Stories from Colombia

CARMEN ROSA MARTÍNEZ: A LIFE STORY BETWEEN FOOD AND FLAVORS

This is the story of Carmen Rosa Martínez, an aged woman attending the A.R.T. project in Patio Bonito Bogotá, she has dark hair and a nice smile, her hands show how much she has worked through her life. This is a story that takes place between foods, corn and wood fires in Colombia´s countryside that was broken by the armed conflict and the lack of opportunities for their sons and family leaving her alone with her husband and obligating them to move to a big city where “si usted no tiene plata en el bolsillo no tiene que hacer fuera de la casa” (if you don’t have money in your pocket you have nothing to do outside your home)

It was in the second half of the 1930´s when Carmen Rosa was born in Sucre Santander, a little town in Santander, a department in Northeast Colombia. Sucre is located in the lowest part of the cordillera de los Lloriquíes, a branch of the Cordillera Oriental (Eastern mountain Range) having a privileged weather from warm places in the southeast in the “Cañón del Rio Suárez” (Suarez River Canyon) or cold places in the northwest what is an advantage for local agricultural production, due to the weather and the fertility of the land having as Carmen Rosa said “había de todo, hasta se perdían las cosechas (to dispose some products) ”.

Her mother taught her to cook and to help in the house working including to keep the fire to cook and to prepare hundreds of delicious dishes, she learned in an empirical way “mirando y aprendiendo” (looking and learning). She had to cook for workers (farm workers) and for the family.

Carmen Rosa´s mother taught her to cook and to help in the house working in various tasks including keeping the fire and cooking and to prepare hundreds of delicious dishes. At the age of five she was able  to make arepas, empanadas and other dishes that her mother and her father knew how to prepare, at the age of seventeen she married her husband, then they were thinking about setting a restaurant near the road between Sucre and Bolivar, both towns of Santander. A few years later the idea became true and they started with the restaurant and a little market. As years passed by, and depending on the amount of people going there to be served they had to hire people and take their daughters to the restaurant to help them out.

Her husband was five years older than her and he was able to make cheese, butter and other milk products because he worked milking the cows in some farms in Bolivar.

The restaurant was able to serve up to thirty people and to sell other goods to the local people, they managed to host local people, travelers and truck drivers, she used to serve famous Santanderean dishes as “Carne Oreada” and “Mute Santandereano”. She used to give credit to the local people attending the business because in the village everybody was familiar to them, they used to have two hundred and ten sons in law. When the guerrilla´s arrived to their town they where still having the restaurant and they had to “nos tocaba servirles al ejército y a la guerrilla, ellos siempre pagaban y nunca nos hacían nada pero nunca se les podía negar el servicio” (we had to serve both the guerrilla’s and the Colombian army, they always payed and they didn’t harm us  but you had to give them the restaurant service without arguing about it).

During this time the land became a violent place as she said “había mucha guerrilla, lo llamaban zona roja, nos tocó dejar todo y venirrnos [a Bogotá] sin vender por que por allá nadie quiso comprar nada” (there were lots of guerrilla in there, it was called a red zone, we had to come here [to Bogotá] without selling our properties because nobody wanted to buy in there”, But the main cause why they had come to Bogotá was the loneliness, all the sons leaved them alone looking for better opportunities in other places as workers in the cities or in other towns, so they had to close the business.

Carmen Rosa describes their arrival to Bogotá as: “casi me muero por que acá toca comprar todo, allá todo se producía” (I almost die here because here you have to buy everything, in there we used to produce all the goods). But she got through it, because she is a strong woman. In the countryside everything was hard, as she told me: “nosotros nos criamos con una tanda de sufrimientos” (we were raised with so much suffering) she sees herself as a strong woman, a woman that serves her husband and doesn’t give him hard times because “uno no tiene que esperar a que le manden, uno hace y va sirviendo” (you don’t have to way until your husband tells you to do things, you start making them and you serve him) she also told me that “mujer maluca es la que no cocina” ( a bad wife is the one that doesn’t cook”), she used to work all her life and she thinks that a woman that doesn’t work is useless: “a mi me impresionan las mujeres que no trabajan, yo he trabajado toda mi vida, las que no trabajan no sirven para nada” (I get impressed by the women that don’t work, I have worked all my life, those who do not work are useless” [women from Santander are known for being strong and sometimes very angry. Two centuries ago, the local cotton production in Santander was a really good business and women were in command of it because men were dedicated to grow it and to grow other goods until the British industrially produced wools were imported and left the local cotton and wood production in bankruptcy. There were also important women that were leaders in Colombia’s independence wars and in the riots against the Spanish Empire from Santander.

