Venezuela, My Slum, My Amaranth

Ping, why do you want to visit St. Augustin, slum of Caracas? Maria asked again.

I don’t know why. I’m drawn to its light and colors, its hum from the hillsides. When the Spanish conquerors arrive to these lands, they find the tribes eating a plant with brilliant leaves and tiny seeds. They inquire by words and mimics about the name of the plant. One tribal man finally understood the question. He shouted "CARACARA, CARACAS,” fluttering a bundle of that plant at the same time.

Caracas…huauhtli…amaranth

Mud huts in rainbow colors, forming barrios, shantytowns, slums…gripping the thin soil on steep slopes…generation upon generation, story upon story, hut upon hut…In 1999, after three days of torrential rain, the hills collapsed. Thousands of homes were buried.

“Ping, the cable on the left takes you to a heavenly mountaintop overlooking the sea, covered in mist, trees, birds and springs,” said the soft-spoken psychiatrist and poet from Cuba, as we drove through the mountains towards Caracas. “The cable on the right, however, takes you into the slum, the hell. Which way you choose, Ping?”

In the torrents of 2007 riot, I arrived at Caracas. Nobody was there to pick me up. I had no address or phone for my host, no internet, no language, no money, no food. As the night went deeper, I became desperate with hunger and panic. People at the airport surrounded me with advices. A Chinese businessman invited me to his palace home in Guatamala. I thanked him and took a rain check. A man brought in a taxi driver, who offered to drive me into Caracas. “I’m willing to take the risk for you,” he said through the interpreter. “You can pay me when you find your host.”

“I name the city Santiago de León de Caracas,” announced Captain Diego de Losada y Osorio, July 25th, 1567. “In the name of God, His Majesty the King and the Spanish nation, I take possession of these lands.”

Within 5 minutes, Maria found a web of people to take me to St. Augustin: • Santo Clever lives in the slum, knows the people, doesn’t speak English • Joelle speaks English but doesn’t drive • Ingrid drives but doesn’t speak English

Cultivated in America for 8,000 years, caracas/huauhtli/amaranth yields as much as rice or maize, with complete proteins like quinoa, and rich in lysine, folic acid, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, vitamins A, B and C…It represents up to 80% of the caloric consumption for the indigenous before the Spanish conquest.

Seven warrior foods for the Aztec: corn, bean, squash, nopal, chili, chia, huauhtli/caracas/amaranth.

Rotted amaranth stalks – mei xian cai gen – are exactly what their name suggests. The overgrown stalks of amaranth, too woody to be eaten as a vegetable, are harvested, chopped into sections, covered in cold water and then left in a clay pot until they start to go off. They are then rinsed and allowed to ferment in their pot for another couple of days. Finally, they are covered in brine and left for another day or two – by which time the jar will emit a revolting smell – and the stalks are ready to be eaten after a quick steaming.

Maria’s plan for me: Ingrid drives Joelle to Maria’s house at 8:00 am Pick me up and have breakfast at the famous Aripa café Drive to St. Augustin to meet Santo Clever at the bottom of the slum Santo Clever takes us into the heart of the beast Ingrid drives me back to Maria’s house at noon I catch my flight for Thanksgiving in St. Paul, Minnesota

Huitzilopochtli: left side of hummingbird…heart of hummingbird.

Children and adults painted hummingbirds on the prayer flags after I read “Confession of a Ruby-throat.” A little girl gave me her last candy she had bought after long hours of waiting outside the supermarket with her mom. “For the humming bird and its big heart,” she said.

The Aztec month of Panquetzaliztli (7 December to 26 December) was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli. People decorated their homes and trees with flags. They held ritual races, processions, dances, songs, prayers, and sacrifices. They fasted and prepared for the whole month. They made a statue of the god with huautli (amaranth) seeds and honey. At the end of the month, it was cut into small pieces so everybody could eat a little piece of the god.

The Spanish conquerors named the city Caracas, but outlawed the plant. It grew as weed on hills, deserts, marshes, roadsides.

It spread to China, India, Nepal, Greece…as vegetable, flower, grain, medicine, joy…

Hanekam--Dutch Rajgira—India Xian Cai—Chinese Chau Lai—Hindi Mola Keerai –Tamil Dhantina Soppu/ Harive—Kannada Phak Khom—Thai Hell’s Curse

The leaves of caracas are oval, 2-4 inches long, starting out green or dark red and changing to bright yellow, orange or florescent pink at the top.

They contain 3 times more vitamin C, 10 times more carotene, 15 times more iron and 40 times more calcium than tomatoes, 3 times more vitamin C, calcium and niacin than spinach.

The Greek named it amaranto--the one that never withers or fades.

Amaranthus was a son of King Abas, hunter of the island of Euboea, and Artemis’ lover. The hunting goddess invited Amaranthus to hunt with her, and he got cocky, insulting Poseidon as worthless, claiming his bounty of the hunt was superior. Poseidon sent a giant wave that washed him into the sea and drowned him. Artemis turned her lover into an amaranth-flower, her sacred plant.

Love-lies-bleeding Flaming Fountain Joseph's Coat Prince's Feather Molten Flower Cock’s Comb

When I was six, the Cultural Revolution broke out. Everything was shut or burnt, schools, books, flowers…my parents were exiled. Every day I walked through mined fields, chicken wires and flying bullets to forage food and fuel for my brother and sisters. My grandma taught me how to garden and raise chickens. One day, a plant shot up among the vegetables, brilliant green with streaks of red veins, reaching 5 feet tall, a flaming crown thick and velvety like my rooster’s head. I touched it with my fingertips, and an immense joy entered my head into my stomach. It awakened something: hope, beauty, tomorrow. I named it “my rooster crown,” kept it safe among corn stalks, and it kept me alive through the violent years.

