Bolivian Market Vendor

Life of a Bolivian Market Vendor, 1960s

from The World of Sofia Velasquez: An Autobiography of a Bolivian Market Vendor (1960s-70s)
I have to get up at half past two in the morning. I say my prayers. I leave the house at three, all alone. I lock the room so Rocio is safe, take my stick and climb the Bautista on foot in the dark, with a heavy bundle on my back. The street is empty, I am afraid. And so, because I always deal with magicians, I have learned from them that it is a good thing to have a bottle of alcohol at hand. I always carry a little bottle with me. At the first street comer, I offer some alcohol to Pachamama, Mother Earth, and to the spirits of the ceme- tery so that they will accompany me. And, would you believe it, I really believe that they do. As I reach the street corner, no one is there. I am afraid. So I make an offering. I say: "Soul from purga- tory who art in the cemetery accompany me. Transform yourselves (sic) into a woman or a man and a woman with a child." And they always appear: a wife, a husband, and babies. I follow them up the hill. Then street sweepers appear. When I reach the bus stop, some people are already sitting there. I wait. The bus leaves at quarter to four, and I arrive there at six. That's what I do on those mornings when they (the customers) didn't pay me [on time]. When they do pay me, I stay overnight there. During Rocio's school vacation, I take her along and we sleep at the house [in Llamacachi].
Childhood Games

All my memories are from this house, because my mother tells me that I was born in this house in the Calle Incachaca in the room where my brother now lives. I remember when I was playing in the Garita' in the evening and when my mother would tell me to throw away the garbage. When I was small, I acted more like a boy than like a girl. I liked to play with the boys. I liked to play ball and play with marbles. And I liked to be the mono mayor (the leader in "follow the leader"). In that game, boys stand in line and if the first one climbs a wall, all the others have to climb the wall too; if he hits another boy, then all have to hit one another; if he jumps, all must jump; and if he breaks off a flower, all the others have to do so too. That's how we played.
I had a childhood friend called Yola Aguilar who is now married to a lawyer, Isidro Arismende. Her mother is from Peru. She doesn't have a father. [The mother] lived with a friend called Aguatina Quinones. They came from Peru together. She earned a living embroidering petticoats and things like that. She had already done that in Peru. She came to La Paz because she had many brothers and sisters and her parents couldn't take care of all of them and people had told her that life was easier here in Bolivia. To this day, neither one of them is married and they are still living together. They are inseparable friends.
Yolanda came to live in our house when she was one year old and I was one year old too. She was born on October 25th and I on September 30th. I am 25 days older than she. When I meet Yola, we reminisce about our childhood and laugh about what we did. There were seven boys liv- ing in the house, all renters. We always played follow the leader, mar- bles, or with a ball. Yola and I always acted as goal keepers when we played soccer. Every time we played with the boys, my parents would whip me because they didn't like me to play with boys. I remember that once we went to relieve ourselves near a stream because we didn't have a bathroom in our house. There were lots of brambles along the shore and the water was so dirty it was black. Yola used to be rather timid. She didn't talk with ease, while I was never afraid to do things, even when I was very small. Well, she told me to climb up the slope first. So I did. Yola followed me, and when she was about to slip, she held on to my dress and the two of us tumbled and tumbled, right into the dirty black water. My dress was covered with black mud. I stood up and cried, "What am I going to do? My mother will beat me." Yola cried too. She took me to a public faucet and we washed ourselves and then we returned to the house. She still remembers it clearly. "What a sight we must have been tumbling down that hill," she will say. And I tell her that it was all her fault.
Also, we would always hunt for chicken feathers in the garbage dumps. They were our playthings. Once we went to look for some-Yola and I always went together-and there were some older girls there. We fought over the feathers, each saying that she had found it first. There was a battle royal. A girl knocked me an the head and I had a large bump, I cried and Yola told me, "Don't cry. Your mother will scold you." "What am I going to do to make this disappear," I answered. "Put a wet a rag on it and go to bed and you will be all right the next morning," Yola said. So my mother never found out.