Carmen Rosa’s husband knows how to cook, even better than her and he cooks for Carmen Rosa sometimes. She thinks that cooking requires to think and that’s how she learned to cook, that’s how she knows every recipe in her memory, that’s the reason why she can make fast calculations about the amount of ingredients that you need to use to prepare a meal for a determined number of people. She just makes some calculations in her mind moving her fingers in a way that denotes that she is counting something and then she says to you how much to use. Now in Bogotá she knows the recipes and prepares some dishes to sell or in some special parties like the 25th of December or Holy Thursdays for the family and the neighbors.

Here are some recipes by Carmen Rosa, I hope that the reader appreciates the value that they have because Carmen Rosa´s life and memory sits in recipes, in wood fires and in serving in a restaurant. (please note that most of the ingredients are available in Colombia so if you live outside Colombia try to contact a Colombian Shop near to you)

AREPAS SANTANDEREANAS (Makes 10 Arepas) 

(it is like a Mexican tortilla but thicker. This is the Santanderean recipe of them, considering that every region of Colombia has its own different arepas.)

Ingredients:

2 pounds of corn or corn flour.

½ pound of butter

sugar

salt

(white cheese)

directions:

If you prefer to make the Arepas in the traditional way please follow steps 1 through 4, if you prefer to make them with corn flour please continue to step 5.

1. You should peel the corn, in order to succeed in this task you need to prepare “lejía”.

2. to obtain “lejía” you need to mix some wood ashes and water, then you need to filter the mixture to obtain a delicate mix.

3. Pour the “lejía” and the soft corn in a big container, you will need to wait approximately one night or until you take one grain of corn out of the mixture and check if the corn skin gets separated from the corn easily. Then its time to pour all the mixture in a fique bag and wash it thoroughly until you get the corn peeled.

4. Grind the corn. 

5. Add all the remaining ingredients and mix, add salt and sugar to taste, mix with your hands until you get a consistent dough.

6. Put the dough over a flat surface and roll over it with a rolling pin and make it as thin as ½ centimeter, then cut it in circles about 10 centimeters diameter and put it in a conventional oven in low fire until it gets harder. Serve it covered with butter and salt or white cheese topping, you can also add grinded white cheese with the other ingredients.

MUTE SANTANDEREANO (Serves 4 people)

(corn soup) 

Ingredients:

2 pounds of corn (either corn flour or corn obtained in the traditional way)

1 pound peeled Colombian yellow potato (papa criolla).

1 pound peeled Colombian regular potato (papa pastusa).

2 litters of water.

1 pound of pig feets.

Grinded white onion

Salt

Parsley.

Directions

1. Pour the water in a big simmer, bring it to bowling point.

2. Add the corn and all the other ingredients, onion, parsley and salt to taste and cover it, then wait for two hours and it’s done.

Serve it in bowls.

MASATO

 Traditional beverage.

 Ingredients:

1 pound of wheat or rice flour.

5 litters of water.

Cinnamon.

1. Take one litter of water and pour the flour in it, then mix it until it dissolves, and add it to the remaining amount of water. Add  cinnamon .

2. Pour the mixture in a large simmer, put it over low fire and take it to bowling point for 15 minutes, keep stirring all the time.

3. Turn off the fire and leave it until gets cold, add sugar at your taste.

4. Serve it.

MANTECADA

Soft and wet dessert like a cake.

Ingredients:

10 eggs.

4 pounds of wheat flour.

2 tablespoons of vanilla essence or aguardiente (local colombian liquor)

1 pound of butter.

3 litters of milk.

2 pounds of sugar.

