Download While living at the ecological ranch in the Andes, I had the

Becky Corran
7 August 2003
Internship
Final Project Paper
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Anthropology and Biology Major
PAPAS PARA PROSPERAR (POTATOES TO THRIVE):
LESSONS ON ANDEAN ETHNOGRAPHY, THE STUDY OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND CROSS-CULTURAL LIVING
Initially, I had very few expectations about my summer in the Peruvian highlands, only
that I would be involved in research on community issues while engaging participatory methods;
and experiencing a brief life as an anthropologist abroad. Little did I know the scope of what I
would participate in and learn. From meeting a local woman working for change, to challenging
misconceptions I had about traditional and western medicine, I gained invaluable experience that
will affect my future life as an anthropologist and as an individual committed to making change
in the world.
While living at the ecological ranch in the Andes, I had the opportunity to conduct field
research at the nearby community of Shilla. Thanks to previous considerate interactions on the
part of Dr. Hammer, the anthropologist leading our group and working there, our research teams
had access to numerous individuals and resources within the community.
At the beginning of our field school, a paper was passed around, and we were to sign up
for a group: herbal medicine, ritual and ceremony, or community organization. I was interested
in the herbal medicine group, but, predictably, by the time the paper got to me, there were 10
people there, and only two men in the community organization group. I signed up for it,
resigning myself to my second choice: but this ended up being one of the most fortuitous
moments of my tenure in the land of the Inca.
When we first visited Shilla, my group was dropped off at the municipal building (the
only building in town not made of adobe with flush toilets.) We had prepared questions
addressing what we considered to be critical issues in community organization.
Dr. Hammer had arranged for us to meet with local officials, and possibly the mayor. We sat on
the steps of the building and waited. And waited. And waited. My two group members and I
began playing a game of catch with a group of local kids that had been gathering nearby,
pointing and trying to conceal stares. After about 30 minutes standing around and playing, a
man walked up. He identified himself as a member of the town council and began to answer
some of our questions, but often when we asked a question he wouldn’t understand the idea we
were trying to get at. Only after a frustrating hour did we realize our error. Our pre-prepared
questions were from a completely ethnocentric view. Elections were important, but campaign
advertising was limited to painted ads on people’s houses. Local government was loosely tied to
departmental and federal governments, but (as Americans) we incorrectly assumed these dictated
local projects. In fact, we found that local projects originate locally (for the most part) and are
deliberated very seriously before coming into play. Additionally, there are no workers employed
by local government, every family that wants to utilize the public work (irrigation, waste
disposal, schools, etc.) has to contribute at least one worker for the project. A small crowd had
gathered, and even together, the six or seven men often couldn’t understand what we were
getting at. After about 50 probing questions (25 of which received only puzzled looks for a
response) a woman approached. She was the twenty-something wife of one of the men being
mystified by our questions. Almost immediately, the groups split up…the two men in my group
continued on with their questions (and the hedgy answers) while the woman, Santa, and I talked.
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She would overhear something the men were saying, about corruption in government or party
loyalty, and roll her eyes at me. Then she would whisper, “That isn’t really how it is. Actually,
the church gives all their money to the members of Somos Peru, and….” We began our own
conversation, and I adapted the questions we had asked earlier, incorporating some of the things
the men were saying. I really felt like we connected, and our quiet discussion next to the
officious interrogation (it became even more like an episode of “Crossfire” after I left my two
companions with the group of men,) was full of information. Santa told me about language
barriers for many women in the community (most of the men know Quechua and Spanish, but
women are less likely to learn Spanish) that prevent them from holding higher offices in the
community. Also, she described the influential women’s groups in the town, Vaso de leche
(glass of milk) and Madre, that are formally responsible for keeping schoolchildren fed and safe,
but in reality represent the voice of women in local politics—dictating public works that would
benefit women and children in the community. Additionally, she gave me a local history and
economics lesson, describing the changes that had taken place in her lifetime, and her parent’s
generation, who witnessed the land reforms of the 1960’s and 70’s. She described and economy
based on small scale farming and marketing, with some foods being produced for subsistence,
but most being sold to other local farmers. This parallels the national trend of smallholder
commercial production and cooperative marketing (Long 1975:76). We chatted for hours, and I
felt like I was learning so much more just by conversing. While my classmates struggled to get a
shred of information, I was discovering how the town really worked (according to Santa, which
seemed to be the most accurate information we acquired in all our time in Shilla.) At the close of
the interview, which had by then felt like a friendly chatting session, I felt like I had gained both
a wealth of ethnographic information and a potential friend. Santa and I agreed to meet again at
the Fiesta de San Juan, and she could introduce me to the rest of her family. It wasn’t until much
later I learned (from Dr. Hammer) that Santa was the first woman to serve in local government,
and a veritable font of political knowledge (which I found out on my own.)
