We amble back in the general direction of the village, with several detours because Julio has thought of some other picturesque spot that I really must photograph.
‘¡La placa!’ he exclaims suddenly and dashes off in a different direction, at right angles to the main path. ‘¡Debes ver la placa!’
He’s going to show me a plaque out here in the middle of nowhere? I must have misunderstood him, I decide; and march after him through thigh-high, rustling stalks of grass.
‘It’s not far, is it? We really must go back, your Mamá will be waiting for us.’
Julio turns round, flashes a quick grin. ‘Not far.’
We go round the side of a hill and something that’s either a gigantic boulder or a small hillock. Beyond it, another valley opens up, green and level. At the foot of the hillock (or gigantic boulder) stands a slender wooden post crowned by a small metal tablet: a commemorative plaque, out here in the middle of nowhere.
‘La placa del cacique Foyel,’ explains Julio. Chief Foyel’s plaque.
Which it is, in a manner of speaking.
Desde este lugar fuimos localizados y perseguidos por los lanceros de Foyel el 27-2-1884, percecución por la cual mis tres compañeros fueron muertos en el Valle de los Mártires el 43-1884. En memoria de John D. Evans, su hijo Milton Evans 27 -2-1987.
(It was in this place that we encountered and were persecuted by the warriors of Foyel on 27-2-1884, which persecution led to the death of my three companions in the Valley of the Martyrs on 4-3-1884. In memoriam John D. Evans, put up by his son Milton Evans 27-2-1987.)
This is the first I’ve heard that the tribe of Foyel were the ones responsible for killing the three young gold-prospecting Welshmen. It’s over 200 miles from here to Las Plumas, the ‘Valley of the Martyrs’. The plaque was put up more than a century after the event, by John D. Evans’ son Milton. It’s possible, of course, that John D. Evans told his son details about that trip and its lethal end details that aren’t known to historians. (Although on the memorial to his horse whose giant leap saved him, John D. Evans merely mentions el atque de los indios, the attack by the Indians, without naming any names.)
Perhaps the Evanses – father or son – felt more comfortable inhabiting stolen territories if their erstwhile owners were undeserving, bloodthirsty savages, rather than people who went about their daily lives until they were forcibly removed, persecuted and killed.
60
JUANA LUZ IS ALREADY waiting when we get back.
‘In your school clothes!’ she exclaims when she claps eyes on Julio. ‘Your good clothes, and you’ve got mud and scales all over them! Now what are you going to wear tomorrow? Really, Julio....’
Julio and I assume hangdog expressions.
Julio, it transpires, only has one good suit of clothes, and now he will need to wash them so that they are clean again for tomorrow’s school.
‘He does all his own washing,’ explains Juana Luz while Julio, chastened and sulking a little, gets water from the standpipe in the garden, fills the kettle and prepares to boil it for hot water for washing.
‘I want him to be able to look after himself. He needs to understand how things work.’
I feel just as chastened as Julio. I try to explain that the trip to the river was a joint decision, but Juana Luz shakes her head. ‘It’s not that I mind him going fishing. It’s clever of him that he caught four fish in such a short time.’ A reluctant smile climbs from her lips to her eyes. ‘But he should have known to change first. That’s why I got cross with him.’
Soon, the clothes are clean again and fluttering on the line to dry, and Julio is in disgrace no more.
Every morning and evening, the local radio in Esquel transmits a string of personal messages. This is a service for people who live in scattered communities where many have no telephone. Juana Luz has no landline phone, but she does own a small, old-fashioned mobile. Picking up a signal in Futacura is tricky though, so she listens avidly to the radio messages every morning and evening.
‘There might be something for me,’ she explains. ‘And it’s also a way of keeping up to date with what’s going on out there.’
‘For Manuel Paredes and his sister Deborá in Costa de Lepá,’ says the radio. ‘You are needed in the school today at 1300 hours.
‘Enrique Lincán in Piedra Parada: today at approximately 1500 hours, Mario Abillo will come and bring the thing as arranged.