The way to the heart is through the stomach.

Locals say that the rotten amaranth stalks were first eaten out of desperation more than 2,000 years ago, when war had impoverished the region and people had to grub around for wild vegetables to survive. One old man, so the story goes, picked some amaranth stalks that were too coarse to eat but he couldn’t bear to throw them away, so he stashed them in a clay crock. After a few days, he noticed a strange smell at the mouth of the jar, and, hungry as he was, decided to steam and eat the stalks. He found them unexpectedly tasty, and so a strange custom was born in Shaoxin, home of fermented food in China.

At the top of St. Augustin, Santo Clever points at the steep steps leading into a dark alley, “Down below is Little Hell. Many people died there in the gangster clashes. Gunshots every night. Caracas has 4 million civilians who own 6 million weapons and make 4,000 and 5,000 homicides each year. At lot of them happen here, in our Little Hell.”

On a mango tree A pink stroller rusting Children laughing for my camera Wind blows laundry this and that way Prayers from hilltops

I was about to take the taxi into the heart of Caracas when a man showed up at the airport, cardboard on his chest: Wang Ping. I approached and asked, “Poesia? His eyes lit then fired up when he saw the taxi driver. “No no no!” he shouted, wrenching my baggage away from the driver’s hand. “You’re not going to Caracas with the hoodlum. You’re coming to Valencia with me.”

Another legend about amaranth: two and a half millennia ago in China, State of Wu invaded Shaoxing, the capital of the state of Yue, and took its king as a slave. During his three years of captivity, the Wu king succumbed to a mysterious illness. No one could work out what was wrong with him until the Yue king offered a diagnosis after tasting his captor’s excrement. And so the Wu king was cured, and in his gratitude he released his prisoner. When the Yue people heard the story, they wept bitter tears, and decided they should eat their rice with stinking fermented foods to mark their humiliation.

Many Cubans work as doctors and dentists in Caracas’ barrios in exchange of oil. In the region of Huancavalica, peasants use amaranth stems for its high calcium content. After harvesting the grain panicles they burn the stems, then collect the cinders and mix them with water in order to soak the maize. The maize reacted with the calcium in the cinders and released certain amino acids, permitting its assimilation by the human body. Such prepared maize is used to make the dough for tamales.

Fermented amaranth stalks turn out to be the mother of many stinky foods from Shaoxing. Its leftover liquor is used to cure many other ingredients. Chunks of tofu, steeped in it, become the stinking tofu sold at street stalls and can infect the air at a distance of about 50 metres. Young rape shoots are briefly infused in it and then stir- fried with fresh greens to give an extraordinary mix of flavors, fair and foul. Chunks of squash develop a fishy aroma after a spell in the murky liquid; bamboo shoots reveal their darker side. This humble tool of fermentation unlocks the nutrients in the often indigestible castoffs and turns them into relish.

An amaranth plant springs up next to a rosebush. “What a delightful flower you are, desired by gods and mortals alike!” says the amaranth. “I congratulate you on your beauty and your fragrance.” “O amaranth, everlasting flower,” sighs the rose. “My life is short, even if no one plucks me, while you blossom and bloom with eternal youth!' Amaranth grains are tiny. One panicle contains 100,000-450,000 seeds. They self sew, wild or cultivated, treasured or outlawed, unimpeded by other plants, reaching 3m tall and 1m wide, with stems 5cm across at the nose, thriving under any condition, under the sun.

I want to bring Maria, Daniel, Victor and Leonardo to America! I want to go back to Venezuela, its guava and mango trees on mountains and valleys, so polluted, so sweet. I want to bring my prayer flags over Angel Falls, the tallest waterfalls on earth.

“There are about 100 Venezuelan players in Major League Baseball in the US,” said Santo Clever. “Our boys start training in baseball nurseries from age 3. We also make great musicians in the barrio.”

Like maize, sorghum, and sugar cane, amaranth is a C4 plant, with higher photosynthetic efficiencies, turning light into more energy more food than most C3 plants. Unlike maize and sugar cane, it requires little water and thrives in arid land. It’s our future crop with the global warming and water crisis.

“The light, Ping, look at the light,” cried the driver and opened the window. I woke up from my slumber. A big bang of lights exploding through the ink dark sky, in the shape of a womb. A constellation? A galaxy? Too bright for the eyes, too close to the earth, and too beautiful for the mind. Was it a dream? If so, I wanted to be in.

“It’s Caracas, Ping,” shouted the driver. “It’s our barrio, our slum.”

Santo Clever points up the steep hills of St. Augustin. “This is where I live with my wife, children, grandchildren, my parents and grandparents, my aunts and uncles and their children. Call it Hor de Cal, oven of limestone, call it barrio, hell, slum, call it my HOME!”

For thousands of years, the Aztecs ate caracas as the 'golden grain of the gods,' and offered the gods with its grains mixed with blood, honey and spirits.

Mexicans still toast Amaranth seeds like popcorn and mix them with honey or molasses to make a treat called alegra, meaning joy in Spanish, giving joy to the world.

The driver pulled me into the car and headed towards Valencia. I vowed to return to Caracas, to photo the light from the round belly of the slum.

Eat amaranth with care. Too much of it opens our skin to light, causing sunburn.

Ready? asked Santo Clever. Yep! I hopped on the back of his motorcycle. From the hilltop of St. Augustin, we crashed into the belly of Little Hell, into Caracas.