Peruvian Traditions

by Palma, Richardo; Lane, Helen R. ; Conway, Christopher

  Last night while reading the Jesuit Acosta, who, as you know, wrote about the events of the conquest at length and in detail,1 I came upon a story and said to myself: “The phrase already appears here,” or what amounts to the same thing, even though Father Acosta doesn’t say so, he examines the origin of the little phrase in question, for which I am going to claim before the Royal Spanish Academy the honors of a Peruvianism.

  And this said, enough of beating about the bush and on to the main concern.

  I believe I have recounted before, and in case I left it in the inkwell I make it appear in print here, that when the conquistadors took possession of Peru wheat, rice, barley, sugar cane, lettuce, radishes, cabbage, asparagus, garlic, onions, eggplant, mint, chickpeas, lentils, broad beans, mustard, anise, lavender, cumin, oregano, sesame, and other products of the land that would be too long to enumerate, were unknown in this country. As for beans, we had them at home, along with various other produce and fruit that made the Spaniards lick their fingers with pleasure after tasting them.

  Some of the new seeds grew more abundantly and bore more fruit in Peru than in Spain; and with great seriousness and self–assurance several respectable chroniclers and historians recount that in the valley of Azapa, in the jurisdiction of Arica, such a colossal radish was grown that a man could not get his arms around it, and that don García Hurtado de Mendoza, who at the time was not yet viceroy of Peru, but governor of Chile, was ecstatic and looked at such a wonder openmouthed. I say, that radish was no trifle!

  Around the year 1558 don Antonio Solar was one of the richest inhabitants of the City of Kings. Although he was not among Pizarro’s companions at Cajamarca, he arrived in time to get himself a good share of the division of land after the conquest, a share that consisted of a spacious parcel on which to build his house in Lima, 200 fanegas2of uncultivated land in the valleys of Supe and Barranca, and 50 mitayosor Indians to serve him.3

  For our grandfathers the following catchy saying had the value of an aphorism or of an article of the Constitution: “The house in which you live, the wine you drink, and all the pieces of land you see and can seize.”

  Don Antonio put together a valuable hacienda in Barranca, and to further the work he brought from Spain two teams of oxen, an act that in those days gave agriculturalists the same importance as that given in our day to ships propelled by steam engines that transport people from London or New York. “The Indians came,” says one chronicler, “to see them plow, amazed by something that to them was monstrous, and they said that the Spaniards were idlers who used those huge animals so as not to have to work themselves.”

  Don Antonio Solar was the rich encomendero whom the viceroy Blasco Núnez de Vela wanted to hang, accusing him of being the author of a lampoon in which, alluding to the reforming mission given His Excellency, the following inscription was written on the wall of the inn at Barranca: “The one who throws me out of my house and land I will throw out of this world.”

  And since I have used the word encomendero, it will not be out of place for me to note the origin of it. In the title deeds or documents in which each conquistador was assigned parcels of land, the following clause was placed: “Likewise, you are entrusted with4x (here the number was inserted) Indians for you to indoctrinate in matters of our holy faith.”

  Along with the teams of oxen there arrived seeds or plants of melon, medlars, pomegranates, citrons, lemons, apples, apricots, quince, sour cherries, cherries, almonds, nuts, and other fruits of Castile unknown to the natives of the country, on which they gorged themselves to such a point that not a few of them died. More than a century later, under the rule of the viceroy and duke of La Palata, an edict was published that priests read to their parishioners after Sunday Mass, forbidding the Indians to eat cucumbers, a vegetable known as mataserrano5for its fatal effects.

  The time came when Barranca’s melon patch produced its first harvest, and here our story begins.

  His steward chose ten of the best melons, carefully setting them in a couple of crates, and put them on the shoulders of two mitayos, giving them a letter for their master.

  When the melon bearers had covered several leagues, they sat down to rest next to a wall. As was only natural, the perfume of the fruit awakened the curiosity of the mitayos, and there began within them a hard–fought battle between appetite and fear.