Upon reflection, the information gathering session with Santa was one of my most
productive ethnographic endeavors. However, our rocky start made me realize just how tough an
objective-anthropology can be. I had considered myself a conscientious, thoughtful
anthropologist, who always tried to remove my Western biases. Of course, I discovered
ethnocentrism was coloring my ideas about everything from how the federal government should
interact with local governments, to representative input to local authorities. In the future, I will
be careful to do a lot of information gathering before formulating formal interview questions
(which I knew in theory but forgot in practice.) I got the sense the men would have been much
more talkative had we not assaulted them with a barrage of obscure questions right off the bat.
After the interview, I tried to erase much of what I had understood as universal, and become
(truly) culturally relativistic.
The balance of our Community Organization fieldwork was an informational flop, but
and experiential boon. Because we missed talking to the mayor in our first visit, we were to stop
in and interview him on our next trip out. We revised our questioning strategy (less of an assault,
more of a conversation) and were ready to go. The day after the three-day Fiesta de San Juan,
we returned. First we stopped at the municipal building, hoping to find him in his workplace.
After a disappointing search there, we set off for what our local friend identified as his residence.
Upon arriving, fresh and ready to learn and understand every aspect of the political structure in
every small village in Peru, we knocked. No answer. After a few minutes of sitting on the curb
outside his house (with a woman staring intently out the window at us) a man came to the door.
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We leapt into action, pens and papers ready, game faces on. “Señor mayor, tell us everything you
know!?!” Of course, it wasn’t the mayor. It was his friend, and newly appointed ambassador to
the gringos: “What do you want?” We explained our objectives, our grand plan to understand
community organization, and thereby understand the world. Overwhelmed, the ambassador
ducked back into the house, only to return a few minutes later. The mayor couldn’t meet with us
today, he explained. “But why? Is he attending to some urgent town business? Is he mitigating a
fight between rival families? Has he gone to the city to appeal for paved roads?” The
ambassador giggled. We waited. Then came the mumbled response: “He is still drunk from the
Fiesta. You will have to come back another time.” In this moment I realized the nature of
anthropology: humanity. To think we could ever seek the testability a hard-line scientist would
expect is absurd: we study people. They are as predictable as earthquakes and as objective as a
romance novel.
Later, we visited the local Centro de Salud. I noticed that every village is equipped with
one of these blue buildings, and I wondered what their role was. We were fortunate to have
happened upon the one doctor in the town at the time, working at the center. My group had no
questions prepared, but this didn’t hinder our information gathering. The two others in my group
were not particularly interested in talking to the doctor (they argued health has nothing to do with
community organization,) so I did most of the interviewing. I inquired about the role of the
health center: Was it a government-sponsored service? Who pays for the staffing? What services
are available? He spoke animatedly of his training at a university in Lima (as an obstetrician.)
Shilla was just one of his stops: each week he traveled to several neighboring communities and
was the resident ob-gyn for a day. Supplies come mainly from the central government, but
because Shilla is such a small community, they have little more than a few bandages and a few
bottles of iodine. The obstetrician explained, he brings his own tools, and when someone needs
any care more supplies or care than can be provided, they traveled to the next bigger town, and if
nothing was available there, the next bigger town, and so on. The government gives small
salaries to the doctors and nurses that staff the clinics, and supplies, but, the doctor speculated,
this was just a gesture toward improving “health” in Peru. He indicated he saw little true
concern on the part of government officials to care for people in really rural communities like
Shilla. Additionally, services are (in theory) paid for by insurance each member of the
community is to pay (roughly $1 per year) but the doctor said no one pays, until they come to the
center, and find they will be refused treatment if they don’t pay.
