* * *
JUDGE ZÁRATE LIVED with a daughter, doña Teresa, a girl of 20 fresh years of age, pretty from her shoes to her tortoise shell comb, who bore in her veins all the ardor of her Andalusian blood, a cause more than sufficient to surmise that she was tiring of her condition as an unmarried young lady. The girl, as was natural at her age, had a heart–throb, Blasco de Soto, a lieutenant in Carbajal’s regiment, who had asked her father for her hand and found his request refused, for His Honor wanted a man with an assured fortune as the husband for his daughter. Her suitor was not discouraged at the refusal, and acquainted Carbajal with his predicament.
“What’s this I hear!” Francisco shouted in a rage. “A farcical judge turning down my lieutenant, who is a lad without peer! The old gaffer will have me to deal with. Come, my boy, don’t worry, either I am not Francisco de Carbajal or tomorrow will be your wedding day. I will be sponsor at your wedding and that’s all there is to it. I regret that you’re really in love, because you should know, my boy, that love is the wine that most quickly turns to vinegar; however, that’s not my concern but yours, and you’re certain to be a winner. What I must do is see you married, and I shall do so as surely as there are grapevines in Jerez, and between you and Teresa you will multiply until the blackboard is full.”
And the field marshal went to the judge’s house, and without further ado asked for the girl’s hand for his godson. Poor Zárate was filled with remorse, stammered a thousand excuses, and finally gave in. But when the notary required him to sign the document giving his consent, the good oldster took the goose quill and wrote: “Let this sign of the cross indicate that I consent for three reasons: out of fear, out of fear, and out of fear.”
* * *
THUS THE PHRASE “the judge’s three reasons” became proverbial in Lima. We have heard it from the mouth of many oldsters and it is as useful as the phrase about the 99 reasons the artilleryman gave for not having fired a salvo: “Reason number one: Having no powder. There is no need to mention the 98 other reasons.”
Shortly after his daughter’s marriage, Zárate fell gravely ill of dysentery, and on the night that he received Extreme Unction Carbajal came to visit him and said to him:
“Your grace is dying because he wishes to. Never mind the doctors; drink a pinch of powdered unicorn’s horn in some herb tea, for it is as efficacious for your illness as a saint’s bone.”
“No, señor don Francisco,” the sick man answered. “I am dying, not because I so willed, but for three reasons.”
“Don’t say them, for I know what they are,” Carbajal interrupted him, and left the dying man’s room laughing.
The Witches of Ica
I
Limeños of old called Ica a land of good grapes and renowned witches. In our day it was the scene of the miracles of the venerable Friar Ramón Rojas, widely known as Father Guatemala, whose canonization is being carefully considered by Rome.
I do not believe in any magic charms save those that a pretty girl’s face naturally comes by. Every good–looking woman has a pair of familiar little devils in her eyes that make us men fall into more than one temptation, followed later by heavy–caliber renunciations.
But the people of Ica are given to believing in the supernatural, and they cannot be made to understand even if they were tortured on the wheel that it is not true that witches travel through the air mounted on broomsticks, that they cast evil spells, and that they can read the book of the future without spelling out each word, just as I read a bulky manuscript of another century.
It is true that the Inquisition of Lima helped to enhance the reputation of witches that the women of Ica enjoyed. At hand are my collection of Anales,1in which there figure among the women condemned many from the town of Valverde, whose artifices I do not wish to take up in this article so that you won’t say that I repeat myself like a bishop giving his benediction.
II
The first sorcerer who prospered in Ica (around the year 1611) deserved to be called an astrologer instead. He was white, of medium height, with dark hair and a well–shaped nose, who spoke very slowly and sententiously, and whose occupation was that of a healer.
He was the Falb2 of his century, a great prognosticator of earthquakes and very skillful at reading omens.
It would appear that he even tried to write a book, to judge from the following lines taken from a letter he sent to a friend:
“The way of knowing when a year will have abundant water. The look of the sky on the afternoon of the first of January is observed, and if it is yellowish green it will be a good year for water.”
