National Geographic Slovenia January 2009 The town of Maras is about 50 kilometres from Cuszo, the most important town in the Andes. It seems that Maras remained on the map largely thanks to its salt pans. Salinas de Maras. They are located about one hour’s walk from the town. On a steep hill, where the plateau starts to slope down to the Sacred Valley, but still at an elevation of over 3200 meters, there is a modest spring that has fundamentally changed the cultural landscape. Namely, the stream is saturated with sodium chloride – salt – which is a precious thing in the area, infinitely far away from the sea. Local people had been extracting salt from the low hills as early as in the pre-Inca era, while 500 years ago, the Spanish channelled the stream into pools, dotting the steep slope. The number of pools has been on the increase for the last 25 years. and stretches over a plateau, rising some 3300 meters high, above the Sacred Valley of the Incas. |
Salinas de Maras
Poor But with Salt to the Top of the Roof
Text Meta Krese
Photographs Arne Hodalič
»Salinas de Maras existed already in the pre-Inca era. First, it was the Spanish who harvested salt and then the Incas took over their territory,« confidently explains Mariano Atapaucar Argandoña. After looking at him with a hint of doubt about his timeline that was no way near the universally accepted historical rules, he assures me: »My ancestors are the Incas, my granddad is an Inca nobleman and he was among the founders of Maras, so I know that this is how it was.«
A tired house of the Argandoña family is part of a dusty and quiet Maras street.
We are sitting in a dark room. The low sooty walls are wrapped in soft light of the glowing pieces of wood, burning down in the stone stove, tullpa. Under our feet are wriggling guinea pigs that will end up in the pot on the first occasion. A fat cat is sitting on the table and it wouldn‘t even wink at the sight of confused roommates. It knows exactly its boundaries and who its enemies are: it’s the annoying fat rats that wander the backyard leisurely even in broad daylight. I don’t want to know where they are at night, an uneasy thought flashes through my mind. A dog is lying on the doorstep of the house, which is actually nothing more than a room. A narrow door opens the look at the family animals in the courtyard. A bull is quietly chewing it foodstuffs in the hot sun, a donkey is resting in the shade of a provisional roof.
In her hands, Mrs. Emelia Argandoña Torres is holding a giant jar of chicha, an alcoholic fermented drink, made from corn sprouts, that she is tirelessly pouring into our glasses which seem to be empty all the time. The conversation is equally animated.
»Just a little bit more?« she offers for at least the seventh time.
»A bit later,« I promise, already knowing that I will flatly break the promise. My stomach is far from being so tired that it could stand at ease all the garbage that I would swallow together with the beverage, similar to our beer. Unfortunately, I spotted that the water, used to dilute the chicha, was taken from muddy troughs which the rats definitely use for thorough bathing. I hold tight my bottled water. For this reason, I am probably not the right companion for the drinking conversation and I prefer keeping the arguments, which I found cogent enough, to myself. OK, I say to myself, the gentleman is sixty-five and – being very generous with the age – it could be supposed that 150 years ago, his granddad was in the prime of life, when he was capable of establishing the town. But there is still a gap of a few centuries to the recorded establishment of the town. But there is really no real reason to spoil the atmosphere with my European logic. After all, this is not the purpose of my visit.
»My granddad also told me that the existence of the town had been ensured because we became twin towns with the neighbouring Chinchera: they promised us water and we promised them potatoes,« Mariano Argandoña continues.
