“Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?
Oh, sweet content!
Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed?
Oh, punishment!
Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexed
To add to golden numbers, golden numbers?
O, sweet content, O, sweet, O, sweet content!
Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
Honest labor bears a lovely face:
Then hey nonny, nonny; hey nonny, nonny.
Patient Grissell, Act I
Thomas Dekker (1570?-1641?)
As a young man, I spent a couple of years in the cities and high Andes Mountain villages of Peru. I came away with a deep, abiding respect for the lowly, noble Cholo.
Are you familiar with the term? Technically, cholos are the progeny of a Hispanic/Indian union and have historically occupied the lower rungs of social caste. In today’s urban America, a Cholo is a young, street smart, urban Hispanic guy, usually with a white “wife-beater” shirt or a flannel shirt buttoned at the collar over baggy chinos. A bandana framing a shaved head or hairnet to protect the perfectly cut and combed hair often completes the look. The really hip guys have at least one tattoo and own a very cool “ride”. Cheech and Chong popularized the culture a generation ago and young Hispanics use the term endearingly with each other. The term shows up in a recent Lady Gaga song.
But in Peru, the Cholo is the absolute economic bottom of the barrel. They are very handsome people with sharp, well defined features and high cheek bones, golden skin and jet black hair. I find children of racially mixed unions to be 
generally good looking kids. Somehow, they tend to acquire the best features of each race. This is true of the Peruvian Cholo. They gravitate to the coastal cities from their remote mountain villages to try to find any kind of work that will sustain life for one more day and hopefully provide some kind of shelter against the elements for one more night. They dress in whatever rags are available to them and their shoes tend to be old tire treads, cut in the shape of their foot with straps fashioned from strips of rubber inner tubes – home made for sure. They tend to be smaller in stature and strong as an ox. You will see them in the bustling streets of Lima, Arequipa and Trujillo, carrying sacks of produce or boxes of product often larger and heavier than they are, as they go about the business of loading or unloading trucks to keep the Peruvian markets moving. They work from sunup to sundown and then they disappear somewhere to rest until the next day, perhaps in something as basic as a large cardboard box. You seldom see them at night.
They usually speak some Spanish, but they often prefer to communicate with each other in Quechua, the ancient language of the Incas.
The coca plant is indigenous to Peru and is the source of cocaine. In its highly refined state, it is the drug of choice for American social elites. In its natural form it is a mild stimulant for Cholos, to help them keep going until the end of the day. They all have small wooden containers featuring a slim wooden center rod, connected to a lid. They look something like a mini mortar and pestle. They jam coca leaves into the container and work the rod until it mashes the leaves into a paste. Then, they lick the rod to allow the basic drug to absorb into their systems, so they can hoist the next load.
On more than one evening while I lived in Peru. I found myself walking along a dimly lit street, or sometimes a street lit only by moonlight, in some Peruvian town or village and from somewhere in the darkness, I would hear the wafting 
sound of a folk tune played beautifully on the ubiquitous wooden flute that seems to show up in all the poor neighborhoods after dark. It is an airy, other-worldly sound that fits perfectly in the Andes Mountains. It has a kind of undefined sadness to it and it makes you feel like you are a million miles from civilization, but not far from a friendly face. I loved the sound and the simple melodies. I still do. The interesting thing is all the folk tunes that you hear over and over have an up-tempo beat and a happy, lilting tune. The people who wrote these tunes over the generations are not a sad people. Objectively speaking, they probably should be, but they aren’t.
They are humble, but they project a quiet pride that transcends social standing. They seem to me to be ultimately content. They band together, form unions and families and tend their children and teach them, as they grow. They are never far from starvation but self respect is always there. If you smile at them, they will instantly smile back. They accept their lives and do not aspire to an expanded position in society. They work to live. Their work is their lifeblood and they respect the task of the moment.
Peruvian Cholos know how to enjoy a happy moment. They laugh easily. One of my great pleasures in Peru was a local dish called the anticucho – chunks of marinated beef heart on a bamboo skewer, slathered with an incredibly hot, 
bright yellow sauce made from a local chili, called “aji”. There was an old lady who had a small kiosk on a street corner in Lima, consisting of an upturned wooden crate to sit on and a small, square metal container to hold coals, over which she roasted anticuchos for sale. She was always there and I was a regular customer. Every time I ate one, I would fan my mouth and dance around, because it was so hot. Every time I did that, she would throw her head back, laugh loudly, point at me and yell, “Mira al gringo” (look at the gringo). Eventually she started to laugh as she saw me approach. She was dirt poor, but she was doing her work and she knew how to enjoy the moment.
I remember a visit from the President of Peru to Cajamarca, a remote city high in the Andes. He arrived in an old DC-3 tail-dragger aircraft and when it rolled to a stop at the end of a grass field, the local Cholos ran onto the field to lay alfalfa under the nose of the aircraft to feed it. President Francisco Belaunde Terry deplaned and as the local people gathered around him at the base of the stairs, a news man, said to one of them, “This is Francisco Belaunde Terry”. The local man said, “Who’s that?” The newsman replied, he is the President of Peru and the local man asked, “What’s Peru?” He was in the middle of a country he had never heard of and had no use for. He was standing next to an “important dignitary” who could play no useful part in his life. His life was complete without those things.
I thought that little experience summed up the Cholo approach to life. We must work, so we can live. To live means to experience quiet joy. Quiet joy is achieved through familial connection, good food and music, regular rest, enjoying the moment, laughter and the knowledge that you have completed a good day’s work.
I learned a lot from the Peruvian Cholo. I learned that all work is ennobling.