Peasant story

Yes buddy, just like you hear it. In those days hunger made us twist our guts, and on moonless nights our taitas came down from the hill to get us food for us to eat. We also could not make bonfires, because if not those large metal birds shot fire from the sides, although the bad thing about it was biting our tongues and not screaming, so death would cover us forever with its black cloak, while the howls of the dogs informed us of the strangers who roamed the bush.

So I grew up and took my first steps in life. Sometimes hidden in the bushes, and other times in the half-abandoned farm surrounded by the taitas, the sisters, the chickens, the pigs, and an old horse gifted by the former owner of all those lands. When I could, I would go in the morning to the ravine that drowns out the crowing of the roosters and the whistling of the birds due to the thunder of the river at its mouth, to draw the water with the totuma from a hole in the sand; to drop it in a mucura and climb it up the hill on the head, so that my mother and my sisters could prepare the food. Having had a good breakfast in the quiet times, I would grab my notebook with the pencils, and I would throw in a lot of quimba, until I reached the school, with its mud walls lined with guaduas that formed a spacious room full of desks.

Ah! Compadrito Pancracio, we were like sixty students. I don't even remember. There we were the culicagados from the first to the fifth grade meeting with the teacher who took the hands of the guipas to teach them to delineate the tangles of the letters on the paper, while some of the children cried because they could not go to piss in the bush , or we would pick up in the weedy yard, surrounded by the dense mountain that miles ahead becomes a mountain range.

At recess we played to remove the asses to place them on the backs of our careless companions, and the would see shout; then the teacher would come handing out blows to the right and left with a rose stick that she had made us cut since the beginning of the year of study. On the way home we would fight because Bertilda kissed one of the boys, and not us, or because of some other thing. But since there was no time left in my house because I often went with my father to help cut the grass and cultivate the corn, soon after I went all dirty to another region where one day I got a wife.

Some years passed, and I already had a patron who owned the haciendas in the region, who gave me a piece of land and a ranch to live with the family made up of three guambitos baptized with the name of the saint of the day the stork, my wife, me, and the animals that we managed to gather with the few pennies saved in the course of a lifetime of effort. We no longer used the sperm, but the petromax lamps that we bought in the nearest town.

At that time the woman was jealous of me with the female of    Aniceto, because in addition to being very pretty, in the patron saint festivities she was almost always my partner in the patron saint dances, which made the godfather won't greet me, and she and I would make some scandals in front of the guambitos or friends, either while I was smoothing my pants with the charcoal iron, already at meal times, and even now that I have no love affairs with any other. But what are we going to do to him: The past, past, and don't think that I dragged the naguas to all women.

As for money, my pants pockets always remained empty, giving just what is necessary to live and dance hard at the parties that I tell you, well, look at me that I learned to wear shoes here in the city.

Of the children, the first, Martina de San Silverio, rendered accounts to my  god very early. The second, the caite José Onésimo, later. Wait I explain godfather. The violence was still raging, and we peasants did not know why they were killing people, and so we were forced to abandon the crops. That is how we began to feel hungry, so much that our guts were thrown away dry from how much we endured.

For this reason, I who have been an  a believer, tried by all means to find a way to support the family, resorting to the imagination that from time to time deceived me at night when I seemed to see tealights that glowed among the stubble; and very stealthily I would go to the place where I thought I saw them, and mark it with a stake or whatever else I could. The next morning, very early in the morning, we would go with Caite José to take a pick and shovel to the place I am telling you. Why will you say, or as it is said now. It happens that the ancients, our parents, great-great-grandparents and other dynasties, buried the gold they had in clay pots, to hide it from thieves. Much of that gold must still be around. After their death, the soul remained grieving, waiting for some lucky person to see the flickering tealights burn at night. Then one would dig for the deceased to rest, and the Christian to enjoy. Caite José accompanied me on many excavations, but luck was cast on its back for us. We never get anything.

The pockets were more bare than a newborn child god. The bosses of the region had decided on the cultivation of cotton since the machine to enter through the large door of the plantations. Thus they destroyed the banana crops, the guava trees, and all the support of the food of us ignorant people, to turn us into poorly paid wage earners, since the money was not even enough to buy the food that arrived in the nearest town on market days.

The hunger was terrible. The guambita, the oldest, I don't know, died without being able to remove the vice of eating dirt. Every time I remember, my soul hurts as if it had been yesterday.

The poison that controlled the cotton plague decimated the birds and wild animals of the field, poisoned the water of the rivers and forced the swollen fish to die on the banks of the rivers. For these reasons, many children died. Among them my caite José, my guámbito. I wanted to look for another region, but since we had the ranch, I worked from dawn to dusk picking up cotton during the day, and getting up early to fish for the only good thing that was achieved in the newly built dam on the side of the slope, to get the food that was scarce day by day.

 Imagine godfather, at that time the devil was doing his thing on the sidewalk, because the condemned man would appear at the least expected moment and scratch the peasants, or he would lose the women with the friends of the husbands peering into the very noses of one . In the days that I am telling you, after drinking some spirits to cheer myself up, I went fishing at the dam that I tell you. There he had the godfather of the lesser guambito, a tin boat with a powerful motor on board, which he used to pass people to the other side of the pond, either with food or with laborers who worked there.