Yola had dolls and so did I, and my mother would buy me small earthen ware pots and plates. I have kept my toys to this day. I had three dolls. One was of the kind that one can put to sleep and another had lit- tle braids. I only had little dolls, while Yola had large ones. One of Yola's dolls was called Pepe-a little boy. The other was Margarita. We would bury them and play funeral. For example, my Josefa would die and I would begin to cry, "My child has died." And then we would have a solemn funeral. All the children would join us. Near our house there was a pile of dirt where we would go and bury the doll, crying all the while. Then we would return and play "daddy" and "mommy." We also liked to play at performing dances. We would dance cullawa and llamerada.
Yola's mother was very kind. My mother was not like that at all. She was very strict. Yola would tell her mother that we wanted to dance the llamerada and she would give her an old awayo (carrying cloth) and she would make a pollera (wide skirt) out of it. I didn't have one, but I used to make the bed for my parents, and they always put some old awayos over the mattress. I would take one, and Yola's mother would sew it into a pollera for me. We would always play from six to seven in the evening. The boys who lived in our house: Lucho; my nephew Jose; Raul and Eloy, the sons of my other renter-they are both married now-and Yola's lit- tle brother would bang on tin cans representing a brass band, while we would dance until we were tired. Our dolls were our children. Then we would play "wedding." Yola would always get married to Eloy, while my nephew Jose was always the priest. He would also baptize the dolls.
What I liked to do best, however, was to play at selling. Yola and I would pretend to be selling lard. We would "sell" mud, pretending it was flour. Really fine dirt was sugar and little stones were fish. Berries called nunumaya we found near the stream became hot peppers. Our money was pieces of paper. And T remember Jose, my brother Fedro's oldest son, acted as a policeman. He would come and beat us, the way policemen do. And we would pretend to cry and say that we would go and complain.
[I did not have to work] when I was a small child. My mother did that. She worked with my sister-in-law. Since I was the only, beloved daugh- ter, I could spend the entire time playing. That's why we played at wed- dings, fiesta sponsorships, and baptisms. We would act out terrible quar- rels. We would act as though we were drunk. Yola recently told me, "The children today are much more awake than we were. When we were chil- dren, we were not like that. We would play like brothers and sisters. It's no longer like that. There is much more malice." And it is true. We would play like siblings with the boys. We played with marbles and soccer balls and we even learned how to box. Yes, we used to box with the boys! I was always full of mischief. Jose would go to play near the stream and I remember that one day my brother told me to fetch him. But, instead, I played with him there. Jose was playing cobohuy: the bandit and the boy with his friends. I called him, "Jose, Jose, your father wants you to come." He answered, "Yes, just a moment, I am playing." He never called me "tia" even though I am his aunt. Ever since I was small, he always called me "gorda" (fat one). "Wait gorda, we will come soon." Then his friends said, "Why doesn't la gorda come and play the role of the girl?" I agreed and started to play with them. They took me prisoner, tied me up, and put me in a corner. At that point, my brother came with the whip, and Jose and all his friends escaped. But I couldn't escape because
I was all tied up. My brother released me, and when we got home my brother whipped Jose and my father whipped me. We both received a terrible whipping.2 After what happened with Jose near the stream, I no longer played with the boys. I mostly played with Yola. We sewed dresses, everything.