What is more, he explains the abundance of water, when that particular circumstance does not occur, as characteristic of leap years.
He also characterizes years as solar or lunar, according to the greater or lesser influence of the sun and moon.
“How can it be known when it is time to declare that there is an epidemic? For this, the only thing that need be done is to pay attention to whether whirlwinds form or not during the month of February. In the first case there is certain to be a plague; it may by noted that pock marks, for example, first appear on leaves of grape vines.”
The theory of the astrologer from Ica concerning rains is also curious. “Clouds,” he states, “are nothing but spongelike masses that have the quality of absorbing water. These sponges come into contact with the sea, and once their thirst is quenched, they mount to the upper regions of the atmosphere, where the winds wring them out, and the water in them falls to the ground.” As for the large number of sapitos (frogs) that appear in Ica after a downpour, he said that they were due to the fact that the germs of them contained in the clouds develop before reaching the ground. He named any piling up of clouds a “double plume,” and the ensuing flood was given the name of “male swelling.”
The fact is that, as happens to all charlatans when they set out to explain natural phenomena, he neither understood himself nor did anyone else understand him, conditions more than sufficient for him to become a man of great prestige.
“Only a mortal who has a pact with the devil can know so much,” the people of Ica said, and for all their complaints everyone went to him to buy medicinal herbs.
III
Witches did not disappear from Ica in view of the fact that the Cortes of Cadiz did away with the tribunal of the Inquisition in 1813. Evidence in support of this:
Until a few years ago, Mama Justa was still alive, a most repugnant black, a fence for stolen goods, and a crafty woman, very skillful at preparing love potions and sticking dolls with pins, and (God save us!) mending maidenheads. The sloven lived into old age. The only persons to have formally accused her successor, ña3 Manonga Lévano, were several neighbor women who swore, by the consecrated Host, that they had seen her turn into an owl and fly.
Ña Lévano’s occupation was that of midwife. She would arrive at the home of the woman in childbirth, place on the woman’s head a widebrimmed straw hat that she maintained had belonged to Archbishop Perlempimpim, and before five minutes had gone by an offspring would come into the world. There was no tale to the effect that the magic had ever failed.
Ña Dominguita from the convent of Socorro is still alive, and all of Ica calls her a witch without it making her angry. She is an old woman bent over with age, the hobgoblin of the children because she wears a sort of turban. In the little garden of her house there is a small tree, planted by Father Guatemala, which bears little gold–colored flowers that according to ña Dominguita fall off on Cuasimodo’s Day, little flowers that possess miraculous virtues. She was educated in the Beguine convent of Socorro, founded in the previous century by the Dominican friar Manuel Cordero, whose portrait is preserved behind the door to the chapel. NÑa Dominguita hates everything that smacks of progress, and predicts that the iron horse will bring many misfortunes to Ica. On the eve of the battle of Saraja she not only predicted the winning side, though to do so she had no need to be a witch, but also designated by name
those men of Ica who would die in it. Her words always have a double meaning, and the quick thinking that gets her out of tight spots is amazing.
Don Jerónimo Illescas, who was born in Ica and lived there, an obese man and a great wit, was what is meant by an aristocratic sorcerer. He knew as much about reading cards as a French trickster. ño Chombo Illescas, as the townspeople called him, ran, until his death a few years ago, a tavern on the corner of San Francisco and sold tasty sausages made by Tiburcio, a black tosspot employed by don Jerónimo in the kitchen. This Tiburcio was also a character, for he had found a way to make excuses for his constant drinking.
“Black boy! Why are you always drunk?” a local gentleman would ask him.
“Master, how do you expect me not to get drunk out of satisfaction if my sausages turned out to be delicious?” Tiburcio would answer.
If he was again reproached on the following day, he would answer:
“Ay, master! Why wouldn’t I get drunk out of disappointment if my sausages were a failure and tasted really bad?”
