Josie "Josefina" Beavers

Greenfield, Illinois
Sophomore in International Studies, Anthropology, and Spanish
University of Illinois

Keepers of Huanchaco's Culture:
Etic versus emic understandings of sense of problem

Introduction

I spent much of last semester at school trying to find the perfect way to spend my summer. I had this desire to get out of academia and see what anthropology meant when it was applied to real life. And so I searched all over and with the help of a great teaching assistant, I found this program in Peru lead by Dr. Bonnie Glass-Coffin. I emailed her and decided that the program sounded perfect. The most appealing part of the program, for me, was the fact that it was real. It seemed like a chance to be more than a student, a chance to help a community, to solve real problems. All I really knew of the problem was that Huanchaco was a traditional fishing village with little caballitos made out of reeds and all of the sudden, this huge influx of surfing tourism had overtaken the town. The surfers and fishermen were now competing for a spot on the waves and it was all up to me to figure out what could be done. And so I arrived in Peru with a very large agenda. I had plans to come into the village of Huanchaco, size up the situation, and help to fix it. All in five weeks. I spent the first week overwhelmed. I knew I wanted to concentrate on tourism and its effect on the cultural identity of Huanchaco. Oh, but where to begin... And I had this great need to solve a problem, to fix something. In class, Bonnie talked about the "what", "why", and "how" of our research projects and I knew I wanted a good "why." I didn't necessarily know exactly what my research would center on, or how I would gather it, but I wanted it to matter to the community. I kept thinking about terms like "sustainable development" and "sustainable tourism" and wanted my work to center around these concepts. To find a way for Huanchaco to grow, but not burn out in the meantime.

Then one night at a bonfire on the beach, a man approached Bonnie and talked for much of the night. The next day she told me, "I've found your contact man!" It seemed that some guy who I had seen before, but passed off as a beach bum was a trained archeologist and social thinker. He had tons to say about the situation of Huanchaco, its cultural identity, its problems and his proposed solutions. Within a few days, we gathered for a meeting and talked for hours. I left this meeting feeling, basically, like an idiot. All of my ideas of solving the problems of Huanchaco had been thrown back in my face. Who was I to even claim to know what these problems were? I am a 19 year old student who has just finished my first year of college and I would be living in Huanchaco for exactly five weeks!

And so I decided to focus my work here on presenting the goals and ideas of the already existing grass-roots programs in Huanchaco which focus on cultural heritage preservation projects. A presentation of the etic versus emic understanding of the sense of "problem" seems necessary because I assume that I was not the first-- and will not be the last-- student to begin a field school with the misconception that an outsider is capable of grasping a place or problem in a way equal or superior to an insider. This documentation of the evolution of my thinking, the discovery of the limitations of an outsider-directed perspective, will benefit future students who may come to Peru with the same ignorant attitude as I. This trip was my time to learn that "ground up" means really ground up. It came as a slap in the face to see that I could never be the one to find all the answers-- I am the outsider, who I am to decide what the problems are?-- since that is what I had previously imagined myself doing with my life.

Background

Before I continue, it is necessary to provide some background information on the village of Huanchaco. We arrived here on June 16, via bus from Lima. The eight hour ride through the desert was my first exposure to such blatant desert landscape. The road snaked through sand dunes and piles of trash, never revealing so much as a blade of green. We arrived in Huanchaco, a coastal town, and took up residence in a hostal on the Plaza de Armas.

We are not the first field school to find its base in Huanchaco. Much to the contrary, Huanchaco is a common base for many archeological field schools because of its prime location near Chan Chan, Huaca de la Luna y del Sol, and Huaca del Brujo, all well-renowned archeological sites in the region. In the past, many students and professors have come into the area and taken from the community, without always providing reciprocation to the townspeople.

From the first day here, we have all made an effort get to know members of the community. Our first afternoon found us grouped on the beachfront, surrounded by every tourist-fed industry in town, including a man who braids hair, a guitar and box-drum band, a man selling mini-caballitos and people actually gathered on the sea wall to photograph us! The more we got to know of the town, the more we all realized that the surfers are not threatening the fishing industry. True, the surfers have come into the picture in recent years, but the number of fishermen has been declining since long before then. Our time in Huanchaco has been during the winter season, the slow time for most tourists and travelers. The majority of Huanchaco's visitors come in their summer, so we have gotten a skewed view of the role tourism plays in Huanchaco's economy. But winter is the high time for surfing and even now it does not seem to interfere with the fishermen.