The town of Maras is about 50 kilometres from Cuszo, the most important town in the Andes, and stretches over a plateau, rising some 3300 meters high, above the Sacred Valley of the Incas. A staggering elevation but only for the visitors: the snow capped peaks, such as Veronica and Chikon, appear so close in a clear night that you could touch them with your hand but they are another 2000 meters or more higher. The town is older than Mr. Argandoña is trying to convince us. Many pieces of earth ware that still crop up in the fields near Maras at plowing time speak of – this time for real – the pre-Inca civilization – chanapata. Pedro Ortiz de Orue, one of the earliest Spanish conquistadors of today’s Peru, became the first encomendero, when he married the Inca princess Maria Tupac Usca herself. Maras was a sanctuary also for the Inca nobility, who had to flee their palaces in Cuzco. The town, nowadays smelling of urine that has been absorbed by the street dust for centuries, used to bear a respectful name Villa de San Francisco de Asís de Maras. Today, one has a feeling that the houses, made of sun-dried mud bricks, would have fallen apart ages ago if they hadn't been supported by stone portals, solid witnesses of colonial times. The town was considered modern in the past while today it seems that everything with a taste of development – in a good and bad sense of the word – stopped somewhere far away behind the cordilleras.
I change the topic: »What does your family make for a living?«
»We have land and 23 pools,« he says proudly.
It seems that Maras remained on the map largely thanks to its salt pans. Salinas de Maras. They are located about one hour’s walk from the town. On a steep hill, where the plateau starts to slope down to the Sacred Valley, but still at an elevation of over 3200 meters, there is a modest spring that has fundamentally changed the cultural landscape. Namely, the stream is saturated with sodium chloride – salt – which is a precious thing in the area, infinitely far away from the sea. Local people had been extracting salt from the low hills as early as in the pre-Inca era, while 500 years ago, the Spanish channelled the stream into pools, dotting the steep slope. The number of pools has been on the increase for the last 25 years.
Salt gatherers are organized as a cooperative society. Some 3600 pools are in the hands of between 700 and 800 families who collect salt from April to October, sometimes even November. Their production totals between 160 and 200 tons annually. They mainly include the local farmers with little land and some livestock.
According to warehouseman Patricio Avispe, the largest owner has 36 pools, while the majority owns between 4 and 7. Families either buy or sell pools through the cooperative society and they cost between 100 and 200 solos (approximately 25 to 50 euros). Patricio Avispe, with arguably the best overview of the situation in the salt pans, has been doing his job for over 6 years but is forced from time to time to hand it over to other members of the cooperative society because the regular pay is a welcome addition to the family budget. The pool yields between 20 to 30 bags of salt per year, which sounds a lot. However, the picture completely changes in the moment when Maximiliana Hordar de Ortis reveals how much money she and her partner Benilio get for one bag of salt.
»The prime quality salt needs to be snow white; for 55 kilograms, the society pays us 8 solos (2 euros). We are not allowed to sell to anybody else.«
The prices for second quality salt, slightly reddish in color, where traces of muddy bottom of the pool can be seen, is already halved. For the poorest quality salt, dirty red in color, they are paid 3 solos, which is not even one euro.
Now I begin to understand their heated discussion when Maximiliana stopped Benilio while sorting the salt as he was trying by all means to make the prime quality pile of salt bigger by mixing it with the inferior salt. With prices this low, it is probably difficult indeed to stay away from little cheating.
However, the conversation does not end with financial issues.
»Before my husband left me for a younger woman, our family had had more pools because we lived in Maras. Together with Benilio, who works as a joiner in Cuzco, we have only five pools left. My children have jobs, which makes things a little easier.«
We are sitting next to their pool on a narrow slope, covered with a layer of a couple of inches of salt, which they never touch because otherwise, water would drain the mud into the backwater. Along the hill below, a geometrically strictly arranged landscape is sloping down to the valley. The whiteness is dazzling. But in spite of that or because of that we are having a great time. We treat ourselves to an interestingly mixed snack: Maximiliana spreads some fava beans and corn on a piece of cloth, and we contribute some fruit. Our hosts are more than happy to replace the omnipresent chicha with our water.
»This is how it goes,« begins Maximiliana. Her words in the quechua language are softly blowing in the air. This way and only this way is how author José María Arguedas heard the 'music, songs and sweet talking of Indian maids and concertados’, as written in his book Deep Rivers (Globoke reke, translated by Ferdinand Miklavc, 2002), I ponder. This is the melody that makes a poet or a writer out of you…
Maximiliana’s story is long, our companion's translation is short. Nobody cares.
