Читать книгу I, Rigoberta Menchu - Rigoberta Menchu - Страница 14

‘…those who sow maize for profit leave the earth empty of bones, because it is the bones of the forefathers that give the maize, and then the earth demands bones, and the softest ones, those of children, pile up on top of her and beneath her black crust, to feed her.’

—Miguel Angel Asturias, Men of Maize

We’d been in the finca for fifteen days, when one of my brothers died from malnutrition. My mother had to miss some days’ work to bury him. Two of my brothers died in the finca. The first, he was the eldest, was called Felipe. I never knew him. He died when my mother started working. They’d sprayed the coffee with pesticide by plane while we were working, as they usually did, and my brother couldn’t stand the fumes and died of intoxication. The second one, I did see die. His name was Nicolás. He died when I was eight. He was the youngest of all of us, the one my mother used to carry about. He was two then. When my little brother started crying, crying, crying, my mother didn’t know what to do with him because his belly was swollen by malnutrition too. His belly was enormous and my mother didn’t know what to do about it. The time came when my mother couldn’t spend any more time with him or they’d take her job away from her. My brother had been ill from the day we arrived in the finca, very ill. My mother kept on working and so did we. He lasted fifteen days and then went into his death throes, and we didn’t know what to do. Our neighbours from our village had gone to different fincas, there were only two with us. We weren’t all together. We didn’t know what to do because in our group we were with people from other communities who spoke different languages. We couldn’t talk to them. We couldn’t speak Spanish either. We couldn’t understand each other and we needed help. Who was there to turn to? There was no-one we could count on, least of all the overseer, he might even throw us out of the finca. We couldn’t count on the owner, we didn’t even know who he was since he always did everything through intermediaries: the overseers, the contracting agents, etc. So that’s how it was. When my mother needed help to bury my brother, we couldn’t talk to anyone, we couldn’t communicate, and she was desolate at the sight of my brother’s body. I remember only being able to communicate with the others through signs. Most of them have had the same experiences; every day they’re stuck in situations in which they can’t call on help from outside and have to help each other. But it was very difficult. I remember also wanting to make friends with the children who lived in our shed with us–we were three hundred…four hundred people working in the finca–but we couldn’t get to know each other.

A galera is a house, a large shack, where all the workers live. It’s called a galera because it has only palm leaves or banana leaves for a roof, and the sides are open, it has no walls. All the workers live there together, with their dogs and cats, everything they bring with them from the Altiplano. There are no divisions, they put us in any old how, and with anybody. That’s what life is like on the coast. Just one house to hold four, five hundred people.

It was difficult to get to know each other anyway, but our work made it even more difficult because we had to get up at three in the morning and start work straight away. It’s worst when we’re picking cotton because it isn’t the weight that counts, it’s the quantity. In the early morning it’s nice and cool but by midday it’s like being in an oven; it’s very, very hot. That’s why they make us start work so early. We stop work at midday to eat but go on working straight away afterwards until night-time. So, we didn’t have much time to get to know any of the others, in spite of our all being one people. That’s what is really distressing for us Indians, because when we’re together, well, we’re a community, we’re all from the same place, but down in the finca we’re together with other Indians we don’t know. All the workers on the coastal estates, in coffee or in other things, are Indians who either live there at the fincas or emigrate there to work. They’re all Indians but from different ethnic groups who speak different languages. This makes it very difficult for us because the linguistic barriers prevent any dialogue between us Indians, between ourselves. We can only understand the people from our own ethnic group, because we can’t speak Spanish and we can’t speak the other languages. So although we want to get closer to other groups, we can’t. And so what we used to do in the finca was to go on celebrating our customs and everything, but without understanding each other. It was as if we’d been talking to foreigners.

