out.
T: Later, I coughed, coughed, coughed to get it all out. When, at night, she sent me to get wood from the hills there was no light. I was losing my vision. Elisa [a cousin] saved me; my vision was getting cloudy. Her father was like I told you also tall, white and a good person also. The blessed woman, Elisa, cured me while my vision was clouding, with a cold compress on the eyes. With this, she cleaned me. From there, I escaped. My brother in low, the blessed Antonio Alvarez, returned for something [to the house]; he had taken cattle to the land. When he came, we met him. I wanted to cry. “I want to go there [with Antonio], I want to go there,” I told him. “I am leaving early tomorrow. If you go [with me] early tomorrow, bend down, bend down [on the mule] and we will go together.” From there we arrived at a place named Misahuanca to rest. And, we took down the mules. And there in the morning we got up really early to arrive at Chachas to end the rest of the trip.
E: In those times, they walked a lot
T: Two days. My aunts have walked to Lima
E: To Lima? Wow
T: We arrived at a tall cross. He told me, “this is the land now little daughter.” And we walked down and down until we reached the town. From there we went to the small farm and from there to Andahua. But the people feared my father and sent me back to him and then to Pampacolca.
E: How did you meet your husband? Did he talk to you?
T: I was an old maid [18 years old] working in Pampacolca; he was a soldier and an older man. I went out of the house because my employer sent me to work at the Major’s house [of the army] in Arequipa. The Major said to me, “If you want girl, we’ll sned you by mule to Chuquibamba. From there you can take a car from Lima.” But I didn’t do it. I stayed with my employer. There I met my husband.
E: In the city of Arequipa.
T: Yes, I had only just arrived in Arequipa from Pampacolca to work.
E: And your father also helped you find work in Arequipa, or was that on your own account?
T: On my own account. There we met. From there, we kept seeing each other, seeing each other, and I already wanted to marry like my sister, naturally. We stood and we talked. Then Aurelio talked with my sister, and I talked with him more. She made the wedding arrangements.
E: Your father knew.
T: No, my father did not know that I was going to marry. He wanted me to marry a man of money. I already knew that my father said I would marry a man. I said no, how am I going to marry without knowing the person? From there, I did not tell him more.
E: What order were your children born in?
T: First Porfirio. In one year he died of malaria. He was a very beautiful child. He was tiny. I grabbed Porfirito and went to get wood …and he died.
E: Then it was Ramiro, Alberto, and Nancy [my mother].
T: Aurelio did not want Nancy. When the children came he wanted men. He did not want a daughter. He said “what a disgrace that you have…”
E: And ironically, if it weren’t for his daughter, you would not have had grandchildren.
T: Yes true, because Alberto has not had children. Ramiro died at 14 years old…an accident. [While playing, he was hit by a car]
E: Where was the accident?
T: In Chorrillos.
E: It seems like you have been through many tough times. Have you had a happy time? What has been the happiest part of your life?
T: Well, after I stopped working and it was peaceful.
E: Oh, how many years, more or less, has it been since you stopped working?
T: Twenty, right?
E: Why did you come to Lima from Arequipa?
T: Because my family called me from Arequipa, because the salaries are lower there [in Arequipa].
E: Which family members?
T: A cousin of mine, from my mother’s side. He had his wife and children and he saw that I was alone [Aurelo died] and said that I should come.
E: Alberto and Nancy and Ramiro lived with you?
T: Yes. Nancy and Alberto were small; Ramiro was in school. He stayed with a family [near the school].
E: When you came with Nancy and Alberto, what was your first job?
T: A nanny. My children stayed with my niece.
E: Did you ever learn how to read?
T: No. One year I went to school here in Lima. Nothing stayed in my brain anymore. I couldn’t do it. I already had my mind on other things, on my children. It’s not the same like being a child, right?
E: But later you found work as a cook.
T: Later I went out to work as a cook.
E: Where were Nancy and Alberto?
T: Alberto lived with his godparents, with Doctor Vivia. Nancy was also with her godmother.
E: In the second job you were at, they let Nancy come to live with you.
T: Yes, I told them. In the second job they let me, yes…but Nancy did not want to. She said “I already have my girl friends, they are coming over and we are going to be living like pigs.” It would be better to look for a room. We looked for a room and found one in Arenales. There we stayed, and there I worked and Nancy went to her school.
E: Where did you spend your childhood?
T: Chachas (in Peru). I come from the department [state] of Arequipa, the district Chachas, annex Nahuira
E What did your father do?
T: My father was an agriculturist
E: How many siblings did you have?
T: I had an older sister. Three siblings: Estefa, Eulogia, and Juan
E: Yes, and did you play with them? Were they older or younger than you?
T: Older. I was the last one.
E: Did you have animals? Did you have llamas? What else did you raise?
