A window into another world

Our final artisan visits were in Ventanilla, far on the northern side of Lima. Ventanilla is a relatively young district, formed in 1969 initially to relieve overpopulated areas in downtown Lima and nearby Callao. Apparently Ventanilla was attractive a couple hundred years ago to pirates off of the coast of Lima who could see that there were a number of caves and grottoes in various rock formations nearby, and they thought those would be good places to hide their treasures. The concentration of rock “windows” from their ocean viewpoint led them to name the district after “little windows” = ventanilla. Later, people were attracted by the lore accompanying the buried treasure, wondering if they could find anything. In summertime it is said to be a popular place to go to the beach, handling up to 40,000 people at once.

Many of Ventanilla’s current residents either arrived as part of land invasions (a group of homeless families squat on an undeveloped or undesirable piece of land, hoping that eventually the government will include them in city planning with services such as water, sewers, and electricity) or were moved here by the government to relieve crowding in other districts. (And, in fact, a week after we visited, I read in the news about a violent confrontation between squatters and police in yet another undeveloped place in Ventanilla - land invasions are not just a part of “old” history but very much part of the present.)

By this point in our artisan visits, Simon had clearly communicated to us that two hours on a bus flying and screeching and bumping through traffic, followed by a long-ish artisan visit, plus two more hours for the return, was unacceptable. The fact that he was also getting carsick with some frequency on the buses made us rethink our strategy. We realized that we just weren’t going to be able to visit all of the artisans we’d intended to interview due to the distances involved, and decided to hire a taxi for our last few days of visits. Gustavo, a friend of Manos Amigas, had quickly become our go-to taxi driver when we needed airport drop-offs or pick-ups. He readily agreed to transport us around the outskirts of Lima for an hourly rate. 

One of the reasons we liked Gustavo over any other driver was that he drove pretty slowly and cautiously, given crazy Peruvian traffic. Everyone else we’ve driven with tended to ride the accelerator, then slam on the brakes, over and over and over. (See Simon, carsick, above.) Add free-for-all turn “lanes” (if you don’t want to wait in the line to turn left, then just dart out in traffic and create your own lane), mix in buses, combis, and cars careening between lanes at will and you have a recipe for stressful driving. Except it all seemed to work just fine; I saw the results of just one accident during our year in Lima. But Gustavo did all of the above much more slowly and cautiously, and Simon did well as a result.

I was really thankful that we drove with Gustavo to Ventanilla, since the traffic, impossibly, was crazier than we had ever experienced. After we passed the airport, mayhem broke loose. Apparently the highway was being ripped out and redone without traffic being stopped or redirected in any way. So this meant that six lanes of traffic flowed in various directions, not always on a surface intended for driving and not always flowing in a direction you’d expect. We narrowly missed encounters with semis and dump trucks. Two brave souls were driving on their motorized bicycle cart, their cart stacked with fresh vegetables, weaving between semis, buses, and cars like ours. Drivers created shoulders where I didn’t realize there was space. Sam said, “This is Lima traffic on steroids!” It took us over two hours to maneuver through this mayhem and get to Ventanilla. How long would it have taken us on a bus? I’m not sure we ever would have made it!

While Gustavo is a cautious driver by comparison, he definitely drives Lima-style. Here we are nonchalantly cutting in front of a semi. 

We drove parallel to the ocean, passing mile after mile of giant container yards, with thousands of containers ready to be loaded onto ships. Later we passed the funky rock formations that drew the pirates’ attention. Eventually we arrived in Ventanilla, which at that point looked like many other districts, which is to say, crowded, paved, full of businesses and mototaxis. It didn’t appear impoverished at first glance. Gustavo asked around for directions to our artisans’ neighborhood, and we drove still further north, but much closer to the ocean now. We drove up, up, up the giant sand dune, seeing the ocean on one side and the increasing poverty on the other.

Our first visit was to Mario Nolasco. I’d actually interviewed Mario months before, in the Manos Amigas office, before we’d embarked on artisan visits. He’d come to the office to deliver a muestra, a product sample, and Yannina asked me to interview him before he left. Since I had my interview notes, we just needed photographs of his workshop to complete his materials. While I’m glad we visited him, in hindsight that was a long way to travel just for a few dozen photographs! Mario was proud to have us visit, though. He told us that we were just his third set of visitors in five years: Yannina had checked out his space when she was doing her due diligence before they started working together; another Manos Amigas volunteer had come to interview him 3 years ago, and now us.

I was really impressed with Mario’s workshop. He is young, just 24 years old, and has an immaculately kept workshop that he’s built by himself. Compare some pictures from 2009, with ours from 2012; the changes he’s effected since then are striking.