[I also remember accompanying my mother on her trips to barter cracklings for corn.] I remember one time, I can still picture it vividly. It happened in Ilabaya during the fiesta of Rosario in October. My father would arrive there a week before the fiesta and set up the tent. I was very small. All I did was play and play. I liked to dance. There were some nice llamerada dance groups. The migrants to La Paz from Ilabaya organized an Inca dance. They looked like real Incas. I followed them and started to dance along. My mother laughed. Then a diablada came and I danced along with them. Then I gathered some wayruritos, little black and red seeds. They were my treasure. I spent hours gathering them. I didn't even have time to eat. It was the eve of the fiesta. My mother's tent was not the only one there. There were two others. The other two were set up by butchers who had also come to trade. I remember it clearly. Firecrackers were set off in a large open area surrounded by straw thatched houses. I think that there were two prestes [who sponsored the fiesta and the fire- crackers]. I went to the church to look at the Virgin. The migrants to La Paz had the custom of buying new clothes for the Virgin and changing her clothes. Ever curious as I was, I went to watch them change the clothes and saw the Virgin all naked. It seemed strange to me. They called her "Virgin," but the Virgin was made out of rags. Her body was made out of rags! I watched with my mouth open. Then I went back to the tent, sat down next to my mother and asked her, "Mamita, how can they say that it's the Virgin? The Virgin has a body made out of rags just like my doll. And they dressed her like I dress my doll." My mother answered, "Why did you go and look. You shouldn't have looked how the prestes dress the Virgin. She might get angry."
Later that evening the Virgin did get angry. Or so it appeared to me. They began to set off the firecrackers, with the two prestes competing [to see whose display was more magnificent]. I was watching from under the tent. Suddenly a firecracker landed on one of the straw roofs. It was the county judge's office. The roof caught fire. I began to scream. I could- n't watch any longer. I screamed, "Father, father, let's leave!" I imagined that the Virgin had become angry, that we would all burn and that end of the world had arrived. Everybody was screaming. I didn't know what to do. My mother tried to hold on to me but everybody was running all over the place and so I escaped. My father ran after me. I ran down to the river because I thought that if I jumped into the river the fire couldn't reach me. Next to our tent was the tent of a butcher who had a daugh- ter the same age as I but she was de pollera (a woman who wears a wide, gathered skirt) and I was de vestido (a woman who wears European- style dress). She was hard of hearing. But she too ran down to the river. When my father finally caught up with me I refused to return to the tent and had to be carried. That night I couldn't sleep. I was totally dis- turbed. The next day my mother asked me why I had run away. I answered that water couldn't catch fire. Well, five or six houses had burned. It was a terrible fire that they couldn't extinguish. I had had the shock of my life. I thought that the end of the world had come because the Virgin became angry and had put a curse on me for watching her clothes being changed.
[I also remember another frightening experiencel. At the time, my mother already owned a plot of land in El Alto. She had not built a house there yet. I was small and full of mischief. I loved to explore everything. I remember that there was a pile of rocks there and I started to pick up stones. I saw an enormous toad and I began to scream. I had a bad scare and escaped screaming. My father was alarmed, wondering what had happened. I thought that the toad would gobble me up. I almost died of that susto (fright). That evening I became very ill. I had a high tempera- ture, perhaps because of the scare I had. Also I had caught the measles. My father tells me that I almost died then. I was delirious. My mother also tells me that I was about to die because I was no longer conscious and no longer could speak. My father was crying, "How can my daugh- ter die?" To cure me, they washed me with a herb called hakana. That herb burns the skin. That's why I am dark. They say that I was supposed to be light-skinned. My mother sometimes curses my father because he washed my entire body including my face and she wanted him to wash only my body. I have not been ill since then, except for high blood pres- sure, but that time I almost died because of that toad.
School

Time passed. School started. They took me for the first time to the Victor Munoz Reyes School (a public school). It's located at the corner of the Buenos Aires and the Max Paredes and is known as the Eduardo Abaroa School in the morning and Victor Munoz Reyes in the afternoon. It was a girls' school. My father didn't like mixed schools for boys and girls. He always put me in schools for girls. I don't remember much about the
Victor Munoz Reyes school. I think that I was there for [only] two years, I went to school there for the first time when I was seven. It must have been in 1952 or 1951 [just before the revolution]. I remember well how I cried for my brothers during the revolution on April ninth [1952]. It seemed to me that the whole city was going to burn from all the fires. My mother was crying because Moises wasn't at home and neither was Pedro nor my father. They had gone to join the revolution. We went out on the street and stopped at the street corner down from our house and I saw the sad sight of cadavers stacked in the back of trucks like beef. The prisoners too were being loaded in rows with their hands tied behind their backs. Then I saw that one of the persons leading the prisoners with a rifle slung over his shoulder was my brother Moises.
