Today I am pleased to be bringing you a guest post from the authors of the memoir The Gift of El Tio as part of Tributes Books Blog Tour. Please join me in welcoming Larry Buchanan and Karen Gans.
As the cold wind whistled past the black mouth of the cave
in the cliffs above his village of San Cristobal, cacique Juan de la Cruz
wrapped his coat about him and again stared into the flames for a sign, a
message from a spirit, a ghost, or in this case, from his god, El Tio. “Be patient,” he said. He spit as he spoke again of the prophecy
that would soon be fulfilled. I sat
beside him in the shelter of the cave, the cold seeped from the rock walls to freeze
my behind as my face burned in front of the fire. There was no message. The spirits and ghosts didn’t speak, but Juan
already knew that a dozer would soon level his Quechua village, and he knew
very well that I was responsible.
While prospecting in
southwest Bolivia in 1996, I discovered an enormous deposit of silver beneath
his village. To make a mine, my company
had to move the people to a new site.
Karen and I lived among the people for ten years to document the effects
of my discovery, all of which are recorded in our recent memoir, The Gift of El
Tio. After a short time of living with
the Quechua, we learned my discovery had been specifically foretold for over
400 years, the people knew the silver was there all along. It turns out I was merely a pawn of their god
of the underworld, El Tio, guided to Bolivia to help fulfill a promise he had
made.
“El Tio promised us a gift…,” Don Juan said, stuffing more
coca leaf into his already bulging mouth, “…to change our lives forever. We will have so much wealth, so much silver
our houses will shine white in the sun, we will not even count our change in
the market.”
This prophecy was passed down orally from father to son for
at least ten generations; it is known by everyone. I first heard it from some hitchhikers going
to the dry lake near Uyuni to gather salt.
I paid no attention to it. I am a
scientist. Math and physics leave little
room for ancient prophecies; there is no icon on my calculator for computing a
prophecy made by a naked, beer-bingeing, cannibalistic god of the
underworld. I found it a curious story,
quaint, picturesque even, but it was well beyond my ability to believe in such
things. That is, until I heard the whole
story.
The animist culture of the Quechua allows for a pantheon of
gods, the Catholic god and the Pachamama foremost among them, but also
innumerable lesser gods, spirits, goblins, souls and devils of various
sorts. One, a particularly cruel and
peevish god, El Tio, lives his entire life within the black interior of
mountains, guarding his precious veins of gold and silver, a god never born but
who actually was constructed by the Spanish merely to frighten the local
workers.
El Tio suddenly appeared in the mines of the Andes as an
adult around the year 1605. Even in the
absolute black of his subterranean home, El Tio’s beard and mustache glow
orange or yellow. His eyes are blue; his
face, Caucasian, resembling those of his creators, the Spanish overlords who
ruled by the whip in the mines of Bolivia.
The Spanish had molded a clay god after their own diabolic image and
enthroned him to rule in this sunless underworld, telling the exhausted workers
that this hideous clay figure was El Diablo, their Dios of the mine, their god
who guaranteed torture and death for anyone who dreamed he could somehow escape
the impossible quota of toil demanded of every indigenous male in the
Andes. The miners certainly came to fear
El Tio for they soon learned the hard way that their new god had an insatiable
appetite for human flesh. He was always
hungry.
The rumor is that the Quechua could not pronounce the lisp
in the Spanish “Dios.” Over the years it
became “Tios,” then “El Tio.”
As told in The Gift of El Tio, the people believe El Tio had
hidden a gift for those who continued to believe in him, a gift to be unveiled
after 400 years in the year 2000. I
discovered the silver in 1996, close enough for the people to believe my
discovery was the fulfillment of El Tio’s promise. Coincidences such as this do not exist in the
world of science; everything must be rational, but truth is I did begin to
wonder, to question. I started attending
the numerous Quechua ceremonies in order to document their old ways. In doing so, I became enthralled by the
Quechua culture.
In The Gift of El Tio Karen and I document how the gift was
discovered, how it changed the lives of the villagers, how it did, indeed, make
them wealthier beyond their dreams, and how their new homes did shine white in
the sun. We also document how, true to
the perverse nature of El Tio, in accepting the gift the people also had to
accept the strings attached: the
destruction of the village and the loss of their entire way of life.
Thanks for sharing this fascinating post with us.
I am looking forward to reading The Gift of Eli Tio
Now lets meet the authors and learn more about the memoir.
Karen Gans and Larry Buchanan
Larry Buchanan earned
his PhD in Economic Geology in 1979 and taught university-level geology for
several years, but his love of the field led him to gold and silver prospecting
in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. In 2006, he won the coveted Thayer Lindsley
Award for the San Cristobal silver discovery. Dr. Buchanan has published a
dozen scientific works and is a sought-after speaker at international
conferences and college campuses.
Karen Gans earned her Master s degree in Early Childhood
Development and has thirty-five years of experience as an educator, counselor,
and consultant. She taught English in the Quechua village while the couple
lived in Bolivia. Ms. Gans and her husband have four children and two
grandchildren and reside in Ashland, Oregon.
The Gift of El Tio
by Larry Buchanan and Karen Gans
Publisher:
Publication date:
Genre: Memoir/non-fiction
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon
Larry, a world-renowned geologist, discovers an enormous
deposit of silver beneath a remote Quechua village in Bolivia and unwittingly
fulfills a 400-year-old prophecy that promised a life of wealth for the
villagers. Karen, a specialist in child development, is deeply disturbed by the
prospect of displacing the people in order to open a mine. She challenges Larry
to leave the comforts of home and move to the village in order to bear witness
to the massive change his discovery will spark. Thus begins the couple's
life-changing, ten-year journey into the Quechua community, their evolution
from outsiders to trusted friends. Then part two of the ancient prophecy is
disclosed to them, and they are shocked by the truth of its predictions:
alienation, despair, even cannibalism.
Labels: Karen Gans, Larry Buchanan, legend, memoir, The Gift of El Tio, Tribute Blog Tour
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