Long, long time ago, St. Francis paid a visit to this place. Because he had been walking a lot, he became thirsty. Once, when people invited him for a drink, he spilled a few drops of water on the hill where we are standing today. And a miracle happened… Out of the ground rose a salty creek…
»This is only one of the versions, though, and then there is a story from the Inca times. But I can’t remember this one,« she sincerely apologizes. Work in four pools is waiting.
They let water into the pool once a month, adding it carefully afterwards. Once the pool has been prepared for harvest, it is time for work. Gruelling work, paid with their own health. Mari Gudiel Rodrigues, who works at the Maras clinic’s X-ray facility, says that a large proportion of salt gatherers suffers from tuberculosis; however, it is also true that they are in poor health due to malnutrition and all sorts of parasites. Goiter used to be highly prevalent in this area because of the absence of iodine in the Maras salt. Today, iodine is added already in the warehouse.
Beaten by merciless mountain sun, family members usually stand barefoot in the ice-cold water that keeps the night temperatures also during the day. Each move is planned, haste can be paid with poor quality harvest. They walk on the thick crust – covering the water surface in the shallow pool – with a solid, yet gentle enough stride until the crust starts crumbling away and mixing with water. Using two small boards, they carefully push the broken substance to a pile, moving it later to a very limited space near the pool.
They sort the gathered salt into three classes. Along steep winding paths among the pools, they carry it in 55-kg bags to the warehouses above the salt pans. Women do all the jobs in the pool equally; the only help they need is for transporting the bags to the warehouse. Trying to save each solo that she would have to pay the bearers, Agueoh Orog, 30, has found another way around and loads herself with bags of ‘only’ 20 kilos. She runs with them along the paths among the pools up to the warehouse on top of the salt pans. Paths are steep and looking slippery at first sight, which makes the prohibition of walking among the pools that applies to tourists redundant anyway. The paths themselves scare inexperienced salt pan hikers away. However, they can also be an inspiration: when an Italian tourist was balancing herself on the upper edge of the salt pans, asking her husband about the consequences of falling into the pool, he said, unmoved and visibly tired of her panicking: »They would make prosciutto from of you!«
Many families would not come even close to completing the job without the help of their children. And so it happens that children take a few-year sabbatical from schooling as they are simply not able to do everything.
»They start school at the age of 5 and are supposed to finish it by the age of 10; many leave it at the age of 12 but some only when they are 15 or 17 due to their temporary work in salt pans,« explains Geny Rozas, a teacher at the Maras primary school.
This is a bilingual school. Entering the school, more than half of the kids speak no Spanish or Catalan; however since a few years ago, all teachers have spoken fluent quechua, gradually introducing the children into the second language.
»What about those who can only speak Catalan – do they learn quechua then?« I ask.
Geny doesn’t understand the question and looks at me in surprise. While I am explaining at length and making things even more complicated, not knowing where I have made a mess, her face brightens. »Every single student here speaks quechua.«
These days, the main topic of the mandatory morning meeting is waste.
»Waste is a big problem in Peru and we are trying to make children aware of the importance of separated collection and recycling.«
Eight teachers control 170 children. It is not easy for them especially because most children have no textbooks.
»A schoolbook costs 30 solos. Most parents cannot even dream about buying them. It makes us copy the pages that they need. Actually, we were copying them because the machine has broken down,« she says sadly.
By the way: at least once, my photographer and I were of some use as we convinced the Slovenian KD Group company to buy them a new photocopier.
It is afternoon. Back to Maras.
»You are not going to the salt pans today?«
»Not these days, my dear lady. We are all celebrating the Assumption of Mary,« answers Bernandino Tupayach.