 So the compadre lent me the boat and deep into the lagoon, bocachicos, nicuros, patalós fell on the hook, and I'm not saying more because he tastes his mouth. In the early morning of that day when I was leading the canoe back, I saw in the dark a guy who looked like the same devil they were talking about, or viruñas as I call him, who was walking with espadrilles between the mountains. My hair stood on end with fright, compadre. Immediately, I put my hand on the motor and lunged against the bundle that was on the water. The truth of the case, this guy was not the devil, but a Christian who fished at dawn, and who appeared dead floating in the middle of the logs.

The peons who were waiting with the compadre for my arrival heard the story and were the witnesses who blamed the death on the account of the guy who spoke to him, being arrested and sentenced to several years in prison. While he was paying for the broken dishes, the woman worked on the ranch of the compadre who owned the boat, to support the least of the guambitos.

Although there were several years in that situation, what more punishment than that of conscience, because ignorance makes us commit bestialities. Yes or no, godfather?

The poison that controlled the cotton plague decimated the birds and wild animals of the field, poisoned the water of the rivers and forced the swollen fish to die on the banks of the rivers. For these reasons, many children died. Among them my caite José, my guámbito. I wanted to look for another region, but since we had the ranch, I worked from dawn to dusk picking up cotton during the day, and getting up early to fish for the only good thing that was achieved in the newly built dam on the side of the slope, to get the food that was scarce day by day.

Imagine godfather, at that time the devil was doing his thing on the sidewalk, because the condemned man would appear at the least expected moment and scratch the peasants, or he would lose the women with the friends of the husbands peering into the very noses of one . In the days that I am telling you, after drinking some spirits to cheer myself up, I went fishing at the dam that I tell you. There he had the godfather of the lesser guambito, a tin boat with a powerful motor on board, which he used to pass people to the other side of the pond, either with food or with laborers who worked there.

So the compadre lent me the boat and deep into the lagoon, bocachicos, nicuros, patalós fell on the hook, and I'm not saying more because he tastes his mouth. In the early morning of that day when I was leading the canoe back, I saw in the dark a guy who looked like the same devil they were talking about, or viruñas as I call him, who was walking with espadrilles between the mountains. My hair stood on end with fright, compadre. Immediately, I put my hand on the motor and lunged against the bundle that was on the water. The truth of the case, this guy was not the devil, but a Christian who fished at dawn, and who appeared dead floating in the middle of the logs.

 The peons who were waiting with the compadre for my arrival heard the story and were the witnesses who blamed the death on the account of the guy who spoke to him, being arrested and sentenced to several years in prison. While he was paying for the broken dishes, the woman worked on the ranch of the compadre who owned the boat, to support the least of the guambitos.

Although there were several years in that situation, what more punishment than that of conscience, because ignorance makes us commit bestialities. Yes or no, godfather?

At my exit, we were worse. Fear was spread throughout the region visiting plot after plot, destroying everything in its path like locusts. To add insult to injury, the relatives of the deceased wanted to avenge him. The compadrito who always helped me gave us some pesos, and with that we came to Bogotá, paying for hiding places at any cost. The farm and everything that we had acquired there, they were as if we had never had them.

 Freezing cold, we got a room in a seedy hotel, which at night received unfaithful men with noisy women who stayed in neighboring rooms and would not let us sleep while we prayed. Notice compadre that violence forced us to civilize ourselves. And I who half read and write, who never got an ID or papers, I was forced to look for a job and work whatever it was. As my god does not abandon any good Christian we soon became friends with the owner of the hotel. A fat lady, already old. She proposed to my wife that she sweep and clean the rooms every day, which would earn her lunch and the daily rent for the room. We stayed there for several months, while by contract I made several deep ditches that helped me to learn a new trade.

This is how I started a new life, compadre Pancracio. Nobody knows how one's life is written on earth. For my part I was rigged in the hotel of the fat girl, reason for not looking for the appropriate place to put my head. So the days went by until the one in which the chubby girl began to sharpen my wife with her tongue, which she half understood between laughs and laughter. "What a woman, one has to look for a husband who answers by the house, earns money, and have it well" She promised that I would get a good job that would help us get by with the other sute we had. It is true that we peasants smell something against one, and we immediately burst. So it continued.

One fine day this guy appeared who according to the fat woman would help my wife get a good job, and with giggles, and painting little gold birds with all the flattery to which we are accustomed in the cities, he took her hand by the foot. The scandal was strong. My wife, who is a Tatacoa and she can't stand practical jokes, gave him a hit a blow to the evil born who takes advantage of these. It turns out, compadre, that this guy had a good business. He lived by picking up newly unpacked females from the field, to take them to work as prostitutes, and thus later throw throw them on the street. For us it was the endless beginning of life in the city occupying rooms full of filth in the different tenants where we have been.

I still remember compadre, the time I met a toilet the first day we arrived in Bogotá. We had gone with a friend more trained than us to visit some countrymen. I had a bad stomach while visiting. Luckily the owner of the house understood me and lent me the bathroom. How awful. It makes me sad to say it compadre. I confused the towel from drying my hands with what we now call toilet paper. The friend who sensed that something had happened took me out of the house and explained the details of the case. We were, but very, very, ignorant. One, what would he know that toilet paper was used here and all that  that we now call civilization. Those were other times, godfather.