Four Conversations with Strangers

Have you been to Cuzco? Longest inhabited city on the Continent, founded on the navel of the Incan world, epicenter of empires, invasions, revolutions and counter-revolutions. Now it is best known as the start of the Inca Trail and base camp of Machu Pichu, and there are probably more white tourists in full treking gear (read: North face jackets, zip-off pants and floppy hats) wandering the streets than Peruvians at any given moment. It's enough yo make you think that you've walked right out of Peru and into a Backpacker's purgatory that unremarkably bookends the highlight of most people's trip- Machu Pichu. It's not to say that it is not a remarkablñe place with a facinating history and fantastic cultural life (it certainly has both), but I have to think of this place as a sort of Disneyland-rendering of the continent that formulates what most people take away from their trips, which in turn has caused me to reflect on my impression of the continent and which moments have shed the most light on the real tensions, tradgedies, and pulse that I have occassionally glimpsed.
There are four conversations, with complete strangers living in the places I've passed through, that showed me what this really ticking below the surface, and which will never be captured in photos.

On one of the first days of my trip, I was walking through a popular hiking trail in Santiago when a young forty-something Chilean man greeted me from the bench he was resting on. I had already been impressed with the forward amability that Chileans display towards foreigners and compatriots alike, and I quickly made myself comfortable and joined the man on the bench to pass the time. He appeared to be very familiar with the US, having traveled extensively on both coasts to work and visit family, and we spent sometime comparing the geography and climate of Chile to its northern sister, California. What really impressed me about this man was his absolute ease in his environment- he had no qualms whatsoever about passing almost an entire thursday morning under a tree shooting the shit with a total stranger with horrendous Spanish. I began to trust him so much, in fact, that I confided my own indecision about pursuing a girl I'd just met all the way to Rio (another story altogether) or if I should stick to my original travel plan and let the oppurtunity slide (as it was the oppurtunity slid away from me... but that's another story as well and beside the point). What he said in reponse both invigorated me and cut me to the quick- ¨You have to take advantage of every moment and opputunity, no matter how stupid or unlikely to succeed. Just do whatever you can.¨ Now, I know, it would be hard to string together more trite cliches in a single conversation, but he went on to tell me that he had just been diagnosed with cancer and beyond the point of effective treatment. He told me that he had to stop and rest almost every five minutes on the mild hill where we had met, that he was hoping for just one more trip to New York to visit his sister, and that he couldn't be happier, since he was totally at peace with talking his time, his very limited time, to enjoy everything froma conversation with a forigner to taking a difficult walk up a hill. With only months left to do everything he'd ever hoped for, this man was not rushing or stressing about anything, but savoring everything that came across his path without regret or reluctance to move on.

Several weeks later, I had another heart-rending conversation that brought into startling relief the sheer desperation and cultural abandonment of the poorest campesinos in Bolivia. I was in Sucre, Bolivia, drinking a blended juice ina restaraunt spectacularly situated on an overlook of the dazzlingly white city, when a small man that had been siting to the side chewing coca leaves for the past half hour began to cut the grass almost at my feet while muttering to me that there was no work. We soon began talking, and I was surprised to learn that his spanish was more foreign as mine- he spoke Quechua, the languae of the Incas, and his Spanish was a creole second language that could only communicate the most basic things, and even at nearly his mid-thirties he could not read or write. He taught me a few basic phrases (the language is a little too fast and closed to pick up quick, though), and asked me about my impressions of Tarabuco, his pueblo, during the Carnaval. The conversation took a drastic left turn, however, when he began to mumble about finding a family for his children. ¨Tengo que buscar una familia para mis hijos, me entiendes? No puedo leer or escribir, no hay trabajo, no hay nada para comer- busco una familia para mis hijos, me entiendes?¨ What he was implying was that I should adopt his children and take them to the states, so that they would have a family that could provide for them. I was shocked and told him that I couldn't and he quickly stalked off. It seemed that he haunted that viewpoint cafe looking for someone to take his children from him to better, western opputunities.

If that showcased some of the great tragedies of Latin America, I was assured that there do exist hopeful and proud communities in Bolivia that have survived and even thrived after hundreds of years of oppresseion. On Isla del Sol, which is on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, I met a young man  who told me all about the history of his people on the sland and their unique current community. Isla del Sol is the mythical island where the Incan race was said to be born, but it was previously and still to this day occupied by the much more pacific Ayamara peoples. The Incans enslaved the Ayamarans and attempted to exterminate their lanuage and culture, but the Ayamarans continued to keep the language and lifestyle alive in secret through over a thousand years of oppression under the Incans, the Spanish and the Criolla white Peruvian landowners. At this point, however, Isla del Sol is something of a tourist anomaly- although most tourists plan a visit there, they have resisted attempts to connect the island with a bridge or even install running water or solid electricity. They still rely more on fishing and agriculture than tourism, and most tourist accomodations are houses and small hospedajes that forbid you to shower (the water has to be brought up every morning by mule). Most interestingly, the community provided for other members, referinging tourists to their neighbors that offer the same service, or loaning people money or products, even governing the community based on the principle of respecting elders as leaders. The shadows of their past oppressors are almost oerwhelming- a huge spanish Manor overlooks the entire pueblo, and Incan ruins literally cover the island, but my friend still liked to joke that here in the ¨birthplace of the Inca Nation¨you can't find a Quechua speaker for a hundred miles, and the placid Ayamara still rule the day.

Finally, this morning I met a very interesting young Peruvian student right here in Cuzco. I was sitting on a bench in the Plaza de Armas in the heart of the city when he came up and asked permission to share the bench, and immediately began talking to me. In retrospect I realize that he was cruising and tryiong to pick me up, but I thought he was just an unusually outgoing Peruvian until he began asking me if I had a wife and then, when I asked him the same, said... ¨pues, a mi, no me gusta mucha las chicas, me entiendes?¨ It took one or two times for the message to really sink in, but then we began talking, of all things, about gay rights in Caliufornia and Peru, comparatively. Alan (that was his name) was from a small pueblo outside of Cuzco and had never traveled further from that pueblo than his current location here in Cuzco, and had no idea about the attitudes of gays abroad or even in a city like Lima. He had never told a Peruvian that he was gay and couldn't really see himself ever doing so because it would taint every relationship that he had. He told me that he wasn't even looking for a man, just some sort of community, in what turned out to be a classic country-boy-goes-to-the-city case of alienation and fear. I was not surprised by this attitude, nor the staunch conservative anti-gay aentiment that is all over Peru (Ironic, really, when Cuzco's flag is identical to the gay pride rainbow flag). What impressed me was that he came to me, expecting that only a foreinger and a stranger could relate to him, even though he was online an hour from the place he'd spent his entire life.

These are snapshots, not morality tales, but they make up, I think, some of the more interesting moments of my trip. I always joke that I could probably just google most of the places that I visit to get all the photos that I take while traveling, but these are unique snapshots of culture that are mine alone, really, and for that they make me feel that even in tourist-ready, backpacker-party-central Cuzco I can say I know something below the surface.