Adventures in Huancayo

Although we are now back in the States, I haven’t finished posting all of my drafts yet! I’ll wrap up the blog before Sam returns to work full-time in September.

As we mapped out our final months in Peru and figured out what travel destinations would make the cut, Sam came across an old email from a fair trade colleague. “It’s really cool to see the artisans in Huancayo creating the carved gourds, the mates burilados. If you get a chance, go.”

Huancayo was an 8 hour overnight bus trip from Lima, and about four hours from the jungle we planned to visit. Deciding to combine the trips was easy.

Huancayo was pretty interesting to visit, period, and not just for their funny crosswalk signs. As usual, any place we visit outside of Lima is shocking in its contrast to the dusty, polluted, giant city (written with great affection for Lima). Here we were, high in the Andes, enjoying the cold and sunshine but wishing our hotel room had heat. There was a far more indigenous presence than anywhere we had traveled to at that point. Homeless people were more visible, especially in the streets in and around the main plaza, than we have seen anywhere in Lima. And did I mention it was cold? They were huddled under cardboard and plastic in an attempt to keep warm. 

We had met various members of the Hurtado family at the capacitación training in December, and they urged us to visit their workshops. Sam has described the fascinating process of carving and burning the gourds, so I won’t go into those details here.

At Alejandro and Victoria’s workshop, we first heard of their family’s difficult start. Alejandro’s father died when he was just 3 years old. His mother remarried and left shortly thereafter, leaving Alejandro and his three siblings to raise themselves. His oldest brother Emilio quit school and started working in a mate burilado workshop full time when he was just 12 years old, to support himself and his siblings. As Emilio learned to excel with mates, he taught his brothers. Each has been able to support himself and his family on this artistry since.

Victoria, on the other hand, learned from her neighbors. One in particular saw that she had talent and provided encouragement. “He would give me a mate and tell me to do whatever I wanted with it, to see if I could make something marketable. I played around with it. After I’d made a few, he told me to try to sell them in the Sunday fair. I sold five in a week. I was able to buy myself a few things that I needed. I was 8 or 9 years old.”

Victoria had to leave school after 1st grade to help her family earn money by weaving sweaters and scarves. She has never been able to go back to school. “My parents were very poor. Some of their kids didn’t live because there wasn’t enough food to go around. Our neighbors would help us out with little purchases, some food here, a pair of shoes there. That is how I survived.”

Victoria

Victoria starts to carve owls on a gourd...

Once the carving is completed, Alejandro begins to burn the gourds with a tiny, precise flame. The three owls visible in this picture are all different shades of brown, based on the distance of the flame. He's started to burn the lines as well. 

Farther along in the burning process on the same gourd.

Later we visited Emilio’s workshop and were surprised to see the workshop empty, even though it was a business day. We learned that his workshop keeps a slightly unusual schedule: it is open Wednesday through Saturday. On the other three days, many of his seven workers volunteer in a community church program for children living in extreme poverty. Participating in this church project is not a requirement to work in his workshop, but rather is a project that many in his community are committed to.

As Emilio is committed to hiring people who otherwise would not have a job, he hires workers who do not have a trade. He hires them expressly to be able to teach them a skill with which they can support themselves. Generally his workers haven’t held a job before, and keeping a rigid, regular schedule is something new for them.

At the beginning, his workers agree that they will initially work for a month. If, after that month, they want to continue in his workshop, they sign a contract for one to three years. Not all of the people he hires are interested in continuing in his workshop after the initial trial period. During their period of employment, they gradually learn all the various skills that go into creating mates burilados. If and when they are ready to set out on their own, they give notice up to two weeks prior to their contract ending.

After they open up their own workshop, Emilio continues to give them work, passing on parts of his orders and giving them projects to complete for several years while they build their own client base. When they no longer need work from him, he gradually stops sharing it with them.

I never thought of myself as super tall in Peru until I saw photos like these. Here, Emilio and I are holding some of his enormous gourds, intricately carved with scenes which tell a story as you slowly rotate the gourd.

After he went to work full-time at age 12, he worked for an additional twelve years with just clothing and food for himself and his siblings as payment. Once he married, though, he had two families to support. Eventually he opened up his own workshop with his wife, Ana.

Ana died in 2010 after a long, expensive battle with cancer, fighting through 33 radiation treatments and three operations. It put him deeply into debt - one of her operations cost $25,000 - but he was ready to sacrifice everything so Ana could be cured. During a four year period they lived in Lima, not working, so she could be close to the hospital for chemo treatments. Their youngest, Joel, quit college to run their workshop for them.

He shared how much he has grieved and still grieves Ana’s death. His sadness was palpable. Yet he knows he has to move on. In May of this year, Emilio paid off his last loan. Joel has started studying again, and has a particularly grueling schedule as he juggles responsibilities in the workshop, church program, and college. He attends classes from 6:30-10:30 in the morning and again from 5-10:30 at night. From 12-4 he is either at the church program or at the workshop.

We stopped by Pablo’s workshop but weren’t able to see him, since he was at a now-annual event for him, giving daily demonstrations at the San Diego Zoo for a couple of months each summer.

In an earlier interview, Pablo shared that his work has opened many doors for him: “My art has made it possible for me to see many places within my country and around the world. I have been able to meet many people who appreciate and value the art that we practice as a tradition that our parents left for us. I have been able to achieve my dreams. Now I try to help unemployed and poor young people and women, by giving them work and teaching them the art of mate burilado.” 

Two of Pablo's workers, carving gourds

These four all work in quemado, or burning, of the gourds. They use a foot pedal to control the amount of gas in their flame. Note the giant bags of mates behind them, ready for a future order.

The exterior of Pablo's workshop and home.

Our last visit was to Eulogio Medina and his wife Geralmina Salomé.

Each of the Hurtado brothers worked for Eulogio at some point as they grew up. In contrast to the tiny gas flame “paintbrush” we’d seen at each of the other workshops, Eulogio showed us how he used the traditional thick, pencil-like piece of wood to burn the gourds. Such artistry each person displayed.

In addition to the mates burilados workshops, I have two memories that I associate most with Huancayo. The first is about casual conversation and tourists. Simon and I were playing in the main plaza one morning when he noticed a little kid with a battery-operated car driving around. It was love at first sight, although I’m not sure which Simon was more taken by, the little boy, Adrian, or his car! Adrian and Simon played happily together for an hour while I chatted with his parents, Gladys and Angel. 

In between giving taped interviews to several different groups of students working on some sort of interview-the-gringa project, Gladys and Angel gave me food tips for our trip. When I expressed surprise at how many interviews I was giving and the far-more-than-normal pictures being taken of Simon with random kids and their parents, Angel said, “We get tourists here but they are always very heavily guarded. Everyone wants to talk to them but no one knows how. They always are in a big group or stay close together.” That made me wonder how “guarded” I would be if I wasn’t super approachable on account of having a playful child. Simon has certainly opened up a lot of doors for us this year.

The second one relates to music. On the four-hour drive from Huancayo to the jungle, our bus driver loudly played a single cd on repeat. Every single song featured a screeching phrase which the singer would shriek out four times: OSS! OSS! OSS! OSS! Sometimes she would add a dying-away shriek at the end of the song: OSSSSSSSSS. Our napping little boy didn’t stay that way for long. “I think they play this music just to make the trip more miserable,” Sam said. As we have joked about OSS approximately a million times by now, Simon now thinks of Huancayo too. If he hears us say “Huancayo”, he starts chanting “OSS”. Somehow I find that extremely endearing instead of extremely annoying. Maybe I should send a cd of Simon chanting OSS to the bus driver for his next trips!

Next stop: the jungle.