2009: interior of Mario's workshop

2009: sign on his door with his address & advertising that he does ceramics in the style of Ayacucho, his hometown

2009: exterior of his workshop/home

2012: interior of workshop

2012: entrance to workshop. I love the artful iron lettering of his workshop name, Moya Wasi, which is Quechua for House of Seeds. I also love that he has a tree! His place is nicer and more carefully tended to than some places in our neighborhood.

If you look closely, you can see that the arrow points to "Moya Wasi" spelled out with pebbles. This is the entrance to the workshop.

Mario with some of his products

The second oldest of eight children, Mario comes from a line of artisans. His parents couldn’t afford to buy him toys, but there was always ample clay around. Mario would create his toys out of clay and his father would later fire them in the kiln along with his items for sale.

His opportunity to come to Lima came when an artisan asked his older brother if he’d help him out at his workshop for several months. Mario’s brother wasn’t interested, but 18-year-old Mario was. He had never been to Lima before. “I’m from the jungle. I only knew places with lots of plants and animals. I had heard lots of stories of the big city, the ocean, the cars, and the buildings.”

June is wintertime in Lima, and Mario wasn’t used to the cold. “I didn’t like the weather at all and didn’t plan to stay.” But after his month of work was over with and Mario was making plans to return to Ayacucho, another artisan asked him if he would work with him until December. Mario agreed. Once December rolled around, Mario had slowly gotten accustomed to Lima. The artisan offered to pay for Mario to return to Ayacucho and spend Christmas and the New Year with his family, if Mario would agree to work with him for the next year.

By that point, Mario decided that if he was going to spend this much time in Lima, he might as well open up his own workshop too. He had friends who knew of available land in Ventanilla for his future workshop. “But it was just sand; there wasn’t an existing structure to build onto.” Mario spent 2007 working at two workshops, his friend’s and laying the groundwork for his own. He’d work for one week for his friend, followed by a week working on his own workshop.

Since his land was just sand, his weeks in his workshop were spent sinking posts in the ground and building walls with thin wood. He used woven mats for his roof. As Lima is a desert, it rarely rains, so woven reed mats were sufficient as well as typical of his neighbors’ homes as well. But they are not very strong or permanent. “I lived in the workshop too, of course. You have to guard your stuff. People would say, ‘finish your floor; how can you work with a sand floor?’ But, if your pottery piece falls off of the table and onto the sand, it doesn’t break. If you have a floor, it does. And if you are painting it and it falls into the sand, even though the sand sticks to the paint as if it were glue, you can just rinse it off and start again.”

He strengthened his workshop in 2010. Mario now has a cement floor, reinforced and painted walls, a stronger roof. His home is now in back.

This hallway runs from the back of Mario's workshop, past his living quarters, and out to the bathroom.

The door to Mario's bathroom

As we found out on our way there, the time involved in getting to and from Ventanilla is significant. I asked him how long it takes him to get to Manos Amigas. “I spend three hours in a bus to get to Manos Amigas on time. If I have to bring a big order in, I take a taxi, which would normally take less time, but right now there is construction on both roads in and out of Ventanilla, so it’s about the same amount of time.”

Due to the distances involved, he always makes sure that he has scheduled different days for merchandise to be due and transported to his clients, so that he doesn’t have to trek to more than one place in one day. On the day we visited, for example, Mario’s brother left Ventanilla at 4 a.m. to take an order to a client in Lurín, far on the southern edge of Lima. He arrived at 7 a.m. Because of the normally heavy and insane traffic which is Lima, I can only imagine how long it would have taken him to get to Lurín if he had waited to leave at a more normal hour of 8 or 10 a.m.

Mario’s main plans for the future are to keep growing his business, of course, and to obtain the title of his land. “The government has the title. I am working on getting the title, but it will take time. You have to keep asking for it.” Getting the title to the land is tricky in areas where land invasions have been frequent and the government has relocated people. Back in the office, I asked Christina about Mario’s quest for the title and whether he’d actually ever get it. She told me that it was possible, but that only the people who keep asking for it and are persistent - over years - are the ones who eventually are granted them. I hope Mario is one of the lucky ones.

Mario sticks in my mind. I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps it’s because he was the first artisan I interviewed. Perhaps it’s because he is so young. Perhaps it’s because he is trying so earnestly to be successful in a tough market, doing something (and doing it well) that so many others do too. (Product plug: Global Gifts is currently selling one of his products, a tealight for $16.) Perhaps it is because he is doing the absolute best he can in a poor area, taking such care with the appearance and upkeep of his workshop in an area where few can or do pay attention to those details.

