Valpo storyteller "Papo" knows where to find the secret of life.
    Photo by Jo Evans

Valpo’s Favorite Storyteller Talks About His Tall Tales

(Ed. Note: His original name is Enrique Jovino Quizara Montenari – but he calls that his “slave name,” since he didn't choose it and becaue it came with a number attached (the RUT identification code). His stage-name was always Mauricio. His “spiritual name,” representing his faith in the Hare Krishna religion, is Palama Parucha. Still, most of Valparaíso knows the 63-year-old storyteller simply as Papo.

Born and raised in Santiago, Papo worked in a variety of social and cultural projects in the capital, but moved several years ago to Valparaíso, where he now forms an integral part of the city’s cultural landscape. He can be found dancing in his spectacular home-made costumes in Valpo’s frequent festivals, parades and protests, or sitting surrounded by children in blue velvet magician’s garb, telling stories outside the local supermarket. Unlike most gentlemen his age, it’s also no surprise to see him out at 2 a.m. chatting on the street to young party-goers.

The Valparaíso Times took tea with Papo in the ramshackle flat he shares with a group of 20-something African drummers. Sitting inside the quirky apartment, which clings to the Cerro Bellavista hillside in central Valparaíso, we talked about his unusual career as a cuenta-cuentos, or storyteller.)

Valparaíso Times: How did you become a storyteller?

Papo: Almost without realising it. Since I was little, I always loved listening to stories. Then in 1975, I got to know some Mapuche communities for the first time, during a social project I took part in down there... I was in charge of the artistic part, a cultural programme for children and young people, so I went there with puppets and theater. And given that I hadn’t known anything about the Mapuche communities before that, when I returned to Santiago I began to tell people about my experience there. And that was my first experience of storytelling – but true stories, because I was just telling people about what had happened to me.

Later, I began to investigate stories, to help me with the theater work I was doing. Then, in 1990, I met one of Chile’s best-known storytellers, Carlos Genovese, and I took a short storytelling course with him... From there I began to use story-telling in the social and cultural work I was doing. I always used stories in the theater workshops I taught, and the school programs on inter-cultural education, human development, sexuality etc. that I worked on.

Then in 2004, I took part in a multicultural fair in Viña del Mar, as a Mapuche storyteller. From then on I decided to devote myself entirely to telling stories.

VT: Where do you find the stories you tell?

P: Until recently, I never actively searched for stories – I just told the ones I had heard, mainly from Mapuche communities. Often after I told a story, people would decide to share their own stories with me too, and I would retell them later. But now I’m trying to read more stories, and when I go south to work in the Mapuche communities, I try to do a kind of story exchange – I share the stories from other regions that the people don’t know, and they tell me their own tales. And of course, like all storytellers, when I tell stories I incorporate things from my own experience too.

VT: Are there any recurring themes in the stories you tell?

P: I dedicated myself to tell the stories that transmit the values of the indigenous peoples on this continent. First and foremost, respect for all forms of life. I want to help recuperate these values, which are being lost in today’s society.

The stories I tell are not just to be taken literally. They are stories with morals – easy to understand, but that help you to reaffirm concepts, to ask yourself questions, to reflect.

VT: What’s it like making a living out of storytelling in Chile?

P: For the kind of work that I do, it’s difficult. I get invited to tell stories in various high schools, and they pay me well, and are always very content with what I do. Once I went to a high school close by, and the teachers suddenly said to me, “But we don’t have a microphone! How are we going to do this? We have 150 children here, and they’re very noisy.” I said to them, “We’ll leave it to the stories to quieten them down. The stories will take charge.” And they did. The teachers were very happy.

But sometimes I struggle to get the opportunity to work in other schools, because there are other people who tell stories too, so they tend to put everyone in the same basket, and they think I am the same as all the others. Lots of people, for example, think that I tell mystery and horror stories. And there are people who say to me, “You should tell mystery and horror stories, so that you do better economically.” And I say to them, “But what could be more horrible than the fact that one person dies of hunger every three seconds on this planet... and me telling horror stories on top of that? Where’s the sense in that?”

For me, telling stories is like preaching. It’s more like teaching a class than creating a spectacle. It’s putting certain elements out there for people to react to. It’s helping people discover that things are different, that sometimes they are not as they appear to us. For this reason I’ve devoted my life to this role. Economically it doesn’t give me much, but being able to tell people about the things I have learned as a human being satisfies me completely. 

VT: Do you have a favorite story?

P: Yes, a great favorite, a Latin American story that I believe comes from the Jopi people. A medicine man from Mexico told it to me:

When the gods created the world, they set up the moon, the sun, the stars and so on, and suddenly one said, “But where should we hide the secret of life?” And another said, “Well, the only place where human beings are not going to look for it is inside themselves.” So they hid the secret of life in our own hearts.

Normally I make it much longer, of course, with more twists and turns. But that’s my favorite story.

By Monica Evans (monica.evansAThotmail.com)