I only remember from that time that the teacher would frequently hit me. She would grab me by the hair and knock my head against my book because I couldn't learn how to read. I also remember that my brother Moises had a quarrel with my teacher. He scolded her. I am sure that she must have hit me badly.
[She hit the other children too.] She was mean. But I think that I got used to [school] during that year, and in the second year when I was in the second grade I no longer found it difficult. I had the same teacher but she no longer hit me. Rather, I had become her favorite pupil. In that school I also had a terrible quarrel with one of the other girls over a copy book. I also remember that once they had me march dressed as a nurse in the Sixth of August (Independence Day) parade. That's what I remember.
When I was small I only spoke Aymara. My cousin Juana, the oldest daughter of my aunt Fabiana, would criticize me for being a monolingual Aymara speaker (porque era aymara cerrada). She would say [to my mother], "Your daughter won't be able to U'drn Spanish, tin, she is an ayrnari^u." Because my mothc'r doesn't speak Spanish, T learned how to speak only Aymara too. My teacher probably hit me for the same reason:
I was unable to learn, and I didn't know any Spanish at all. I only learned how to speak Spanish in school. In that class some girls spoke Aymara as well as Spanish but they spoke Spanish most of the time. With Yola I always spoke Aymara and a little Spanish because her mother spoke Spanish.
Then my brother Moises took me to Sagrados Corazones and I remem- ber everything about that school. He took me there because he felt that the girls in Munoz Reyes were willful and quarrelsome. I don't know why, but we often hit one another. Perhaps because I am fat, the girls didn't like me. They always pulled my hair or shoved me. They didn't want me to stand in line next to them. They would always bother me.
[Sofia's experiences included an incident involving her schoolmates that was so upset- ting that she didn't even tell her mother about it. Another factor that led her to change schools was the constant pressure to give gifts to the teachers:]
The following year, when I was still attending the same school, I remem- ber that there was a scarcity of sugar, bread, and cooking alcohol. So the pupils would bring these items to school to give to the teachers. I told my brother Moises what they were doing to me. I told him, "Because I don't bring presents to the teacher she makes me sit on the floor." So one day, my brother went and had a bad quarrel with the teacher. That's why Moises changed his mind about the school. My father also preferred me to be with the nuns. There I went to school both in the morning and in the afternoon, while in the Munoz Reyes, classes were only held in the after- noon. I liked Sagrados Corazones.
[My friend Yola] went to another school because Yola's mother was a more educated person (siempre preparativa). She spoke Spanish. She was a bit better than my family. So they looked for a school that was better than mine: Yola attended the 16 de Julio school in the Tumusla where girls from good families went. My father didn't know about that. That's why he put me in Victor Munoz Reyes where lower [class] girls went. Realizing that, Moises took me out of there and placed me in Sagrados Corazones. Now I was in a better school than she. She was in a public school while I was in a private one.
The nuns accepted me readily. There were no problems. The nuns never punished me. The madre liked me. You see, I already knew things. Mother Maria Chantal was the director. The nuns always raised girls and some of them became teachers. They continued to live there. When I entered the third grade I also had first communion. But I didn't have madrinas (god mothers) because my mother didn't know about things like that. They prepared me for first communion together with eighty or hun- dred girls. The nuns had dresses and veils for us. We celebrated it during Corpus Cristi. The nuns prepared chocolate, cookies, and bread [for all those who didn't have madrinas de comunidn]. When I told my mother that we had celebrated our first communion all she said was, "Fine."
