Dear Friends: I love it when things turn out the way you’ve hoped and planned. A couple of years ago, I came across an article published in 1984 by an anthropological linguist from England, Rosaleen Howard, “Dyablu Its Meanings in Cañar Quichua Oral Narrative.” I took note, as published material on Cañar is rare, and when I later came across her book, Dioses y Diablos: tradicion oral de Cañar, Ecuador, (Gods and Devils: Oral Tradition in Cañar, Ecuador) with more than 50 Cañari myths and legends, recorded in Quichua and transcribed into Spanish, I knew I had to find her and invite her back to Cañar. So I began to search by the Internet and email…and searched, and searched. No luck. Finally, about a year ago, my contact at University of Texas gave me Rosaleen’s correct address. Success! She answered immediately, delighted to have been found.

She is Director of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Chair of Hispanic Studies – School of Modern Languages, at Newcastle University in the U.K. She wrote that she’s now doing research primarily in Peru and Bolivia but was already planning a trip back to Ecuador. I described the Archivo Cultural de Cañar, and the great importance to the Cañari community to have access to these stories, in live recordings and written text. Could we find a time to work together in Cañar? We began to compare our schedules and plan.

Spoiler alert: she’s here! Barely a day after she arrived last week, she gave her first talk on Cañari myths and music to an audience of bilingual (Kichwa/Spanish) teachers, administrators, students, and one of the original narrators from 1976, Pedro Duy (on her left in photo). Everyone loves that Rosaleen speaks Kichwa. And I was so pleased to present her in the name of the Archivo Cultural de los Cañaris, and just that morning had delivered our new banner with the name in Kichwa.

Rosaleen was in her twenties in the 1970’s when she came to Cañar to do her doctoral research, when this was a dark and dreary place with no electricity in the villages, no roads, no amenities such as potable water. The agrarian reform had barely begun, this was pre-migration, and the people were poor. In our working visits to villages to interview those narrators still alive, she marveled at the changes.

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Our first visit was to the village of Juncal to speak to Gerónimo Guasco Guamán, one of Rosaleen’s original narrators 43 years ago, and whom I know from my work with the book of Danish anthropologists Niels Fock and Eva Krener, which we published in Spanish as Juncal: Una comunidad indígena del ecuador in 2016. Tayta Gerónimo wrote the introduction that edition. It was a gorgeous day when we took a taxi/truck about 20 kilometers away to a spectacular mountain valley that has changed little, geographically speaking (sheep are still there too).

Since we published Juncal in Spanish, I’ve been working with three bilingual educators to translate it into Kichwa and the day of our visit I took a mock-up of the new version to show Tayta Geronimo and his wife, Rosario María. After the family gathered around for a look…

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…Mama Rosario took possession of the book and worked through every page, identifying people and places, including a photo of herself in a distant field. She couldn’t have cared less about the text; it was the images that transported her back almost 50 years. A wonderful moment for me as a photo archivist – I only wish I had recorded her information.

Rosaleen waited patiently to talk to Tayta Gerónimo. Although he can’t hear well, she wanted to play one of his recorded stories, so he held two little speakers to his ears and was delighted to listen to a long story he’d recorded with her in 1976.

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Next day we made a visit to the village La Capilla, near Cañar, where we met two original narrators: Pedro Duy and Segundo Avelino. After a tasty lunch of fried trout (it was Good Friday), Rosaleen took out her computer to show photos she’d taken in 1976. Suddenly, Segundo said, “That’s me, joven!” as he pointed to a young man in the back of a truck dressed for a fiesta.

And there he was, as a young man, 43 years ago (back right, with banner across chest, holding hat). Very excited, Segundo said he had to have a copy of the photo, and we sat there for a moment, thinking. Then – this being 2019 – he took his iPhone out of his pocket and made a copy from the computer screen.

