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TWO Horacio and Benjamina GENDER, RACE, ETHNICITY, AND CLASS “Teach me how to say ‘shit’ in English!” Always a joker, Horacio Gutiérrez and his wife, Benjamina Enríquez (women retain their maiden names after marriage), were among the first people I met in San Pedro, and their warm welcome on my first day is still vivid. Their lives illuminate many of the gender , racial, and class hierarchies that structure San Pedrinos’ relationships with one another and with other Peruvians. They also were major figures in the development of San Pedro’s artisan commerce, a matter discussed in Chapter 3. On arriving in Ayacucho, I had heard that two Peace Corps volunteers had been thrown out of San Pedro, accused of being pistacos and responsible for killing several people who had fallen into ravines. I later learned that the unhappy volunteers had isolated themselves, rarely accepting food and drink, refusing to dance at fiestas. But I had not known this and was unnerved by the story that they had been pelted with prickly pear fruit, as ferocious as “prickly” suggests. Horacio and Benjamina quickly put me at ease, pleased that I had rented a room in the compound that housed them while they were building their home across the street. They invited me to lunch. We joked and laughed, and the invitation extended to other meals and gradually became standard practice. I reciprocated by buying fruit and vegetables at the Sunday market. After dinner they often climbed the outside stairs to my second-floor room to chat about the day. We were all young: she was twenty, he was twenty-four, and I was twenty-eight. They had a six-month-old son whom I nicknamed “Smiley.” Our two-story house in the central town was elegant in conception , but unfinished, neglected by its migrant owners. Built around 38 VOICES FROM THE GLOBAL MARGIN a patio, the house was adorned with window frames, a rare amenity, but it lacked glass or shutters. I sheathed the openings with opaque plastic and, in the coldest months, covered them with wool blankets at night. My furniture was rudimentary: wooden crates nailed to the walls, a Primus stove on a rickety homemade wooden table, a bed that sagged like a hammock, and an inverted wooden carton for a night table. The corral in the rear served as our toilet, giggling young women occasionally climbing the five-foot adobe walls to peek. Until the town installed electricity and piped water, a year into my stay, I read by the light of two or three candles (an extravagant expense) and drew water from the irrigation ditch at the head of town. “It’s not dirty there,” I was told. Small in stature and thin in build, Horacio had an open, pleasant face graced by a playful grin that was accentuated by an unruly cowlick jutting from jet-black hair. He dressed in store-bought boots, trousers, a buttoned shirt, and often a pale yellow cotton cardigan for warmth. He put style above comfort: he rarely donned a poncho for warmth, a hat for protection against the sun, or homespun trousers or jacket. Such clothing would mark him as Indian. Benjamina’s “really crude, chusca,” her brother cautioned me about her temperament. She had reason to be angry with Horacio, but she rarely smiled and usually met everyone, even her infant son, with a scowl. She dressed in long skirts similar to Claudia’s, but cleaner and more elaborate. Two dark plaits hung down her back, reaching the colorful red, blue, and green shawl holding her son. Like Horacio, she wore manufactured shoes, but unlike him, she covered her head with a broad-brimmed brown felt hat. Born to Quechua-speaking families, Horacio spoke poor Spanish and Benjamina hardly any. They were from rural hamlets located about one hour on foot below town. With everyone other than his wife, Horacio was a joker, always testing the limits of civil behavior by his antics and outrageous, often sexual, remarks. Some people thought he took too many liberties with me. “Señorita,” he said, as he tried to kiss me, “you don’t have a penis but a vagina.” He called me waqra, a Quechua word meaning “horn,” but used to mean “adulterer,” and teased me about my presumed relationships with Peace Corps volunteers. I laughed, but the joking sometimes wore thin. He once infuriated me by smearing potatoes into my hair, but my anger diminished when I...

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