At Sagrados Corazones they taught me embroidery and knitting. I learned how to pray and to go to communion and confession every Friday. They taught us cleanliness much better than in the first school. I was always very neat. I was well-behaved and no longer quarreled with the girls. We were on the right path (ya hemos ido bien). We learned how to read and write well. I knew everything well: religion, sacred history. Of the different subject matters we were taught, I remember anatomy, zoology, arithmetic, geography, geometry, Bolivian history, and physics. We had gym lessons only once a month because we didn't have a gym teacher. And we only wore skirts. The madre didn't want us to wear shorts. She didn't want us to be half-naked. She also didn't want us to go to church in short sleeves. Now Mother Chantal has changed her mind about this. Now [the pupils] are allowed to wear what they want. But at that time she didn't want to see anything. [Imagine], she would [even] get angry if she saw us playing with marbles! We only wore uniforms twice a year for the parades on July 16th (the Day of La Paz) and August 6th (the Bolivian national holiday). When I finished primary school, I entered the srgundo dasico. That school was already called Henriette de Chevarier. There we did have gymnastics. For this we wore pants. I still have them stored away. At the time, the school was poor and free of charge. The part higher up was for poor girls. The lower part charged tuition and was for gente buena (rich people).
We never mixed with people from below. We were separated by some very dense pine trees. If a ball landed in our part from the other side, a nun would carry it over. Well, I do remember once I was over there. I think that it was in fifth grade. It was during a large celebration that the nuns organized during the fiesta of Corpus Cristi. They had a beautiful procession. Each floor was adorned with pine trees and beautiful orna- ments that looked like flowers. The pupils walked in the procession car- rying candles and we followed singing religious hymns. And the parents from below and our own parents both attended. Yes, that time we did come together, and we all seemed equal. However, our clothing did look a bit sad, because they were wearing good clothing.
We ate at home. School was out at noon and we returned at two in the afternoon. We did receive chocolate and some very good bread that the nuns had made for religious fiestas. Then the nuns also showed movies twice in a large hall in the school and we had "civic hours" (horas civicas) where we presented dances. I danced as a black. Each class presented a dance. There was a llamerada, a diablada, "Spaniards," things like that. I had to dance with a "corporal." One of the girls played that role dressed as a man. I think that it was on Mother's day. People came to watch paying admission. The nuns also directed plays and charged the children and parents that came to see to buy. Raimunda was my friend because her father is my mother's com- padre. My brother Pedro baptized his son and so [Raimunda and her brother] called my mother "godmother." Raimunda was poor and con- tinues to be poor. She would go around helping other people in the fields. She would take me along and we would work together. That's why we became friends. Even before she had her child, she was my only friend then. [Now] they all live in La Paz.
[As I told you earlier, Kaimunda and I travelled together to sell onions in La Paz]. [In Llamacachi, Raimunda] directed me. She would tell me, "Let's go to such and such a place to work in the fields. The potato har- vest is good there." Or she would say, "On such and such a day I am going to wash clothes. Take your clothes there too." I would agree. It was as though she was courting me. She would whistle and I would come out and we would go and wash together. She is older than I am so she would talk about her boyfriends and we would almost die of laughter.
We would also go to fiestas together. She would say, "There is going to be a fiesta in such and such a place. I will come and pick you up." Mostly we went to Chua, but we also went to Huatajata where they celebrate the national holiday in August. Once we also went to Jank'o Amaya. We would always go and watch together. I knew that she had boyfriends. But I didn't know anything more than that. But we would always encounter some young men and we would laugh and they would invite us to soft drinks. She would tell her parents that she was going with me and so they would let her go because they trusted me. But she was lively and full of mischief. I didn't know what was going on. Once she told me to come to the river and that she would go there too. Earlier, she had told her mother that she was going to wash clothing with Sofia and her mother had told her, "Go ahead. Since you are going with the daughter of my comadre it's alright." But Raimunda had arranged to meet a boy there. She had more friendships with boys from Huatajata than from her own community. That day she must have told one of them to meet her at the river. We were washing and laughing, telling one another all sorts of wonderful stories. I was Joking with her wondering whom she was going to marry, when a young man appeared riding a bicycle. He stopped and I looked at him. I had never seen him before. He talked to her and he lay down on the ground while she washed. He even took photos of us washing.