That led to reminiscing, which led to the proper moment for Rosaleen to take out her recorder and ask how things have changed since 1976. It was a mostly a sad litany, with some nostalgia: “We’ve lost our language, our traditional clothing, our agricultural practices, our music (Pedro gave up the accordion ten years ago), and so on…

But then we look around at Pedro’s and Laura’s large and comfortable house and enclosed patio. At 71 years, Pedro still works on the mountain with his animals and crops. His daughter, Laura, has just graduated from the University of Cuenca. Segundo mentions his horses and cattle, and shows us his Borsalino cowboy hat (he’d given up the white Cañari hat from the photo). In this particular community it appears there has been a shift from Cañari culture to a mestizo life, but these folks are vital into old age, tending their crops and animals, educating their children, living in good houses, and they are no longer poor.

After, Rosaleen and I took the long way home, walking along unknown roads that dead-ended in steep pathways, to finally reach our house in time for wine, the fire, and Michael’s dinner of BBQ’d pork chops and mashed potatoes, plus salad with homemade pickled beets. Ahhh…

Rosaleen will present her work this week at two universities in the area, then head back to Guayaquil, Quito and Newcastle. But I’m happy to say she’s already planning her next trip back to Cañar. Yupaychani, Rosaleen, and come back soon!

The Cañar Book Club is BACK!

Many of my dear book club members were outraged that we skipped a meeting of the Cañar Book Club in the March blog, and I apologize. One should never be too busy to pass on recommendations of good books. So here they are a month late – and I promise never to miss a meeting again (except for next month, when I’ll be in Spain).

From Claire in London as she was leaving for a holiday: Tangerine by Christine Mangan that was strongly recommended by the cashier at bookstore. And I’ve just started The Capital by Robert Menasse. She adds: “anything by Maggie O’Farrell, my go-to when I can’t think what else to read; I’m going to run out soon.” Judy’s comment: I agree on Maggie O’Farrell. She never disappoints.

And from my great archive collaborators, the Peace Corps guys who served in Cañar in the 1960s. Alan, in New Jersey, recommends: The Sixth Extinction, An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert. And Dan, in Florida: “The Woman in the Window,” a novel by A.J. Finn, Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, a nonfiction work by Grace Humiston, set in early 20th century New York, about the city’s first female detective. Finally, Gringolandia by Matthew Hayes, a Canadian sociology professor who writes about the ex-pat community in Cuenca, Ecuador. “He’s not exactly an Oscar Lewis but some of his interviews with expats are very illuminating.” 

From Sandy a reader in Portland of serious books: The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore, and Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine. ” I still find myself reacting to Citizen. Partly because I had to read it multiple times to even come close to understanding it all. I really do think it is one of the best books I have ever read.”

From Pat in Bend, Oregon: Daring to Drive by Manal Al-Sharif:  “A Saudi woman who suffered the culture of her country, worked to reform the treatment of women, ended up in prison, and eventually emigrated. Her answers are ambivalent; she loves her country, but her country’s culture brutalizes women.

From Arlene in Toronto: Brother by David Chariandy: “beautiful short novel that won the Toronto Book Award and Rogers Fiction Prize about two brothers of Trinidadian descent growing up in Scarborough.” The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker: “a feminist rewriting of The Iliad from the point of view of the Trojan Women.” (Judy’s note: I love anything by Pat Barker; this one goes on my list.) The Five Invitations: What Death Can Teach Us about Living Fully by Frank Ostaseski, the founder of the Zen Project Hospice in San Francisco. Women Talking by Miriam Toews (See the recent New Yorker profile here: https://bit.ly/2Frwe3a.) And The Redemption of Galen Pike a book of short stories by Carys Davies. “I think her work is spectacular. I roll her sentences around on my tongue as though they were delicious food. Am reading her West: A Novel right now.” (Judy’s note: I don’t know this writer but reading the rave reviews and awards, I certainly plan to bring her with me to Cañar next year.)

From Patty in Portland. “Just finished Becoming and loved it. Michelle’s story is amazing Made me miss the Obama White House even more.”

From my sister Char in Santa Fe: Figuring by Maria Popova. “It will take me all year to read it, but every page is wonderful. I’m also reading The Wife by Meg Wolitzer, which is well written with a sense of extraordinary observation. I like it. Haven’t seen the film.” (Judy’s comment: Glenn Close certainly should have won the Oscar for the film. See if if you haven’t!)