He did clue us in to one government program that seemed to have a great effect (in his
opinion.) The former president, Fujimori, enacted a program that ensured the health of mothers
and infants: women are to receive free prenatal care and supplementary food rations during the
infancy of her child (at this point the doctor pointed to a large sack of corn meal donated by
USAid.) So, he reasoned, pregnant and nursing women are well cared for by external sources.
Nourishment was the doctor’s primary concern among people of Shilla, but he voiced his
concern with little sympathy. “All they eat is potatoes. They don’t know how to eat well. They
sell their livestock at the market and just live on boiled potatoes.” He blamed the local reliance
on potatoes for a high incidence of tuberculosis, in his estimation also the most common disease
he encountered. This is divergent from national data that indicate a 6% decrease in TB incidence
in Peru since 1993, thanks to improved drug therapies (Greer 2001:15). However, a national
diversification of treatment options and decline in incidence may not have trickled down to the
most rural (and arguably most susceptible) communities.
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In response to my questions about invasive or tropical diseases, the doctor also expressed
strong sentiments. “There is no AIDS here. And malaria only appears in travelers. No
townspeople experience these types of diseases.”
While much of the information the doctor gave us was valuable, and led to many
additional questions (our interview was cut short by a woman’s screams: she was giving birth in
the next room, and finally the doctor felt he had to pay her a visit) I felt some of his statements
were a bit more opinion-based, as opposed to fact-based. I felt like his strong statement about
AIDS could have been the result of misconceptions about AIDS and people that may have it. I
suspect a combination of local people not recognizing or seeking treatment at the health center
for AIDS (for whatever reason) may result in underreporting. And, when I later talked about the
results of the interview with Dr. Hammer, she suggested that in general AIDS testing was
expensive and hard to come by in rural areas, and that perhaps the report of zero incidence was
an indication of zero testing.
I later found out (from additional discussions with Santa and Dr. Hammer) that the
(seemingly idyllic) prenatal and infant care is rarely so helpful. In fact, I found, that women
were required to visit the doctor at specific times, three times during her pregnancy, and if she
didn’t complete all the prenatal visits, as a result of an abundance of other obligations, it was
unlikely she would regularly return for help later. So, the doctor’s glowing reviews of the
program came only from cases of women who returned to receive the full benefits: other women
never returned, and his view was skewed toward success. Only much later in my field
experience did I learn what was going on with the women (and everyone, for that matter) who
was not visiting the health center.
Finally, the doctor’s statements about local under nutrition echoed in my mind. As a
anthropologist that someday hopes to be involved in the medical establishment, working for
more sensitive doctors, this was a remarkably unapprised statement. While a diet based solely
on potatoes is not nutritionally adequate, I felt the doctor was hasty in his judgment of local
eating habits. Not only had I seen a variety of fruits and vegetables being eaten and sold at every
market, I saw hundreds of varieties of potatoes, being prepared in infinite permutations. This
statement clarified the biases the doctor (a relatively wealthy urban-transplant) held about
“country-people.” Assuming they are ignorant to healthful nutrition seemed a product of both
his urban upbringing and his medical training: a classic stereotype about rural people, combined
with credentialist assumption about the ignorance of the non-medical community. And, that
people sell their livestock, as opposed to eating it seems more to me an economic reality than a
primitive trading faux pas. The investment of feeding and caring for an animal is hardly
redeemed in one chicken dinner, but is more accurately reflected selling it for a few soles to buy
a different kind of vegetable to eat or soap to wash clothes. To me, the sale of livestock in the
market represents a drop in the bucket of shifting from subsistence to cash economy.
Unfortunately, as mentioned in Mayer’s alguito para ganar, “peasants must sell their products
[in this case, livestock] below production cost, absorbing the losses at home (1999:346).” In
this case, however, I believe the loss absorbed at home is less than the loss absorbed if a family
was to simply eat the meat.