‘We inform Guillermo Huenchillan in Mata Grande that his mother has arrived safely in Esquel....’
There are stories in those messages. What’s the mysterious thing Mario Abillo arranged to take to Enrique Lincán’s house? Why won’t they say? Is it a surprise for someone else who might be listening – a new sofa, a fridge, a horse? Something embarrassing? Illegal? Immoral? Or are these two bored, and have hatched this mysterious message in order to get people guessing about secret things that are set to arrive at three o’clock this afternoon in Piedra Parada?
‘Norma Jaramillo in Colonia Cushamen: your grandmother Isidora Jaramillo wants you to know that the package has arrived.
‘José Paisamilla: a consignment for you will arrive this afternoon on the Don Otto coach. The sender is Floringa Longkopán...’
Then the tone changes. The announcer sits up straighter, his voice becomes more sonorous. This is now an Official Communication.
‘The public are informed that nineteen canines have been captured on roads and public thoroughfares, in violation of public order statutes. Anybody who presumes themselves the owner of one of the said animals should come to the municipal kennels in Esquel between 0730 and 1230 hours to reclaim their dog.’
Municipal kennels. Who knew?
‘Do you still want to go to a remote place on the meseta?’ Juana Luz asks on my last evening. ‘Or is Futacura remote enough for you now?’
I prick up my ears. ‘Why?’
‘I spoke to Mauro on the phone today. He said to tell you that there will be a ceremony held in Vuelta del Río, a very remote community in the hills, this weekend. You are invited to attend, if you like.’
‘A kamarukun? Are you and Julio going as well?’
She laughs. ‘No. It’s a bit too remote for me, it really is in the middle of nowhere. You have to drive a couple of hours from Esquel, and then it’s another three hours on horseback.’
I used to be able to ride but I haven’t so much as touched a saddle for years. I have visions of me falling off the horse in the middle of nowhere while the rest of the group disappears in a dust cloud on the horizon.
‘They won’t be galloping for three hours,’ Juana Luz says sensibly.
I hesitate, but I don’t really contemplate not going.
I will never forgive myself if I miss this chance.
If I fall off, I fall off.
Juana Luz and Julio walk me to the coach next afternoon. I feel equally sad and relieved about leaving. I have lost my heart to Julio, a little bit because he reminds me of myself; and very much because he is so fiercely and proudly and utterly himself. I have lost my heart to Juana Luz too, for much the same reasons. I will miss those two. They will be in my thoughts from now on; and while we are walking down the wide, empty, dusty gravel main street of Futacura, we are already planning my next visit.
‘When you come next time...’ is the start of every other sentence. We will go on excursions into the hills, Juana Luz and Julio will show me hidden beauty spots and introduce me to other members of the community.
‘When you come next time...’
I’m looking forward to it already.
And at the same time, I feel relief that I’m going to go back to the world that I know. I will sleep in a bed in a room with electric light and running water tonight. I will go back to Dana’s beautiful house with all its luxuries, fluffy towels and carpeted floors, a warm kitchen. I will go back to Esquel (small-town Esquel, but after Futacura, a glittering metropolis) and revel in its shops and cafés, its bright lights.
I
find communal life difficult. In Futacura, I was never alone unless I declared that I intended to go for a walk by myself. And then, there was nothing to do except to walk about for a while in the fields or by the river, and then go back to the house.
And, although I do not like to admit it, I find living in straitened circumstances exhausting. I’m not much of a shopaholic; but I find the thought of possessing just two suits of clothing – one for around the house, one for school or work – unimaginable. I put on different clothes every day, and it’s never crossed my mind that, really, that is a bit of a luxury. I don’t need two dozen different tops, a dozen different pairs of jeans.
From now on, I will try to consume less, to live more consciously.
But I still look forward to returning to my own world.
I’m torn. I wish there were two of me, one to stay here, and one to go.
‘You’ll be back,’ Juana Luz says serenely.
