Confesiones a un Árbol: Tacorita

TACORITA

Tacorita, 1974. The three children in the center are

brothers Alberto, Fernando, and Eduardo Quevedo

“The train... the train is coming!” someone shouts urgently. The people from the workshops on the second block of Buenos Aires Avenue in Chimbote rush to clear their belongings and tools scattered across the railway line. On both sides of the tracks, they form a sort of “dark alley” through which the train barely manages to pass.

The 1970 earthquake affected the infrastructure of the Chimbote-Huallanca-Chimbote railroad, and passenger and cargo service stopped operating. Several years later, the rails began to be dismantled. A locomotive towing wagons and a load of railroad ties would often pass along Buenos Aires Avenue on its way to the central station on Olaya Street.

Shortly after the earthquake, a group of mechanics, artisans, and metal traders had settled on the second block of Buenos Aires Avenue, between Pizarro and Garcilaso streets. By 1972, the workshops covered the southeast side of this block and a third of the northwest side. Both rows of workshops were located barely five feet from the rails, forming a flea market called “Tacorita,” or simply “The Line.”

That same year, my father took over one of these workshops, located near the intersection with Garcilaso Street, and focused on repairing bicycles and tricycles, painting, as well as the buying and selling of spare parts and various metal bits and pieces.

From the first day, I worked in this shop after school, on weekends, and during school vacations. As I have previously recounted, I worked here daily until 1977, and during the following four years, my father called me back only during the busiest days.

I have always believed that those years in the workshop really shaped who I am. My father had the gift of speech and wisdom, and I soaked up so much of his experience. Many exciting things happened to me during this period. In the end, I was ready to look life straight in the eye.

It was the stage of first girlfriends. The year 1972 had started in the best way for me: I was eleven years old, and for the first time, I studied with girls at school… and something told me that life was going to be a carnival. The years in the workshop confirmed this hunch; they were times of popularity among the young ladies and learning the ABCs of love.

Romances followed one after another. All of them brief and innocent. Rosa and her large eyes. Sandra and the bike rides. Gloria and her loud laughter. Nelly and the first proper kiss. Vicky, who, being much older than I was, kept things innocent. And Ana, with whom we explored the alphabet without reaching the letter Z.

And there was also plenty of soccer.

In front of my father's workshop, a group of brilliant ballplayers met every day. In that dusty sandlot, the seeds of the Honorio Gozzer Club were sown. My father held the stakes for the matches played by, among others: Julio “El Tío Yuly” Horna Vásquez, Jorge “Cachita” Nonato, Beto “Vavá” Aguilar, Fernando Peralta, Alfonso "El Kayser" Martínez Loyola, José “EL Zorro” Gil Quintana, Samuel Campos, Leandro “Chancaca” Osorio, Celso “Chaqueta” Horna Vásquez, Arturo “Gato” Tarazona Villanueva, Jorge “Palito” Castillo, Oswaldo “Ñico” Silva Solórzano, and Federico “Toto” Hermosa.

Several of these young men were part of the Honorio Gozzer team, Chimbote champions in 1976. The seventh block of Garcilaso Street was the scene of a celebration that lasted several days. That’s where Don Augusto “Cucho” Lozano, the team's coach, and Don Ángel “El Chileno” Vargas Letelier, the club’s patron, lived. The latter owned an auto parts workshop and a truck named “Anvalet,” which we would pile into on Sundays to go to the stadium and cheer for the “Poder Lila” (Purple Power), as the Honorio Gozzer team was also known.

In front of my father’s workshop, there was a “Cámara de Gas” (a dive bar where alcoholics consumed strong, cheap drinks). A white-haired gentleman used to come there, and the neighborhood rascals would always shout at him, “¡Suegro bichi bichi... suegro bichi bichi!” The poor man would fly into a rage, hurling insults and chasing the boys with stones. It was a different story when a regular named Castillo approached. He was tall, thin, and fair-skinned with gray hair, a die-hard fan of the Strong Boys team. The same rascals would shout at him, “¡Fabuloso... fabuloso Strong Boys!” and the man would raise his hand, smiling with an air of celebrity as the boys cheered.

Those were times when, shortly after midday, Tacorita would momentarily turn into a museum of statues: the blacksmith’s hammer suspended in mid-air, the welder’s electric spark extinguished, the stove repairman’s tin melting away aimlessly, and in my own shop, the bicycle rims spinning unattended. The reason for this enchantment was a beautiful woman. She would appear at the corner of Pizarro Street and cross the street diagonally in front of the workshops. She was tall, with long hair and bewitching curves. We knew she was a secretary, but we never learned her name. With good sense, someone had warned us: “You can look at her, but don’t say a word. Her husband is a violent cop.”

Tacorita was a window into the reality of life. It was there I met the first “bad woman,” as they were called in those days. She went by the name Rosa Blanca; she was young, tall, slender, and quite attractive. She had established her “route” in Tacorita, visiting each of the workshops in her effort to promote herself. I liked her presence because it made me feel like I was part of the big leagues, though I was far too young to be admitted. Speaking of leagues, there were more modest ones: the drunks from the “Gas Chamber” also had their favorite; they called her “La Mona,” a woman whose rates were within reach of the destitute.

One day we heard the cry: “The train... the train is coming!” and we all rushed to clear the tracks. On its way, the train snagged a metal bedframe from one of the neighboring shops, triggering an avalanche of twisted iron that grew as the train moved forward. From inside our workshop, my father, my brothers, and I watched as our belongings went by, turned into a metallic jumble.

On December 8, 1982, the Tacorita workshops were relocated to the Bolívar Market on Jorge Chávez Street. A year earlier, I had stopped working for my father. My childhood and adolescence were left behind as well. When youth arrived, Tacorita was still part of the fabric of my growth; by then, my closest friends had renamed the workshop: they called it “The Sheraton.”

My brother Fernando and I took turns sleeping in the shop. We did it to prevent nighttime thefts and also... for other additional perks: after nights of partying, my friends and I would end up sleeping all piled together in the workshop. There was even no shortage of those who asked to borrow the key for other matters. In those times, this phrase became popular: “Eduardo, when is it my turn at The Sheraton?”

By then, Tacorita’s days were numbered. The locomotive no longer passed by. The last wagon took away the remaining rails and their ties. Finally, the workshops were moved to another part of Chimbote. And that move marked the end of my bond with Tacorita.

Postscript.
Tacorita is like a movie in my mind. I see a teenager working with a hammer on the tracks; the stony hills of Chimbote echo back his own hammering, and from a battery-powered radio, an announcer named Ernestina tattoos the boy with the indelible ink of songs like “Es Así como te Quiero” by Los Galos, “El Último Romántico” by Nicola Di Bari, or “Amada Amante” by Roberto Carlos.

New Hampshire, USA

August, 2012