Quite an honest answer had the feast not been already behind us and even then the work in the salt pans did not come to a complete standstill. It is true, however, that the few workers in the salt pans were under 15 and all others were participating in the festival in Tiobamba; on the plateau, about an hour’s walk from the salt pans, in the middle of nowhere, stands a church that opens its doors once a year to pay respect to the memory of Virgin Mary. Behind the church wall, for a period of five days – day in day out – there is a lot of trading, drinking, eating and the festival is accompanied by cooking, singing and dancing competitions, animals assessments, bullfighting and similar… Bullfighting. Only hearing what they had been talking about made me sigh, turn away and want to go away from the scene. »No, no, no,« a passerby was convincing me. »There is nothing cruel here, you've got to see this. The fight is between two bulls.« With a great deal of doubt that I would be able stand the sight of cruel games, I joined the crowd of children, breastfeeding mothers, cheerful adults, enthusiastic old people and even dogs, who formed the arena with their bodies, limiting the space for the fighting bulls. For most bulls that were supposed to fight each other, such words are actually an overstatement. Very few of them showed any fighting spirit and to the regret of their owners (the prize for the strongest bull was sizeable), they only looked at each other, probably touched their horns gently and went to their respective corners. But it happened that two bulls stared angrily at each other’s eyes, making dull roaring and throwing tons of dust in the air with their hooves, followed by a dash at each other. It caused all the spectators to stampede as the bulls did not even think about respecting the boundary, set by us. It was pure luck that no-one was seriously injured. I watched in horror when a probably five-year old girl tripped and remained lying on the ground just in front of the speeding mad bulls, who stepped over her by sheer coincidence. And so the games finished with minor bruises only.
Some time, but not a lot, is spared even for the religious part of the celebration. A heavy statue of Virgin Mary is carried around the church so that she can have a close look at people’s suffering. After that, she is put back to a safe place near the altar. Well, at least Euris Guevara told me so. In she should know. Besides making stews at this and similar festivals, she manages 5 pools and sells chicha and coffins at her Maras home.
My memories of the Tiobamba festival were composed of different pictures. During the day, the atmosphere was pleasant. Children were running around the meadows, where the sun-dried grass was unable to hold the fine dust, which their bare feet were throwing into the air. Behind them, they were dragging kites, which rarely took off. There was no wind, the kites were negligently made and ugly, to be honest, but the children’s joy was sweet. Adults treated themselves to stews, sat in a circle and talked and talked… During this time, they walked individually or in groups towards the church, bought a candle or two, said a prayer or two at the altar and went back to their friends. From time to time, some of them went to the stands. There was no rush in the air. For hours and hours, some people would observe terracotta figurines that belong to every roof in order to bring the family luck, but they all looked the same to me.
When the day changed to night, the bright moments were covered with morbid darkness. Everybody tall enough to see over the table was drunk. Boys, girls, men and women. The old men, whose legs did not support them any more, were dragged by younger drinking fellows to the side of the table. There, they supported them until they urinated onto the edge of the tent and usually also over the benches, and put them back to their place. Women, many of them with babies on their backs, simply squatted down like a broody hens, wherever they were, and shamelessly relieved themselves. The joy of the fair trade was now seen only in the carefully picked up souvenirs that the children were holding in their hands. But terracotta figurines, plastic umbrellas and broken bikes only hindered their efforts to push their drunk mums from the drinks tents.
The beer, flowing like water, cost 6 solos, which is a euro and a half.
»Where do they get so much money,« I wondered.
»On the last working day, the cooperative society divided the profit. Each family received about 100 solos. An most of them will spend the money here,« said Euris Guevara.
»Half of the money that we get from tourists who buy tickets to see the salt pans, goes to Lima,« she continues. »Out of the other half, 15 per cent is for the functioning of the cooperative society and the rest is divided three times a year. On each occasion, we get about 80 to 100 solos, depending on how much prime quality salt we gather. Sometimes, we all get the same.«
The Tupayacha family has 7 pools, which makes me think – rather naughtily – that Mr. Bernandino got just enough money to be curing his hangover at the expense of the Assumption of Mary. Well, this is really not my business.
