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In San Pedro ceramic figurines perch on roof peaks, like the chimney pots of English towns. Weathered by intense wind, rain, and sun, many of these small ceramic replicas of churches, deer, bulls, and tropical forest indigenes (chunchus) appear old, but San Pedrinos say they are recent, as are the tourist shops that sell them. When he was young, nobody had such ceramics, my adoptive father , Pablo, told me. Horacio Gutiérrez agreed, asserting that decorative ceramics were unknown before the mountain god, tayta urqu, taught the craft to a man named Mauricio in the 1920s. “He was a pongo,” Horacio added. “What’s a pongo?” “He’s a diviner, someone who converses with the mountain god,” Horacio answered, annoyed. Like a young child, I constantly asked questions and was often repetitious, sometimes irritating friends. “Mauricio asked the mountain god to teach him to make ceramics ,” Horacio continued. “The god sent him to bathe at a waterfall in Tutapa Gorge at midnight, then a few nights later, sent him to Lake Yuraqucha in thepuna, again at midnight. Mauricio entered the lake, which “almost ate him,” but he was rescued by “aseñora, a Virgin, all dressed in black.” I was interviewing Horacio in his workroom. The bare cement room was cold in the early morning. I excused myself to get a sweater. Handling frigid clay, Horacio was cold too and asked to borrow a jacket. I owned an old army jacket that he liked to wear. “Which Virgin?” I asked when I returned. “She’s known as Mamacha,” Horacio responded. “Mauricio grabbed her belt, and she pulled him out of the water. But by the time he got to land, she had disappeared, and he couldn’t find her.” On returning home, Mauricio made ceramics for the first time. THREE Horacio and Benjamina CONFRONTING VILLAGE POVERTY 61 Horacio and Benjamina: Village Poverty Whenever he returned to the lake and waterfall, and he did so often, “the mountain god taught him how to make ceramics.” “Did he see Mamacha again?” “She only came to the lake once, because that was the only time he had been drowning.” In this widely shared story, Horacio and other San Pedrinos, employing European and pre-Columbian beliefs in a blend characteristic of Andean religion, give the craft a sacred origin. Tayta urqu, the mountain god, is central to San Pedro belief.1 Each mountain has a god, the higher the mountain, the more powerful the god. These gods care for animals, appear in dreams, and can be dangerous as well as helpful, sometimes demanding human life. The god from Rashuillca, the mountain that stands higher than any other, a frequent subject of myth and the mountain that Claudia sang about in Chapter 1, once grabbed an airplane, many have told me, gobbling its passengers into itself and refusing to set them free. The Virgin is also significant in Horacio’s account. Before the advent of Protestantism, she was the Christian symbol most prayed to and looked to for support. A different manifestation of the Virgin was said to have appeared beside another spring and commanded the people to build a church and found San Pedro there. Lake Yuraqucha is similarly enchanted, associated with many stories of drowning and hidden gold. It is also the water source for one of the irrigation systems. According to Horacio, Mauricio taught the new craft only to Horacio’s grandfather, Maurelio, and one other person. Maurelio taught his children, including Horacio’s father, Guillermo, who in turn taught it to his children and ten other men. This, of course, is Horacio’s history and he certainly neglected to tally and include ceramicists in other hamlets. It is also likely that San Pedro’s ceramic tradition is older than this genealogy or the origin myth would indicate .2 Nonetheless, the total number of ceramicists in the 1940s could not have been more than a few dozen. A census by the artisan school in 1966 counted fewer than fifty. Today there are hundreds of ceramicists, perhaps more than a thousand, in both San Pedro and Lima, and at least two have worked in the United States. Until the 1940s ceramicists scheduled their work around the agricultural cycle, working part time in exchange for food, especially maize and coca leaves. In addition to utilitarian pitchers, plates, and large storage vessels, they occasionally made roof adornments, ceramic musicians (given to festival performers), and ceremonial drinking cups.3 During the irrigation festival, yarqa aspiy...

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