Filmmaker in Search of Her Subject - visit to southern coastal Peru #2

part 2

As I’ve mentioned, el Carmen (and indeed, much of the region of Chincha) is known as a center of Afro-Peruvian culture.  El Carmen and the nearby towns of San José, Guayabo and others maintain a very old Afro-Peruvian tradition called the “hatajos de negritos.” 

This is a kind of performance and procession that is part of the Christmas celebration, and also the celebration of the Virgin of el Carmen, whose special day is December 28.  I’ll add a video of the celebration later on in this article. 

the front drive to the bed and breakfast:  Huaranjapo

But first, I should tell you about the bed and breakfast where I stayed.  It is on an estate that is a five minute walk from town.  There is a lovely bungalow, and a couple of small, outlying buildings that serve as additional guest rooms when the bungalow is full.  There is a swimming pool.  There is a patio.  There are a couple of friendly dogs;  and a nice couple that live in a tiny house near the front gate and act as caretakers.  There is a small avocado orchard;  a small guava orchard;  a few banana trees;  a large lawn;  lots of flowers…in sum, a lovely place.  And yes, it has an internet connection.

Amerigo and his wife - the caretakers - in the back veranda of the main guest house

The only downside that I encountered was – mosquitoes.  Bring insect repellent.  Seriously.

one side of the main guest house

The owner, Edith Maldonado, is friendly and very well informed about Afro-Peruvian culture.  She is a pillar (and former board member) of one of the two cultural organizations in el Carmen.  We had been corresponding for months, and she introduced me to people in the town who helped me with my work.

Edith Maldonado (left) with board president Emely Villegas (right) in the cultural center

I was there to film the town (easy – it is a very small town) and the setting (lots of cotton fields, a river that I never got to, and other small towns nearby – I saw the town of San José very briefly).  I was also there to make contact with at least one cultural center;  and to film the rehearsals for the “hatajos de negritos.”

a street in the town - with the only two-storey building

the church dominates the town

there are lots of murals on the walls

The residents of the town are people of very modest means – so modest that I felt a little uncomfortable coming from the lovely bed and breakfast where I was staying to talk to people many of whose homes didn’t even have running water.

Although most own their own farmland, many find work outside of town in larger places like Chincha.  This is partly because a very few years ago, the Peruvian government signed a trade deal with China that has brought Chinese cotton into the country at a lower price than local cotton.  Some townspeople would like to change over to growing cacao, for which there is still a good market, but it takes three years for the cacao plants to mature enough to bring in a serious crop, and the townspeople don’t have the wherewithal to wait for three years with no farming income.

a cotton field outside of town

My filming of the town and of one rehearsal of the “hatajos” went pretty smoothly, although getting the required signature saying we’d filmed with permission turned out to be a bit sticky (but in the end, we got what I needed).   We also went to the home where the second group of “hatajos” rehearses, but they didn’t want to be filmed. 

house of Margarita Córdova where one set of "hatajos" rehearsed

I have since learned that “everyone” comes to el Carmen to see the “hatajos” – and many people have filmed them – so I guess people feel that they should get paid and that they are being somewhat taken advantage of.  I can sympathize with this.

I'll give you a video with clips of the "hatajos" and an explanation of them in the next post.

_________________

Eve A. Ma, a former university professor, lawyer, and director of a non-profit cultural organization, is the producer-director of two documentaries about Afro-Peruvians:  A Zest for Life and Masters of Rhythm with addendum.  Sign up for her newsletter to keep up with her work and get a special video:  www.PalominoPro-signup.com

Filmmaker in Search of Her Subject - visit to southern coastal Peru #1

In December of 2014, I spent about a month in Peru, shooting footage for documentaries about Afro-Peruvians.  About half of that time I was in Lima (see “Filmmaker in Search of Her Subject - My Trip to Lima, Peru).  The other half I spent in the coastal area to the north and south of Lima, in small towns known for being treasure troves of Afro-Peruvian culture.

No, the Andes Mountains and the ruins at Machu Picchu were not on my agenda;  I was working.

Lima is on the coast, about halfway down.  I was heading south.

In the south, I visited the town of el Carmen;  and in the north, the town of Zaña.  In this article, I’ll talk about going to the south, to el Carmen, and then San Luis de Cañete.

