CULTURE: The Storyteller of Honduras

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Nov 11 1997 (IPS) - Speaking slowly while wearing the traditional straw hat that identifies the ‘campesinos’ of Honduras, Teofilo Trejo is acknowledged as the most popular storyteller in the country.

His work is a true revival of the tradition of relating tales among rural workers. Trejo tries to reflect the culture of the countryside, where anecdotes and jokes form part of everyday life.

Originally from the banana-producing region of La Lima, on the northern coast, Trejo works as a popular educator for the National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC), one of the fastest-growing campesino organizations in the country.

His varied childhood, during which he became famous for swimming across the Chamelcon river plus playing soccer and going to church every Sunday, made him into an uninhibited youth. He began to imitate the voices and gestures of famous characters, like the Mexican actor Mario Moreno – popularly known as “Cantinflas”.

According to Trejo, reading allowed him to “see the other side of the campesino, people who are simple and poor, who struggle, and who find in their stories and anecdotes the best relief for their problems.”

“Like them, I have worked and suffered a lot, especially when my mother died of cancer when I was eight-years-old,” he racalled. “Life was tough on me in that sense, because I had to abandon school and go work in the banana plantations, for no salary, only for clothing and food.”

With his dark skin and his thin mustache, 56-year-old Trejo has managed to make a career and name for himself in the campesino movement by becoming the first secretary general of CNTC, and promoting the Program for Basic Integral Education for Campesinos (PEBIC) targeting rural workers.

That commitment to the campesino movement has gained him the affection and respect of his fellow campesinos, who consider him to be the number one ‘perro’ storyteller in Honduras – a perra in this country is an exaggerated joke or an incredible anecdote or story.

“Teofilo’s Perras” as the title of his first book, which had great success in terms of sales, and led Trejo to write another small book titled “Tell me another one, Teofilito”, and then last spring “Teofilito’s most perra perras”.

Rafael Alegria, an advisor to the CNTC, says that Teofilo Trejo – or ‘Teofilito’ as he is known among his friends – “is the pride of the campesinos, because he has shown that we can think and that we have a capacity for criticism about the country’s problems and their protagonists.”

“We are demonstrating the campesino’s capacity to produce, create and dignify our own culture. We are convinced that this is one of the ways we can strengthen our identity and actively contribute to the transformation of our country,” he added.

Always ready to offer a smile to whoever comes to him for advice, an interview or “some perras’, a typical; story told by Trejo is one where he says that once, in an abandoned field on the banks of the Chamelcon river, he found a coconut tree which was very old and so tall “it almost combed the clouds”.

“The coconuts looked like lemon slices, that’s how tall that tree was. I wanted so badly to drink coconut water that I decided to climb the tree and get them. I got ready as if to go to a expedition to the moon. I took machetes, axes, water, matches, bags of food, flashlights, cigars, a rocking chair, and even some soap, so I could take a bath along the way,” he continued.

The idea, said Trejo, was to get the coconuts, and the way he calculated it, it would take between two and six months.

“So I began to climb, and just in case I had any problems, I prayed to God, I blessed myself, I said one Our Father and shouted ‘Hallelujah’ so loud that it made the earth shake. Believers thought it was the end of the world.

“If I fell from that far up, I would surely die, and they would be waiting for me with tamales, cafe, guaro (liquor) and cards at the funeral, and then I would be buried in some pine boards, in arid land without having to invade any landlord.”

“But this time, for free, even though they might have to use someone else’s grave to bury me,” he said with a grin. After some vignettes and much imagination, Trejo tells that he finally reaches the coconuts. The fruits were so big that as soon as he climbed on top of one, they all fell like a waterfall, ending the drought that was affecting Tegucigalpa and the south of the country.

“That is why the government gave me an award. But I was so crazy from the bump I got on my head that I forgot my own name.”

But the people, he said, called him Moses, because of his beard and long hair – which grew during the five months that it took to climb the coconut tree – his ragged clothes and because “only Moses was capable of obtaining water in the desert.”

Trejo has many “perras” that reflect the humor, simplicity and humbleness that the campesinos express every afternoon, when at sunset they come together in groups to chat, listen to each other’s problems and seek relief, through storytelling, to their woes.

Reviving the campesino’s oral tradition is an effort that no Honduran academic has attempted until now. The CNTC supports Trejo’s initiatives, publishing his anecdotes and doing popular education with them.

Education, according to Trejo, has its greatest challenge in the agrarian struggles, an ongoing struggle waged by campesinos in order to obtain a parcel of land to work on, and “keeping us away from the corruption, the hate and the jealousy that do so much harm to our country”, he says.