Another thing we have realized is that while we once assumed there was some economic base that was replaced by tourism, we have found that Huanchaco has grown into the town that it is because of tourism. Dr. Bonnie Glass-Coffin states that research in 1983 found the population of Huanchaco to be approximately 1,000 (personal communication). More recently, a census from 1993 counts 20,000 residents in Huanchaco and the surrounding area; today, the population is speculated to be over 40,000. This dramatic increase in population has not been compensated by any significant increase in the local economy, aside from tourism. Every fisherman I talked to has lived in Huanchaco for generations, but venders in the artisan market often immigrated to the area or were born to parents who had immigrated. The population boom is the result of a rush for work within the tourist industry and people have moved into the area from the surrounding mountains.

The view from the church bell tower reveals a sprawl of small, brick homes, clustered on the hill and behind in church, some even built on top of old huacas, or ancient ruins. These homes form an expanding collar around old Huanchaco, a town of narrow streets lined with restaurants, hotels, new and old homes. The new parts of town are growing faster than the utilities can keep up and, although most have electricity, few have running water.

Methodology

My work with informants felt more like work with friends. After Bonnie talked to this man at the bonfire, I got to know him. His name is Ronald Tafur García, but everyone knows him as "Choco." We met for the first time at his friend Patricia Zevallos Romero's house, a few blocks away from our hostal. And so began my work. Talking to my new friends about the problems that Huanchaco faces and their dreams and visions for the future became my research. I conducted most of my research, especially as I began, on a very informal level. Because of the nature of my work, interviewing was the main way in which I gathered information. At the beginning I just carried my notebook with me, but eventually I became comfortable working with a tape-recorder during my ethnographic interviews so as to more thoroughly collect the thoughts of the people with whom I worked.

My research became centered around three different groups of people interested in cultural heritage preservation projects. The first group was Choco and Patricia, a couple of friends who live together and have a similar dream for Huanchaco. They introduced me to a group of people who call themselves Taller Suchyman. Talking to Zui Dethier, I learned of their vision and current work. The organization is the product of three people: Simone from Germany (who has returned home), Zui from Belgium and Carlos from Peru. These friends share the top floor of a building in town, living off very little as they pursue their work in Huanchaco. Their work centers around the arts and I had opportunities to observe some of their public performances. My third informant was presented to me during class one day when we had a guest speaker, Pedro Anhuaman, a local man who is known throughout Peru and beyond for his artwork.

Discussion

I found that the desires of these three distinct groups had many similarities. All of the groups are concerned with cultural heritage, celebrating local traditions and combating globalization. They also faced similar challenges, most concerning the financial under-writings of their work. But the three groups are quite distinct in their motives.

Patricia and Choco are an unlikely pair. Patricia is the daughter of the late Jorge Zevallos Quiñones, a well-known historian of northern Peru. She is originally from Trujillo, but loves Huanchaco and plans to live here indefinitely. She is trained in anthropology and communications and currently works free-lance, finding jobs for a couple of months so that they have money to pay bills, but spends her free time concentrating on their project. Choco is a Huanchaquero, a native to Huanchaco. He went to school to be an archeologist, but like many other people I have talked to, found the university system to be corrupt and so he decided to work on cruise ships to make money. He set up a place called Suchyman (same name, but not affiliated with Taller Suchyman) and investigated old ways of food and chicha (a corn-based beer) production. He researched old cooking pits from archeological sites and recreated an ancient kitchen within Suchyman. He cooked food and experimented with the production of chicha but soon lost too much money and was not able to continue. He now dedicates most of his time to work on their project, occasionally going out into the field for months at a time on archeological digs.

