i LIMA PERU
I walk with solar man down Calle Quilca in the Chincha district of colonial Lima at sundown where clusters of mostly men and boys stand on the cobblestone street debating and listening to exhortations from passionate speakers on various subjects from the cost of coca to the despised presidente Toledo.
We down pisco sours at la Noche café/bar as I pour over a book of Cesar Vallejo’s poetry I purchased at the bookstore crammed into a crevice next door.
Then I wander farther down the darkened walkway to see murals flaming
on dreary brick walls made by passionate artists who gather at el Averno
gallery to plot and to paint anarchistic art in the side streets and alleys of Lima.
At the end of Calle Quilca I turn the corner onto the teeming Plaza San Martin where the bronze liberator sits elegantly astride his bronze horse.
I visit the baroque churches with their gaudy statues and sodalities
to the Blessed Virgin Mary and her suffering son skewered to the cross, bathed in blood and wearing a red Inca skirt.
Finally I arrive at the tomb of my favorite saint, St. Martin de Porres. Martin was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman, Juan, and a young freed black slave, Anna Velasquez. Martin grew up in poverty. He spent part of his youth with a surgeon-barber from whom he learned some medicine and care of the sick.
At age 11 Martin became a servant in the Holy Rosary Dominican priory in Lima, Peru. Promoted to almoner, he begged more than $2,000 a week from the rich to support the poor and sick of Lima. Placed in charge of the Dominican’s infirmary he was known for his tender care of the sick and for his spectacular cures. His superiors dropped the stipulation that “no black person may be received to the holy habit or profession of our order” and Martin took vows as a Dominican brother in 1603.
Martin established an orphanage and children’s hospital for the poor children of the slums. He set up a shelter for the stray cats and dogs and nursed them back to health. Lived in self-imposed austerity, never ate meat, fasted continuously, and spent much time in prayer and meditation with a great devotion to the Holy Eucharist.
He was venerated from the day of his death. Many miraculous cures, including raising the dead are attributed to Brother Martin. The first black saint from the Americas.
After I light a candle and kneel before St. Martin’s small grey skull displayed on a side altar I rise and walk out into bustling colonial city.
ii AFRO-PERU
I travel 100 miles south of the nation’s capital, Lima, to the Afro-Peruvian region of Chincha.
Chincha is the area that houses the country’s largest concentration of Black Peruvians. Within Chincha, the village of El Carmen is considered the Afro-Peruvian cultural center where festivals are celebrated with Afro-Peruvian music, dance, food and drink. Over the Christmas holiday, the townspeople put on a four-day celebration culminating in the Day of the Virgin of El Carmen - an all-night, all-day gala that pays tribute to their town’s patron saint.
Driving through the countryside in a local taxi we pass a sign that reads El Carmen: Peru’s Capital of Black Folklore and we see lights and hear music.
The town square was jammed with people ready to kick off the festivities in celebration of both Christmas and the Virgin of El Carmen. Brightly dressed folks were spilling out of church following the Christmas Eve mass while others were hanging out, listening to groups of children sing and dance and eating anticuchos (beef hearts roasted on a stick) and french fries dipped in spicy salsa. Many were also drinking a potent home brew called tutuma, made from mine, pisco (grape liquor) and the root of the tutuma, a gourdlike plant that grows in the area. Standing in the midst of the rowdy crowd, I was struck by the diversity of the townspeople. Some were clearly of African extraction, while others had straight hair and brown skin. The rest were of various shades and hair textures in between - the products of hundreds of years of intermarrying between the races.
In 1532, when Spanish conquistadors arrived to seize Peru from the Incan people, African slaves accompanied them. The country’s Black population began to increase markedly several decades later, when Africans from the Bantu regions were captured by Spaniards and brought forcibly to Peru as slaves. By 1570, census takers counted more Blacks than Spaniards in coastal Peru. Even as late as the mid-1700’s, some historians believe that half of the population of Lima was of African origin.
After slavery was abolished in 1854, Incan and Aymaran peoples from the mountain regions flooded the cities in search of work and became part of the workforce and the official census count.
