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Sad Topography
A visit to Piura, Peru.Velvet roses, yellow daisies, red and purple jacarandas.
Fragrant honeysuckle and jasmines; orange, pink and yellow climbing plants and a wide range of greens and browns in bushes and trees.
All this flora attracting colourful butterflies and birds.
Even though Lima is such a grey city we may appreciate these colours and perfumes every other day and yet we take them for granted.
I only realised it this year when I travelled to Piura. On my first visit there, we went to a peasant community called Ignacio Távara, better known as Nacho Távara, in the District of La Matanza.
After nearly 2 hours driving on a terrible highway we took a side track, which only exists in the memory of those who use it and we drove for two and a half hours along the most dismal landscape I ever saw in my life.
In 1984, in the aftermath of El Niño, hundreds of bushes and small trees were almost instantaneously germinated by heavy rains. Alas! once this phenomenon was over, the relentless desert climate put a quick end to this outburst of life, and now almost 80 square kilometres are completely covered by ghostly silvery grey bushes or trees and white or beige sand, only spotted with black goat manure.
The sky is not blue there, it's almost the same colour as the sand, and it is very hot. The branches of these dead trees seem to throw themselves aggressively against you. Wherever you look, your eyes only meet their thin trunks, like iron bars of a jail. This thorny flora has fostered a new type of life: tiny lizards, small silvery grey birds with sad cries - and almost nothing else...
The only colourful thing in the area are the dresses worn by girls, because most women wear only black mourning clothes. And since it is a local custom to mourn the dead for three years, that time has hardly elapsed before somebody else dies of starvation or lack of primary health care. Almost all the women there are illiterate, very shy and quiet. Few children of the scattered hamlets can go to school, because they are in charged of bringing water from the nearest spring: three hours on horse back from their homes. So, early in the morning small girls and boys ride their donkeys and, carrying huge clay containers, cross this haunted forests, two or four times a day.
My soul was oppressed by the dead thorns of this environment and I still have nightmares on it. It overwhelmed me so much that I felt the need to learn more about it, and consulting a map I discovered the names of most of the places in the area, please listen to them, I am afraid their English equivalents will not necessarily reflect their meaning:
Hacienda El Muerto The Dead Man's Estate Mano Muerta Dead Hand Tierras Duras Hard Earth Cerro Mata Fuego Killed by Fire Hill Infiernillo Small Hell Solumbre Shadows (?) Calabozo Dungeon Macho Muerto Killed Male Señal Milagro Miraculous Sign I then thought that this nightmarish landscape had existed for so long that it could have only meant sorrow to its inhabitants who would have therefore given it these names.
But I was wrong, deadly environment has not been the sole responsible for sorrow and suffering here.
Across the main highway - and half an hour's drive away - there runs a stream which waters a former huge cotton-growing hacienda. There you can see plenty of what we take for granted: abundant flora with sparkling yellow, orange, white, pink and all sorts of green nuances. Palm-trees dressed with fragrant climbing plants. Red cardinal birds and all sorts of butterflies against a beautifully blue sky.
And let us now hear the names you find in this area:
La Esperanza Hope Buenos Aires Good Airs Maravilla Marvel Puerta de Flores Door of Flowers El Alba Dawn Hacienda Algodonal Cotton Growing Hacienda Colores Colours Yéncala Yencala Later, a sociologist with whom I shared my impressions, told me that the desert area of La Matanza had also belonged to the huge hacienda but had been given a different use.
It was the area reserved for punishing black slaves. The story of Matalaché, by López Albújar, was taken from such a hell. There, slaves suffered despicable tortures and it was them and their kind who gave the current names to these atrocious milestones:
Macho Muerto was probably the place where black men were castrated. Infiernillo and Calabozo depict tortures and jails, while Señal Milagro symbolises some despaired hope. Mano Muerta was where slaves' hands were cut if they did not comply with their duties. Cerro Mata Fuego was a hill where a palenque or small hamlet of escaped slaves had settled. Once discovered and to be an example for their peers, the whole hill was burnt up. It is said that the black slaves of the area communicated this tragedy from one hacienda to another using the millenary drums and rebelled. This rebellion was put off by the army in such a bloody way that the whole province became La Matanza: the slaughter, the carnage.
Now Solumbre is not a Spanish word to be found in dictionaries but you'll agree with me that it has a very poetical sound and could mean shadows covering the sun, as umbrosus in Latin means shadow.
You are probably wondering how can people still live there - I wonder it myself. Of course it is their land: it is all they have, and seldom do they leave its boundaries.
"Where else could we go?" is their sad and scant reply.
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