»All our children are in Cuszo,« his wife begins explaining spontaneously. »Here, in Maras, there are no job opportunities. And they are not very successful there, too. I suggested the eldest daughter finding a tourist who would take her out of the country. In the USA or Europe she will easily find a job, which will make all our lives easier.«
Thinking about where these girls often end up, I feel a lump in my throat. In Salinas de Maras, salt gatherers and tourists stay in their own respective worlds. Tourists walk cautiously along the narrow path on the edge of the salt pans, observing the gatherers from the distance. They rarely look towards them. While the mutual disinterest did not bother me at the beginning, it was shocking at the end. Mrs. Tupayacha’s words made me understand how they are still not ready for everything that foreigners can bring them.
Poor But with Salt to the Top of the Roof
Text Meta Krese
Photographs Arne Hodalič
»Salinas de Maras existed already in the pre-Inca era. First, it was the Spanish who harvested salt and then the Incas took over their territory,« confidently explains Mariano Atapaucar Argandoña. After looking at him with a hint of doubt about his timeline that was no way near the universally accepted historical rules, he assures me: »My ancestors are the Incas, my granddad is an Inca nobleman and he was among the founders of Maras, so I know that this is how it was.«
A tired house of the Argandoña family is part of a dusty and quiet Maras street.
We are sitting in a dark room. The low sooty walls are wrapped in soft light of the glowing pieces of wood, burning down in the stone stove, tullpa. Under our feet are wriggling guinea pigs that will end up in the pot on the first occasion. A fat cat is sitting on the table and it wouldn‘t even wink at the sight of confused roommates. It knows exactly its boundaries and who its enemies are: it’s the annoying fat rats that wander the backyard leisurely even in broad daylight. I don’t want to know where they are at night, an uneasy thought flashes through my mind. A dog is lying on the doorstep of the house, which is actually nothing more than a room. A narrow door opens the look at the family animals in the courtyard. A bull is quietly chewing it foodstuffs in the hot sun, a donkey is resting in the shade of a provisional roof.
In her hands, Mrs. Emelia Argandoña Torres is holding a giant jar of chicha, an alcoholic fermented drink, made from corn sprouts, that she is tirelessly pouring into our glasses which seem to be empty all the time. The conversation is equally animated.
»Just a little bit more?« she offers for at least the seventh time.
»A bit later,« I promise, already knowing that I will flatly break the promise. My stomach is far from being so tired that it could stand at ease all the garbage that I would swallow together with the beverage, similar to our beer. Unfortunately, I spotted that the water, used to dilute the chicha, was taken from muddy troughs which the rats definitely use for thorough bathing. I hold tight my bottled water. For this reason, I am probably not the right companion for the drinking conversation and I prefer keeping the arguments, which I found cogent enough, to myself. OK, I say to myself, the gentleman is sixty-five and – being very generous with the age – it could be supposed that 150 years ago, his granddad was in the prime of life, when he was capable of establishing the town. But there is still a gap of a few centuries to the recorded establishment of the town. But there is really no real reason to spoil the atmosphere with my European logic. After all, this is not the purpose of my visit.
»My granddad also told me that the existence of the town had been ensured because we became twin towns with the neighbouring Chinchera: they promised us water and we promised them potatoes,« Mariano Argandoña continues.
The town of Maras is about 50 kilometres from Cuszo, the most important town in the Andes, and stretches over a plateau, rising some 3300 meters high, above the Sacred Valley of the Incas. A staggering elevation but only for the visitors: the snow capped peaks, such as Veronica and Chikon, appear so close in a clear night that you could touch them with your hand but they are another 2000 meters or more higher. The town is older than Mr. Argandoña is trying to convince us. Many pieces of earth ware that still crop up in the fields near Maras at plowing time speak of – this time for real – the pre-Inca civilization – chanapata. Pedro Ortiz de Orue, one of the earliest Spanish conquistadors of today’s Peru, became the first encomendero, when he married the Inca princess Maria Tupac Usca herself. Maras was a sanctuary also for the Inca nobility, who had to flee their palaces in Cuzco. The town, nowadays smelling of urine that has been absorbed by the street dust for centuries, used to bear a respectful name Villa de San Francisco de Asís de Maras. Today, one has a feeling that the houses, made of sun-dried mud bricks, would have fallen apart ages ago if they hadn't been supported by stone portals, solid witnesses of colonial times. The town was considered modern in the past while today it seems that everything with a taste of development – in a good and bad sense of the word – stopped somewhere far away behind the cordilleras.