Julio says nothing. He gives me a very long hug at the coach stop.
I clamber onto the coach with its armoured windscreen.
‘¡Hasta la próxima!’ mouthes Juana Luz. ‘See you when you come back.’
I wave until they disappear from view.
61
ON SATURDAY MORNING at nine, I’m at the community centre in Esquel. I have spoken to Mauro on the phone. He won’t be there himself, but someone will give me a lift as far as the car can go. After that it’s going to be horses. People know to expect me. And he’ll come to Vuelta del Río later. So there’ll be at least one person there that I know.
I have spent the past few days at Dana’s, immersed in the urban life of Esquel and the social life of Y Wladfa. Last night, we went to see the concert of a visiting choir with one of Dana’s Welsh-speaking neighbours. Now I’m all set to go out into the hills once more.
My lift is Catalina. She was the first person who hailed me when I got to the community centre. She’s outgoing and friendly and closest to me in age. She is of Tehuelche ancestry, she tells me; and lives in Esquel, where she works for a health insurance company. But she spends most of her weekends in Nahuel Pan, the reclaimed community from which seventy years ago Ambrosio Ainqueó and his mother and sister and around three hundred other Mapuche-Tehuelche were forcibly removed. One of them was Catalina’s father.
These days, a dozen or so families have gone back to live in Nahuel Pan. Catalina owns a flat in Esquel, but she has some land in the valley where she is building herself a house, and keeps a cow and chickens.
‘My children think I’m mad,’ she says and laughs. ‘They think I should settle down in Esquel and forget all this nonsense of living off the land.’
She’s dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, and I had assumed her to be about my age, in her late thirties. But she’s ten years older than that, with four grown-up children. She is a widow, and although she misses her husband, she also tells me that she will never marry again.
‘I love my freedom too much,’ she says with a glint in her eye. ‘My children think that’s mad, too. Do you think I’m mad?’
I think that it’s my great good fortune that I have met her.
It’s a bright, breezy, sunny autumn day. The sky is blue with small puffy clouds like sheep. We zip along the tarmac road for an hour, rattle along a gravel ruta de tierra for another hour, and then Catalina turns off the road onto a strip of land by the river, parks the car and gets out. Shortly afterwards a battered minibus arrives, bearing a group of Tehuelche-Mapuche who have travelled from all over the western reaches of the province.
This is as far as the cars can go. Now we cross the river by a footbridge, and walk. Some horses have materialised, but not enough for all of us. Most of the occupants of the minibus seem to be longkos: elders. They most certainly won’t be able to walk this distance.
There are also a number of rolled-up mattresses and sheets. Catalina has brought a sleeping bag. I haven’t. I wonder where I will sleep. Catalina offers me the use of her camping mattress, and I hope that someone in the village will have a corner in their house where I can sleep.
The sun is warm and the wind a lovely, cooling breeze. The river curls like a huge blue snake, the steppe stretches towards the mountains.
‘It’s along here and then up the hill,’ Catalina says, shoulders her backpack (‘My children laughed when they saw me with this’) and we march off, across the steppe in the sunshine and beautiful cool wind.
Catalina has a tendency to stray off the footpath. ‘Lets go along here,’ she keeps saying, ‘it’s a shortcut.’ We march through knee-high clumps of dry spiky grass. The hill slowly, slowly comes closer. It’s a lot further away than it looked from the river. After a while, hoofbeats behind us announce those lucky enough to snag a horse. The longkos ride slowly past. Among them are two old, old women with craggy and impressive faces. Even more impressive is their riding style: they sit nonchalantly on their horses’ backs, with one foot in a stirrup, the other dangling free. Everyone here seems to ride like that. We get a good chance to see because they all ride past us and begin to ascend the hill while we’re still toiling across the steppe.
The hoofbeats slowly fade. The wind whistles through the grass. Small grey grasshoppers jump up and sail past us with a rasping noise.