From Nancy In Portland: Pig Boy’s Wicked Bird by Doug Crandell about life with his sharecropper parents and four siblings (Derrick, Darren, Dina and Dana) during one particular year in childhood, 1976. Poe Ballantine (one of my favorite Sun essayists) wrpte Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere. Takes place in Nebraska.” Judy’s comment: After this I get to say that my birthplace (Nebraska) was the ‘howling plains of nowhere.’

Phew! That was a long meeting with lots of good book suggestions. So I’ll keep my part brief by saying my greatest fear has been realized: I’ve run out of books and it’s only April! My last good read was The Company You Keep by Neil Gordon, a writer who died too young after producing two other great books: Sacrifice of Isaac and The Gunrunner’s Daughter. All complicated stories that require a lot of attention, but my favorite was the last as it deals with the underground life of Vietnam War protestors from the famous Weather Underground. A lot of factual info intertwined around fictional characters. A riveting read. After that, my friend Lynn in Cuenca loaned me two Henning Mankell books. An author I’ve loved over the years with the Wallander mystery series, since his lamented death two years ago it appears his publishing machine has gone into overdrive, scouring anything not yet printed. So skip An Event in Autumn (written for a Wallander give-away in Holland many years ago), and After the Fire, a novel without Wallander but with a protagonist I heartily disliked. Desperate, I asked visitors from Portland to bring me, The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry, which I’ve just started and am enjoying getting my feet into the deep dark mud of the Blackwater Estuary in1883 Essex. Stay tuned for final report on that one.

Until then, keep reading and sending your recommendations for the next Cañar Book Club, in June (May club meets in Spain….)

I’ve had migration much on my mind these days – up close personally, through the media with the Trumpian wall hysteria, watching the crisis in neighboring Venezuela sending many migrants to Ecuador, and with two excellent fiction books I’ve just finished, Go Went Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck, about African migrants in Germany (and so much more). And Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, which begins in an unknown country in the Middle East.

For the up-close and personal, I want to tell a Cañar migration story, (with names changed).

At 4:00 AM on a October morning we received a call in Portland from an acquaintance here in Cañar, Alejandro, an older man who had worked on our house construction and who became a “compadre de la casa, which means we are considered near-family. He called to say his son – I’ll call him Rafael – had left Cañar in September with his wife, Mariana. Both were picked up crossing the border and were recently found held at the Eloy Detention Center near Phoenix, Arizona. His son wanted to be in touch with us. Could we help?

This was the beginning of many collect calls from Eloy, and many letters on my part for Rafael: one saying we knew him as an honorable man who would not be a threat if released, another to a judge at Eloy, another to the lawyer who was “helping,” saying we would provide some support to the couple in getting settled if released (I don’t think Rafael ever realized we were in Portland, Oregon, not New York or New Jersey.) Meanwhile, I took an online tour of Eloy Detention Center by a local Fox10 TV station in Phoenix, showing a modern clinic, an exercise yard and a in-facility courtroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHsM2XADlSQ But make no mistake: this is a prison, a private prison owned and operated by CoreCivic, under contract with ICE.

Some quick facts on Eloy: 1,500 men and women are presently being held for various immigration violations, and after the Trump administration’s controversial zero-tolerance policy in 2018, the facility housed roughly 300 mothers separated from their children. People die here, primarily through suicides but also for lack of timely medical attention; since 2003, Eloy alone represented 9% of the total inmate deaths in all 250 detention facilities in the United States.

In our calls, with urgency on Rafael’s part, asking for yet another letter addressed to yet another official at Eloy, we didn’t talk much about his personal situation. But I learned later from his father (once we were back in Cañar) that he is an engineer by training, and that he and Mariana left four children with Alejandro and his wife, Leonor. Grandparents in their 70’s who thought they were done with child rearing, grandparents who surely sacrificed to send their son to university, grandparents who are really very poor, left raising four children, two of them still in primary school? I found this hard to comprehend, but asked no further questions the one time Alejandro came to visit – tired and worried – so as not to reveal my true feeling: How on earth could his son and wife leave their four children, knowing it will be years before they see, or care for them, again?