The little boy died early in the morning. We didn’t know what to do. Our two neighbours were anxious to help my mother but they didn’t know what to do either–how to bury him or anything. Then the caporal told my mother she could bury my brother in the finca but she had to pay a tax to keep him buried there. My mother said: ‘I have no money at all.’ He told her: ‘Yes, and you already owe a lot of money for medicine and other things, so take his body and leave.’ We didn’t know what to do. It was impossible to take his body back to the Altiplano. It was already starting to smell because of the humidity, the heat, on the coast. None of the people living in our galera wanted my brother’s body to stay there, of course, because it was upsetting. So my mother decided that, even if she had to work for a month without earning, she would pay the tax to the landowner, or the overseer, to bury my brother in the finca. Out of real kindness and a desire to help one of the men brought a little box, a bit like a suitcase. We put my brother in it and took him to be buried. We lost practically a whole day’s work over mourning my brother. We were all so very sad for him. That night the overseer told us: ‘Leave here tomorrow.’ ‘Why?’ asked my mother. ‘Because you missed a day’s work. You’re to leave at once and you won’t get any pay. So tomorrow I don’t want to see you round here.’ It was terrible for my mother, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to find my father because he was working somewhere else. When they throw people out of the finca, they don’t take them back home as they usually do. Usually when the time comes to go back to the Altiplano, the same contracting agents take us back to our village, so we don’t have to worry about how we’re getting back, or about any transport, or even where we are. We didn’t know our whereabouts, we didn’t know where we were or anything. My mother didn’t even know the name of the town we were in. But we knew we had to leave so my mother began getting our things together. So our neighbours said: ‘We’ll go with you even though it means losing everything we worked for too.’ One of them lent my mother some money to pay for the burial since she’d been in the finca for about four months and had saved a little money. The fifteen days we had worked we weren’t paid. Not only my mother and I, but my brother had worked fifteen days and wasn’t paid either. The overseer said: ‘No, it’s because you owe a lot to the pharmacy. So, go on, out of here. I don’t want to see you around here again.’ But my mother knew that she hadn’t been able to buy medicine for her son and that’s why he’d died. The trouble is that we couldn’t speak Spanish and the overseer spoke our language because he came from our region. He threw us out and said he didn’t want to see us round there again. The boss’s orders. So we had to leave.

We arrived back at our house in the Altiplano. My mother was very sad, so was my brother who was with us. My father didn’t know his son had died, nor did my other brothers and sisters because they were working on other fincas. Fifteen days later, they all arrived home to be greeted by the news that the little boy had died and that we owed a lot of money. My father and my brothers and sisters had been earning in the other fincas and had enough money to settle up with our neighbour. The neighbour also gave what he felt he should to the dead child. That’s how they helped us–the community, everyone–once we’d got home.

From that moment, I was both angry with life and afraid of it, because I told myself: ‘This is the life I will lead too; having many children, and having them die.’ It’s not easy for a mother to watch her child die, and have nothing to cure him with or help him live. Those fifteen days working in the finca was one of my earliest experiences and I remember it with enormous hatred. That hatred has stayed with me until today.

We went down to the finca again. Christmas is the last month we spend in the finca. In January we start working our land in the Altiplano. January and February are the months we sow our crops. In March we go back down to the coast to earn money to spend on the maize fields, and when the first work on the maize is over, we return to the finca to carry on earning for food.

When I was ten, they raised my pay because by then I was picking forty pounds of coffee. For picking cotton I still got very little because it was a lot in quantity but not in weight. There’s an office in every finca where all the work you deliver is taken. It’s weighed and noted down for their accounts. Towards the end, my brothers (who are not stupid) managed to figure out the ways in which they fiddled the amounts weighed. They have tricks to make it weigh less, when the real amount is much more. That happens everywhere. It’s a special trick of the men in charge of weighing the workers’ loads; that’s when they steal many pounds of coffee. They put large amounts on one side so that they can deliver more and get paid more. It’s part of a long process which starts the moment the agents contract the workers in their villages and load them into the lorries like animals. It’s one long process of robbing them of their pay. They’re charged for absolutely everything, even for the loading of the lorry. Then, in the finca, the overseers steal from the workers from the very first day. The cantina steals from them too. It continues until the last day. It’s so bad that we have had the bad experience of getting home again without a centavo. Coffee is measured by the workload set but cotton is measured by a different method. If you pick sixty-five pounds of cotton per day, you’re paid according to the weight. But with coffee, you have to pick a quintal per day and if you don’t it’s added on and the next day you have to finish that quintal before starting another one. In my case, when I started work I had to do a third of what an adult’s task would be. That was thirty-five pounds. But some days I could only do twenty-eight pounds so the next day I had to carry on with the same one. This way you fall further and further behind until you have to spend two days just making up the amount you’re missing. With cotton, the situation is different but it’s very difficult too. The worst work is when it’s second ‘hand’. First ‘hand’ is when the flowers are nicely grouped together, but second hand is when you have to pick between the branches the cotton which has been left behind the first time. That’s much harder work but the pay is the same.