T: No we didn’t have llamas. Sheep, cows, and then there were fruits, apples, peaches, there were plums, there was pomegranate, there were pears too.
E: Oh, you lived in a temperate zone then, not too cold or hot.
T: Temperate
E: What were your parents like? Were they very serious, did they play with you? Did they play with your siblings?
T: My mom was a widow and my dad was a widower, but in his widowhood my dad
managed to find another woman.
E: The two joined together in their widowhood.
T: First he had a woman who was also a widow. Very drunk…an alcoholic. And my father got bored of her.
E: How did your father treat you?
T: I have suffered very much, very much I have suffered.
E: Why?
T: Because of the mother…My father found a woman and the woman absorbed everything. She was an alcoholic
E: He found another woman aside from the first that he left.
T: Yes
E: So your father married three times total. He had children with three women.
T: Yes.
E: And you were the last of them all?
T: Yes.
E: More or less, what was the age difference? How old were they?
T: The oldest brother was from a different marriage…Manuela…and the second of another woman too, Gabriel -
E: Were they 5 or 10 years older than you, or even older?
T: In between; my sister was…she was already married too.
E: Oh. The difference is big then. And did they pay you a lot of attention?
T: No, naturally I suffered.
E: So you grew up in Chachas?
T: My father took me and gave me to a place called Pampacolca. There I grew; I worked ten years, without moving.
E: Pampacolca…
T: In the province of Castilla. When I turned 10 years old, my father came to see me every year and I wanted him to take me with him. I said, “Daddy, lets go. Take me from here.” But he didn’t want to take me; he left me. At 5, 6 in the morning, I wanted to escape since he didn’t take me.
E: Did you attend any school during this time?
T: No, never.
E: They were not accustomed to going to school during these times?
T: And it wasn’t obligatory either.
E: So you lived with a wealthy family -
T: To work in the house.
E: And when you worked for the family they paid you, or only fed you -
T: No, they only gave me food and clothes. I worked like a donkey.
E: What kind of work did you do?
T: All kinds, all kinds. I knew how to wash, I knew how to cook, peel corn, peel barley, make candies, bread, chicharrones. I did all kinds of things.
E: But you must have learned how to cook, sew, and these things, in Chachas.
T: I didn’t know these things. In my land I hardly did a thing. I hardly knew a thing either. My father, blessed soul that peacefully rests, when he brought me, didn’t demand that I do anything. He himself had done these things for me. He left me so. When my stepmother sent me to peel some barely, I did not know. I had never done that.
E: And what happened?
T: I didn’t know how to husk or peel, but my mom made me peel barley. I was turning and turning the grains around. My sister saw me and sent me to bring guano to the field. So she gave me an old blanket to carry the guano. The poor famrmers were working there with my father, blessed soul, and I went carrying everything along the path spreading the guano, and it almost didn’t get to the field at all. Then my father told me, “Why did you come here?” “My stepmother sent me, she said to peel barley, but I don’t know how to peel it.”
E: What did your father say?
T: My father grabbed me, and he sent me inside. “Daughter, leave that” he told me. “Go inside with the animals.” And I went. And they never taught me how to do the tasks.
E: Where was your dad from, if you said [previously] he was tall, white, with blue eyes.
T: Well Chacheño.
E: The chacheñans are not white, nor do they have blue eyes.
T: Naturally no, but my dad did. His brother was even more white, my uncle Eusebio. But my uncle Ezequiel was very black, blacker than me because he caught the black plague. That is why he stayed so black.
E: Let’s return to Pampacolca. You arrived to the family and did various types of work. Obviously it must have been difficult at first because you didn’t know how to do the work well. Where did you stay?
T: In the same house. My patrons in one room, and us [the female employees] here [in one room]; five female employees.
E: And did you become friends with the employees?
T: Naturally yes. We were companions in work. Each one had her obligation. We had to wash, iron, clean the rooms, the general cleaning.
E: You began that at 18 years old.
T: Younger. I began when I was little still, at the age of 6 or 7 years.
E: Did you miss your parents a lot, or did you not care?
T: My father, yes. I didn’t know my mother because she died at my birth.
E: Who took care of you when your mother died?
T: My father gave me to a woman. That woman had me for one year and probably asked my father for more money for milk and such things. So my father brought me back. I knew to sit in the street for a little while and my aunt would pass and give me something little to eat. From there I grew, and grew…a little from here, a little from there, and that’s how I grew. I did not live with my father anymore after that. My father went to visit my aunt, blessed soul. That aunt raised me, but when she told me “Go see your father,” she would send coca leaves with me. When I entered [my father’s house], they were eating lunch, my stepmother grabbed the mote [variety of corn popular in Peru]. My father said to her, “serve my daughter food.” So my stepmother grabbed all of the mote, put it in the pot to cook, then hid it. She did not give me lunch. She was a bad person, my stepmom.