I change the topic: »What does your family make for a living?«
»We have land and 23 pools,« he says proudly.
It seems that Maras remained on the map largely thanks to its salt pans. Salinas de Maras. They are located about one hour’s walk from the town. On a steep hill, where the plateau starts to slope down to the Sacred Valley, but still at an elevation of over 3200 meters, there is a modest spring that has fundamentally changed the cultural landscape. Namely, the stream is saturated with sodium chloride – salt – which is a precious thing in the area, infinitely far away from the sea. Local people had been extracting salt from the low hills as early as in the pre-Inca era, while 500 years ago, the Spanish channelled the stream into pools, dotting the steep slope. The number of pools has been on the increase for the last 25 years.
Salt gatherers are organized as a cooperative society. Some 3600 pools are in the hands of between 700 and 800 families who collect salt from April to October, sometimes even November. Their production totals between 160 and 200 tons annually. They mainly include the local farmers with little land and some livestock.
According to warehouseman Patricio Avispe, the largest owner has 36 pools, while the majority owns between 4 and 7. Families either buy or sell pools through the cooperative society and they cost between 100 and 200 solos (approximately 25 to 50 euros). Patricio Avispe, with arguably the best overview of the situation in the salt pans, has been doing his job for over 6 years but is forced from time to time to hand it over to other members of the cooperative society because the regular pay is a welcome addition to the family budget. The pool yields between 20 to 30 bags of salt per year, which sounds a lot. However, the picture completely changes in the moment when Maximiliana Hordar de Ortis reveals how much money she and her partner Benilio get for one bag of salt.
»The prime quality salt needs to be snow white; for 55 kilograms, the society pays us 8 solos (2 euros). We are not allowed to sell to anybody else.«
The prices for second quality salt, slightly reddish in color, where traces of muddy bottom of the pool can be seen, is already halved. For the poorest quality salt, dirty red in color, they are paid 3 solos, which is not even one euro.
Now I begin to understand their heated discussion when Maximiliana stopped Benilio while sorting the salt as he was trying by all means to make the prime quality pile of salt bigger by mixing it with the inferior salt. With prices this low, it is probably difficult indeed to stay away from little cheating.
However, the conversation does not end with financial issues.
»Before my husband left me for a younger woman, our family had had more pools because we lived in Maras. Together with Benilio, who works as a joiner in Cuzco, we have only five pools left. My children have jobs, which makes things a little easier.«
We are sitting next to their pool on a narrow slope, covered with a layer of a couple of inches of salt, which they never touch because otherwise, water would drain the mud into the backwater. Along the hill below, a geometrically strictly arranged landscape is sloping down to the valley. The whiteness is dazzling. But in spite of that or because of that we are having a great time. We treat ourselves to an interestingly mixed snack: Maximiliana spreads some fava beans and corn on a piece of cloth, and we contribute some fruit. Our hosts are more than happy to replace the omnipresent chicha with our water.
»This is how it goes,« begins Maximiliana. Her words in the quechua language are softly blowing in the air. This way and only this way is how author José María Arguedas heard the 'music, songs and sweet talking of Indian maids and concertados’, as written in his book Deep Rivers (Globoke reke, translated by Ferdinand Miklavc, 2002), I ponder. This is the melody that makes a poet or a writer out of you…
Maximiliana’s story is long, our companion's translation is short. Nobody cares.
Long, long time ago, St. Francis paid a visit to this place. Because he had been walking a lot, he became thirsty. Once, when people invited him for a drink, he spilled a few drops of water on the hill where we are standing today. And a miracle happened… Out of the ground rose a salty creek…
»This is only one of the versions, though, and then there is a story from the Inca times. But I can’t remember this one,« she sincerely apologizes. Work in four pools is waiting.