Still focusing on health and medicine, I had the opportunity to visit with and interview
two curanderos (healers.) Don Pancho was the more enterprising and well-known of the two.
He invited a few of us to his healing center in Huaraz. Upon arrival, we had no place to sit: the
three beds were full and the two chair waiting area was also occupied. In the most shocking
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moment of my Peruvian experience, I realized (again) how culture bound I was. The healing
center was a dirt-floored room, with papers laying everywhere and herbs littering every
horizontal space. There was a shelf that, at first glance, looked like pickled reptile shelf in a
biology classroom, with snakes and leaves in yellowish-brown sauces that made my stomach
churn.
Quelling the initial urge to turn and catch the next flight back to western medicine, my
classmates and I took some chairs (relieved of their stacks of papers and herbs) among those in
the waiting area. Don Pancho immediately opened up and began telling us about the women in
the beds (with stomach illness) and other ailment he had cured. He proudly showed us his
certificates of natural healing, bestowed upon him from the national health department, and a
program for a presentation he gave, in which he was the only non-western doctor to present. He
brimmed with pride, and the women in the bed grinned widely as living testimonials. My
anxiety vanished (in spite of the occasional chicken darting into the room) as Don Pancho
described his cures for parasites, coughs, and susto (fright disease.) I asked him many of the
same questions I had asked the doctor, and he gave me quite different answers. Primarily, he
affirmed potatoes are a staple food, but hardly the source of all health woes in the region. Also,
he confirmed tuberculosis is common, but it is not something people visit him for. In addition to
being a healer, Don Pancho is a midwife. He assists with births all over the town, and is
sometimes called from afar for consultations, and often mitigates complications in pregnancy
and birth. Despite his expertise, Don Pancho gave credit to western medicine on several
occasions, when we inquired about diseases he considered out of his realm.
His humility to the experiences of doctors and other healers, combined with his assurance
in the cures he administered, made Don Pancho what I imagine the ideal local health connection.
In the future, I hope to find a balance between western and traditional medicines, and Don
Pancho would be an incredible example. Unlike the doctor at the Health Center in Shilla, Don
Pancho seemed ready to learn new things and challenge his biases about western medicine, while
maintaining continuity in traditional practice. In addition, in the few interactions I witnessed
between he and the women in the clinic, he truly connected with his patients. There was no
sense of dominant-subordinate, educated-ignorant that often colors western medical interactions.
This experience, in a one-roomed healing center, forced me to face up to my unknown
prejudices. I had an idealized idea about “traditional” medicine, and seeing Don Pancho in
action made me accept the reality of nonwestern healing. Being trained in biology (as
preparation for joining the western medical establishment) made me value sterility, order and
specialization. In addition, I am accustomed to rescinding all authority about my body to my
doctor, and being “cured” in a few days. I had (inadvertently) projected these beliefs onto
traditional healers, assuming that they might feed you plants, but at least they would wash them
first. Of course, I was wrong in making these assumptions, and I am now a bit more critical of
my own experience as a patient (a little dirt never hurt anyone.) However, I find myself still
critical of many aspects of nonwestern medicine, and hearing Don Pancho speak with almost
religious fervor of his healings, I felt a little like I was watching televangelists curing the blind
on TV. In actuality, I think belief in any healing methodology takes a lot of faith, and to work
successfully on public health issues in the underdeveloped world, I have to acknowledge the
powers of both faith and knowledge in healing.
After the sensitizing experience at Don Pancho’s, my second interview with a curandero
was less startling. We visited Don Aurelio in Shilla, just a few blocks away from the Health
Center, but miles away in ideology. Don Aurelio had been the town healer for years, dispensing
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herbs and tinctures for parasites and aches free of charge. But two months before our visit, at a
town meeting, the representatives from the Health Center had reprimanded him, decrying his
remedies and warning him not to dispense anything more. They asserted the townspeople are
going to his shop and getting herbs and advice for free, and probably not getting better, and
taking away business from the health center. So, of late he had been giving only advice (and
perhaps the occasional herbal gift) to his patients, who continued to seek his help. The two
factions are now at a stalemate, and people are left with a stifled healer-friend or a costly timeconsuming-outsider. Don Aurelio shared tons of knowledge with us, and often acknowledged he
just wanted to help people, and was willing to cooperate with the Health Center, if they would
accept him. All I could think was: in reality, all the goals are the same. How can there be so
much contention over the methods?
