Albizu

We spent Monday doing our museum duties, working in the store and at the front desk. Some high schoolers from a group called Where there be dragons were at the museum doing a ceramics workshop with Lucho, and one of their leaders was a girl I went on the Tibetan Studies program with in 2001, Park - bizarre to see her there.

We finally heard from Albizu, the assistant that Rafael recommended to us. He called us at the museum Monday night, and came Tuesday morning at 10. He is a student at the university in Cusco studying anthropology and tourism, and he´s worked on some films with Rafael and his friend Angel. His English is not great, but he can manage, and we have a book, and most importantly, he knows Spanish and Quechua. We sat down with him and brought him up to speed with what we are doing, and what we have shot so far. He´s into it, which is big, we want him to be a partner in the project and to be interested in the interviews and places we go. We showed him the footage of the women in Huiloc, their interviews in Quechua, which we translated into English with Miguel and Kennedy on Saturday morning. He´s really sharp, is very comfortable with meeting people, puts them at ease and manages to sound intelligent. The last day with him in production has been great - language is a huge barrier, and so trust is too - so our interviews and interactions are much better, much more in depth with him there.

We had planned to go to Cachiqata Tuesday to meet with Klever, the leader, or alcalde, of the town, but he emailed us Monday night asking us to meet him at his office in Cusco at 4:30... so Albizu had to make the trip twice in one day. After we did some translations and had lunch, we took the collectivo to Cusco, a two hour trip. It was great to be back there, we saw it much differently this time. It was much more crowded, people everywhere - when we were there before the strike kept people away. It´s also Independence Day on Saturday, with festivities all week, so lots of people from other towns are in Cusco now. We went straight to Klever´s office, with the mindset that this was an introductory meeting, we probably wouldn´t film - we were hoping to set up a meeting with him in Cachiqata to get a tour of the town and hear about his plans to build a community reserve.

Klever is a superstar. He´s a ridiculously pretty man, like an action figure or some such thing. I guess he´s in his early 30´s, and he´s been the leader of the town for only two months, replacing his father. He has a trekking company with three other people, very successful, leading tours around the Sacred Valley. We sat with him and he described with some gravitas his ideas for the community reserve in Cachiqata, and when we arrived, he had been meeting with a man from another town, one of six that are setting up similar reserves with his guidance. His idea is to have one hotel, one tourist company, one campsite, one of everything so that all traffic and money and activities in the town are regulated, and the rules are set by the people there. He got money from the World Bank to build a botanical park there, which will start construction in two months. We could do probably do the whole film on him and his projects. We also learned that another documentary crew from the U.S. had just spent two months filming every day of his dad´s life in Cachiqata. We have to find out who they are - Klever will forward us an email from them. So we´re meeting with him on Monday in Cachiqata, in the middle of a trek he his leading through there with 18 tourists. We´re also spending Wednesday with him there. Hopefully that will be enough.

After the meeting, we filmed some night scenes of Cusco and did an interview with the head of a trekking company, a friend of Albizu´s. We ran into Angel, Rafo´s partner, in the square, and went to Rafo´s house with them and caught up - a great night with them. We watched some of their videos on youtube, really impressive. We stayed at some random place Albizu knew and came back to OTT this morning. Al and I spent the afternoon with my family, learning about their business, the loans they got to set it up, which were all materials, pretty lousy ones actall, and no money. I found out they´re very upset with how they were treated by the municipality, lots of broken promises about promotion. It was also good to finally speak to them casually with a translator, they´re great people, esp Matiaza.

As Maya mentioned, tomorrow we go to Huiloc for three days. It´s gonna be rough there I think, nothing at all modern about it, but we´re hoping Gabriella, the lady we interviewed before, will be a major character. There´s a big group of tourists coming on Friday to the market, and we´ll see their prep for that with Miguel. We have a list of people to speak to from Kennedy and Miguel, and we´re just hoping to film the whole time, get to know Gabriella well. Sunday we go to Antipulco on horses with Miguel, and Monday we meet Klever. We put Al up at the Tambo, a hostel where most museum people stay if they´re not with a family, and put him on a pension at the restaurant next door for three meals a day while he´s here - he´ll be with us from now on.