Huasipungo

As I start out on my new journey of reading the world, I knew there would be some shockers out there. Book number two was one of them. I have meaning to read this for years, after all I in live in Ecuador and it is one of the most famous books written by an Ecuadorian. I read it in it’s original Spanish. This book is all about how shockingly the ‘white high society’ treated the local ingedinous population. The name of the book, in the original spanish is Huasipungo means a small parcel of given to to the indian and family in exchange for hard labour. The hacienda that the author writes about is ficticious but the really of life is not. The treatment towards to local indigenous population is shocking. Rape, murder, starvation, the list goes on. This is one of those books that will stay with me, but not in a positive way. The author writes the book with the special way the indians speak the Spanish language. The spellings are different to the way the Spanish say and write. (For those who read the English version, think of this as reading old English.) My husband, who is Ecuadorian, read this book when he was in his late teens, say it has also stayed with him even after all these years. Huasipungo, a forced labor system of the Ecuadorian sierra. The word was derived from the Quechua language (huasi, “house,” and pungo/pungu, “door”). Most Indians submitted to variations of this system from the colonial period until recently. In order to obtain access to a small parcel of land (a huasipungo), Indian families would consent to provide agricultural labor and to serve as domestic servants for a hacienda owner. The Indians had the right to collect wood and straw from the owner’s land or to graze animals upon it. The owner paid wages for labor and typically supplied Indians with food, clothing, animals, and cash. (source https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/huasipungo) The next book is Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason (Iceland)