Their current work is composed of the organization of fund-raising workshops and the planning for the final goal, a cultural center named after Patricia's father. The first workshop will be held in August when they will teach the production of handmade paper. This workshop is only the first of many, and Patricia and Choco plan to continue with classes and expand the material taught to cover such topics as chicha production, traditional cooking classes and artisan craft skills. Other sources of income could come from trekking trips to local destinations such as Chan Chan, Huaca del Brujo and Cerro Campaña, a nearby mountain, and guide services for visitors to provide a local's insight to typical food, drink and activities in Huanchaco.

With the funds gained from these activities, Patricia and Choco plan to open Centro Cultural "Jorge Zevallos Quiñones." This center will be composed of three main sections: First, Aspectos a Desarrollar, or Aspects of Development. Under this branch of the cultural center will be social investigations, cultural organization and environmental education. Choco's passion lies in social investigations and he centers his work around four main foci: chicha and traditional food, the ocean, the fishermen and a cultural museum for local children. The cultural organization will provide activities and education for local people in the form of films, public forums and expositions within Huanchaco. Patricia feels that too often social gatherings pull people to Trujillo and her hope is to nurture cultural and social thought here. Patricia states that she feels a "conpromiso al medio ambiete" or obligation to the environment. The environmental education portion of the center will teach the importance of environmental awareness to everyone. It will also provide a name and agency from which projects can be conducted, such as studies on the totorales or contamination to the ocean.

The second branch of the cultural center will focus on services and products. It is under this section that the workshops, treks and guide services will continue as well as the sale of souvenirs and publications. A goal of this branch would be to provide low cost classes to Huanchaco residents so that they can gain artisan skills and sell their own products. They also hope to bring these classes to local schools and hope to involve the municipality for financial help.

The final branch of the cultural center will be a library specialized in social sciences. Patricia has access to a large supply of books as keeper of her deceased father's personal collection. She and Choco also hope to collect books through donations and purchases with money from the center. Within this library, they hope to see a section dedicated to works specifically on Huanchaco. This library will be a private entity as part of the cultural center, but Patricia foresees cases in which people with compromised financial situations will still be allowed access to the books.

The center will bring in some money through the services and products it provides while also seeking financial support from corporate sources or auspices.

Many parallels can be seen between the goals of Patricia and Choco and that of Taller Suchyman, also the work of a group of friends, passionate about the preservation of cultural heritage in Huanchaco. The distinction lies in their motivation. Patricia strives for this center because, while she finds it to be "nuestra conpromiso al Perú"(our obligation to Peru), she also feels driven to continue working in her father's name, to "seguir sus estudios" (continue his studies). Choco seems to care about this project because of a genuine passion for social investigation. But Suchyman, on the other hand, find their passion in art.

Most of my work with this group centered around Zui, a striking woman who I first saw in a performance on the Plaza de Armas one Saturday night. Zui has such a beautiful vision and is so ardent for what she does. She first came to Peru when she was seventeen for a year of volunteering and then went back to Belgium to go to school She went to France and tried to study ethnography but became horribly frustrated with her fellow students who had never been out in the real world. So she came back to South America and traveled from Peru, through Bolivia into Argentina and Chile with a circus group performing for people as they went. Then she went back to Belgium and then decided to go to Columbia and study and work. She had just found a school and organization to settle with in Columbia when Carlos, a friend from her previous time in Peru, came looking for her and told her that she was needed back there; they we going to start the taller. And so Zui came back to Peru in October of 2001 and together with Simone and Carlos established Taller Suchyman. Carlos once studied classical piano at one of Peru's universities, but after three years became frustrated with the same complaints as Choco and got out of the system.

The work of Suchyman, like that of Patricia and Choco, also has three main branches: Casa Alberque, a school and house for children on the streets; Centro Cultural de Desarrollo del Arte, a cultural education center; and public performances to raise awareness.