She [knew the boys from Huatajata because she] was a Protestant from childhood on. And they always had field outings and Baptist meetings there. Raimunda even asked her whether she could take me along, but my mother told her that I was her only daughter and she wouldn't allow it. But Raimunda went herself and she must have gotten to know the boys from Huatajata in this manner. They came to visit her by bicycle. She also got to know a [man with the surname] Chura from Compi. He is the father of the little boy, who is my godchild.
When the fairs were opened there, Raimunda continued to come to La Paz with me, and I think that she had a sales site in the Rodriguez and was selling there on a daily basis. She was working here and living in La Paz, in Vino Tinto, where the boy's father lives and so they got to know one another and they eloped. They were supposed to get married. He even went to her parents to ask for her hand in marriage. I think that they gave him three months to get married and in that time the child was born. She said that the man was very mean. He beat her every time he got drunk and so she separated. She didn't want to marry him any longer. She said that they were, after all, not married and so she didn't have to be with him. She had him sign a document that he would pay child sup- port. He was also very close to his family and did what they told him and they were hostile towards her. After she got separated, she returned to Llamacachi and so when you came she was living with her parents. Then, when she got to know her present husband, she came back to La Paz.
Adapting to Life in Llamacachi

Life [in Llamacachi] had been difficult too because her older brother made life impossible for her. He would say, "Why did you have a child? What sort of child is he?" They would quarrel every day about it until Raimunda got sick and tired of it and came back to La Paz. Then one day she came and told me, "Comadre (I had baptized her son), I think that I am going to get married. I am telling you this because you are my close friend." I couldn't believe it. But she said, "Yes, comadre, it's true. He is younger than I am but I will marry him anyway." And she even married in white. He is from Jank'o Amaya and T think that he works for the Figliozzi bread and noodle factory. She married here [in La Paz) in the church of Saint Sebastian at nine in the morning and at eleven they went to Jank'o Amaya. They had a beautiful wedding.
I think that she got to know Apolinar, her husband, through Chabela, a woman who sells here in the Rodriguez. It seems to me that this Chabela and the young man were both renters in the same house. That's how Raimunda got to know him. Now they are married and they live happily. She says that he likes her little boy a lot. It's as though he were his own son. She says that she is very happy because she loves him and he loves her son. She married some five years ago and she already has two children from this man, a daughter and another son. The daughter is already quite big and the baby son must be seven months old. They live here in Munaypata. She stopped selling onions when she married. She is at home and she says that there are fairs on Saturday around there where she sells noodles. Her husband can obtain them at a cheaper price because he works for the factory. She also has her small son whom she sends to school. I think that he is in second or third grade.
Boyfriends

I got to know [my boyfriend] in Llamacachi. I knew him in 1971, for one year. I had always been living here and going there. I would be here for three days and stay there two. My mother would ask me why I had stayed in La Paz that long and I would say that my clients hadn't paid me. But it wasn't true at all. I was just having fun.
In the meantime, this young man had been there. I didn't know him yet. Remember that there were lots of trees in Chua? Well now there aren't any left. The Matilde Mine bought them and cut them up for tun- nel supports. They came with two large trucks. A man called Juan Escobar came to work as a supervisor. Well, he had a driver called Hugo Santiago driving a Volvo diesel truck of the kind they use in Riberalta to transport logs. It was a large red and white truck. T didn't know him, or at least only superficially, but he said that he knew me.
