From Cuenca to Queens: An Anthropological Story of Transnational Migration

3. Family Matters

3 Family Matters There’s a story about the devil that Rosa likes to tell her children. In the story there are two poor sisters. One marries a local man who drinks too much and isn’t able to provide for his family. The other sister is unsympathetic to her sibling’s unfortunate situation and brags that she will do better by marrying a rich man—one with gold teeth. One day while washing clothes in the river, the ambitious girl is surprised by the sudden arrival of a handsome man dressed in a white suit, with cowboy boots on his feet and gold caps on his teeth. She is dazzled by him. Right then and there he asks her to marry him, and she of course consents. On the day of the wedding, however, as the reception guests lie on the floor asleep from too much food and drink, the girl spies her groom transforming into a rat. She realizes then that she has just married the devil himself. With the help of an old witch and the timely use of some humble tools of women’s work, such as a needle and thread that she uses to tie up her groom, she barely escapes the dire fate of being taken away by the devil. The now-chastened girl joins a convent, where she repents her selfishness and greed until the end of her days. Rosa tells this story because it works on multiple levels to reinforce ideas about the moral order of life that are very important to her (Miles ). In particular, it highlights the value of good family relations at the same time that it warns of the threats to family unity that the blind pursuit of wealth can create. In this story, the greedy sister has clearly valued wealth, material comfort, and status over her relationship with her sister. She cruelly points out the difficulties of her sister’s marriage andbragsaboutherownbetterprospects.Suchdisregardforthefeelings of one’s siblings is a sign of obvious moral decay, since close sibling rela-  From Cuenca to Queens tionships are very highly valued in the Andes (Butler ; Allen ). By expressing a lack of sympathy for her sister and the desire to do her one better, the greedy woman exposes her moral laxity. It is not bad enough that the bride covets money and social status—she does so at the expense of her sister’s feelings. Embedded in this story is a symbolic critique of capitalism that I think is not insignificant. Consider for a moment the form that the devil takes here—something of a conglomerate of hegemonic images, including both local and international symbols of power and wealth. The gold teeth of the devil are a now largely outdated Ecuadorian affectation of wealth among the poorer classes, whereas the white suit is reminiscent of the Spanish/Hispanic plantation or hacienda owner—the traditional oppressor of the poor. The cowboy boots could reinforce the hacendado image or, perhaps, conjure up an entirely different one linked to U.S. economic and cultural imperialism. The Marlboro Man—that international symbol of U.S. cultural imposition—is now ubiquitous in Ecuador . Even the luggage carousel at the airport in Cuenca, often a visitor ’s first image of the city, is illuminated by the red glow of a Marlboro Man sign. Hence, the devil in this story is lurking in the very symbols of wealth that are, in and of themselves, so alluring and desirable.1 The trick, it seems, is to figure out how to acquire the desirable without attracting the undesirable. One message from this story is that one way to accomplish this is to make sure that family obligations and relationships are not abandoned during the quest for wealth. When I first heard this devil story in , Vicente’s transnational migrationwasonnoone ’smind.AtthetimeIsurmisedthatthistalehelped Rosa teach her growing children moral lessons about how to live a good life in a modernizing city. This story, and others I heard like it, stressed the values of hard work and family responsibility and instilled a healthy skepticismtowardtheemptyandusuallyunattainablesymbolsofwealth and influence. Through these stories Rosa was telling her children that the manifestations of wealth that are so valued in the urban setting (and so difficult for them to achieve) may in fact come at a cost that is far too high. Today, however, this story strikes me as just as appropriate as an allegory for transnational migration. While transnational migration from Ecuador...