They let water into the pool once a month, adding it carefully afterwards. Once the pool has been prepared for harvest, it is time for work. Gruelling work, paid with their own health. Mari Gudiel Rodrigues, who works at the Maras clinic’s X-ray facility, says that a large proportion of salt gatherers suffers from tuberculosis; however, it is also true that they are in poor health due to malnutrition and all sorts of parasites. Goiter used to be highly prevalent in this area because of the absence of iodine in the Maras salt. Today, iodine is added already in the warehouse.
Beaten by merciless mountain sun, family members usually stand barefoot in the ice-cold water that keeps the night temperatures also during the day. Each move is planned, haste can be paid with poor quality harvest. They walk on the thick crust – covering the water surface in the shallow pool – with a solid, yet gentle enough stride until the crust starts crumbling away and mixing with water. Using two small boards, they carefully push the broken substance to a pile, moving it later to a very limited space near the pool.
They sort the gathered salt into three classes. Along steep winding paths among the pools, they carry it in 55-kg bags to the warehouses above the salt pans. Women do all the jobs in the pool equally; the only help they need is for transporting the bags to the warehouse. Trying to save each solo that she would have to pay the bearers, Agueoh Orog, 30, has found another way around and loads herself with bags of ‘only’ 20 kilos. She runs with them along the paths among the pools up to the warehouse on top of the salt pans. Paths are steep and looking slippery at first sight, which makes the prohibition of walking among the pools that applies to tourists redundant anyway. The paths themselves scare inexperienced salt pan hikers away. However, they can also be an inspiration: when an Italian tourist was balancing herself on the upper edge of the salt pans, asking her husband about the consequences of falling into the pool, he said, unmoved and visibly tired of her panicking: »They would make prosciutto from of you!«
Many families would not come even close to completing the job without the help of their children. And so it happens that children take a few-year sabbatical from schooling as they are simply not able to do everything.
»They start school at the age of 5 and are supposed to finish it by the age of 10; many leave it at the age of 12 but some only when they are 15 or 17 due to their temporary work in salt pans,« explains Geny Rozas, a teacher at the Maras primary school.
This is a bilingual school. Entering the school, more than half of the kids speak no Spanish or Catalan; however since a few years ago, all teachers have spoken fluent quechua, gradually introducing the children into the second language.
»What about those who can only speak Catalan – do they learn quechua then?« I ask.
Geny doesn’t understand the question and looks at me in surprise. While I am explaining at length and making things even more complicated, not knowing where I have made a mess, her face brightens. »Every single student here speaks quechua.«
These days, the main topic of the mandatory morning meeting is waste.
»Waste is a big problem in Peru and we are trying to make children aware of the importance of separated collection and recycling.«
Eight teachers control 170 children. It is not easy for them especially because most children have no textbooks.
»A schoolbook costs 30 solos. Most parents cannot even dream about buying them. It makes us copy the pages that they need. Actually, we were copying them because the machine has broken down,« she says sadly.
By the way: at least once, my photographer and I were of some use as we convinced the Slovenian KD Group company to buy them a new photocopier.
It is afternoon. Back to Maras.
»You are not going to the salt pans today?«
»Not these days, my dear lady. We are all celebrating the Assumption of Mary,« answers Bernandino Tupayach.
Quite an honest answer had the feast not been already behind us and even then the work in the salt pans did not come to a complete standstill. It is true, however, that the few workers in the salt pans were under 15 and all others were participating in the festival in Tiobamba; on the plateau, about an hour’s walk from the salt pans, in the middle of nowhere, stands a church that opens its doors once a year to pay respect to the memory of Virgin Mary. Behind the church wall, for a period of five days – day in day out – there is a lot of trading, drinking, eating and the festival is accompanied by cooking, singing and dancing competitions, animals assessments, bullfighting and similar… Bullfighting. Only hearing what they had been talking about made me sigh, turn away and want to go away from the scene. »No, no, no,« a passerby was convincing me. »There is nothing cruel here, you've got to see this. The fight is between two bulls.« With a great deal of doubt that I would be able stand the sight of cruel games, I joined the crowd of children, breastfeeding mothers, cheerful adults, enthusiastic old people and even dogs, who formed the arena with their bodies, limiting the space for the fighting bulls. For most bulls that were supposed to fight each other, such words are actually an overstatement. Very few of them showed any fighting spirit and to the regret of their owners (the prize for the strongest bull was sizeable), they only looked at each other, probably touched their horns gently and went to their respective corners. But it happened that two bulls stared angrily at each other’s eyes, making dull roaring and throwing tons of dust in the air with their hooves, followed by a dash at each other. It caused all the spectators to stampede as the bulls did not even think about respecting the boundary, set by us. It was pure luck that no-one was seriously injured. I watched in horror when a probably five-year old girl tripped and remained lying on the ground just in front of the speeding mad bulls, who stepped over her by sheer coincidence. And so the games finished with minor bruises only.