Despite my initial skepticism and continued criticism (of all factions involved,) I still
believe there can be a happy medium, combining western and traditional medicines, to heal both
physical and emotional ailments. In fact, the doctor in the Health Center may be right about the
incidence of tuberculosis, but potatoes are not the problem. In fact, 46% of medicinal plants
used in Peru for general illness are inhibitive to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Henderson 2000:9),
so the Doctor and Don Aurelio are probably working in tandem to combat the familiar disease.
This was later supplemented by a visit by a nutritionist from the neighboring university.
She confirmed the value of many herbs as remedies, and gave us more information about fruits
and vegetables common in the Andes used to improve health. She spoke at length about
nutrition in rural regions, and described programs that she (and others) had been working on to
improve nutrition. But, she emphasized, potatoes are still critical, a base for every meal. She
and her colleagues give suggestions on how to augment the tubers, and have found most people
know about what they should eat to be healthy.
Our daily Quechua classes were filled with puzzlement and wonder, but ended up being
some of our most productive times. Amawta (professor) Requena for grammar was incredible:
full of knowledge and enthusiasm. He challenged us to converse about everyday things, like
buying potatoes at the market. We would stumble through, and diligently write down the
conversations, at first just as an exercise in learning. But, when we began to visit the market, to
buy food or supplies, we found just how practical our classes were. Each day in the market we
worked on speaking Quechua to the vendors. When we asked “How much?” (one of the few
sentences we forced ourselves to memorize) the women would grin with delight, and
immediately start chatting with us (in Quechua.) We would smile through the marriage
proposals and bum-pinches, only understanding a fraction of what was going on. But, a few
things were apparent. People were overjoyed that a bunch of gringos would take time to learn
their language and talk to them. I could see the effects of years of hearing Spanish become the
dominant language, and the delight of the potential for resurrecting the traditional language.
Again I felt a rush of anthropological pride: if we, as privileged northerners, could help keep this
language alive (and bring happiness to so many native Quechua speakers) without exploiting the
culture, then we must.
In one of the last classes, our amawta gave us an Andean mythology lesson. In one
cosmogonic myth, the representatives of good and evil are engaged in a battle of power. They
are to create or present one thing that will represent all they stand for, and these things will do
battle. The evil deity creates giant stone warriors, and the good deity puts forward the humble
potato. The stone warriors come to life, and begin wreaking havoc on all of creation, and are
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about to ruin the entire world. The representative of good is about to be shamefully defeated,
when the humble potatoes take action. They begin shaking in the ground and eventually they
vibrate the stone warriors off a cliff. Good triumphs over evil, and the Andean world is set right.
Amawta Requena stressed that this was part of the Andean person’s psyche, that it drives the
Andean interaction. Then, it all made sense. The doctor shunning potatoes, viewing them as an
insidious, malnutritional agent; the healers, mentioning them as the food of the people; the
nutritionist working around them to improve health. As representing the role of the Quechua
speaker in Peru, the papa is an icon. Looked down upon by outsiders as simple but highly
respected and valued from within.
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WORKS CITED
Greer, Michael
2001 Peru Interventions Led to Dramatic Decline in Incidence, Mortality. Medical
Letter on the CDC and FDA, Oct. 14: 15-16.
Henderson, CW
2000 Peruvian Plants Inhibit Growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. TB & Outbreaks
Week, Sept. 15: 9-11.
Long, Norman, David Winder
1975 From Peasant Community to Production Co-Operative: An Analysis of Recent
Policy in Peru. Journal of Development Studies 12(1):75-95.
Mayer, Enrique, Manual Glave
1998 Alguito Para Ganar (A Little Something to Earn): Profits and Losses in Peasant
Economies. American Ethnologist 26(2):344-369.
Wilson, Fiona
1999 Indians and Mestizos: Identity and Urban Popular Culture in Andean Peru.
Journal of Southern African Studies 26(2):239-244.