3 tablespoons of oven powder.

Directions: 

1. Put all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix it, then add the oven powder.

2. Place the mixture in large oven recipients and put it in the oven at 300 Fahrenheit until you can inset a tooth stick in the middle of it and it comes out clear.

4. Cut it in pieces and serve.

GLORIA ELVIRA BOHÓRQUEZ

Sixteen years have passed since Gloria Elvira Bohórquez arrived to Bogotá where she now sells lottery tickets in Patio Bonito, the district in which she lives now in order to survive. She works every day from 10:00 in the morning until 1 o’clock and then from 4:00 to 9:00 hoping to sell some tickets because she is a commission seller.As she begins to talk to me she remembers the countryside, where she used to live, and she longs for it, especially for the freedom she had to walk around, because now, in Bogotá, as she says, it is very easy to be robbed. Up to the moment she has not suffered this experience but her sons and neighbors have. She also misses the family that she left there in the midst of a violent situation: her sister and her nephew. She left them to escape from Violence, the responsible of many tough journeys and changes that Gloria has had to undertake throughout her life, since she was very small.

This 60 year old woman, which weaves fique[1]objects in a fast and swift way begins to  weave her own story, to explain how she has wound up here. She recalls her life in El Huila, a southeastern Colombian region, and she smiles when she tells me that she and her siblings had no clothes of their own and that they wore long T-shirts that belonged to their parents. They lived in a farm and there she learned to work with fique. Her father hat fique crops and she and her siblings knew how to make hats, alpargatas[2], and bags to pack coffe. They learned watching a neighbor, who after seeing their interest helped them and taught them. Coffee bags were what they made moistly because in El Huila the coffee production is very important.  Her parents brought her to this farm, when she was just 3 months old. It was her first life-journey but it wouldn’t be the last one. They had come here because her parents followed the conservative party[3] and in the place in which they lived before, San Juan de Río Seco, in Cundinamarca, most of the people followed the liberal party.  Her parents fled escaping the violent conflict that existed during that period of time between both parties.[4]

Her encounters with violence would not finish there. When she was 10 years old she had to see her house burnt down by the guerilla, which was nicknamed “La Chusma”. The guerrilla was also against the conservative party followers who were called “The Birds”. It was the war between “La Chusma” and “The Birds”. The guerrilla stole the family’s cattle and threatened to kill them. Gloria’s father had to build a refuge in the jungle so that the family members would be safe when they slept at night. It was thanks to this refuge that they weren’t burned with the house that burned quickly because it was full with dried coffee bags.

They had to move to Santamaría, the nearest town where they were received by one distant relative from her father. She was an old woman who treated them badly and with which Gloria and her siblings had to stay all week long while her parents went to work. They left on Mondays and returned Fridays. This woman would feed them badly, although their parents would buy the food. She would also send the children to cut wood and bring it. This was a difficult moment for the Bohórquez family.

Despite this situation, Gloria Elvira remembers this time pleasurably, because it was when she learned to read and write. There were no normal schools at that time and she learned in a strange way. It was a method called the “radiophonic school”. She sat with her siblings in a patio, while they listened to the voice of a teacher and copied things in a small board.  At the end of each term they had to write an exam, that was sent by mail to Bogotá and from there the good news or the bad news arrived, if they had passed or failed. Gloria almost passed to second grade, but she quit studying because her father asked her to do it.  In those times the people who studied all the grades were supposed to be teachers and her father didn’t want her to be one. He wanted her to work in the countryside.  She kept “practicing” history and geography on her own because she liked them. 

Then came the difficult age: she was a teenager, she was fourteen. She was forbidden to go out by herself, not because of violence, but because her parents didn’t want her to be near boys. “They wouldn’t let me talk even with the farm workers”.

As she keeps weaving, she pauses talking to remember clearly. Her granddaughter is there learning to weave and hearing a story she already knows, because when her grandmother pauses she finishes her sentences. She knows that her granmother’s brothers helped her to escape from the rigid vigilance of their parents and how they passed her messages from a man that would later become her boyfriend and with whom she would escape from her house at the age of 22.  

