{"id":18,"date":"2024-05-28T20:08:20","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T03:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/?p=18"},"modified":"2024-05-28T20:08:20","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T03:08:20","slug":"cedron-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/2024\/05\/28\/cedron-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"Cedr\u00f3n trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

I started reading Deep Rivers<\/em> instead of what we’re supposed to be reading for tomorrow because it’s making me nervous that we have to read two entire books by Friday. So far I am… confused but enjoying myself!<\/p>\n

In the first story,\u00a0The Old Man<\/em>, Arguedas tells the story of a boy who visits Cuzco for the first time with his father, who is from here. They arrive in Cuzco at night and leave early the next morning. They are visiting so the father can exact some sort of revenge on the Old Man, whom he is related to and previously worked for, but whom he hates.<\/p>\n

The Cuzco described by Arguedas is dirty and disappointing, full of shadows and drunkards who urinate in the middle of the street. The tone of the story is dark and foreboding, and after reading it last night, I wasn’t sure what to expect. This morning, as we broke through the clouds and Cuzco came into view, I couldn’t help but think\u00a0Arguedas was so wrong<\/em>. Was he though? We’ve only been here for a day and I have yet to stray far beyond the four corners of the Plaza de Armas. Is Arguedas’ representation of Cuzco more “real” than what I have experienced so far? By the end of our stay, and as we get more adventurous, will we glimpse the “reality” that Arguedas described?<\/p>\n

In the story, it is implied that the boy’s father has been away from Cuzco for a long time, so the Cuzco in his stories is very different from what the boy is experiencing. The boy mourns a Cuzco that he will never see and in response, the father says, “It’s Cuzco… That’s what it does to the sons of those who have left.” In contrast, the cedr\u00f3n tree growing in the middle of the courtyard in the “driest, hardest earth” is forced to witness the decay of the city, reflected in the tree’s slow death as its bark is peeled off. The boy claims that despite the destitution around it, the cedr\u00f3n must be the unhappiest creature of all in that courtyard. The boy says perhaps the colonizers “poisoned the earth of the city with their breath”, and that is why the cedr\u00f3n is so small and scraggly. The fragrance of the cedr\u00f3n tree is a source of comfort to the boy, and it pains him to see the tree suffer.<\/p>\n

Cedr\u00f3n is used in Indigenous traditional medicine in the Andes. Cedr\u00f3n is also the main ingredient of Inca Kola, a drink created by a British immigrant to Peru and now owned by Coca-Cola. Inca Kola is a patriotic symbol for Peruvians and is hence a tool in the state’s nation-building project. The cedr\u00f3n tree was brought to Europe in the 17th century and has since become a popular ornamental plant, in addition to its popularity as a flavouring agent. Perhaps the physical decay of the cedr\u00f3n in\u00a0The Old Man<\/em> is analogous to this decay of sacredness as the trees and their products become increasingly commodified. What does it mean to be sacred?<\/p>\n

I’m going to be looking out for cedr\u00f3n trees around Cuzco!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I started reading Deep Rivers instead of what we’re supposed to be reading for tomorrow because it’s making me nervous that we have to read two entire books by Friday. So far I am… confused but enjoying myself! In the first story,\u00a0The Old Man, Arguedas tells the story of a boy who visits Cuzco for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91251"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cissyperublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}