Taller Suchyman has a distinct outlook on the situation of children on the street. As Zui told me in an interview,
"Eso es que quiremos por los niños de la calle. Creemos en su fuerza y creemos que con esta fuerza que tienen que han recibido en la calle, a transformarla y reorientarla... Pensamos en una manera muy diferente que muchas organizaciones de niños porque esos organizaciones quieren reinsertar los niños de la calle en la sociedad. Eso es lo que quiero: Nosotros creemos realamente que esos niños son más fuerte y realamente, tomamos el tiempo y damos nuestras fuerzas y nuestras vidas para reorientarlos-- eso es lo que tiene que entender-- que lo tan importante de esta vida, entonces, puede ser. Y esperamos que ellos pueden ser liederes y luego pueden guiar; y quisás con todo esta experiencia pueden guiar a la gente."

Their approach to these children is always through art. They recognize an incredible power and force within children who must fight everyday for food, and feel that if this force is channeled through art, they will be able to be the leaders of tomorrow. They choose art because it teaches the importance of unification. What is a circus or a play with only one person? With music, performance and art the message is always that the more people involved, the richer the product. And so the goal of Casa Albergue is to provide shelter and a nurturing environment for these children. The school will work differently than conventional schools. Every six months they will choose a theme, be it poverty, plants, animals, racism or the situation of women in the world. The art, music, theatre and the circus classes will all focus on this one theme and at the end of the six months, they will hold a semana cultural, or cultural week, in which they will present the results and work of the students for the town.

The cultural center of Taller Suchyman will provide a library and public access to information for everyone. Zui feels that the government depends on keeping the people ignorant and quiet in order to maintain control. They hope that a large library and information center will allow the people of this area to learn and grow and formulate their own opinions about the role of government in their lives and desires for the future.

The people of Taller Suchyman currently perform on the street; in fact, my first exposure to them was a dance and theatre performance in the Plaza de Armas. Right now, these expositions are one of their primary sources of income. As their work grows, they plan to continue with the performances because they feel that many people think that they do not they have time to learn about theatre or music; but if they are able to bring theatre onto the street, people can walk by, and even if it's just for a second, they can see and learn something about the cultural heritage of this region. Zui has very strong feelings about the invasion of other cultures, specifically that of the United States, in Peru. She is infuriated by the way people can sit for hours in front of the television, just soaking it all in; her way of combating globalization begins with her public performances.

As the work of Taller Suchyman grows, they hope to involve many more people. Their dream is to invite people from all over the world to come and work and teach and learn with them and provide food and housing for these volunteers. Their goal is to share; it is in sharing and leaning that they will preserve the cultural heritage of this region.

Like Taller Suchyman, Pedro Anhuaman has a love for art. His work in the preservation of Huanchaco's cultural heritage lies in a book he is writing. But his outlook on the future of Huanchaco focuses on very different priorities. He sees Huanchaco's cultural history as a tourist attraction. He proposes that the police station be moved from its current location because right now it lies on top of the ancient port of Huankarute. Pedro envisions a tourist attraction based on this ancient port. He also hopes that his book will bring attention, and even fame, to Huanchaco and its fishermen. His book will consist of his artwork and stories that he has "recibido directamente de mi abuelo" (received directly from his grandfater). These stories will tell the history of Huanchaco as well as describe the life of the fishermen and the culture and folklore of the region. He hopes the book will be widespread within the states and spread knowledge about Huanchaco to the world.

Conclusion

These five weeks did not unfold like I once imagined they would. I did not diagnose Haunchaco's cultural identity crisis and I certainly did not cure it. But what I did learn is that this could never have been the case. I do not hold the answers for this town; the people of the town were the only one's capable of defining the problems and therefore, working toward a solution. I had learned about the concepts of emic versus etic in the classroom, but this field school brought to light the limitations of an outsider's perspective.

As far as the different cultural heritage preservation projects of Huanchaco, much is left to follow up on. Will they ever combine forces and work together for their similar goals? Will the community respond to their work? Will they find the necessary funding? Perhaps further work in this area could focus on finding financial support for the work of people like Patricia and Choco or Taller Suchyman.

I, myself, am in great awe of the dedication and passion that I witnessed among my informants. A part of me wants desperately to throw down all I know or own or have been told and join Taller Suchyman in their cause, but I do not yet know how to believe so wholly and truly in any one thing. And I cannot fully understand that which Patricia is working for, because she is striving towards the remembrance of her father. If I want so desperately to change the world, I must find my own fight.