[I do remember the first time I noticed him]. It was at the fiesta of Rosario in October. I went to buy some bananas and I was walking back up with [my nephew], Lean, when a group or musicians from La Paz came along and bothered me, calling my name. I looked at them angrily and wondered why they knew my name when I had never seen them before. My parents were standing a little farther away, while on the other side there was a young man who was smiling and looking at me. I won- dered who he was. He was thin and dark, I thought that he was bother- ing me just for the fun of it. I told him, "Llokalla,3 don't bother me!" and didn't pay him any attention. But I was curious and asked other people who he was. That's how I first met him, because he bothered me. Soon, I forgot entirely about the whole episode. But then, one Friday, I was trav- elling to La Paz as usual. I was sitting in the back of the truck with my head covered with a black manta. Well, when I travel I always like to joke with all the passengers, so I was joking and laughing when I looked to one side and saw that the same young man was sitting right next to me, He looked at me and I looked at him and he smiled and wanted to talk to me. But I looked away covering myself with the manta. He is from Laja, but he had been working there in Chua since the fiesta of Rosario. He would follow me around and bother me. In Huarina he disappeared. Apparently he went to the Matilde Mine from there. I wanted to know who this guy was.
Time passed. Then one day I was resting in Llamacachi. My mother and I were sitting in the sun between the store and the road. A truck passed and later returned and the driver came out, greeted my mother and me and entered the store. There he greeted my father by name and my father returned the greeting as though he knew him. It turned out that they were friends already. I didn't know anything about it. He ordered some "papaya (a yellow soft drink) with foam" as he called beer. When I asked my mother who this man was, she said that he was my father's friend. "He comes by all the time and buys from me." He stared and stared at me, but I didn't pay any attention. Then, on another occa- sion, he came to buy cigarettes. I again didn't talk to him.
Some time later I went around in search of guinea pigs. I heard a rumor that Lidia, the daughter of Andres Quispe, who was married to Edmundo Gutierrez, was having an affair with the pastor of the Jehovah's Witnesses and everybody in Llamacachi was commenting and criticizing them. I ran all the way home bursting to tell my parents the big news. When I entered the store my parents were drinking beer, I entered gloating to tell my story, when I saw that he was there. He greeted me, "Senorita Sofia." But I ignored him angrily. I said to my mother, "What is happening in this community?" At that point he interjected, "Excuse me for talking to you by name, but how wrong of that woman to do a thing like that." So we discussed the whole thing. That's how we started talk- ing to each other. I left the store while he continued drinking. After a while he was quite drunk and he came out and talked to me. He told me that he had fallen in love with me from the moment that he had first seen me, and wanted me to be his girlfriend. I told him that was impossible. I didn't know who he was and that he must be crazy to say such things. But he pleaded and pleaded until I said, "OK, let's be friends." That's how I got to know this Hugo Santiago Alejo Quino.
[Before that, I had another boyfriend]. Remember, I used to make el Senor Hans angry when I didn't come to work and he had to go and look for me at home? We were working in the Hermanos Manchego together with Pascual. Well, that time I was friendly with a young man whom I don't see any longer. His name was Jaime Cabrera. He was from my neighborhood in La Paz. He lived across the street from our house. But he was not very nice. He drank a lot and my mother didn't like that. He knew very well that I was working and he wanted me to stay away from my work. My brothers didn't like that at all. I got angry at him myself and that's why I no longer talk to him. Our friendship lasted only three or four months.
After that I took more care. Hugo suspected that I had already had a boyfriend, but I told him that f didn't. He would always visit me at nine o'clock in the evening, hoping that I would come out. But I didn't. My mother didn't let me. The poor fellow would come with the pretext of buying Colorado cigarettes but I wouldn't open the door. Then one day-let me tell you all about it, senora-it was the first of May and he had the day off, he came to the house already quite drunk and continued to drink in the store where almost all the members of the Chua coopera- tive were gathered because it was Labor Day. He and others started to play music. He was well liked by everybody. He made friends with everybody and everybody said that he was a good person, that he was quick to invite people for drinks. He liked to spend money on friends and people there always have a good opinion of people like that. I myself did- n't mind it either. I was happy that my sales were good. We earned a lot that day. They left late that night and he stayed on until we finally urged him to go home.
