Jennifer Hulse

Mapleton, Utah
Junior, Anthropology
Utah State University

"The field is the only place to learn ethnographic techniques. No classroom can give you the sunset and a beach like Huanchaco."

Mother's Clubs in Huanchaco, Peru
By Jennifer Hulse

Overview

This paper is the product of information gathered during a five week stay in Huanchaco, Peru. I spent the majority of my time working with an organization of women called the Club de Madres (mother's club) in Las Lomas, and with Silvia who serves as current president of the club. The body of this paper will discuss my investigation of these women, their economically and emotionally challenging situations, what makes it necessary for them to come together to form this self help organization, and adversity that threatens the existence of the group.

My interest in the subject of women and their struggles in developing nations stemmed from my experiences volunteering at a women´s crisis center in the United States my freshman year. My experiences there resulted in my choice of a research topic as I prepared to leave for India on a field study program. In India I spent four months working not only with women below the nation's poverty line and their self-help groups, but also with Tibetan women refugees and their resistance operations against China and human rights violations. As I prepared to come to Peru I chose a similar topic to investigate and compare with past experiences.

Background

Huanchaco lies on the north coast of Peru and is about an eight hour bus ride north of the country´s capital, Lima. The town center is littered with restaurants, hostals, and gift shops selling native crafts to the numerous tourists who come to enjoy the surf this area offers. However, further inland, up the hill, and past one of the oldest churches in Peru is an area of Huanchaco called Las Lomas. The streets here are unpaved and brown overwhelms all other colors. Structures are basic and follow a simple development strategy. As I walk further away from the city center, the homes and businesses turn into simple brick white washed structures. Further out I begin to see houses made from reeds woven together and tied into the four walls of a home. These areas have been settled by new immigrants who build homes around city edges because they cannot afford homes in the center though they still need to be near the job opportunities Huanchaco offers. They are therefore not as developed and are usually settled illegally on government land. In this way the borders of Huanchaco slowly expand and reach into the nearby city of Trujillo.

Common problems existing on the outer edges of Huanchaco include lack of reliable income opportunities, insufficient shelter, and absence of electricity and water services. There are also problems that are specific to the women in the area. Domestic abuse is common and men frequently refuse to contribute money to their families, forcing women to find some source of income to support their children while also carrying out the everyday household chores of washing, cooking and cleaning. Many of the women in the area are now single mothers as a result of abuse and of unreliable men who leave and are never seen again. This pattern of machismo in Peru causes immense emotional pain for women. Because of Peru's society's expectations about feminine ideals, they are expected to bear their burdens silently and without complaint. There are few places to which a woman can go to seek emotional support without losing respect in the community for not fulfilling the ideals of a strong woman. This has created a life of solitude for the many women I had the opportunity to meet. Their homes are simple and they are expected to be the same.

The streets in Las Lomas are fairly empty during the day and there are no tourists here, but in the afternoon children play soccer in the dusty center plaza with an old basketball and mothers run to the corner bodega to find necessities for the next meal. Many of this place's occupants work in the informal sector as vendors at the local market. They sell ice cream, anticuchos (grilled cow hearts), or hand made jewelry to tourists. Silvia however, is home in the afternoon where she prepares a meal for her two children and waits for other nearby mothers belonging to the Club de Madres.

Silvia and the Mother's Club

There are around 60 women in the neighborhood belonging to the group and 42 active members. Together they provide one meal a day, six days a week, for 86 children of these women and their families. Monday through Saturday there is a glass of oatmeal or Quaker for each child except on Tuesdays and Saturdays when there is soup. The Quaker is provided by the government, which sends a month's supply in the first week of each month in the form of two 60 kilogram sacks of dry oatmeal. The soup is made communally and combines the ingredients that each mother can provide. Silvia Acosta is the President of the Club de Madres. On my first meeting with her, as recounted in my field notes and summarized below, I was struck by the humble condition in which she lives.

