The heart when it hurts

My father used to take me, as a child, fishing in the highlands. He had long rubber boots and would go waist deep in the rushing rivers. We would walk a long way and Dad would wait patiently. I carried my camera and waited beside him. At that time, I was already dreaming of exploring the Andes. As an adult I fulfilled my dream and hiked the entire Cordillera. These photos were published by National Geographic magazine in 2001.

After many trips through the Andean countries I confirmed that we are a mestizo people, that despite the deep pain of the conquest, despite the injustices and mistreatment of our society, despite our violent history, we have the two worlds – the white and the Indian – incorporated in our culture, in our life, in our being. And part of the necessary reconciliation is to accept each other. Inspired by this need to reconcile with history, and also by the need to process personal pain, I wrote this text on the Andes that was never published:

The shadows of the night

I still wonder where the land of shadows begins and where the land of the living begins. As I understand it, the boundaries were erased a long time ago, in a cataclysm, an unspeakable tidal wave that some called the Spanish conquest: waves loaded with crosses destined to be nailed to the coppery heart of the idols.

The very instant of her death several kilometers away knocked on the window, “Sister, what are you doing, why didn’t you use the door?” my grandmother asked in surprise, “I just came to say goodbye”, the shadow answered. For my grandmother there was no separation between the two worlds. When I was growing up in my house in Quito, I shared the space with the souls in pain, I listened to them climb the creaking wooden staircase, I breathlessly calculated the short way they had to walk to my door. In the modern world there is no place for the mystery of the night. Spectres now don’t bother to interrupt my path.

The attention traditionally paid to the afterlife in the Andean world was a way of acknowledging that the ancestors are never completely absent. Their work, their dreams, their loves and slights remain with us penetrating the silent wall of death, awakening our attention to the past, to our roots. If we do not remember our ancestors, if we do not remember the daily history built by simple people, that which is almost never mentioned in books, we can hardly know who we are and where we should go.

When I traveled around Cusco I remembered an ancestor, an adventurer who like me had decided to travel the Cordillera on some mysterious quest. No one knew for years of his whereabouts, whether he had lost his life in an ambush or gained the favor of a lusty wench. One night the dogs began to bark madly and the family of the lost one knew that only his specter would return.

Cusco is the heart of the Andean world, the precise axis where all the coordinates converge: layer upon layer, wound upon wound, hand upon hand, nostalgia upon nostalgia, Christian stone upon Inca stone. On my last trip to Cusco I was invaded by an ancient, inexplicable sadness. There I understood that as a people we have to accept ourselves, to look at our mestizo world with gentleness and kindness.

The heart when it hurts

Does your heart ache, Daddy, does your heart ache? How beautiful is the heart when it aches! It is like a hummingbird that wants to escape from the chest, flapping its wings restlessly. This square, the Main Square of Cusco, we call it Huacaypata, that is to say ‘above the crying’. When the heart hurts, papitico, we place it sweetly on top of the crying, so that it gets wet, so that so much drought does not crack it.

That is the reason why we cry, to give the heart the moisture it needs, so that it does not melt and then turn into a rocky area.

Do you ask me what remedy is used for a bad heart? It is very easy, very easy. You take the smallest flowers, those little flowers, those tender ones whose petals have not dared to show and you put them in fresh water. The next morning you drink the water. The tiny flowers have all the energy, all the hope, they have the power to awaken a bud here, a bud there.

But daddy, don’t try to tear your heart out of your chest. When your hand hurts you don’t try to cut it with a knife, when your leg hurts you don’t leave it lying on the road. Why is it that when your heart hurts you want to pull it out of your chest, to tear it out with a single stroke? You take care of your hand, you caress it, you put ointments on your leg and give it rest. Why is it that you want to tear your heart out of your chest? Your heart is more beautiful when it cries, it needs water of piti flowers, it needs ointments, it needs caresses and rest. Ask your heart to cry, take it to the plaza of Huacaypata and let it flutter like a hummingbird.

When I discovered the disillusionment, I wanted to climb the mountain and poison myself, as my father did. I tried, but I could not. The wind spoke to me.

How does the gale speak? Near the cliffs it howls, near the slopes it sings. The wind is sometimes sweet and sometimes it rages. We must listen to it, it always tells us where we are, where the stream is, where the spring is.

So is the water. Water also speaks if we listen to it.

The sun and the stars speak, the creeping and climbing plants speak, the earth speaks, but, above all, the wind speaks.

How beautiful is disillusionment, Daddy! With time the wound becomes a whimsical whirlwind that revives the memory.

Have you ever seen a peasant house with mirrors? The peasant does not need to look at himself, he has no image of himself. He blends in with the earth and is as relentless as the wind.

You ask me what the Andes are? Let me tell you. In Quechua, the eastern Cordillera is called Antis or Antisuyo. When you climb these peaks you see in the distance much higher mountains, mountains surrounded by jungle, impossible to climb, terrible and mysterious. Those are the Antis, the Andis, the Andes. There, in that distant and mysterious place, our ancestors end up, there, in that place, our sorrows end up.

Our dead and our sorrows are very similar, that is why they go to the same place. The dead always say “I am leaving, but I will come back”, and that is what sorrows always do, they leave but they always come back. And when they return we welcome them like lost relatives, like old friends.

How beautiful is sadness, Daddy, how beautiful is the heart when it cries! When it cries it is like a hummingbird that goes to the Antis and converses with the dead, and converses with the sorrows”.