Yody Moran

For generations the people in the provinces of Peru have been marginalized. Most people living in the rural areas are from indigenous background, and because of this, they are often discriminated against when they enter larger cities. In the early 1980s, prices in Peru began to double, leaving millions unable to afford food. Around this time, violent protests ensued from teachers, miners, and farmers, among others. The Shining Path movement, led by Abimael Guzmán, began educating people in the provinces about the problems in the country and offered a solution. This education however, was usually forced upon the people living in rural areas, and Guzmán’s solution turned out to be an armed uprising. The political violence that ensued lasted for almost 20 years (1980 – 2000), creating more poverty and a general distrust among everyone in the provinces. The war left about 70,000 people dead, hundreds of thousands with no means of a livelihood, tens of thousands of orphans, and destroyed roughly $36 billion worth of property.

Yody remembers a time when everyone had to be inside their house by 6 p.m. to avoid confrontations with the subversives and the military and dead bodies in the streets became a common sight. Although there was even a brief period during the mid-1980s when Huancavelica was completely taken over by The Shining Path, the rural communities had it much worse. The subversive groups would come into a community to “re-educate” the population or steal children for the same purpose. They would force community members to feed them and often stole anything they wanted, including livestock. Then the military would enter the same community and want to know who had helped the subversive groups. They would often extract this information through torture and execution, which led many people to give up the names of their neighbors. Once the military left, the subversives would re-enter, wanting to know what they had told the military. They would use the same methods as the military to extract the information. This process was repeated for close to 20 years.

Yody recalls how she would arrive at neighbors’ houses during this period, only to find them tortured and dead, and her family’s psychological trauma that led to her mother’s death from entering into labor months too early. Yody’s father was also captured by the military. He had heard the military was looking for him, so he stayed at friends’ and relatives’ houses at night to avoid them. Despite his attempts to hide, the military found him one night at home and took him to the military base. There, he was tortured for days. When he would pass out, the soldiers revived him through electric shocks. Miraculously, one of the soldiers who knew that Yody’s father had done nothing wrong, allowed him to escape just before he would have been executed.

After this, Yody’s father was no longer able to find work because everyone knew he had been taken by the military, and they were afraid to be associated with him. Her father returned to the Santa Barbara community to try and salvage what was left of his farm where most of their livestock had been killed, stolen, or was dying of disease. Yody only finished her first year of high school before she had to devote all of her time to supporting her younger siblings.

Yody was married when she was 15 and soon after had her first child. Yody and her husband lived - barely scraping by - on his salary for many years. She began to knit sweaters, scarves, and other items to sell in the markets to help bring in a little extra money. Through her husband’s work as a teacher, she met Angelica Betalizuth, the director of a local non-governmental organization. In 2003, she offered to put Yody in contact with the Joining Hands network and its Fair Trade project, Bridge of Hope.

Yody recalls her initial skepticism in the project, but Bridge of Hope liked her products, so when they gave her an assignment for a few hundred finger puppets, she accepted. Yody was a little overwhelmed at first because she only had a month and a half to complete the order. In addition, they gave her 300 soles (approximately $100 at that time) as an advance, which was more money than she had ever held in her hands. Yody brought on two other mothers to help her with the order. The network was satisfied with their work, and as the orders began to grow, so did Yody’s group. El Mecurio (named after the colonial mine that founded Santa Barbara), grew to eight, then 17, and today has 32 members, all mothers.

The women are able to work on the orders when they have time, meaning they are able to look after their children before they go to school and when they return. Before joining the group, most of the women used to knit for the market - where there was never a guarantee of selling their products, or wash clothes in the river, which paid little, and the freezing water destroyed their hands. “The group has taught us many things,” Yody said. “We now know how to keep financial records, use a computer, and all the while they treated us with respect.” Yody remembers the first time she went to the bank to receive their payment. “We walked out of the bank with close to a thousand soles, and it felt as if everyone was watching us. We were afraid we were going to be robbed before we got back to the house.” The bank used to discriminate against many of the members of El Mercurio, pushing them to the back of the line simply because they were indigenous. After receiving help from the Joining Hands network, however, they are now respected customers, and Yody believes that the bank has learned an important lesson.

El Mercurio has been growing steadily during the last few years, creating finger puppets, stuffed animals, sweaters, and more - many of which are their own designs. Yody and El Mercurio have truly been inspirations, rising out of a violent past and becoming successful and respected women in their community.

By David Andrews

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