Gladys Paucar Cordoba is another Peruvian woman I’ll be visiting while spending January to March, 2019, in Tarma, Peru. Gladys is the older generation of Peruvian women as she is in her early to mid “60’s. I first met Gladys in Iowa. She was an exchange teacher residing in Shenandoah for several months and came to my Spanish classroom in Greenfield. We visited several times before she returned to Peru, where she had been teaching in the Andes in a mining town near her home in Huancayo.
As did other Peruvians, she returned to the U.S. in a few years to escape the civil war with Sendero Luminoso. Gladys over-stayed her visa and went to work, traveling to visit other Peruvians in several states and even me in Iowa. Finally, she settled in California, where she easily found work as a nanny because of her good English. Before returning to Peru, she was a caretaker for an elderly woman. All of the time she sent money back to her family for building a home for them and for her. During that time I went to Peru and met her parents. Gladys was unable to return for her mother’s death and funeral because of her visa’s expiration. She knew that her decision to return to Peru would be final.
Gladys returned to Peru for retirement and a pension from her teaching job. She brought back items from the U.S. that she could use in Peru and finally was able to see her lovely American-style home for which she had worked in the States. Her brother had designed it and her father managed the construction. Her father lived with her for a few years in the home before he passed on. Now she enjoys life in Huancayo and visits her seven brothers in Lima for holidays or entertains them and their families. I have visited Gladys twice now.
The first time I came for a visit she was newly returned from the U.S. and feeling a bit lonely. She was reconnected with some people she had known in her youth and a few teachers from her time in the mountains before heading to the U.S. She seemed to be experiencing culture shock. For her it was especially insecure being a woman on her own in Huancayo. She was very careful when going out. We spent several days taking tours in the Mantaro River Valley where Huancayo is located. On my visit last May, 2018, I found Gladys to be busy with social activities and very well-adapted to life in Peru. We took the train to Huancavaleca and stayed the night, enjoying the beautiful scenery. One night the district superintendent, a man living in Huancayo in her neighborhood, asked to come over. Although Gladys was reluctant, she let me invite him to talk about coming back in January. She wouldn’t come out to meet him though. Later she told me that she doesn’t like for people to know where she lives unless they are family or very good friends.
Gladys has never married. Her brothers have families which she enjoys. She is especially close to the little niece and nephew of her youngest brother. We talked about the influence her Catholic private school education and its effect on her attitude towards men, sexual relations and marriage. I think she also observed her mother, who had two little boys when she married her father. Six more children followed, and Gladys helped her mother care for the five younger boys. Because her father was a policeman posted in places far from their home, he began a second family, which took some of his resources as well.
However, Gladys and her siblings all obtained good educations and have been successful in careers, especially several in engineering. Gladys herself paid for her youngest brother to take special English classes, which helped him to obtain a mining engineer post with a Canadian company in South Africa. Now he and his family are back in Lima and very successful with the Canadian mining company. He credits his success to Gladys for urging him to study English along with engineering.
Gladys stays fit by exercising a lot and eating a healthy diet of Peruvian fruits and vegetables like the beans pictured here. Quinoa is high on her list of nutritious and economical foods. When visiting Gladys, I am a vegetarian and I like it!! Although she has a lovely “American” kitchen in her house, baking and cooking are not really her hobbies. She does like it when I bring chocolate though and has requested cashew butter from Trader Joes!
I’ll look forward to visiting Gladys and going to Ayacucho, where she attended the university. I’m interested in hearing more of her stories of the founder of Sendero Luminoso, Abimael Guzman, who was a professor at the time she attended the university. Gladys was a good student of psychology and English at the time. I’d like to learn more about what prompted her to leave Peru so long ago to seek her fortune and leave her large family and the mother to whom she was very close.
Unlike Nataly and Elena, Gladys does not participate in any church. She is culturally a Catholic. Her family often comes for the beautiful Easter celebrations in Huancayo centered around the Catholic faith. She doesn’t attend any church regularly, although there are Catholic churches all over Huancayo. Gladys is also just a few blocks from the flagship Peruvian Methodist Church and prestigious Methodist school in Huancayo. I have recommended it to her, but she hasn’t been tempted to attend yet. I think her Catholic school education influenced her in ways that she looks back and can see were not helpful in her life.
Paths in Peru 