At Silvia´s home, which is also the center for the Club de Madres, I find myself surrounded by hand made bricks. The mortar oozes sloppily between each block, and is now frozen and solidified. A layer of off white paint coats the surface but there are gaps of gray and brown where the surface was too rough too hold the color. The room where I sit with my professor, interpeter, and the cook from my hotel who has just introduced me to Silvia is roofless and the sun blazes in and around us as we sit. I burn deep with heat as I feel my skin browning from the sun and the two nearby cook-fires on which the water for Quaker is boiling. The floor is compacted dirt and is scattered with small pot holes, but is well swept and there is very little dust. We each sit on steal framed chairs, the only furniture in the room besides the home made stone stoves. Silvia stands directly in front of me and I pause to reflect on her face. I can find few words to adequately describe her features, but the word "hard" comes most to mind. Life leaves telling traces of itself on Silvia's face, hands, and feet. She has a stern and prognathic jaw with a bottom lip that pouts. She is about 5 foot 2 inches tall and stands firm with her arms folded in between large breasts and belly. Her clothes are thin from wear and her hands and feet are calloused, with thick and dry, cracked skin. At first her stern appearance makes me a bit uneasy, but her toothless grin breaks the ice and I am left feeling free and forget any qualms I might have had.

In the corner to my left lie two make-shift stone stoves and one two-foot tripod cooking structure. The stone hearth closest to me is about one foot in diameter and six inches high. It consists of little more than stones stacked around a small pile of auburn coals boiling a five-gallon pot of water. The other hearth is more complex. The stones have been stacked a bit higher and wider with a stone tablet top. There is a fire inside and a small one-liter pot, placed within a hole in the tablet, which boils several small pieces of chicken for Silvia´s mother. The tripod structure, although small in diameter (about 8 inches at the top burning surface), balances a 15 gallon pot of a thin Quaker oatmeal. A three-foot stick, used to stir the meal, juts out from the oatmeal. The “Quaker” as they call it, awaits the arrival of the neighborhood children whom it will feed. The room is large and could hold about 30 people comfortably, but is bare and empty of any furniture or adornment. My attention now focuses on Silvia as she explains the organization over which she has been elected to preside.

The Club de Madres follows the following structure. There are eight elected officials for each mother's club in Huanchaco and a similar set of positions for the umbrella organization. These positions consist of a president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, three bocals (responsible for public relations), and a coordinator who is responsible for communication with state and local officials. These positions are served in two-year terms. Ideally at least, this and the above mentioned structure is how the club would function. However, circumstances in Las Lomas are rarely consistent and situations arise that cause the system to fluctuate. The houses surrounding Silvia's are filled with the family members of the former president of this sector. Rosa was president for the first twelve years of its existence. She held this position until her deviant behavior caused the rest of the group to split and elect a new president. Rosa has been accused of everything from stealing group funds and donations to the abuse of other women´s children. Over the years, Silvia has become exhausted by her neighbor's behavior towards her. Rumors about the club are abundant in the community and the constant soap-operas on the television seem to have rubbed off on the behavior of many of the neighbors in the community.

Methods

Most of my time at the Club de Madres was spent in participant observation. I spent two to three hours a day, five days a week with them, for a total of about fifty hours. There I did whatever I could to help distribute food. As the children arrived at about 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon, I would fill the buckets they brought with Quaker for them to take home to their families. During and after this I would visit with the mothers and also play with many of the children that would remain for a few moments of dancing to a little radio music. I was primarily concerned with spending time with the women and children and building relationships with them. Additionally, I conducted two formal interviews with club members and a focus group with Raquel, Marin and Sara. Raquel and Marin were organizers of another women’s organization just outside Trujillo and Sara was an American women's studies major. They were able to give me insights about the history of the Club de Madres and also general opinions on how the club should be run. My interviews also provided information on history of the Club de Madres organization and brief histories of individual women.

In the paragraphs that follow I present the life histories of Silvia, the president of the particular sector of the club that I worked with in Las Lomas, and also Marita, an active member of that sector.

Life Histories

Silvia started recounting her story at age sixteen when she “thought the world was going to end.” She married a twenty-eight-year-old man with whom she had two children before leaving him at age eighteen because of his abuse. He now has a family in Argentina with a woman fourteen years younger than himself and has no contact with Silvia or her children. Silvia left for Lima where she found a job as a cook. Life in Lima is something that she refuses to discuss with anyone because she is not proud of what happened there and things she did. The only insight I have into her life in Lima is that she had a job cooking at a restaurant and was raped one night after work.

When she left Lima for Huanchaco, where her parents live, she was living with a man who fathered her third child. She eventually asked him to leave because he abused her older children, and as Silvia says, “no one hits my children but me.” She now lives alone with her children and considers herself better off because of the problems a spouse has caused her and the women she is surrounded by.

