Folk Tales of Bolivia continues with two more tales from La villa imperial de Potosí (Buenos Aires, 1905) by Julio Lucas Jaimes, the chronicler who wrote as "Brocha Gorda." They are read here in a fresh English translation made for KacheliTV, by Madame de Pamplemousse.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In The Three Juanes, a village where every man is a John and Saint Joseph is patron has three labourers of the one name — Big John, Johnnie, and Little John, Juanete, the sacristan boy the priest despairs of ever teaching a furrow. One flick on the nose from Pepa the Difficult, and Juanete resolves to study his way up in the world — but on the day of his solemn investiture as the village's notary, one person is missing from the crowd. In The Little Countess of Asnar, the Galician cord-maker Cristóbal Asnar keeps his shop in Potosí, and his daughter keeps a white kerchief, embroidered with one word — Asnar — which a young count picks up, and kisses, at the temple door. What horror, to have kissed so vulgar a name! But the devil, who invented billiards, has a cannon shot of his own to play, and constancy, as Jaimes says, softens cliffs.
A note on the tales as written. Both are told complete as Jaimes wrote them. The first is his "Cuentos de la aldea" (Village Tales); the second turns entirely on a name — Asnar plays upon asno, a donkey, which is the joke the whole town is in on, and the cord-maker wears it with pride to the end.
Chapters:
00:21 The Three Juanes
10:40 The Little Countess of Asnar
From La villa imperial de Potosí (Buenos Aires, 1905) by Julio Lucas Jaimes — public domain; English translation made for KacheliTV. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.
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