Round 3: La Gringa (Part 3 of 3)

[This is a continuation of Cavia porcellus vs Ursa pacificus and Round 2: Dave vs Duck. Read those first]

There are no pictures available for this post. And that's appropriate because you can't take pictures of the stuff I'm going to write about. The theme is darkness: the darkness of the pampa at night, the darkness of the interior of my gut, and the darkness of the place where La Gringa takes you..... DP, 30 July 2014.

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3 August 2014.....After Harold, Susana, and I had done a solid round on the feast, we took a break and waited for Harold's friends and in-laws to stop by. Carlos and Lorenzo dropped in not too long after we had finished. As is customary, Susana prepared them heaping plates of delicious duck to eat while we conversed.

Carlos and Lorenzo are motorcycle mechanics who were preparing to take a trip up into the Callejon de Huaylas the next day. They'd head up past Yaután to Huaraz, then continue down the alley - or callejon - between the Cordilleras Negra and Blanca, towards Caraz, Carhuaz, and Yungay. We discussed my fantasy of restoring a Harley-Davidson Panhead (ca. '48-65) or just finding a vintage Honda 250cc here in Casma. While you see those old Hondas around, it turns out they've all been retrofitted with new Chinese-designed engines manufactured in India. Those are the only spare parts available.

Later, Susana's mom and dad came over for some duck and drinks. Altogether we ate and drank some wine Harold had been saving, lots of Pepsi, a few beers, and anisadoI had brought over. Anisado is anisette; I brought it and explained that my father said his parents always had anisette for guests, along with the southern Italian specialty strega ('the witch'), which is manufactured in his natal Benevento.

Susana's parents commented on how, when they were younger, they never missed a party. Living in the chacra (Quechua for 'agricultural field,' but locally slang for the countryside), parties were frequent, but far apart. Every little village in the irrigated river valley will have an occasional party with loud music, food, and often lots of beer. Susana's parents explained that they never drank much, but boy did they love to dance. They told a story of how, one time, they needed to cross the river to get to the party. So, when they approached the river, they took off their pants, waded through, dried off, and put their pants back on at the other side...all before arriving at the dance! Naturally, they had to repeat the process in reverse to get home.

Nostalgic stories of the chacra led to some interesting discussions of teratology. As I discovered during my ethnographic fieldwork of 2007, there are plenty of legends about archaeological sites in the valley. In fact, most of the valley is some kind of archaeological site, depending on how you look at it. A running theme in these stories is the danger loaded into this old and changing landscape.

We began talking, humorously, about piegrande, or Big Foot. Big Foot is not really a legend here, but with cable television and satellite dishes provided by TelMex, the History Channel is no doubt doing a great job circulating bogus stories about mythical beasts. As a stocky, bearded man, I did my best impression of the Patterson-Gimlin Film, the famous image of Big Foot hoofing it around a few boulders near Bluff Creek, California.

Before long the discussion turned a little serious, to a topic I'd never heard of: La Gringa. La Gringa ('the American woman' or 'the white woman') is reportedly an apparition that appears in the dark of the desert pampa, calling to men who pass through at night, enchanting them, and dragging them off to who-knows-where. La Gringa shares some elements of other known archaeological and Latin American legends. Many of the legends I collected in the area in 2007 developed a theme of attraction, loss, and denial. Some of these legends included huaqueros (pot-hunters) who found great stores of gold in glowing pots; but they were suddenly pulled backward, only to turn toward the pot again and find it gone. Other stories featured other-wordly creatures descending from the hilltops to bring havoc to the valley. Latin American folklore also features la llorona, a banshee-like character who enchants as she screams.

As Susana's parents, Carlos, Lorenzo and I contemplated our nighttime commute out of the chacra and back into Casma, we half-joked about La Gringa. She couldn't harm women, because they wouldn't be attracted to her. Alternatively, if we ran into her, I'd explain what was up. I'm a gringo and naturally can reason with la gringa. Of course, I could always just hop out of our mototaxi and make like Big Foot to scare off la gringa if she happened to appear.

After a couple more rounds of beer and soft drinks (note: beer here is consumed in 1-2 oz portions; 3-6 people share a 24oz beer over many rounds) we finally made our move to leave. It's hard to leave Peruvian company. The hospitality is sincere and sustained. There's always another beer, soft drink, or round of duck to share.

But, it was time. Susana's parent's loaded into their mototaxi and Carlos, Lorenzo, and I loaded into ours. We had decided that we would take the direct route out of the chacra. Instead of going down the San Rafael section of the southern branch of the Casma River - past the villages of Santa Matilde, San Francisco, and etc. - we would take a straight shot across the desolate Pampa Allegre. Pampa Allegre is an empty, long, inter-mountain pampa where you find the 3500-year old site of Pampa de las Llamas-Moxeke and the slightly-later sight of Pampa Rosario. It's also a crossroads of mining trails, sand quarries, and informal garbage dumps. None of these paths are mapped, let alone paved or lit. There is simply no light.

