The Lady Land Reform Movement

Moments when i'd rather be somewhere else

Home/Hogar

From here
i'd give anything to be at your window,
especially when it rains outside.
then we could remember
the way
rainstorms shook our barro y
madera roofs,
and its fingers curled
undernearth our door that never locked anyways.

I'd re-travel the blocked highways
the "gracias Evo por la carretera!"
roads that wind up the Ande's skeleton,
far from its eyebrow,
but perhaps somewhere along
its spine
lower lumbar, disintegrated disk,
hugging loosely the unstable rocks
to its one side
while the other falls
to invisible depths that are probably cities.

Back
Hoy regreso
to the clock's tick tock
of fish on oil-greased pans
excuse the cliche,
but its what we lived by, right?
And the nectar squeezed from fruits
we wished we cold cut ourselves
with machetes.,
that made out stomach's curl into themselves
and after enough of them,
we knew these chinitas' had curves.

You could think about
lattitude. longitude.
and the way
showers only produced more sweat,
apple soap bars with exfolients
did nothing,
made knife-chopped hair
smell less like rivers
though...
that won't leave its roots,

and now these infinite routes
take me through your roots
a little
mas lejos
from mine,
but nevermind,
because I see a body forming
and the name you say you can't pronounce,

I just hear more clear
when you're standing inbetween borders
and an accent like a black laced
flair in one of your miniskirts.

"gracias Evo por la carretera"

The main point of travelling most of South America by land is what i would see in the process, but after the hitchike to Chile and back down toward southern Bolivia, the political unrest made it so that buses could only travel by night, and they have to take narrow back roads through cliffs because the main roads (slightly wider roads through cliffs) are blocked by rock and dirt barracades and protesters. A large part of southern bolivia wants to cecede from rest of the country, so there are always roads blocks of every kind preventing tucks from coming in and out. During the supposedly fourteen hour bus ride from Oruro to Tarija, I was woken up half an hour into the ride by the bus driver yelling for everyone to get off the bus, so when i stood up, I realized that the bus was tipped at an angle, over a cliff and out the window was the straight fall down.
The bus had attempted to speed over one of the rock road blocks, but one side of the wheels got stuck and the part of the road that was left was too narrow for the other side. Immediately all the man started to shovel out rocks from the road block while they threw rocks at the people who were making them, although not to hurt them, because everyone supports the protests, just not when they have to experience it on the bus. In the meantime, i was pushed to the large bundled group of women and children (don't get me wrong, it was nice to have a break from the Jean Claude Van Dam marathons they play on the bus televisions for the entire trip), while they kept warm by complaining that the men weren't doing anything. Eventually the bus made it, and the next 14-20 hours were spent in and out of sleep, rounding the edges of unstable cliffs, and Jean Claude Van Dam.

Along the Bolivian, Chilean desert

Sajama, Bolivian desert and mountain stories

Sajama is a small town of maybe less than 50 people, and I am staying for a few days with the woman who own the bodega in town, where you can get the best and only cheese, chocolae, bread, tampico and toilet paper in town.
I think I am the only foreigner in town, because everyone who is not from here stays here a night before climbing a mountain whose sumit is extremely difficult to reach. Sajama is at the base of a mountain, it is not a place one stays.
My presence here sparked a lot of curiosity, mainly the two ten year old boys that live next door that say buenas tardes the 50 times they pass me, and dry to decipher the letters of whatever i am reading over my shoulder. And of course, the señora. We call each other señora and señorita, because I can´t pronounce her aymara name, and she hasn´t asked mine.
At night, just before the cold gets unbearable, she weaves Alpaca gloves with her sister next to the chair i´m sitting in and writing, and she periodically asks me if I want another coca tea, and then tries to read my journal.

I cooked Lama steak and potatoes with her, while Lama hides and fetuses lay drying in the sun next to us. She told me she would tell me all the legends she knew, though it is the grandparents that know them all, she said. She only remembered a few. She told me why the ground was uneven, and when mountains used to walk and talk and breathe.
There are part of the ground here that are uneven, mostly deroted from salt. Otherwise, there are just miles and miles of desert, and river, and Chile, just over the mountain

Las diosa incas

The last peice of literature we worked with the girls was In the Time of the Butterflies, where we talked about the significance of women storytellers, and storytellers as chidren, and in the responsibility of storytelling. It´s a book I am very attached to, and I loved the idea of carrying it around, until Tatiana, one of the girls at the convent. After we read it, she wanted to know all about the dictatorships, and everything that had happened to Peru during those times, and where The Dominican Republic was (where the book takes place). I knew where the book had to go after that.
The assignment was to write a story about either your own village, country, or a made up one, where it is your responsibility to tell the story.
In all the stories, the girls turned themselves into Inca goddesses, into sole survivors of families killed through political situations, into girls falling inlove during politically turbulent times. They were very dramatic, and I loved it.

Goodbye part I- rainstorms, and the dangerous camioneta

Franca and I, or Negrita and Chinita as the town folk of Yurimaguas had fun nicknaming us because of our permanently darkened skin and because everyone thought I was Chinese, returned from Tarapoto after dropping off Molly at the airport. I reminded her that though her diet would no longer consist of monkey, crocodile, giant grub, stomache and the always faithful friend plantains, that churros in Argentina would cost her five times the amount.
When Molly left, it hit me how used to this place I had grown, and how much I would miss it. And how if someone were to ask me, how was Yurimaguas? I wouldn`t know what to say, but it would all be sumed up with a mischevious smile from one of the three of us.
The girls at the convent started to cry when Molly left, and I did too, though i was returning the next day. I remember I wrote to a friend about it, and she said to take in everything, because when people cry on your departure...that`s love.
On the anywhere between 2- 6 hour journey back to Yurimaguas, Franca and I were piled on to the back of a pick up truck with eighteen other people. Of course, after a dry spell, a rainstorm began to form while we sped down the single lane road around a mountain with frequent mudslides. At one point, there were only three wheels on the road, and the old man who had both of us squeezed up against the railing yelled, ¨estas gringas pesan mucho!¨or, ¨these foreign girls are too fat!¨
We arrived back in Yurimaguas, just two of us, to begin our unit on short stories and legends.