Don Jerónimo’s fame as a seer had spread from the city to the country. Indian women, above all, came from afar and paid him a peso per consultation. There are fools in Lima who, in order to be like Napoleon the Great, pay four sols to a fortune teller who reads cards.
IV
Like the witches of Mahudes and Zugarramurdi in Spain, those in Cachiche, a barony, countship, or seigneury of a friend of mine, are famous. Being from Cachiche and being a witch are synonymous. No one can go to Cachiche in search of the delicious figs that that place produces without returning bewitched.
The excellent figs of its gardens also contribute to Cachiche’s renown. These figs are like those of Biscay, about which it is said that in order to be good, they must have the neck of a hanged man, the clothes of a poor man, and the eye of a widow; that is to say, one end dry, a wrinkled skin, and the other end oozing tears.
Let us pursue the subject of the witches of Cachiche.
In order not to be tedious, we are going to speak only of Melchorita Zugaray, the most famous sorceress that Cachiche has had in our day.
The laboratory or workroom of this woman with many tricks up her sleeve was a room closed off with a hide over the door, and at the dark bottom of the walls there stood out a white linen cloth, onto which holes in the ceiling made for the purpose cast beams of light.
The person who came to consult with Melchora concerning an illness were taken to the laboratory, where, after certain cabalistic rituals, the witch placed him in front of the brightly lit cloth and craftily interrogated him concerning his life and habits, paying careful attention to what he had to say about his friends and enemies. She then snipped off a bit of his clothing or a lock of his hair and set a meeting time for the next day in order to sacar muñeco.4The patient would come, Melchora would take him to a field or to an animal pen and unearth a little rag doll pierced with pins. The victim would pay a goodly sum, and if he wasn’t cured it was because he had had recourse to the sorceress’s fund of knowledge too late.
Others, above all jealous women and scorned suitors, sought Melchora out to have her put them in close touch with the devil. The witch would dress in men’s clothing, and accompanied by the person requesting her services, would make her way to a mountaintop where, among other incantations to summon the Evil One (Jesus three times!), she used the following one:
Patatín, patatín, patatín,
calabruz, calabruz, calabruz,
no hay mal que no tenga fin,
si reniego de la cruz.5
The devil would naturally turn a deaf ear, and the witch, who had received her pittance beforehand, would put an end to the magic spell, saying that if Bigfoot failed to appear it was because the victim was afraid or lacked faith in him.
V
Four years have not yet gone by since the tribunals of the Republic found a number of unfortunates of the province of Tarapacá guilty of having burned a witch to death, and I believe that the act of burning a victim at the stake has more recently been repeated in other towns in the South.
As for Ica, one of the issues of El Imparcial, a newspaper published in that city in 1873, states that a poor woman of Pueblo Nuevo was tied to a tree by a man who gave her a terrible flogging as punishment for having cast a spell over him. The very same thing had happened in 1860 to Jesús Valle, an 80–year–old black slave of the former marquis and marquise of Campoameno, who had her hands full keeping the peons of a hacienda from turning her into toast.
VI
And to end my account of the witches of Ica, for this article is already longer than it should be, I shall tell why José Cabrera, known as el Chirote, won fame in Ica as a past master of sorcery.
It so happened that the spouse of a friend of his felt the first labor pains, and as the husband went in search of the midwife, el Chirote stayed behind to look after the woman. She screamed and made such a fuss that Cabrera, annoyed no end by her carrying on, gave her such a hard slap that it made her head spin round. Getting slapped and giving birth to a boy was a matter of two minutes.
The husband, the new mother, and the neighbor women called ño Cabrera a sorcerer, and even today no one calls him by his nickname of Chirote the sorcerer without his answering calmly:
“I deserve it. I got that nickname for having taken it upon myself to do a good deed.”
1A reference to Palma’s Anales de la Inquisición de Lima (1863), a series of chronicles about the Spanish Inquisition in Lima.—Ed.
