Latin American Folktales

by John Bierhorst

  The big man arrived. He said, “What have you been up to? Blast! You’re better than I am!” He wanted to be angry at the little man, but he couldn’t. “Do you want to eat? Here, I’ve brought you some food.” But the man said no. The old woman had told him, “Don’t eat anything they give you.”

  “All right, don’t! But if you’re hungry, let me know. I’ll give you food. On top of that, you’re earning your pay.” But it wasn’t true. They were cheating him. There was no pay except beatings for not working fast enough.

  The next morning the old woman told him, “You’ll be getting another kind of work today.” She knew all about it. “It won’t be the same as before,” she said. “They’ve been testing you.”

  “Whatever they give me, God will help me.”

  “Yes, the boy will come bring you a taco,” she said, “but you must work.”

  So once again he arrived at the house of the big man. “Now you are going to plow furrows where you cut down the wheat,” he was told. “Go hitch up a team and get the plow.” But they gave him two bad mules that didn’t want to be hitched. They bit him and kicked him. The little boy had advised him, “Don’t be afraid when you try to hitch the big man’s mules. Just punch them and you’ll subdue them. These animals they give you are like wild beasts.”

  And they gave him the mules and he roped them together. It was work. They bit his hands. “Ave Maria!” cried the laborer, and he kept his thoughts on God. He put on the reins and the mules bit his hands again. He slapped them around. They were so wild that fire came from their mouths and eyes. They didn’t want to be driven or pull the furrows.

  The little boy came again and asked, “How much work have they done?”

  “They don’t want to go.”

  “Ah, they’ll go,” said the boy. “You eat, and I’ll help you with a furrow or two.”

  Well, he took hold of the animals and spoke to them slowly. Immediately they began to pull furrows. They cut every row in the field. But when the man finished eating and tried to take charge of his team, they bit him again, and they kicked him until fire poured from their hooves and their eyes and their noses. “Hit them, punch them if they do that to you,” said the boy. “Beat them, don’t be afraid of them. That’s why they gave you a whip.” The man listened and beat the mules. And the mules cried out, “Compadre, stop! You’re killing us!”

  At last it was evening, and the man untied the mules. He put them in the corral, gave them food, and went home to the house of the little old woman.

  “How much have you worked?” she asked. “How tired you look.”

  “Yes, tired. Those animals they gave me wouldn’t move.”

  “Ah, that’s the way they are. Well now, you’ve done your penance.

  Now you can go back to your own house. Rest. Tomorrow you go home.” The man rested, he lay down, they gave him food. Tortillas and beans. And water, no pulque.

  About three in the morning the old woman said, “Are you up?” “Yes, lady, I’m awake.”

  “Now you may go to your house. Your wife is there, crying. She lights a candle for you and remembers you. She is all right. You beat her. But what you did to her was not your fault. It was the fault of your comadre—the one you drove like an animal yesterday, the one you tied up. You were punished for what you did to your wife, and your comadre was punished also. You drove her, and she pulled the plow. Now go to your wife. She is crying, thinking she has lost you. She doesn’t know where you went. Go see her.”

  “Yes, lady. Thank you.” He got up.

  “Go on, go see her now. Forget what was done to her, forget what we’ve talked about.” And the old woman showed him her bleeding heart, and it was the dear Virgin, with the mark of the wound on her breast.

  “Don’t always believe what people tell you,” she said. “Believe what you see. Now, when you pass your comadre’s house, you will talk with her. Her eyes are blackened from what you did to her yesterday.”

  He went home and greeted his comadre, whose house was on the road near his own. She was black and blue and cut up from the beating. “Ah, dear compadre,” she said, “you punished me yesterday.”

  “So, it was you?”

  “Yes, it was me.”

  “But I only did what the boss told me to do. I was carrying out orders. I didn’t know it was you.”

  “Ah, so that’s how it was, compadre. I told you a lie. And for this, I believe, we went to the place where the Devil lives.”

  Mexico (Otomi) / Jesús Salinas Pedraza

  102. The Moth

  A man and a woman lived happily together with their only child, a little boy.

  But the man went off on a journey, leaving his wife in tears, and while he was away she spent the nights sleeplessly spinning.

  One night, as the little boy lay awake, he asked his mother, “What is it that flutters there beside you, that I hear you talking to?” The mother answered, “Oh, just someone who loves me, a little friend who comes and keeps me company.”

  When the man returned from his journey, his wife was out of the house. He began talking with his son, asking him how his mother had spent the nights while he was gone. “Someone who loves her came every night,” said the little boy, “and she stayed up late, spinning and talking to him.”

  Hearing this, the man went out to look for his wife. When he found her, he threw her over a cliff and killed her.

  Then one night, as he sat before the fire, thinking of what had happened, his little boy cried out, “There he is, Mama’s lover! The one who kept her company!” and he pointed to the moth that had come to his mother’s side during the long nights of her husband’s absence. Realizing his mistake, the man became strangely quiet. His grief overwhelmed him, he no longer moved, and at last he stopped breathing and his body grew cold.