  “Do you know, brother,” one of them finally said in their native dialect, “that I have thought of the way we can eat a melon without its being discovered? Let us hide the letter behind the wall, for if it doesn’t see us eat it won’t be able to accuse us.”

  The simple ignorance of the Indians attributed to writing a diabolical and marvelous power. They believed, not that the letters were conventional signs, but spirits, that not only functioned as messengers but also as lookouts or spies.

  This must have seemed right to the other mitayo, for without a word he put the letter behind the wall, placing a stone on top of it, and this done, the two of them set themselves to devouring, not eating, the inviting and delectable fruit.

  Once they were already near Lima, the second mitayo smote his forehead, saying:

  “Brother, we’re making a mistake. It would be best if we divide our loads equally, for if you are carrying four melons and I’m carrying five our master will be suspicious.”

  “Well spoken,” said the other mitayo.

  And once again they hid the letter behind another wall as they finished off a second melon, that delicious fruit that as the proverb says, when fasting it is gold, at midday silver, and at night it kills; for in all truth, there is no fruit more indigestible and liable to produce colic when one has a bellyful of it.

  Arriving at don Antonio’s house they placed in his hands the letter, in which the overseer announced to him that he was sending him ten melons.

  Don Antonio, who had promised the bishop and other notables to present them with the first melons harvested, happily headed for the crates to inspect the load.

  “What’s this, you thieving rascals!” he exclaimed, snorting with rage. “The overseer is sending me ten melons, and two are missing,” and don Antonio consulted the letter again.

  “He’s sending just eight, taitai,”6 the mitayos answered, trembling. “The letter says ten and you ate two of them on the way. Well then! Have a drubbing be given these rogues.”

  And the poor Indians, after getting a good thrashing, sat sulking in a corner of the patio, and one of them said:

  “Do you see, brother, a letter sings!”

  Don Antonio overheard him, and shouted to them:

  “Yes, you rascals, and take care that I don’t give you another thrashing. You know now that a letter sings.”

  Don Antonio told his social circle about it, and the phrase became widespread and traveled across the sea.

  1José de Acosta (1540–1600) was a Spanish Jesuit who resided in Lima for 15 years and wrote De procuranda indorum salute (1588), which called for better treatment of the Indians, and the Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590), which surveyed the natural history and geography of Mexico and Peru.—Ed.

  2Here, a measure of land; about 1½ acres.

  3The mita was a system of enforced Indianlabor; mitayos were the Indian laborers of the mita.—Ed.

  4In Spanish, se os encomiendan.

  5Indian killer.

  6A respectful form of address. Also taitay.

  An Adventure of the Poet–Viceroy

  I

  The faction of the vicuñas, who were called that because its members wore vicuña hats, was getting the worst of it in the civil war that was raging in Potosí. For the moment, the Basques were winning because the corregidor1 of the imperial town, don Rafael Ortiz de Sotomayor, was altogether on their side.

  The Basques had taken over Potosí, for they held all the important public offices. Of the 24 town councilors, half were Basques, and even the two magistrates were of that nationality, despite the fact that this was expressly forbidden by ro
yal decree. The Creoles, Castilians, and Andalusians formed an alliance to destroy or at least counterbalance this predominance of the Basques. Such was the origin of the open war that for many years made this region the stage of bloody slaughter, to which the ever–victorious general of the vicuñas, don Francisco Castillo, put an end in 1626, by marrying his daughter, doña Eugenia, to don Pedro de Oyanume, one of the most important Basques of the town.