E: And you didn’t tell your father that you wanted to eat?
T: My father was looking on; he saw it all. He didn’t do anything. From there, my sister Manuela gave me to an uncle from Tintamata. He was a true Quijahuaman [family name] but his wife was bad, bad, bad. On one occasion, she started the grill. Then she picked up a lot of wood, combined with urine and hot pepper, and made a lot of smoke and she closed me into a room with all the smoke and went out.
T: Later, I coughed, coughed, coughed to get it all out. When, at night, she sent me to get wood from the hills there was no light. I was losing my vision. Elisa [a cousin] saved me; my vision was getting cloudy. Her father was like I told you also tall, white and a good person also. The blessed woman, Elisa, cured me while my vision was clouding, with a cold compress on the eyes. With this, she cleaned me. From there, I escaped. My brother in low, the blessed Antonio Alvarez, returned for something [to the house]; he had taken cattle to the land. When he came, we met him. I wanted to cry. “I want to go there [with Antonio], I want to go there,” I told him. “I am leaving early tomorrow. If you go [with me] early tomorrow, bend down, bend down [on the mule] and we will go together.” From there we arrived at a place named Misahuanca to rest. And, we took down the mules. And there in the morning we got up really early to arrive at Chachas to end the rest of the trip.
E: In those times, they walked a lot
T: Two days. My aunts have walked to Lima
E: To Lima? Wow
T: We arrived at a tall cross. He told me, “this is the land now little daughter.” And we walked down and down until we reached the town. From there we went to the small farm and from there to Andahua. But the people feared my father and sent me back to him and then to Pampacolca.
E: How did you meet your husband? Did he talk to you?
T: I was an old maid [18 years old] working in Pampacolca; he was a soldier and an older man. I went out of the house because my employer sent me to work at the Major’s house [of the army] in Arequipa. The Major said to me, “If you want girl, we’ll sned you by mule to Chuquibamba. From there you can take a car from Lima.” But I didn’t do it. I stayed with my employer. There I met my husband.
E: In the city of Arequipa.
T: Yes, I had only just arrived in Arequipa from Pampacolca to work.
E: And your father also helped you find work in Arequipa, or was that on your own account?
T: On my own account. There we met. From there, we kept seeing each other, seeing each other, and I already wanted to marry like my sister, naturally. We stood and we talked. Then Aurelio talked with my sister, and I talked with him more. She made the wedding arrangements.
E: Your father knew.
T: No, my father did not know that I was going to marry. He wanted me to marry a man of money. I already knew that my father said I would marry a man. I said no, how am I going to marry without knowing the person? From there, I did not tell him more.
E: What order were your children born in?
T: First Porfirio. In one year he died of malaria. He was a very beautiful child. He was tiny. I grabbed Porfirito and went to get wood …and he died.
E: Then it was Ramiro, Alberto, and Nancy [my mother].
T: Aurelio did not want Nancy. When the children came he wanted men. He did not want a daughter. He said “what a disgrace that you have…”
E: And ironically, if it weren’t for his daughter, you would not have had grandchildren.
T: Yes true, because Alberto has not had children. Ramiro died at 14 years old…an accident. [While playing, he was hit by a car]
E: Where was the accident?
T: In Chorrillos.
E: It seems like you have been through many tough times. Have you had a happy time? What has been the happiest part of your life?
T: Well, after I stopped working and it was peaceful.
E: Oh, how many years, more or less, has it been since you stopped working?
T: Twenty, right?
E: Why did you come to Lima from Arequipa?
T: Because my family called me from Arequipa, because the salaries are lower there [in Arequipa].
E: Which family members?
T: A cousin of mine, from my mother’s side. He had his wife and children and he saw that I was alone [Aurelo died] and said that I should come.
E: Alberto and Nancy and Ramiro lived with you?
T: Yes. Nancy and Alberto were small; Ramiro was in school. He stayed with a family [near the school].
E: When you came with Nancy and Alberto, what was your first job?
T: A nanny. My children stayed with my niece.
E: Did you ever learn how to read?
T: No. One year I went to school here in Lima. Nothing stayed in my brain anymore. I couldn’t do it. I already had my mind on other things, on my children. It’s not the same like being a child, right?
E: But later you found work as a cook.
T: Later I went out to work as a cook.
E: Where were Nancy and Alberto?
T: Alberto lived with his godparents, with Doctor Vivia. Nancy was also with her godmother.
E: In the second job you were at, they let Nancy come to live with you.
T: Yes, I told them. In the second job they let me, yes…but Nancy did not want to. She said “I already have my girl friends, they are coming over and we are going to be living like pigs.” It would be better to look for a room. We looked for a room and found one in Arenales. There we stayed, and there I worked and Nancy went to her school.