  Peru (Quechua)

  103. The Earth Ate Them

  An old man had three daughters who were constantly in want. He was so tight he refused to buy food, and it was all they could do to keep body and soul together.

  One day, as the old man lay dying, he called his daughters to his bedside and whispered his last request: they must bury him with all his money, in gold and silver coins, which they would find in a bag hidden behind a panel in the wall. He had to instruct the girls how to find this moneybag, since they had no idea it existed. Naturally the daughters said they would do as their father wanted.

  The old man died, and the girls laid the bag in his coffin.

  Many days went by, and finding themselves desperately poor the three sisters got together and decided to steal the purse from their father’s grave. They were sure he would never miss it. Besides, it would save them from starvation. The eldest, they agreed, should be the one to go after it.

  The next day, late, just at vespers, the eldest sister went to the cemetery and fetched the moneybag. She brought it home and set it aside, thinking they would be able to start using it the following morning.

  But that very night, before they had finished their dinner, there came a knock at the door, and when they looked through the keyhole, there was their father, returned from the other world.

  Frightened half to death, they crouched in a corner and refused to open up. The next morning they brought the money to the cemetery and put it back in the coffin.

  A few days later, in dire need, they stiffened their resolve and decided to try again. This time the second oldest was elected to go. And off she went. But that night again the father came knocking, and the next day they returned the money as they had done the time before.

  After a few more days the youngest sister announced that she was going to bring home the moneybag and keep it no matter what. If the father came for it again, she’d open the door and face him down.

  She went to the cemetery just as she’d said she’d do, brought home the bag, and hid it where the father would not be able to see it if and when he arrived.

  That night at his customary hour he knocked on the door. The youngest sister calle
d, “Who’s there?”

  “Your father!” came a hollow voice as if from the earth.

  She opened the door and there stood a skeleton. The two older sisters shrank back in horror. But the youngest motioned him to his old chair, and he settled himself noiselessly the way ghosts do. While the older sisters held their breath, the youngest spoke up:

  “And your legs, Father?”

  “The earth ate them,” answered the ghost.

  “And your hands and your arms, Father?”

  “The earth ate them.”

  “And your ears, Father?”

  “The earth ate them.”

  “And your hair and your beard, Father?”

  “The earth ate them.”

  “And the bag full of money, Father?”

  “You mean you didn’t take it?” came the hollow voice, picking up strength. In a fury the ghost jumped out of the chair and disappeared, much to the dismay of the sisters, who were consoled nevertheless by the bag of money hidden safely away. In fact—

  They were happy as the dickens

  And ate chickens.

  Argentina

  EPILOGUE

  TWENTIETH-CENTURY MYTHS

  One should always fear spirits, gods, and ancestors, but never the living.

  proverb / Aymara (Bolivia)

  Resisting Hispanic influence, oral literature of strictly Amer-indian origin flourished throughout the twentieth century, hardly as an afterthought but vigorously in many areas from New Mexico to Argentina. While folklorists turned their attention to transplanted Old World lore, anthropologists continued to document native cultures that had been little known, transcribing oral tales in quantities far surpassing the Hispanic collections. Even in Indian Mexico, which had been written off by early-twentieth-century authorities as hispanicized, purely native lore was found to have survived, notably among the Lacandon Maya of Chiapas and the Huichol of Jalisco. And to an impressive degree among other Mexican groups as well, not to mention more remotely situated cultures in Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina.

  Indian lore, wherever it is unmixed with Iberian tradition, cannot be called Latino; and, as noted elsewhere in this book, the mixing, when it does take place, occurs in one direction only. Indian storytelling techniques and subject matter are not absorbed by Ibero-American communities; that is, not at the level of folklore. They have had a pronounced effect, however, on Latin American literature, as can be seen in the fiction and poetry of Rosario Castellanos, Miguel Asturias, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ernesto Cardenal, and many others, who have looked upon Indian narrative art as a cultural resource. This is not the same as bringing the symbolic Indian into literature as a tragic or noble figure. What is meant is that Indian oral art has become a literary influence, as with the Peruvian Vargas Llosa, who retells twentieth-century Machiguenga tales in his novel of 1987, El hablador (The storyteller), creating a bridge, if a troubling one, between Hispanic and Indian traditions—troubling for the Hispanic side because the fictional hablador actually crosses that bridge in a renunciation of Western culture.

  We may speak of Indian folklore, yet Indian narratives cannot comfortably be called folktales; they have both the immensity and the inwardness that Europeans associate with an earlier stratum in their own culture, when myth was freely produced. Indian storytellers do distinguish between serious tales and those told for entertainment only. But exact terminology would be hard to adjust to the very brief sampling that can be offered here, to which the term “myth” in the original Greek sense, “story,” may be broadly applied. This follows the custom of some, if not all, anthropologists.

  The twelve myths given below have been chosen to reflect the main anthology, opening with a tale that suggests the power of stories themselves and closing—in both cases, though to different effect—with a final question: Can death be permanent? In between are some of the other familiar themes—marriage, world creation, and romantic courtship. Observe that money and nonsense, those durable staples of European folklore, are not represented. And there are some reversals. Instead of “The Witch Wife,” we have “The Buzzard Husband”; in place of the male Creator, at least three instances in which the Creator is female.

