In our village we have the habit of talking very loudly because we haven’t really any close neighbours. When the workers leave in the morning, they call out to all their neighbours because the neighbours’ maize fields are all near each other, so they all go together. We all get together like one family. Our maize fields aren’t in the village itself. They’re a short distance away, towards the mountain, so we call all our neighbours and we all go together–twenty or thirty people going off to work together with our dogs. We eat at midday or whenever we feel hungry. We usually go home again at six in the evening. Six o’clock is when our men come home, hungry and thirsty, and the woman who stays at home has to make food again. That’s when we do all the extra chores in the house. The men tie up the dogs in the corrales where the animals are and the women fetch water to wash the nixtamal and washing pots, chop wood and prepare the torches for the night. We prepare all our things for the next day to save time in the morning. When nights falls, we’re still working. Afterwards, we sing a bit; songs we Indians have in our own language. I don’t know how, but my brothers got hold of an accordion, and we’d sing until our parents told us off because we were very tired and they sent us to bed. We usually go to bed at ten or half past because we have to get up so early and since our house is very small, when one person gets up, we all have to get up.
Our house measures about eight varas. It’s not made of wood but of cane; straight sticks of it we find in the fields and fasten together with agave fibres. Any tree will do to make a house, but (I think this is part of our culture) only if it’s cut at full moon. We say the wood lasts longer if it’s cut when the moon is young. When we build a house, we make the roof from a sort of palm tree found near the foot of the mountains. We call it pamac. For us, the most elegant houses are made with cane leaves, because you have to go a long way to get them. You have to have men to go and get them to make the house. We were poor and had neither money to buy cane leaves nor anyone to go and get them. They’re only found down in the fincas on the coast and they’re very expensive. The landowners charge by the bunch–seventy-five centavos the bunch–and it takes fifty bunches for a house. We didn’t have the means to buy cane leaves, so what we did was go to the mountains and collect this leaf called pamac. The mature leaves last about two years and after that you have to start again. So we all went to cut the mature leaves. Between us–men, women and children–we could build a house in fifteen days. We had a very big family, and we were able to use sticks, although many people used maize stalks. After the maize is harvested, people cut the stalks and use them for walls. But our house was made of sticks of cane: that lasts longer. The houses are not very high because, if there’s a lot of wind, it can lift the house and carry it all away. That’s why we make them small and put sticks all round. The sticks are stuck in the ground and tied together with agave fibres. There are no nails in our houses–you won’t find a single nail. Even the roof props, the corners, or anything supporting the house, comes from trees.
We all sleep in there together. The house has two floors; one above, where the corn cobs are stored (we call it the tapanco) and another below where we all live. But at the times of the year when there’s no maize, many of us go up and sleep in the tapanco. When the cobs are stored there, we have to sleep on the ground floor. We don’t usually have beds with mattresses or anything like that. We just have our own few clothes and we’re used to being cold, because the roof doesn’t give much protection. The wind comes in as if we were out on the mountain. As for sex, that’s something we Indians know about because most of the family sees everything that goes on. Couples sleep together but don’t have a separate place for themselves. Even the children realize most of the time, but sometimes they don’t, because I think married couples don’t have enough time to enjoy their life together and, anyway, we’re all in there together. Of course, when we sleep, we sleep like logs, we’re so tired. We often get home so tired we don’t want to eat anything, or do anything. We just want to sleep. So we sleep. Perhaps that’s when the others take the opportunity to have sexual relations, but there’s hardly any room. Often just the children go down to the finca and the parents stay at home and look after the animals. That’s when they have a bit more time to themselves. But most of the time my father goes to one finca and my mother takes the children to another finca so they’re apart for three months. Or we all go together to one finca but there it’s even worse for sleeping than at home, because we’re with people we don’t even know and there are hundreds of people and animals sleeping together. It is really difficult there. We’re piled up in one place, almost on top of one another. I’m sure the children notice a lot of things. In our case, all the brothers and sisters in our family slept together in one row. My older brother, who’d been married for some time, slept with his compañera, but the ones who weren’t married (my other two older brothers, my sister, myself, and my three younger brothers who were alive then), we all slept together in a row. We put all the women’s cortes together and used them for blankets. My parents slept in another corner quite near us. We each had a mat to sleep on and a little cover over us. We slept in the same clothes we worked in. That’s why society rejects us. Me, I felt this rejection very personally, deep inside me. They say we Indians are dirty, but it’s our circumstances which force us to be like that. For example, if we have time, we go to the river every week, every Sunday, and wash our clothes. These clothes have to last us all week because we haven’t any other time for washing and we haven’t any soap either. That’s how it is. We sleep in our clothes, we get up next day, we tidy ourselves up a bit and off to work, just like that.
My tenth birthday was celebrated in the same way as all our people. I was up in the Altiplano. It might not have been the exact date of my birth because I was in the finca at the time, but when we went back up to the Altiplano, that was when we celebrated my birthday. My parents called me to them and explained what an adult’s life is like. I didn’t really need them to explain because it was the life I’d seen and lived with my mother; so it was really only a show of accepting what parents tell us.
My elder brothers were present and my sister who’s now married. But my younger brothers were not. I’m the sixth in the family, with three brothers after me, but they weren’t present because it’s a ceremony in which my parents tell me about the new life I’m about to start. They told me I would have many ambitions but I wouldn’t have the opportunity to realize them. They said my life wouldn’t change, it would go on the same–work, poverty, suffering. At the same time, my parents thanked me for the contribution I’d made through my work, for having earned for all of us. Then they told me a bit about being a woman; that I would soon have my period and that was when a woman could start having children. They said that would happen one day, and for that they asked me to become closer to my mother so I could ask her everything. My mother would be by my side all this time in case I had any doubts or felt alone. They talked about the experiences with my elder brothers and sisters. My elder sister, who was already grown-up (she’d be about twenty-four, I think) told me about when she was young: when she was ten, twelve, thirteen, fifteen. My father said that sometimes she didn’t do things as she should but that that wasn’t right: we should not stop doing good things but accept life as it is. We shouldn’t become bitter or look for diversions or escape outside the laws of our parents. All this helps you to be a girl who is respected by the community. My father explained the importance of our example and the example of every one of our neighbours’ children. We know that not just one pair of eyes is watching us, but the eyes of the whole community are on us. It’s not a case of giving things up. We have a lot of freedom, but at the same time, within that freedom we must respect ourselves.
Well, my mother, father, and all my brothers and sisters, gave me their experiences. Suddenly they treated me like an adult. My father said: ‘You have a lot of responsibility; you have many duties to fulfil in our community as an adult. From now on you must contribute to the common good.’ Then they made me repeat the promises my parents had made for me when I was born; when I was accepted into the community; when they said I belonged to the community and would have to serve it when I grew up. They said they’d made these promises and now it was up to me to keep them, because now I had to participate in the community as one more member of it. In those days, there was already the mixture of our culture with the Catholic religion, let’s say Catholic customs. So my duty was to promise to serve the community and I looked for ways in which I could