The household financial situation is difficult. The family is supported by Silvia´s seventeen-year-old son, named Mario. He has been supporting the family since he was ten and would watch and wash cars for tourists. Occasionally when he was young, a tourist would also buy him lunch, which he would bring home to Silvia and then return to work. Now Mario has a job making curtains and rugs, but recently injured his hand, making work difficult. His job is also very stagnant and every week it is difficult to tell if work will be available or not. As a result, every once and a while Silvia must help clean houses or schools for a day to make up the difference Mario cannot provide. Silvia has been offered a steady job doing janitorial work at the school from 10:00 to 3:00, but has refused because of her responsibilities with the Club de Madres. She serves as the president of the local club and also as the secretary of the regional board.

This strength is a quality that Silvia has obviously had the opportunity to display on many occasions. There are two painful incidences she described to me that caught my attention. Several years ago her father had a heart attack. Upon arrival at the hospital she found her family in tears. “Is he dead?” she asked. When she informed of his stable state he exclaimed, “then why are you crying?” and sent everyone out of the room.

Also on the day of our interview she had just received news that her oldest daughter had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She went immediately to see her and found her crying. “Why are you crying? It does no good!” she said and began immediate preparation for a fundraiser to buy medication. I find myself admiring Silvia’s strength, but her life is not an uncommon one here. There are many within the group who share similar stories. Among these is Marita, whom I also interviewed.

Marita is a beautiful woman with an oval face and flat, almost Asian features. Her smile is shy and teeth are almost perfect except for the gold cap on half of her left front tooth. She has two children and takes great care in how they look and are dressed. Although both of them have only two or three sets of clothes, they are always well groomed.

Her home is a small white washed brick dwelling. There are two rooms, a kitchen with a table, a small gas stove and a pile of dishes in the corner, and a bedroom with room for nothing more than one large bed and a small hammock hanging for the youngest girl. There are no windows, making the house very dark and the rooms smell musky and wet. But the connecting hallway is roofless and allows plenty of natural light. Here in the warmth of the day, it is possible to hang the laundry to dry. To walk from room to room requires ducking and dodging between and under small sweaters, pants, socks and underwear. The corner of the sky lit hallway is sectioned off by a reed thatch wall that serves as a bathing area with three buckets inside always full of water that are used for drinking, bathing and cooking. A section of the wall by the front door is painted black and is used as a chalk board for the children to practice math and writing. She has created a very decent living space for her children considering her circumstances, which are not much different from the ones she was born into.

Marita was born in Cajamarca. Her father is from Huaraz and is now in Lima somewhere, although she doesn’t remember his face or know his name because he left when she was very young. She was raised by her mother, grandparents, and papá político (the man her mother lived with), to whom she is very grateful.

Eventually Marita’s mother became very ill and she was forced to drop out of secondary school to take her mother’s place selling at the supermarket. She was never able to go back and finish school and married young. Her husband was an alcoholic and was very abusive. He would hit and kick her, through her to the floor, and then lock her in the house. He did this, she said, because he had many other women. She finally left him because her daughter was getting old enough to get scared when this would happen and was afraid her daughter would have to experience the same as she got older.

Marita works hard to provide a better life for her daughter and two younger children Jose and Carolin. She joined the Club de Madres because she wanted to be able to provide as much for her children as possible. She is alone now and the club is the only kind of additional financial support she has. She told me, they would get more help and support but they don’t know the right people, or who to talk to.

Feelings of frustration over financial and abuse are confronted daily by each woman in the organization. Silvia has been taking random jobs for years to support her family and has been forced to have her son Mario work from a young age to make ends meet. Marita was placed in the same position as Mario when she was forced to replace education with work to support her family. Both of these women receive no additional compensation from their previous spouses who fathered their children. These problems are common among the other women who frequently fail to provide firewood on their assigned days because they do not have the two soles (sixty-five cents) necessary for the fuel.

Tensions between the mothers

Through all of this there is the additional annoyance of Rosa and her family (who are Silvia's neighbors). On my second day coming to see Silvia I noticed that the water line in front of the house had been uncovered and smashed. Silvia was outside being confronted by five neighbors and a short but severely obese woman whom I was later informed was the former president Rosa. They were speaking too quickly for me to understand exactly what was being said, but I was later informed that Rosa had cut the water line so the club could not make Quaker. She was jealous and had announced that she wanted to be president again. Apparently this was not a surprise to the women of the club. Rosa’s water cutting habits have become a pattern and continued through my weeks here with them. Whenever the women talked about her, they puff up their cheeks and make an angry face, mocking her fatness.

Rosa also has another bad habit of gossiping. One day in my third week working with the club I came to find that the water pipes had been broken again. She had spread rumors that when all the women gathered for meetings, they closed the door and had men in there with them. This kind of gossip not only harmed the reputation of the group within the community, but also caused problems at home for at least one of the women. Josephina, one of the regular members has a suspicious and jealous husband and was apparently severely beaten by her husband as a result of the rumors. This was reported to me by some other group members, and I never saw Josephina at a group meeting again.