After talking with Mario, we walked down about 12 shacks until we arrived at Jacinto’s home/workshop. 

The building next to Mario's

The view of Ventanilla and the ocean from Mario's workshop

At first I was surprised by their proximity - Ventanilla is huge! - but later I found out that Mario introduced his neighbor to Yannina, thinking that perhaps he would be a good fit for Manos Amigas.

Jacinto is from Huancayo and produces mates burilados, carved gourds. He and his wife, Vasilia, both learned to make mates from their parents. Each has been working since they were 7 or 8 years old. This was a common story we heard from the mates artisans who are over 40 years old: they all were working, some of them full time, by age 8. 

Jacinto welcomes us to his workshop

Simon, as usual, finds friends to play in the dirt and sand with

Jacinto and Vasilia have five children ranging in age from 16 to 27. They moved to Lima in 1998 for better work opportunities and lived in Villa El Salvador, on Lima’s far south side. But in 2000, the Peruvian government moved him and 10,000 others from Villa El Salvador to Ventanilla.

When they arrived, there was nothing but sand. There were no existing structures, no services. “They moved us in giant trucks. We slept in the sand with plastic and cardboard boxes for protection. Not many people stuck it out. Life was rough. There was no water, no electricity, no access to transportation, no nothing.” While they have electricity now, 12 years later, they still do not have water. “They promised us that we would have water by 2008. But administrations change and don’t always fulfill previous promises.”

I can’t imagine living so far from the heart of Lima, without any access to transportation, let alone water and shelter. I suppose that is an example of how desperate they and others were for a home. While Jacinto and his family have obviously come far from the days when they slept in sand, they still have a hard life. They must bring in water for everything: washing clothes, dishes, drinking, cooking. Sand is everywhere. As we talked, a dusting of sand blew down on my notes from crevices in the roof.

Jacinto outside of their workshop/home. They have come a long way from sleeping in sand, covered by plastic.

After we finished our interviews, we thanked everyone and piled back into Gustavo’s car, bracing ourselves for the ride back home. Slowly our scenery changed from ocean and shacks to dusty construction and planes, to frantic streets with everyone jockeying for position, back to Miraflores where parapentes were sailing above the ocean and among the high rises. Parks, filled with greenery in this desert, are pretty much everywhere in Miraflores. During the week, many of those parks are filled with niñeras, nannies, and their charges. While not all of the niñeras are from places as far away as Ventanilla, few are from Miraflores.

What a contrast. On the ride back, I kept thinking about what people like Mario, Jacinto, and the niñeras think when they trek in from their neighborhoods and arrive in the relative luxury of Miraflores and see the wealth everywhere. The luck of having green parks and playgrounds patrolled by security officers, safe places to play outside, the ocean as a backdrop for daily activities: that felt luxurious after days on buses seeing the rest of Lima. As such, Miraflores can be such a contrast to the rest of Lima, and a lot of the expats who live there wouldn’t dare set foot in many of those areas. I remember being that afraid, so I can’t fault them, but I am also thankful I got past my fear.

Once, when we were driving with Yannina through a dusty district far past Lima’s downtown, she commented, “We [in Miraflores] have the ocean. What do they have here? Dust.” So many different worlds, all in the same city.

A tale of two talleres

One of our most recent artisan visits was to two talleres (workshops) in Villa El Salvador: a mother and daughter, each with her own taller, living side by side.

Zoila, walking me to Ruth's workshop, on the left. Zoila's is the door on the right.

Zoila learned how to form and fire ceramic figurines out of necessity when her husband abandoned her with no means of supporting their three children, ages 12, 6, and 2. She didn’t have any skills for a trade and sold little treats on the beach to get by. One of her friends did ceramics and Zoila thought, if she needed to learn something to make a living, why not learn ceramics? But her friend was reluctant to teach her, so Zoila hung around and attempted to learn by quietly watching her friend. Then she went home and tried to replicate her work. It took her a full year of trial and error before she produced a piece she was satisfied with.


Her kids grew up in the workshop and each had their responsibilities. Ruth, the oldest, used her creative flair and vast imagination to design the pieces. Oscar, the middle child, painted the detail work. Clara, the youngest, helped Zoila form the clay and paint the background colors. And so they survived.

Zoila, in her one-room workshop

She has created many molds for her ceramic pieces over the years.

They moved around the southern districts of Lima frequently but finally secured their own land about 15 years ago, a small plot in Villa El Salvador. It’s not far from the beach; the ocean is on the other side of a huge sand dune and across the Panamerican Highway. Now Villa El Salvador is a large district but it started as a land invasion in 1971.

