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Graciela’s friends call her Chela. I spend three hours in her booth today, watching tourists buy her work (and others reject it), chatting about being an artist, about growing up in Machu Picchu, about change in this gateway village. Chela is a friend of my language-learning partner in Cusco, Mariarosa Holgado Vargas. Mariarosa urged me to look Chela up when we visited Machu Picchu, then called Chela to tell her we were coming. Chela met us at the train station and helped haul our gear to the hostal. Chela spent her childhood on the other side of the Peru shopping network, helping her parents sell snacks and trinkets to tourists when they got off the train from Cusco. She didn’t get to go to school. Now, she’s sending three children to college with the proceeds made from from selling her art, one piece at a time, to passing jewelry buyers. Some years ago, Aguas Calientes began to boom as Machu Picchu’s fame grew. Chela and a group of friends saw the growth – and the benefits – passing its longtime residents by. The new wealth to be made from Peru shopping was going to outsiders. They lobbied for land to build a local market. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. They protested, demonstrated, pushed. Eventually government set aside land for them. They formed a vendors’ syndicate and established an artists’ market at the train station. It grew and prospered. For the past three years, Chela has been the syndicate’s secretary, a tiring, often thankless, job. Think office politics, where your “office mates” are competitors, all trying to scrape out a living from passing tourists in this warren of stalls.
We find Aguas Calienties to be a charming little town, tranquil, chock full of good restaurants. No traffic. No motorized vehicles – everything’s on foot here. Its namesake hot springs is a delight: attractive, well-kept, scrubbed clean every night after closing. But, as well-heeled outsiders flock into town, Peru shopping becomes burdensomely expensive for the locals. Chela frets over the skyrocketing prices. I worry for her. What price fame? --Posted by Terry, October 13 October 15-18 update: My visit to Machu Picchu produced an unexpected Spanish language learning opportunity. Back in Cusco, when I wrote Chela a one-page thank you note, it turned into a major lesson in my daily language sessions with Mariarosa. I wrote the original in my sub-novice Spanish. She corrected it, not only grammar and spelling, but content. I rewrote it. She corrected it again. I rewrote it again. She sent it off – via a friend rather than through the postal system. Chela called her; she was thrilled I had “bothered” to write. As for me, I tucked another tool – and a special memory waiting for jewelry buyers – into my language learning strategies. |
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