  It can be noticed that Indian tellers have a way of pulling the story out of the social sphere and into the wider world of nature. A counter-tendency, often revealed in the same stories, draws the listener into the depths of personality, safely beneath the necessary world of social ills. The result, we may say, is medicinal, a kind of healing. The similar claim that European folktales are a form of folk psychotherapy is well known, if controversial. With myth, the proposition is less easy to ignore, though the line of inquiry, since the target is elusive, must again be controversial. “The Condor Seeks a Wife,” with its heroine who retreats to the safety of her mother’s lap, and “The Priest’s Son Becomes an Eagle,” with its sudden escape into nature, may be considered in this light.

  Just as Old World folklore has its standard fairy tales and Aesopic fables, Indian lore has tale types that jump from language to language, spreading out over large geographical areas. Three of these are included here. The first, “The Buzzard Husband,” belongs to Mexico and Central America. The second, “The Dead Wife,” is a pan-Indian type, more common in North America than in Latin America and with a history of documentation that goes back to at least the early 1600s. The third, “The Revolt of the Utensils,” also a pan-Indian myth, has an even older pedigree.

  In much the same way that European tales can be traced to such sources as the medieval Gesta Romanorum and the fifth-century Panchatantra of India, native American myths have early colonial and pre-Columbian prototypes. A case in point is “The Revolt of the Utensils,” which appears in the sixteenth-century Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché Maya of Guatemala. Written in alphabetic script in the 1550s by one or more Maya scribes, the Popol Vuh incorporates stories that recall pictorial versions on Maya vases of a thousand years earlier. The myth of the rebellious utensils, in which the earth is rid of an early, imperfect race of humans, tells a story of cultural destruction. The people’s cooking pots, griddles, grinding stones, weapons, and other artifacts rise up against their masters and put them to death, returning the world to a state of nature. Although this particular story has so far not been found on an ancient Maya vase, a version of it is illustrated on a pre-Inca pot from Peru, showing the combative utensils with arms, legs, and angry little faces. The modern version given below, from the Tacana of Bolivia, has the utensils in a playful mood, holding their power in reserve—perhaps as a gentle reminder that the war between nature and culture, if seemingly resolved in favor of culture, is not finished yet.

  104. Why Tobacco Grows Close to Houses

  In former times tobacco plants were people. They loved stories, and for this reason they always lived close to the walls of houses. That way they could lean forward and listen whenever stories were about to be told.

  Even if they just heard talking they would get as close to the walls as possible and listen. Therefore the Mother arranged her creation so that tobacco plants would never grow anywhere except around houses, up close to the walls. There they can listen easily. In addition the Mother commanded that tobacco be chewed with coca leaves, because that way tobacco can hear the stories directly from the mouths of the tellers.

  Kogi (Colombia)

  105. The Buzzard Husband

  Once there was a man long ago. He was very lazy. A loafer. He didn’t want to do anything. He didn’t want to work. When he went to clear trees, he asked for tortillas to take along. But he only went to eat.

  Lying on his back in the woods, watching the buzzards gliding in the sky, he said, “Come on down, buzzard, come here, let’s talk! Give me your suit!” The buzzard never came down.

  Every day the man returned home. “How is your work?” his wife would ask.

  “There is work to do, there is still work to do. There is quite a bit because it can’t b
e done easily. There are so many large logs,” the man would say. And he left and he came back. And he left and he came back. And that’s how the year passed.

  The poor woman’s heart! “My corn is about to be harvested,” she said. But how could her corn be harvested? Sleeping is what the man did. He spreads out his woolen tunic. He goes to sleep. He makes a pillow out of his tortillas.

  “God, My Lord, holy buzzard, how is it that you don’t do anything at all?” he would say. “You fly, gliding easily along. You don’t work. But me, it’s hard with me. I’m suffering terribly. What agony I suffer! Look at my hands! They have lots of sores already. My hands hurt, so now I can’t work. My hands are worn out. I don’t want to work at all.”

  Maybe Our Lord grew tired of it. The buzzard finally came down. “Well, what is it you want with me, talking that way?”

  “It’s just that you seem so well off,” said the man. “Without a care you fly in the sky. Now me, I suffer so much. I suffer a lot, working in my cornfield, and I haven’t any corn. I’m poor. My wife is scolding me. That’s why, if you just wanted to, you could take my clothes, and I’ll go buzzarding.”

  “Ah!” said the buzzard. “Well, I’ll go first to ask permission. I’ll come back, depending on what I’m told.”

  “Go, then!”

  “Wait for me.”

  The man waited. He sat down, waiting for the buzzard. “Why don’t you come to change places with me? I can’t stand it anymore, I’m tired of working,” he said. He had taken his ax and his little billhook with him to clear the land. He cleared a tiny bit. He felled two trees, then he returned home again.

  “How about it, have you finished clearing your land?” asked his wife.

  “Oh, it seems to be nearly ready.”

  “Ah,” she said. And another day passed.