To get to el Carmen, I took a bus-cama (bus with beds).  A friend in Lima helped me purchase the ticket, which was a good thing because I certainly didn’t know my way around well enough to do so easily on my own.

The buses were overnight buses;  you could choose to leave any time from around 5pm up until around 8pm, all of which would put me at my destination in the morning.  A long trip.

I believe that somewhere on that bus-cama there were seats that could be stretched out into beds, but most passengers, myself included, had a seat in an area in which you could recline the seat somewhat, but certainly not enough to make it into a bed.

El Carmen is a little below the center of this map.

Dinner and breakfast were provided on the buses.  These meals were not anything memorable, so I’ll pass over them.  If you take one of these trips, consider bringing along your own food.

We traveled along the Pan-American highway which in most places is a two-lane highway with streets and roads crossing it. 

I had a window seat.  At the beginning of the trip, since the sun was up, I could look out.  For the first hour, what I saw was seemingly endless, poorer suburbs of Lima.  Then, we got to the countryside.

The river-valleys are full of small farms growing cotton and other crops.

The countryside was mostly dessert, with the ocean off on one side in the distance.   There were squatters’ shacks along part of this dessert area.  Then, almost without warning, we’d come to a lush river valley:  green, and full of trees, small farms, and towns.  I learned that Peru had had land-reform about 30 years ago, so that where once there were huge estates worked by day laborers or tenant farmers, now most of the farmers own their own land.

After a couple of hours on the bus-cama, it got dark.  Someone in corporate offices had had the unfortunate idea of installing a TV in the bus-camas and for some reason, the volume was turned up pretty loud.  It was impossible to ignore this machine once you couldn’t look out the window any more;  but finally, around 10:30pm, it went off. 

In the morning, I got off the bus-cama in a town called Chincha, and according to instructions (from the person who owned the bed and breakfast where I would stay), I took a licensed taxi to el Carmen.  The ride took about 15 minutes.

_________________

Eve A. Ma, a former university professor, lawyer, and director of a non-profit cultural organization, is the producer-director of two documentaries about Afro-Peruvians:  A Zest for Life and Masters of Rhythm with addendum.  Sign up for her newsletter to keep up with her work and get a special video:  www.PalominoPro-signup.com

Filmmaker in Search of Her Subject - My Trip to Lima, Peru - #2

(my trip to Lima, Peru - continued)

Before going, I’d made plans to meet with the people I was planning to film.  I’d also made contact with others who would provide me with information to deepen my awareness about Afro-Peruvian culture and its performance traditions.

On my first day after arriving, I did a lot of walking to see where I was located, and check out places to eat and purchase groceries.  I found that my apartment was near the lovely Parque Kennedy (Kennedy Park), as well as a supermarket (where I purchased an inexpensive cell phone), and a string of small bars where you could get a decent-to-good meal at a decent price.

Parque Kennedy

Bars along calle Berlin.

An aside here:  before going, I’d been told not to drink tap water or even the wonderful juices that are prepared with fruit pulp thinned by tap water.  Of course the first thing I did in the first little bar I went to was order one of those juices, completely forgetting the advice.  Halfway through, I remembered it and stopped drinking.  I suffered no ill effects and throughout my stay, gradually increased the amount of tap water I drank until I got to the point that I could forget the advice. 

Since different stomachs acculturate in different ways, my experience may or may not be what others will encounter.

On my second full day in Lima, I went to meet Lalo Izquierdo, one of the main subjects of both of the documentaries I was working on.  We arranged to meet in downtown Lima, in an area near the city center.  

Me with Lalo Izquierdo in the patio of the apartment where I was staying.

Rather than taking a taxi, I decided to take the bus.  There was a bus stop near my apartment and everyone was very helpful in advising me which bus to take.

But the line for my bus was, well, seemingly endless.  The buses themselves were very large, but still did not have nearly enough capacity for the number of people who wanted to get on.

A helpful gentleman told me that because of my obvious age (I’m well over 50), I could get at the head of the line.  Almost never in my life have I taken advantage, or wanted to take advantage, of my “senior” status, but one look at that line was enough to convince me it was time to make an exception.

When I got on the bus, there was no seating but since I don’t look frail, no one offered me a seat.  This was no problem;  I am in fact pretty sturdy.

Lots of people in a park for an event;  there were generally lots of people everywhere.