This giant, empty sand lot is the soccer field.

As her children got older, they continued helping Zoila in the business but also began following their own pursuits. Ruth, now 36, opened her own ceramics workshop seven years ago, and loves any kind of artistic expression, from painting to designing carpets of flower petals for the local Good Friday processions. 

Ruth showed us a picture of her grandfather, which was the model for the as-yet unfinished painting on the left.

Clara, now 26, works in a factory to make ends meet, in addition to helping Zoila as needed. Oscar completed a degree in commercial exportation and was the logistics side of his mom's and sister's businesses.


Three years ago, Oscar was helping Zoila finish an order when he decided to go hang out on the beach for the afternoon. “I’ll paint the eyes when I get back,” he told Zoila. Hours passed and Oscar didn’t return.


Oscar had drowned. He was 27 years old.


Several weeks passed and Yannina started wondering where Zoila’s order was. It was past due and she was surprised she hadn’t heard from her. She called and Zoila recounted what had happened. Yannina assured her that she would talk to the client and get more time to complete the order. “But I can’t finish the order. I don’t know how to do the eyes,” Zoila told her. “Oscar did that.”


Zoila eventually somehow finished the eyes and was surprised when Yannina kept calling her to inform her of new orders every two weeks or so. As this was far more frequent than usual, she thought she knew where they were coming from: “Oscar is sending us these orders.”


Zoila and Ruth live side by side. But their homes couldn’t be more different. Zoila’s is pretty dark. The only natural light that comes in is from the open areas where the walls and roof don’t meet. There are four rooms, shotgun style. The odor of animals is strong. You can hear neighbors moving around behind thin walls. 


In contrast, Ruth’s home and workshop is light-filled, thanks to a raised roof in one section, windows filling the space between the walls and raised roof. Flowerpots are in a small outdoors space, separating her workshop from living space. Incense burns incessantly. Still, the level of poverty they live in is astonishing.


Sam told me on our way back home that he thought they were better off than they are, based on their appearances every time he’s seen them at Manos Amigas. We shared that with Yannina and she nodded, saying, “The poorest people almost always dress themselves very carefully.” And yet Ruth told us that before working with Manos Amigas, they were "very, very poor." I can only imagine what that means. 


Ruth is able to work solely as an artisan because she can fall back on her husband’s salary if needed; he works as a security guard for a Catholic home. Zoila, however, cannot survive on just her artesanía alone. She has a small store at the front of her home where she displays some of her work but also sells miscellaneous gift items to friends and neighbors.

Zoila's store

Simon went crazy when he saw Winnie-the-Pooh on Zoila's store wall. She promptly took it off and gave it to Simon. He's not exactly showing his happiness in this photo but it's now hanging on his wall, which he points out to us several times each day.  

I am drawn in by Zoila and Ruth’s stories for several reasons. Obviously, Ruth’s losing her brother/Zoila losing her son hits very close to home, as my brother Jared died of leukemia four years ago. Their grief is very present and I relate to that.

I also appreciate how Zoila fell into pottery out of necessity but now Ruth is doing it out of love. Granted, Ruth works in ceramics out of necessity too, but she is so clearly an artist and loves the creative process. And her work is gorgeous and distinctive.

I really like Ruth's style.

I first noticed Ruth’s work when she brought in muestras in December. I don’t like nativities at all, period, and I don’t understand the craze to buy more and more of them (nativities being a great seller at Global Gifts and a large percentage of what Manos Amigas’ artisans produce), but I saw a nativity product sample that Ruth had produced and loved it. Not enough to buy it for ourselves, of course, but enough to be really excited about learning more about her and seeing her work. (Sam thought the nativity was beautiful, too, and therefore you will be able to buy it at Global Gifts this upcoming holiday season!)

The nativity in question

I am also a bit biased towards Ruth's work because she listened intently to Sam's presentation at the artisan training in December, the one where he suggested ways to design products to sell better, based on his experiences at Global Gifts. She told him how much she appreciated his input and that it had really helped her brainstorm new ideas. "I designed these pieces after your talk," she said, showing him several sculptures of a teacher reading to one or two students. "I wondered," Sam said. "I ordered a bunch for Global Gifts!" By the time this post is actually up, they should be in the stores.

A final reason why I am captivated by her work: Ruth's figures do not have eyes or detail work on their faces. I wonder if that is somehow an homage to her brother.


A mom trying to survive teaches her daughter the tools for her own trade. The daughter takes her skill to the next level and produces art. I wonder what Oscar would have been able to do, had he lived.