‘Langostas,’ says Catalina. This confuses me greatly, because as far as I know langosta means lobster, and this looks like a very unlikely place to find any of those. It finally turns out that the small grey grasshoppers are, in fact, locusts, and that they too are called langostas.
We reach the hill. Catalina stops to catch her breath. ‘It’s my asthma,’ she says. ‘The dust isn’t helping.’
A little while later a gaucho on horseback with a second horse on a lead rein passes by at a rapid trot.
‘A spare horse!’ Catalina says. That glint in her eye is back. She hails the gaucho and gets him to lend her the spare horse. She offers me a lift, too, but I’m not sure if the horse, a fragile-looking creature on spindly legs, is up to carrying both of us. Also, I very much enjoy walking. All those times I travelled through the desert on the coach I wished that I could just get out and walk, connect with the land by touching it with every step. Now I can.
We climb the hill, Catalina and the gaucho on horseback, and me on foot. The path winds round the brow of the hill, descends into a small valley, begins to climb again. A little line of green grass indicates the place where a small stream meanders through the dusty greyness. The string of horses and riders disappears round the next bend in the road. Slowly, Catalina and the gaucho move away from me, too. I march on.
Down hill.
Up hill.
Down hill.
Up...
All I can hear is the breath of the wind, the rasping of the locusts, the sound of my own footsteps, occasional bird calls. I follow the hoofprints in the soft gravelly sand, and walk, and walk, and walk.
Until finally, the path peters out. I am standing on a rugged greyish highland. Now what?
I strain my ears to catch, perhaps, the sound of voices, or the clip-clop of hooves.
Nothing.
Wind, air, wide open spaces.
I gaze down at the ground, among the spiny bushes and rocky outcrops, trying to decipher the hoofprints. I used to be an avid reader of Wild West adventure novels when I was young, whose heroes could unfailingly read any kind of trail. I hunker down and peer at the sandy soil. There is a fairly clearly marked trail of a number of horses travelling together, all going in the direction I have been following so far.
I straighten up and walk on. Calamity Jane, watch out.
62
THE TABLELAND CONTINUES for a long time. The features of the landscape remain the same, while on the horizon, hills appear and shift and slowly disappear from view. It all looks weirdly familiar. If it was a little greener and there were a few more sheep about, it would look just like mid Wales. I peer at the openings between the far hills on the horizon, convinced that any minute now, I will see th
e blue of the sea.
But I am four hundred miles inland, eight thousand miles from Wales. I have not seen a human being for an hour, which isn’t much time at all. But out here, in the middle of nowhere where the only sign of humanity is the occasional fence across the landscape, I feel rather small, and insignificant, and alone.
I understand a little better now that triumphant crowing of Victorian travellers about being the first to set a foot on virgin soil. I’m surrounded by a wilderness that isn’t hostile, it just doesn’t care. Out here, being human doesn’t mean a thing. I’m no more – and no less – special than a pebble, a horse, a locust, a condor. It’s as though the dimensions have been changed, and everything is the same size. All the layers that ordinarily define me have been stripped away, and I have been left with nothing but my bare self.
It’s alarming. Frightening. Illuminating.
Liberating.
The hoofprints give out altogether, and for the next ten minutes I panic. It is a comfortable, luxurious kind of panic.
If I don’t turn up at wherever we’re going, someone will notice my absence and come and look for me. Won’t they? In the worst case, I can just turn around and walk back in my own footprints, and within a couple of hours I will reach the road where I can flag down a coach or a car which will bring me back to Esquel.
I am not really lost, but even so, I catch a brief glimpse of how huge and impersonal nature is, and how small and weak and clawless I am. I think of the Welsh settlers, newly arrived in Patagonia; of David Williams who got lost in the desert and died of thirst.85 Suddenly, I can see how easily this would have happened.
I am a stranger in these lands, on this soil. I wouldn’t know which plants are edible, what to do for water. Dig? (With what – my small Swiss army knife?) Use water stored in plants? (Which plants?) Recycle my own urine? (Ick.)
Beyond the Pampas Page 23