They went to live to her boyfriend’s farm in Palermo, near Santamaría, but they didn’t get married until a year later after they started living together, but sleeping apart. He slept with the male farm workers and she slept with the female ones. Her job was to pick up coffee, which is a job that mostly men do. They lived for some years in peace working hardly. Then the reel arrived to the farm accompanied by a worse plague: the guerrilla. And as problems never come alone, her husband died of thromboses at the age of 64, so she sold the farm and came to Bogotá, leaving her sister that had come to leave near her,  behind because she decided to stay. The guerrilla threatened her passing messages below the door. They said that if she and her family didn’t join them, they would kill them. Her sister had to invite some members of the guerrilla to have dinner with them in various occasions because they were frightened.   

Now Gloria lives in Bogotá, remembering her childhood and her youth while she weaves. Fique, as she says brings her memories of those years: of her parents, of her siblings, of the countryside. If she could, she world return to the countryside, because she tinks life is too hard in Bogotá, especially for the children and the elders. She hopes that the guerrilla has left the countryside, that El Huila is no longer a dangerous region. It is the region where her sister lives, the region in which she lived her childhood and youth, the region in which she loved and buried her husband, where the weather is not as harsh as in Bogotá with the hot suns and the cold nights. 

[1] Textile plant with radical leaves, fleshy, in form of triangular pyramid a little channeled, dark green color, a meter of length and fifteen centimeters in width, approximately. 

[2] Canvas footwear with sole of esparto or hemp that makes sure by simple adjustment or with tapes.

[3]  The two most important politic parties in Colombia have been the conservative and the liberal parties. The conservative party seeks to strengthen the central government and the relationship between the church and the state. The liberal movement aims for the strengthening of the local governments and the division between church and state.

[4] Since the beginning of the twentieth century the conservative party ruled the country up to the thirties, when the liberals rule. Then, in 1946 the return of the conservative party , in the middle of politic tensions, makes the conflicts and oppositions worse. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a popular liberal leader is murdered in 1948. There were big riots and the period known as “The Violence” was unleashed. During the fifties the migration to the cities increased because of the intensification of the conflict between the two parties. Fusce at massa nec sapien auctor gravida in in tellus. Integer tempus, elit in laoreet posuere, lectus neque blandit dui, et placerat urna diam mattis orci. Nullam sit amet nisi condimentum erat iaculis auctor.

DON JOSE

Don Jose never leaves his house without a hat and he always asks a woman whether he should call her Miss or Mrs. His customs are part of the past and he has a constant wish to be somewhere else. He arrived to Bogotá, less than a year ago and lives in a house where its small space is unfamiliar for a man used to living in the countryside. He arrived to the city because his parents and his wife died and his home town became a violent place that he fears to return to. He has written on a piece of paper all the songs he knows, but that he no longer remembers them that easily. He says they don’t fit in his head: “75 years already weigh in the nape of the head.”

From the countryside, he misses his friends and being able to work in what he knows: knitting with sisal fiber, making bags, hammocks, hats, sandals, and baskets. He says Boyaca, his hometown, has special weather where everything grows, and he misses it. Bogotá is too cold for him and he still does not go far away from his house so as to not get lost. He misses the past but not his youth, since he wisely states that “when you are young, you are young” and that one must accept aging.

He works with sisal fiber in the A.R.T. program. He says that this is the only job he knows. When he lived in the countryside, he had a machine (DESFIBRADORA) in which he prepared the sisal fiber he grew himself. This is a life and a culture that he might never be able to go back to. In A.R.T. he has made new friends, people who share his lifestyle and customs. The first time he went to the project he did not trust or speak to anyone. He used to say he didn’t have any ability, that he did not know how to do anything. He is an extraordinary knitter and he has now found again the trust and security in himself and his surroundings to do his job; he has found a place where he doesn’t feel like a stranger and where perhaps, he will find a fragment of the life he had to leave behind. Don Jose teaches with pleasure to the children that go to the project; he says they also teach him things. He is a man who bravely faces solitude and displacement. Not long ago he spoke of going back to his land, but he is afraid and he doesn’t know what he might find there.