He left and we all retired but then he came back and knocked at the door. The young man's plan was to take me with him. So he knocked at the door and I asked, "Who is it?" And he answered, "Sell me some alcohol." "Who are you?" I insisted. "I am from Chua," was the response. He no longer wanted any alcohol but wanted to take me with him. I told him, "How are you going to take me with you? You don't know me well. We have become friends only recently. Go home. You can't take me to La Paz. It's the middle of the night." "No," he answered, "We are going to my boss's place. He knows all about it. We'll go to the chalet [in Chua] and sleep there and we will go to La Paz tomorrow." It was difficult to get rid of the man. I was afraid that my mother would come out and scold me. So I told him, "Look Hugo, I am going to come right away. Take this manta." When he took it, I told him, "Look, my mother hasn't eaten yet. I have to cook for her. When I am done I am going to come out. Don't knock at the door, but promise to wait." "Yes," he said, "I will wait for you." He made me swear that I would come out again and I promised him that he could do whatever he wanted with me. Then I went up. We had, in fact already eaten.
I was scared. I didn't have my manta [shawl] but my mother didn't notice that I had gone out with a manta on and had returned without it. She just asked me what had happened and I told her that I had made a sale and had left the money in the store. In reality, I hadn't sold anything. I made sure that the door was locked, took my blankets, and told my mother that I wanted to go to sleep and that I didn't want her to answer if someone knocked at the door because some drunkards might come. I was sure that someone would knock at the door and ask for beer. And he did. He knocked and knocked shout- ing, "Sell me some beer." I didn't react. But the stupid ass must have thought that I would [eventually] come out. He sat down next to the door to the store and must have fallen asleep waiting for me. What finally woke him up was my dog Sandro. The dog licked his face and he woke up freezing at three o'clock in the morning. Imagine! He fell asleep at the door thinking that Sofia was going to come out. So he finally left without saying a word, still clutching my manta.
A week later he brought the manta back. I had told him to bring it back. But he told me, "Why did you deceive me? You should have come out and gone with me." I answered, "I am no one's toy. I am not an easy lay. You were stupid to stay and fall asleep. Who is going to come out because of you?" I did a lot of mean things to the poor fellow. I don't deny it. I made him suffer a lot. When he came to buy cheese I got angry, I did- n't want to talk to him. I told him that I didn't know who he was; that there were men who came to amuse themselves passing themselves off as bachelors when they in fact had wives.
He knew that I was angry, but he didn't know how to win me back. He came on the pretext of buying cheese or eggs and I would sell him cheese worth seven pesos for twenty and he would have to plead with me to give it to him even at that price. I didn't come down with the price eas- ily. He would tell my father, "Don Velasquez, tell your daughter to sell me some." And my father would tell me, "Sell him some, he is a stranger here. Poor man, sell him some," I didn't want to sell him anything. So I put the price up so that he would stop bothering me. I made him suffer for an entire year. I started talking to him again only when my father died. He even said that I should become his sweetheart. I agreed. He won me over when my mother became seriously ill after my father died. My mother couldn't walk and so he took her to the Matilde Mine to have her cured. He had her see a doctor there who gave her some injections and since then her feet no longer hurt. At that point, I said to myself that this man must love me.
His father is a tailor and before that he worked as a doorman at the Volcan factory until they retired him. Since then he has been sewing. His mother used to travel to fairs with eggs and cheese like I do. He tells me that he was the youngest son. I don't know whether I will continue with him. My destiny will tell me the answer, but I am planning to marry whoever comes along next year (i.e., 1976), as long as he is some- one responsible.