The taxi drops me off at the white stucco casita of Amador Ballumbrosio. Amador is the singer and master violinist who embodies the Afro-Peruvian cultural tradition. Because of Amador and others like him black Peruvian traditions have survived and prospered in Peru. He and his lovely wife have lived in El Carmen all their lives. Though he considers himself 100-percent Peruvian and isn’t sure about his ancestors’ path from Africa to coastal Peru, the music and dance that his father taught him clearly recall the sounds and rhythms of West Africa. Dark-skinned with mixed gray hair, don Amador sits in his wheelchair holding his violin and reminiscing about the old days.
iii AREQUIPA
I sit on the empty patio in Arequipa sipping mate de coca, eating bread and blackberry jam as wispy clouds linger on the summit of Mt. Misty until their white vapors dissolve in sunlight and blue sky.
In the afternoon I walk down a cobble-stone street to el Convento de Santa Catalina, a former nunnery. Here divided by caste the lowly Indians waited hand and foot on the privileged Spanish and middle-class mestiza nuns.
The nuns were finally forced by a papal bull to live like a religious community instead of a walled wealthy female town in the heart of the city.
I visit the kneeling figure and frozen face of Juanita whose young life was
sacrificed on a mountain top by Inca priests in propitiation for the sins of her people and to please Pacha Mama (Mother Earth) and Hanang Pacha (Father Heaven)
After dinner and pisco sours la linda senorita gives me the word:
“Mira Tomasito, aqui las chicas somos un poco lentas.
Esperamos que primero ustedes den el primero paso…
Y luego uyuyuy! Ten cuidado! Por algo somos Latinas!”
As sun sets and rapids rush headlong over rocks and stones to the sea
a sprite in a soiled skirt scurries under a low archway in the stone banister
in search of scraps of food and reusable plastic strewn on the hillside.
She squats on the ground picking left over fragments of cotton candy from a stick and stuffing them into her smudged little cheeks.
She doesn’t see me watching her in wonder as she rises and scurries
back under the banister to rejoin her mother holding a tattered sack.
iv LAKE TITICACA
I collect flat and round smooth stones on the sandy shores of Lake Titicaca,
womb of the Inca world,
drink matte coca to revive in the thin air of El Altiplano,
sail to Isla del Sol where I trek with Aymara and Quechua spirits on a path arcing across the island… then sleep in silence of grazing llama and alpaca.
v THE ROADBLOCK
On the way to the carnival in Cusco my caravan is halted by a blockade of boulders placed on the main road by angry Aymaras protesting government policies that leave them unemployed and hungry.
A sturdy maternal woman wearing a derby with a red feather is perched on a boulder in the road knitting a wool scarf as she defends the cause against angry drivers whose trucks and buses are lined up like at a border crossing.
vi CUSCO
Crowds of pilgrims gather on the granite ground overlooking Sacsayhuaman on a grey rainy day to witness Inti Raymi, the ancient Incan rites and rituals in worship of the Sun and the Winter solstice.
The heavens weep over Cusco as the solemn procession begins with the blowing of conchas, then the Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom of ceremonial drums
Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom
Then wooden flutes begin to play and legions of colorfully clad Inca soldiers,
priests, vestal virgins and nobles file down from the opposite hillside onto the sacred plain then solemnly process around the elevated sanctuary in center field.
Next the Inca’s principal wife attired in white is carried by soldiers to her royal seat in the sanctuary. Finally with great fanfare the Inca king on his golden throne holding his golden scepter is borne by soldiers to the sanctuary where he presides over the centuries old ceremony. The kings’ head is shielded from the rain by a muscular servant holding a condor plumed umbrella.
The sacred rites are performed and prayers are recited in Quechua as hundreds of maidens dance around the stage while on the surrounding hillside a kaleidoscope of banners wave in unison to the beat of the drums.
After the symbolic sacrifice of a holy llama her flesh is carried by the high priest to the sacred bonfire where it is offered to Hanang Pacha. As the smoke rises with the Condor’s flight skyward the grey clouds part, the golden sun shines on a rainbow arcing over Cusco in honor of El Inca.
vii HUANCHACO
Waves at sundown are breaking sideways along the sandy coast,
lapping up the darkened beach to where flickering torches
illuminate long slender totoras made of bamboo and reeds
awaiting sunrise and another day of fishing, while laughing chattering children parade in simple card board masks and costumes
celebrating the spirit of the nation as bonfires dim
and night falls over the sleeping village of Huanchaco.