Discussion:

Life circumstances and these kinds of experiences are understandably discouraging and commitment from group members is lacking. Each day there is a small group of women assigned to come and prepare the Quaker, but they often fail to show up or drop off materials and leave. When this happens, Silvia is left with the responsibility of preparing, distributing, and cleaning to in addition to cooking and caring for her own children.

I was also able to attend one of the club meetings. While I have been told that there are forty-two active members, there were only eleven present at the meeting and there are only five members that I see regularly preparing and distributing Quaker. In the meeting there was also one woman who was chided because she did not show up for her assigned day to prepare the meal. As a result she was administered the designated punishment, one week without her share of the food. Although this is the punishment for failing in ones duties it does not seem to have much of an effect because failure to attend to one’s club duties is frequent.

Also affecting the participation of group members is the fact that the monthly supply of oatmeal provided by the government is becoming sparse. The Club de Madres was started nationwide in 1985 as a political design to achieve votes. However, as the government continues to change, support for the Club de Madres is fading quickly and will soon disappear all together. This has effected the amount of food distributed to the communities. And as the amount of food provided has dissipated, so to has the amount of participation within the clubs. Now all over Peru many clubs have become inactive, including two of the four original groups in Huanchaco.

These kinds of problems with inactive members were a surprise to me. I have not seen a problem with member commitment on this scale before. While reviewing my notes a possibility for the source of this problem was suggested. Silvia made many references to crying in my interview with her. To Silvia, crying was an unacceptable reaction to the problems being experienced. Suppressed emotion is not only a heavy burden, but not discussing these kinds of issues can prevent a valuable way for the group to form bonds that strengthen their abilities to solve problems. Personal issues of abuse and disaster are public knowledge, but are not a subjects of discussion within the group over which solutions are sought. This idea was strange to me.

I spent time in a small village in south India there is a number of women who have come together to form a micro-credit group. While group money lending was the organization´s initial purpose, the meetings quickly became opportunities to discuss village and individual needs. They raised money to pay for the installation of a village well and collectively confronted one woman´s husband because he refused to let her come to group meetings. Eventually other village members would come to meetings and ask the group to solve disputes between neighbors. Although women occupy a low status within Indian culture, there is not the same kind of emotional restraints placed on the socially accepted ideal of a woman.

Women in the United States are encouraged to seek support when domestic abuse is a problem. There is a plethora of organizations that exist to help them through the emotional trial of overcoming these situations and also for physically escaping them. One of my most common tasks as a volunteer at one of these women´s crisis centers was to listen to women tell their stories. To let them “talk it out,” repeat what happened to them over and over again until the emotional strain can be overcome.

In Peru there is not the same kind of encouragement to express these kinds of feelings. The idea of “talking it out” is not a viable option to the women in the Club de Madres because of the restraints society has on expression of emotions over their personal problems. It is also apparent that the focus of the group is on the children. Mothers like Marita became members in order to better provide for their offspring and are not taking their personal issues into consideration, and so most of the energy and consideration at group meetings is expended on organizing the production of Quaker.

Conclusions

I don’t feel that, after the short time I was able to spend with the women of the Club de Madres, I can accurately assess the effectiveness of the club. One observation that I have made, however, is that the culturally set ideals for women have a profound impact on the success of development projects. It would be beneficial, when organizing any women´s organization or development project, to consider and come to an understanding of how the different ideals of women effect the mentality of those involved. This would involve in depth and lengthy ethnographic studies of a particular group. In this way the individual needs and culturally specific obstacles may be discovered and considered in the formation of a project. By doing so, a project can be developed that accurately addresses and effectively solves the problems that exist.

The time I spent with Silvia and the women of the Club de Madres has been priceless to me. I have so much respect for their strength and for the success they have been able to have in their difficult circumstances. The only regret that I have is my difficulty with the language. It pains me to know that I missed so much information and insight into the lives of women who have so much knowledge and experience to offer because I do not speak the language fluently. There were times when I could understand that I was being given very personal information. Marita was explaining the abuse she has sustained from her husband, and with my limited Spanish skills, I could not communicate any comfort or understanding to her. The language barrier not only prevented me from gaining information but my ability to share my thoughts and feelings for them. I am grateful to know however that the barriers were not complete. While communication was limited between us, I feel great affection for them and tears were shed by both sides during our final hugs and goodbyes.