2Rudolf Falb (1838–1903), Austrian astronomer and meteorologist.—Ed.
3See “Santiago the Flier,” note 1.
4To cast a spell by placing pins in a doll.
5Patatín, patatín, patatín, / calabruz, calabruz, calabruz, / there is no ill without an end, / if I deny the cross.
The Royalist Smells of Death to Me
I have often heard, from the mouth of old ladies, the following catch phrase: “The royalist smells of death to me,” and as I was investigating its origin I was given the following account by a respectable elderly man who had been a lieutenant in the Alejandro Imperial Regiment number 45. I need only add that a large part of his account is consistent with the historical documents that I have been able to consult.
The schoolmaster in the town of Pichigua, in the province of Aymaraes, was, in 1823, an eccentric old man who had lived in the town for almost 20 years. No one knew where he came from, for he had appeared in the town as though fallen from heaven, and obtained from the authorities ten pesos’ salary a month for teaching the youngsters their abc’s and Christian doctrine.
In 1823 Pichigua was a small town inhabited by 800 Indians. Today its population is barely half that. Around that time, Colonel don Tomás Barandalla appeared in the town one morning with two companies of the Alejandro Imperial Regiment, and the Indians of Pichigua, who were diehard royalists, welcomed him with enthusiastic acclaim.
Barandalla had come to Peru in 1815 as captain of the Extremadura Regiment, which at the end of that year rebelled in Lima over a question of pay, with order being restored thanks to the energy of Viceroy Abascal.1The viceroy punished the rebels and to restore discipline dissolved the corps, leaving only two remaining companies that served as a base for the formation of the Alejandro Imperial, of which by 1823 Barandalla was the colonel.
The latter, showing off his Burgundian–style mustachio and wearing his dress uniform, was receiving the congratulations of the principal dignitaries of Pichigua in the corridor of the house of the parish priest, don Isidro Segovia, when an old man in a threadbare cape of thick Cuzco wool halted in the doorway. Near him was a group of Indians, with their heads bared, contemplating the valiant colonel in bewilderment.
The old man stood there without doffing his hat, and looking at Barandalla with a scornful air, said to those in the group of Indians:
“The royalist smells of death to me.”
And alluding to the close friendship that appeared to exist between Segovia th
e priest and the Spanish officer, he added:
“An abbot and a crossbowman bode ill for the Moors.”
One of the colonel’s spies heard him, and going over to the colonel told him of this remark. Barandalla looked toward the door, his eyes fixed on the old man, still with his hat pulled down and smiling disdainfully.
“Who is that man in the cape?” the colonel asked one of the townspeople.
“A poor devil, sir: he’s the schoolmaster.”
“He looks like an insurgent,” Barandalla said, and turning to one of his officers he added: “Take him out and shoot him.”
The priest and several dignitaries dared to unbutton their lips, pleading on behalf of the man condemned, but Barandalla stood firm. The schoolmaster put up not the slightest resistance, and allowed himself to be tied up, still murmuring:
“The royalist smells of death to me.”
“The one who smells of death is this insolent old man, so much so that I’m going to have him shot,” the officer interrupted him.
“Well and good!” the old man answered without batting an eye. “The fact that I smell of death doesn’t keep another man from smelling too. And turning to the group of townspeople, he said in a loud voice: “My sons, it’s not Barandalla who is killing me; it’s the justice of God. Twenty years ago today I stabbed my wife, my mother–in–law, and my children to death in Huaylas. Let the one who is guilty pay the price, and God have mercy on my soul.”
A month later in Cuzco Viceroy La Serna signed a number of promotions, and Barandalla received the rank of brigadier, perhaps as a reward for his cruel deeds. Barandalla was the one responsible for the shooting of the parish priest of the town of Reyes, in Junín. The brigadier was about to pay the devil tenfold for it.
Peruvian Traditions Page 22