Fast forward to last week, when I ran into Rafael’s sister, Clemencia. As we walked down the road together, I asked if there was news of her brother and sister-in-law. “They were released last week!” she said. I asked if they had to pay bail (thinking of the letter to the lawyer)? “Oh yes,” she said, “they had to pay $15,000 for Rafael, and $20,000 for Mariana.” And on top of that, I thought, add the cost of paying coyotes to get them from Cañar to the U.S.: right now up to $12,000, probably more for a couple. “They are both in New York and working,” Clemencia said, “and They have a court date in three months.” (Or not, I thought. It’s common enough for migrants from Cañar to sacrifice the bail, be no-shows at court, and continue an existence as illegales, working for years to pay their debts.) A quick calculation on my part puts Rafael and Mariana’s debt, with bail, at about $50,000. I didn’t ask what their work was, but it is most likely construction and hotel cleaning. How many years will it take?

MIGRATION IS NOT A CRIME. The crime is a system of coyotes, money lenders, ICE, private prisons, lawyers, courts, bail bondsmen, draconian laws that will mean years before Rafael and Mariana see their children, and years that Alejandro and Leonor, grandparents too old for parenting, will be caring for young children.

OK, on to less fraught, domestic, news: We took a long hike a week or so ago that was the first serious walking test of Michael’s new hip. We hired a taxi to take us to the top of a mountain that looms over Cañar, called Tayta Bueran, then we walked down – about 3 hours. The tough part was wading through the paramo grass that grows above tree line – dense, knee-level, grabby and clinging, full of hidden holes,. But once through that – about 45 minutes – it was (sortof) smooth sailing, with picnic lunch and slipping and sliding on steep gravel road to the Pan American highway.

So far so good, so then yesterday, we tried it again, but on another mountain (taxi to top, walk downhill) and with our goddaughter, Paiwa, on vacation and spending a few days with us.

CANAR BOOK CLUB

Lots of great book suggestions came in from my last blog, and I was interested to see how many relate to migration in one way or another. – maybe it’s on all our minds. I’ve already revealed my recent reads, but I have to mention The Past, by Tessa Hadley, which I’m presently loving. And I’ll include another reader’s mention of Go Went Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck because Susan G. of Portland makes such a good summary: “Takes place in Berlin and portrays a retired professor’s encounter with the illegal immigrants there. Sounds like nothing but grimness, but it shows the transformative effect of empathy, and much more, and left me with a positive feeling.” She also liked Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan and The Paris Wife by Paula McClain, two titles I’ve put on my wish list.

My sister Sher in Santa Fe is reading Tana French’s new book The Witch Elm – “love her writing!” (Tana French can do no wrong.) Carole from Portland is reading Leavers by Lisa Ko – “hard read for me but thought provoking.” Suzanne from Cuenca suggests Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue, “a fictional story that embodies so many aspects of the modern immigrant story. And of course Becoming by Micelle Obama. Such a personal look at her life from childhood through the White House. I have even greater regard for this woman and her family, and she takes on the issue of race that is strangling this country.”

Pat from Bend is reading Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver, “a novel about two families living in the same shelter (a brick house) in two different centuries.”

Son Scott in San Francisco suggests Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, which Michael is presently reading and liking very much. Also, by same author: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

Janice in New Jersey writes that she loved Charming Billy by Alice McDermott (in response to my reading of The Ninth Hour, her new book).

Judy in Batavia, New York is reading Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles (of A Gentleman in Moscow fame) and When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. (One of the saddest books I’ve ever read.)

Finally, Rick – great reader and writer from Portland – recommends Valeria Luiselli, “born in Mexico, raised in South Africa, lives in NYC, writes in English and Spanish, worked as a translator for the juvenile courts for migrant kids and now teaches at Hofstra. The English book, Tell Me How It Ends, is an essay about the plight of migrants, what they overcome by leaving Central America,and their difficulties getting into the US.  It’s short, and so powerful that I bought a dozen copies for our political group. The Story of My Teeth, originally published about three years ago, got terrific reviews. It’s hilarious, and great fun to read.”

This virtual Cañar Book Club might be one of the best ideas I’ve ever had! I love all my fellow club members, and please keep your reading suggestions coming for the March blog!