Word: quechua
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...tiny outlying communities around Morochata, where he was training a catechist to administer masses and perform marriages and baptisms. All of the campesinos in the area were ostensibly Catholics, having been converted by missionaries like Ray over the decades. But they still lived the traditional life of the Quechua Indians, and were thus often Catholics only in name, still believing in the ancient pagan gods. El padre wanted to see to it that they became good practicing Christians...
...sort of bribe to entice people to talk to me. I had to establish my innocent intentions to these people who were so suspicious of outsiders. The woman who owned the store, wearing shabby modern clothes rather than the traditional bulky skirt and heavy woolen top of the Quechua Indians, handed me the peanuts wrapped in a piece of newspaper. She then moved quickly to the other side of her stall, barely acknowledging my gracias...
...padre then read the prayers in Quechua, his voice betraying his lack of familiarity with the language. After finishing he began to walk toward the gate of the cemetery. "Aren't we even going to wait until the body's buried?" I asked him almost gleefully. I had never seen a burial. No, he answered, it was time for dinner. By now there was a noticeable buzz in my head. We set back for the church, so that the padre could get rid of his vestment...
General Decline. As some of Che's other notebooks poignantly show, he needed all the comfort he could get in Bolivia. Che's band, which never numbered more than 51, included 17 Cubans, who held nearly all the command positions. The Cubans were unable to speak the Quechua language of the Indians, who, Che noted, are "as impenetrable as rocks...
Barrientos was also a man of vision who hoped to include in his own brand of forceful democracy the Indian campesinos whose Quechua dialect he spoke so well. "I have the idea that every citizen must be a participant in building his country," he once said. "In order to be a participant, he must know what the problems are and how they can be solved. In order to know, he must receive information and believe it. The destiny of telling the campesinos has fallen on me, a good friend of theirs." By plane and helicopter, Barrientos pursued his destiny, often...