Some time, but not a lot, is spared even for the religious part of the celebration. A heavy statue of Virgin Mary is carried around the church so that she can have a close look at people’s suffering. After that, she is put back to a safe place near the altar. Well, at least Euris Guevara told me so. In she should know. Besides making stews at this and similar festivals, she manages 5 pools and sells chicha and coffins at her Maras home.
My memories of the Tiobamba festival were composed of different pictures. During the day, the atmosphere was pleasant. Children were running around the meadows, where the sun-dried grass was unable to hold the fine dust, which their bare feet were throwing into the air. Behind them, they were dragging kites, which rarely took off. There was no wind, the kites were negligently made and ugly, to be honest, but the children’s joy was sweet. Adults treated themselves to stews, sat in a circle and talked and talked… During this time, they walked individually or in groups towards the church, bought a candle or two, said a prayer or two at the altar and went back to their friends. From time to time, some of them went to the stands. There was no rush in the air. For hours and hours, some people would observe terracotta figurines that belong to every roof in order to bring the family luck, but they all looked the same to me.
When the day changed to night, the bright moments were covered with morbid darkness. Everybody tall enough to see over the table was drunk. Boys, girls, men and women. The old men, whose legs did not support them any more, were dragged by younger drinking fellows to the side of the table. There, they supported them until they urinated onto the edge of the tent and usually also over the benches, and put them back to their place. Women, many of them with babies on their backs, simply squatted down like a broody hens, wherever they were, and shamelessly relieved themselves. The joy of the fair trade was now seen only in the carefully picked up souvenirs that the children were holding in their hands. But terracotta figurines, plastic umbrellas and broken bikes only hindered their efforts to push their drunk mums from the drinks tents.
The beer, flowing like water, cost 6 solos, which is a euro and a half.
»Where do they get so much money,« I wondered.
»On the last working day, the cooperative society divided the profit. Each family received about 100 solos. An most of them will spend the money here,« said Euris Guevara.
»Half of the money that we get from tourists who buy tickets to see the salt pans, goes to Lima,« she continues. »Out of the other half, 15 per cent is for the functioning of the cooperative society and the rest is divided three times a year. On each occasion, we get about 80 to 100 solos, depending on how much prime quality salt we gather. Sometimes, we all get the same.«
The Tupayacha family has 7 pools, which makes me think – rather naughtily – that Mr. Bernandino got just enough money to be curing his hangover at the expense of the Assumption of Mary. Well, this is really not my business.
»All our children are in Cuszo,« his wife begins explaining spontaneously. »Here, in Maras, there are no job opportunities. And they are not very successful there, too. I suggested the eldest daughter finding a tourist who would take her out of the country. In the USA or Europe she will easily find a job, which will make all our lives easier.«
Thinking about where these girls often end up, I feel a lump in my throat. In Salinas de Maras, salt gatherers and tourists stay in their own respective worlds. Tourists walk cautiously along the narrow path on the edge of the salt pans, observing the gatherers from the distance. They rarely look towards them. While the mutual disinterest did not bother me at the beginning, it was shocking at the end. Mrs. Tupayacha’s words made me understand how they are still not ready for everything that foreigners can bring them.
(c) text Meta Krese, photographs Arne Hodalič