Recurrence

The indigenous "pan" was my treasure. Before the erectors of bell towers and the planters of coffee, rice and beans arrived, the Puris inhabited my homeland. Vast times passed with no space for indigenous people, who were bad-mouthed and branded as lazy, saying that they did not erect towers, plant coffee, rice neither soya beans. Then one day a farmer hit the ground with his hoe and something broke. There were several ceramic "pans" buried in the ground. He clumsily pulls them out and they break even more, leaving only one. He takes it home. - Woman, the Indian pan! His son makes a small basket with straw tied at the four corners. They put the "pan" in it and hang on the dusty, poor veranda of the dreamed colonial house. Time goes by, the "pan" ends up thrown in the storehouse, becoming a nest of fat rats that ate the thin corn of that land and those hands. I wanted it for myself, I knew it wasn't a "pan" but an urn where the indigenous people put the ashes of the deads, burying them in the cemetery that the hoe had broken up. But it was a "pan" for everyone. We lived not far from the farmer's house, who gave me the urn forgotten in the storehouse as a gift. Now, photographing details of the few portraits of the forgotten Puris, may they still echo.