No one really knew this route except for me, because it was my morning commute every field season from 2004 to 2010. However, I never drove it at night.

The decision to let the gringo lead the way must have seemed completely absurd - if not deeply regrettable - almost as soon as we left the light of the village. The landscape had changed since my regular commutes, and  so I had literally lost my bearings. Where I expected to see small dusty hills, I saw pump-irrigated grape vines. When we began to bear left a little bit, I explained, "OK, we've made a turn down towards San Francisco. Not what I had planned, but it will do." This interpretation could not have cultivated confidence in my fellow passengers. Nor did it do so in me. I became increasingly concerned as the San Francisco landmarks failed to appear as they should.

It is incredibly difficult to reckon distance in the barren, monochrome, and lightless desert at night. However, soon our little headlight began to reveal unmistakable features for me. "A ha!" I exclaimed, "That's the Inca road in front of Pampa de las Llamas. Bear right!" A little further on I made out the transverse trail that cuts towards the arm of the pampa we sought. "On our right is Pampa de las Llamas, it's 3500 years old! Keep going and we'll come to the wall with a hole in it; it's also sort of a garbage dump," I hollered over the high-pitched strain of the small engine. "Bear left after the wall and we'll pass in front of Pampa Rosario...there it is! It's an Early Horizon site!"

After crossing the endless stones and empty sands of Pampa Allegre, we started to see the low glow of Casma over the cerros (low bedrock hills) before us. Cane, corn, and maracuya vines began to close in on us, enveloping the dusty path in the reassuring reflection of our own headlight. "Are Susana's parents behind us?" I asked. "Sí, están par' allí," confirmed Carlos. They're right there behind us. 

The path descended into the well-known agricultural fields, the chacras-proper, that funneled us past the extortionate 'guard house' that links the country road to the highway. Once on the highway, we were home-free. Tractor-trailers full of eucalyptus lumber from Huaraz, speeding colectivo station-wagons, and other mototaxis be damned; we had crossed the pampa at night, guided by a gringo, and hadn't had the misfortune of encountering La Gringa.

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Or had we? I arrived home at my hotel at about 10PM. After the cold, loud, and stressful trip across the pampa it seemed a lot later. I took a shower, got into pajamas, and began relaxing for the night. While checking the Internet, I began to feel cold again. Real cold. Then I started to shiver. My teeth began to chatter. I had escalofrios. 

Escalofrios translates pretty directly to 'chills.' Usually chills are associated with cold temperatures and illness; so are escalofrios. But escalofrios, like chills, can also refer to the tremors one gets when freightened. In my limited understanding of Peruvian folkways, escalofrios go along with susto, a form of deeply-applied fright that can result from bad magic, curses, and other nefarious forms of witchery.

Whatever the case, I sat there on my bed, trembling and - at one point - realized, 'I don't think I can actually control these tremors.' I put on a sweatshirt, wool hat, and wrapped a lliclla (small blanket/wrap used for warmth and carrying things in this part of the Andes) around my head and shoulders. I climbed into bed. It wasn't particularly cold in my room, or really at all that night. But I was freezing terribly and wrapped up far more intensely than would have seemed necessary or appropriate to anyone but me. On top of it all, I felt sick to my stomach. Along with the escalofrio was estomago suelte, or 'loose stomach.'

After four hours in bed, I began to warm up. So much so that I began sweating. I thought I might have slept a little, but I'm not sure. I recognized that I was both hungry and sick to my stomach, a little cold, but also quite sweaty. My skin was pallid, but internally I felt feverish. My guts were out of sort, but I was also hungry.

I went on a late-night quest for crackers and found them up near the 24-hour stalls that service the big rigs ripping down the Panamerican Highway.

Returning home, finally, I realized it was 3am and I was not going to go to the field to climb mountains for several hours. I turned off my alarms and went to sleep again; this time I felt a bit better.

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In the pampa we hadn't seen La Gringa, but maybe she got in me somehow. Maybe La Gringa got inside my guts and gave me escalofrios and estomago suelte. We didn't see her, but maybe she heard us joking about her and decided to show el gringo who would have the last laugh. Or maybe I had consumed a menagerie of otherwise innocuous microbes from the country feast that laid siege to my innards. None of the Peruvians seemed unwell, but lots of other - more urban - Peruvians would have thought twice about eating a feast in a village with no running water. 

Whatever the case, something got inside me, and it was Andean. Whether one chooses a folkloric approach (aka. a structuralist approach, if you want to nerd-out like an anthropologist) or a biomedical approach depends on how one wants their engagement with the place to play out. For me, I prefer to live between the worlds of biomedical empiricism - where you only get what you can see - and structuralist explanations based in local cultural logics.

In any case, a 2-day course of Ciprofloxin from the local Chavinfarma seemed to do the trick in bringing the stomach back into order. Within two days I climbed a 900m peak. The mountain made me do it.