  In 1617 the viceroy and prince of Esquilache wrote a long letter to Ortiz de Sotomayor regarding several matters of government, which reads more or less as follows:

  And kindly note, my dear don Rafael, that there is a smell of rebellion about those factions in Potosí that is overwhelming. The hour has come for the harshest of measures to be taken to put an end to them, for mild measures would prove to be a disservice to His Majesty, an offense to Our Lord God, and a discredit to these realms. Hence I have nothing to recommend to the discretion of Your Excellency, who, as a valiant and astute soldier, will apply the cautery to the place where the wound appears, for the devil has a free hand in these matters concerning Potosí, and disorder may spread like oil on a cloth. I expect Your Excellency to answer that you have brought a satisfactory end to these disorders, and not otherwise, for it is high time to end them before those vicuñas catch their breath and come to be as much a problem as the comuneros2in Castile.

  The vicuñashad sworn not to allow their daughters or sisters to marry Basques, and one of the latter, on learning of the solemn pledge of the enemy faction, proclaimed right in the middle of the main square: “If the vicuñitas are not willing to be our wives, we are men enough to take them at the tip of our swords.” This boast further aroused the vicuñas’ hatred, and there were daily skirmishes in the streets of Potosí.

  Ortiz de Sotomayor was not one to embrace a conciliatory policy. A firm supporter of the Basques, he believed that the viceroy’s letter authorized him to use treachery as a weapon against the vicuñas, and so one night he had don Alfonso Yáñez and eight or ten of the leading vicuñas secretly seized, decapitated, and their heads placed on the top of a post in the main square.

  With the break of day the vicuñascame face to face with this terrible sight and immediately set upon the corregidor’s men with daggers, and the latter were forced to take asylum in a church. But fearing, with good reason, the vengeance of his enemies, don Rafael mounted his horse and came to Lima, while letting it be known that he had done nothing save to follow the viceroy’s instructions to the letter. As we have seen, this was not precisely true, for His Excellency had given no authorization to behead anyone who had not first been sentenced to death by a court.

  II

  Thursday of Holy Week in the year 1618 was celebrated with all the solemnity that characterized that century of strict observers. His Excellency don Francisco de Borja y Aragón, prince of Esquilache, left the viceroy’s palace, with a splendid retinue, to go visit seven of the most important churches of the city.

  As he was leaving the church of Santo Domingo, after having prayed at the first station of the cross with the devotion that befitted a kinsman of Saint Francis Borja, duke of Gandía, he found himself face to face with a supremely beautiful lady followed by a slave carrying the indispensable small rug for her mistress to kneel on. The lady’s eyes fixed on the viceroy one of those glances that give off magnetic currents. Don Francisco returned her gaze with a barely visible smile, raising his hand to his heart as if to tell the young lady that Cupid’s dart had found its mark.

  A la mar, por ser honda

  se van los ríos,

  y detrás de tus ojos

  se van los míos.3

  His Excellency was a real don Juan, and there was much talk in Lima of his good fortune in love. Along with his dashing demeanor, his martial bearing, and his urbanity, he enjoyed the vigor of a man in the prime of life, for the prince of Esquilache was barely 35. Possessed of a fiery imagination, gracious of speech, brave to the point of recklessness, and generous to the point of extravagance, don Francisco de Borja y Aragón was the perfect examplar of those chivalrous hidalgos who laid down their life for their king and their lady.

  There are historical figures whom we become fond of, and I for one am a devoted admirer of the poet–viceroy, doubly noble by reason of his titles of nobility and by the parchments that he filled with his elegant pen of a prose writer and the favorite of the muses. I concede that he allowed the Jesuits to have too free a hand during his rule, but it must be borne in mind that the descendant of a general of the Company of Jesus, canonized by Rome, would necessarily share the prejudices of his kind. If he sinned thereby, the blame lay with his era, and it is folly to demand that men be superior to the times in which they live.

  In the other six churches he visited, the viceroy kept meeting the same lady, and the same exchange of smiles and glances ensued.