But the result of this bus ride, and the ride back (after having a pleasant and productive meeting with Lalo) was to clue me into something I continued noticing for much of my trip:  the infrastructure in Lima is overwhelmed by the population.  It is a city of a little over 7 million people, about a quarter of the population of the entire country, and a large percentage of these people have only moved into the city in the past one or two decades.

Other evidence of this was the sad state of much of the housing in the immense outlying districts.  I learned that there are a lot of squatters both in Lima and in the countryside who don’t have the means to build themselves good housing (or even to purchase any vacant land). 

In the countryside, I’ve been told that under certain circumstances you become the owner of land on which you have squatted (like the homesteading laws in the United States) but often, people build a very rudimentary house in, say, a semi-desert or desert area (there are huge stretches of desert along the coast of Peru) and then find it too difficult to live there, so they move along to another place, leaving the house – or shack – behind them.

In Lima itself, there are thousands of poorly constructed houses in areas that don’t look like they get too much civic attention.  I’m guessing that the inhabitants are people who do NOT spend a lot of time in the beautiful parks along the seashore.  I would have liked to have investigated some of these areas, including Rimac, but just didn’t have time.  Other than Miraflores, and a couple of bus rides, all I saw of metropolitan Lima was a bit of Barranco (an area where I’m told there are a lot of writers and artists).  I never even saw the main square of downtown Lima.

PHOTO

And I hate to say it, but this kind of ends my experience in Lima.

I’ll write another article about my time visits to the coastal area both north and south of Lima.

Filmmaker in Search of Her Subject - My Trip to Lima, Peru #1

-->

In December of 2014, I made a voyage of discovery to Peru, going up and down the coast in search of images to complete one documentary and create another.  Both films are about Afro-Peruvians;  one focuses on the dance, history, and music with its connection to Latin jazz.  The other is a celebration of three great percussionists:  Lalo Izquierdo, Juan Medrano Cotito, and Huevito Lobatón.

I’ve talked about the films elsewhere, and you can view their trailers on their web sites (www.AZestforLifeMovie.com and www.MastersofRhythm-Movie.com), so here I’ll give you a travel resumé.

Before going any further, I should explain that I speak Spanish.  My trip would have been very different if that were not the case.  If you don’t already know it, it’s a good language to learn.

Mosaics in the Parque del Amor;  it's hazy but you can still just make out the ocean.

In the week before I left California to board the airplane for Lima, several people advised me to be careful and watch out for thieves.  Frankly, they made me feel a bit nervous about going.  My worries increased when, as planned, I was met at the airport by a taxi driver promised as reliable, and he told me to lock the cab’s doors and keep the windows rolled up.  He then regaled me with a couple of sobering stories of tourists being kidnapped.

After I’d spent a couple of days in Lima, however, I decided that it was unnecessary to be fearful.  Yes, you want to be sure to use a licensed cab driver (and its easy to find one).  And of course you don’t want to walk down the street with your video camera, worth thousands of dollars, in a fancy camera bag that kind of says “steal me.” 

But beyond these and other common sense tips, it’s not a place to be afraid of.

Street in Miraflores with old-style buildings.

All in all, I spent a little under a month in Peru, about two weeks of which were in Lima where I’d rented a room in an apartment in the Miraflores district.  Miraflores, as I soon discovered, is a district on the shore of the Pacific with a lot of tourists, students, and upper middle class housing. 

Rather more modern buildings across from the lovely Parque Kennedy.

The room I rented was in an apartment in a large housing block whose entrance had a guard/concierge at the door.  There was also a dog…an elderly dog who mostly lay in the sun and enjoyed being petted.  A nice dog.

Many people in the apartment block had green and healthy plants in front of their doors.  It was delightful.  And since it was December, not only was the weather very mild (December is summer in Peru) but several of the balconies on the upper stories had been hung with Christmas lights.

Front of one of the apartments with very healthy plants.  That's me, in front.

The apartment was only a few blocks from the ocean, and the coastline is lined with beautiful parks.  I took full advantage of them to go for some very nice walks.  The coast reminds me a little of the coast in the San Francisco Bay Area because it’s frequently foggy.  There is also a high bluff next to the ocean.  I was on top of the bluff and never made it down to the beaches.  After all, I was there to work.

_________________

Eve A. Ma is the producer-director of two documentaries about Afro-Peruvians:  A Zest for Life and Masters of Rhythm.  Find out about these and her other work at www.PalominoPro-signup.com.