My class with her feels like a cultural primer on Peru. One of my standing homework assignments is to read an article in the paper and then explain it to her. This is completely up my alley; I like to follow the local politics and attempt to understand whatever the bigger issues are. So I’ve often read articles on an issue I’m following but don’t understand, and then ask her for clarification. Her explanations always are thorough and fascinating, lending complexity that I wouldn’t have necessarily gotten from a dictionary or Googling.
Such as: there is a wildly popular Peruvian soap opera called Al Fondo Hay Sitio. My literal Spanish translates it as “At the Deep End There Is a Place.” What the heck was that supposed to mean? She explained that it was a nod to the experience most limeños have had here with packed, packed, packed buses and combis. It was a reference to what the cobrador (the guy who takes your fare once you tell him where you are going; he also helps the bus cut around in traffic via gestures from the bus windows, and leaps out at stops to yell out the various places the bus is headed, to drum up business) would say to someone who wanted to get on the bus but was doubtful there was room, seeing people crammed up and down the aisles, spilling out the doors, etc: “al fondo hay sitio” - “in the back [of the bus], there’s some room.” No one believed the cobradores but when every bus is like that, you finally get on the bus.
One week I brought in an article about the Conga project, a very controversial mining project in northern Peru. I’d been following the issue since November or December, when it initially erupted and a state of emergency was declared, but I didn’t exactly get what was going on. Essentially, a US-owned company is planning to transform a beautiful area by draining several popular lakes (also used for drinking water) and permanently changing (some say ruining) the lifestyle of many native communities in and around the area. The current president had been very outspoken against such mines before he won the presidential election last year, but now is attempting to proceed with plans for the mine while trying to ensure the mining company funds some social projects to soften the local blow.
We spent an entire hour (of my two-hour class!) discussing it. I appreciated that Silvia provided a perspective of the people affected by the mining. Every other person I had asked about it shared an opinion along the lines of, “the people who live there are stupid/uneducated/selfish/extremists, mining doesn’t cause contamination or pollution, they aren’t using the natural resources anyway but aren’t letting anyone else use them either.” My guess is that because Silvia grew up in a mining town, she can appreciate the protesters’ perspective. “But of course, the people who are complaining about the protests and the project not moving forward are not the ones who live there and will be affected by their decisions.” This is why Spanish class is fun!
She, along with most Peruvians, agrees that mining is essential for Peru’s economic growth. But this particular project is extremely controversial on a number of levels, too far beyond the scope of this blog or my comprehension of all the issues, and the situation has become so fragile that two priests have been called in to mediate. I’m not sure if the second state of emergency has been lifted there yet. Feelings are extremely hot on both sides. When I was reading a recent article about it, the supposedly neutral journalist asked one of the priests, “The anti-mining protesters are really violent, aren’t they?” This, after several protesters had died in clashes with the police. To his credit, the priest answered, “There are many forms of violence, with actions as well as words. Both sides are guilty of much violence.”
I ask Silvia questions about what I don’t understand about Lima, popular culture, anything. Sometimes I find out things with my supposedly innocent questions that I’m not sure I want to know. The Saturday paper always has an interview with some celebrity and the title of the article is called “a quemarropa con (name)”, which means something like “all the way to burnt clothing with (name)”. So I asked Silvia why it was called that. This was her response.
“When someone wants someone else killed, they shoot them. And when they want to be really, really, sure that the person is dead, they shoot them many, many times. Sometimes they shoot them so many times that the victim’s clothing catches on fire.”
At this point, I wondered if Silvia had misunderstood what I was asking, since this was gruesome and not where I expected her answer to go. She continued. “So when you read in the paper that they found a body, it might say something like, ‘Le mataron a quemarropa.’ Roughly translated, “they killed him to the point of burning his clothes.” Similarly, you can use it for an uncomfortable situation where someone is asking you lots of questions, firing them at you as if they were bullets, questions that you want to avoid, questions that aren’t innocent, questions that are meant to harm. So when they call this interview a quemarropa con alguien, they are promising that they are going to ask lots of personal, perhaps embarrassing, questions.”
I was riveted. Her answer was interesting on so many levels, from the completeness of her response to the fact that a method of killing is so much a part of the lexicon that it is an offhand, even lighthearted, title of an article. Perhaps that is yet another legacy of the internal conflict.
A less morbid but still disturbing example: I brought in an article one week about a prominent Peruvian author, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, in which he was interviewed (not a quemarropa!) and asked about an incident in his adolescence which had made headlines at the time for reasons I couldn’t understand. At school, as punishment, his teacher had forced him to pass through a callejón oscuro, a dark alleyway, of 120 students. He passed out, was hospitalized, and there was a minor scandal. I was confused. Why is a “dark alleyway” a punishment? And why does it matter how many people were in it?
“Ah,” Silvia said. “This is all too common in Peruvian schools, even now. I’ll explain it to you but I am not defending it.” She walked over to the whiteboard and started drawing. “A callejón oscuro is when you and your classmates line up side by side, facing a wall, with your hands on the wall and your feet several feet away. The alleyway is formed by you and your classmates, and the space between you and the wall.” She finished drawing it on the whiteboard. “Someone, the person being punished, has to crawl through. It can be a game, with you and a couple of friends, say, and you ruffle the person’s hair or tickle them as they crawl through. But it’s not always that innocent, and people kick and punch the person crawling through. What that teacher did was inexcusable. He gave the students permission to beat up their classmate. That in itself is horrible. But a callejón oscuro of 120 students? Imagine how many kicks and punches they could give!”
Now I understood the scandal. Learning that it’s still a frequent practice today makes me shudder. Middle school and high school can be hard enough by themselves, period, without the specter of getting beaten up in a callejón oscuro.
I appreciate that Silvia helps me navigate the complexities of Peruvian life at the same time as I navigate the complexities of Spanish grammar, pronunciation, intonation, and levels of formality in conversation. We’re in the process of figuring out how I can continue my class with her once we return, via Skype. She is just too awesome to give up simply because we will be on another continent. Hopefully she’ll decide al fondo de su horario hay sitio para mi - at the end of her schedule, there’s a place for me!
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