  If you don’t love me

  don’t trade glances with me;

  if you won’t ransom me,

  don’t make me your captive.4

  At the last station of the cross, when a page was about to place a little cushion of crimson velvet with a gold fringe on his prie–dieu, the prince of Esquilache leaned over and quickly whispered:

  “Jeromillo, there is big game behind that pillar. Follow the trail.” It would appear that Jeromillo was skilled at this sort of hunting and was endowed with both the sense of smell of a setter and the swiftness of a falcon, for by the time His Excellency returned to the palace and dismissed his retinue, the page was already awaiting him in his chamber.

  “Well, Mercury, who is she?” the viceroy said to him. Like all the poets of his century, he was fond of references to mythology.

  “This note, which smells of perfume, will tell Your Excellency,” the page replied, taking it out of his pocket.

  “By Santiago de Compostela! So we’ve received a note, have we? Ah, little page, you’re worth twice your weight in gold, and I must immortalize you in verses that surpass my poem on Naples.”

  And drawing closer to a lamp, he read:

  Siendo el galán cortesano

  y de un santo descendiente,

  que haya ayunado es corriente

  como cumple a un buen cristiano.

  Pues besar quiere mi mano,

  según su fina expresión,

  le acuerdo tal pretensión,

  si es que a más no se propasa,

  y honrada estará mi casa

  si viene a hacer colación.5

  The mysterious lady knew very well that she was going to be dealing with a poet, and the better to impress him she had had recourse to the language of Apollo.

  “I say!” don Francisco murmured. “So the lady is a bluestocking, or to put it differently, Minerva in the person of Venus. Jeromillo, we’re off on a love–adventure. My cape, and give me the address on Olympus of this godess.” Half an hour later the viceroy, muffled in his cape so that no one would recognize him, was on his way to the lady’s house.

  III

  Doña Leonor de Vasconcelos was a striking Spanish beauty and the widow of Alonso Yáñez, the man beheaded by the corregidor of Potosí. She had come to Lima determined to avenge her husband, and she had cleverly put Cupid’s artillery into play to attract the viceroy of Peru to her home. To her the prince of Esquilache was her husband’s real murderer.

  The widow of Alonso Yáñez lived in a house on the calle de Polvos Azules, with grounds in the rear that ran down to the river. This circumstance, together with the frequent sound of male footsteps in the courtyard and the interior of the house, was a cause for alarm in the mind of the adventurous gallant.

  Don Francisco had been engaged for half an hour in ceremonious conversations with the lady when the latter revealed who she was, trying to bring the conversation round to an explanation of what had happened in Potosí. But the shrewd prince skirted the subject and chose to follow instead the winding path of amorous artfulness.

  A man as keen witted at the prince of Esquilache needed to
be told no more to realize that he had fallen into an ambush, and that he was in a house that was probably the headquarters that night of the vicuñas, of whose animosity toward his person he had already had some indication.

  The moment came to proceed to the dining room to partake of the promised refreshments. It consisted of that pleasing salad of mixed fruits we Limeños call ante, three or four different preserves made by the nuns, and the classic pan de dulce.6 After sitting down at the table the viceroy picked up a Venetian glass decanter full of a delicious Malaga wine, and said:

  “I regret, doña Leonor, not doing honor to so excellent a Malaga, but I’ve made a vow to drink only a superb sherry that comes from my own vineyards in Spain.”

  “Your Excellency need not deprive himself of the wine he likes best. I can easily send one of my servants to Your Excellency’s steward.”

  “Your Ladyship has read my mind.” And turning to a servant he said to him: “Look here, you rascal. Go to the palace, ask for my page Jeromillo, give him this little key, and tell him to bring me the two bottles of sherry that he’ll find in the cupboard of my chamber. Don’t forget this message, and here’s a doubloon to buy yourself some pan de dulce.”

  The servant left and the prince of Esquilache went on in a jovial vein:

  “My wine is so fine that I have to keep it locked up in my chamber, for that knave of a secretary of mine, Estúñiga, has the same predilection for wine as mosquitoes for blood, and a scribe’s inclination to give every bottle of wine his personal seal of approval. I’m going to get cross with him one of these days and slice off his ears to set other topers an example.”