Teresa Ghiglino (Peru) studied at Queen of Angels School in Lima. From a young age she showed great talent in art and in literature. At the age of twenty five she emigrated to Washington, DC, where she studied at the American University, and obtained a Master's degree in Fine Arts. Currently she works as a visual arts teacher in Washington Metropolitan Area.
She had been named Teacher of the Year by the DCCAH. In addition as a painter, she has exhibited her paintings in several cities across of the United States. However, after the death of her parents on 2003 and 2007, the author temporarily set down her brushes to focus on recreating her Italian family history.
Tawi: The Secret of Three Generations is her first book. It makes use of invented facts from the authors rich imagination, as well as the historical setting of the first hydroelectric plant in Duck Canyon, Peru. Her father the engineer Luis Ghiglino, worked on its construction. The renowned physicist and scientist Santiago Antunez de Mayolo - Teresa's great uncle, created the original plans for it.
"Unearth your roots to untangle them and honor their every twist – only then will you grow. Tawi is a family story, but also one that transcends its text. In it, the author – sometimes explicitly to guide her reader and other times implicitly – offers us the challenge and adventure of digging into the past and unveiling an ancestral code of wisdom. To understand the great message hidden within this history of three generations, it’s necessary to internalize the Andean concept of cosmology and, above all, understand that for an Inca there is a transcendental meaning behind the literalness of the word. A meta-text that hides the Quechua tuning behind the Spanish of its verbs.
Inca Garcilaso claimed that these people weren’t afraid that their past of glory and conquest would be overlooked after colonization, but rather they deeply feared losing hope. For Andeans, losing hope means forgetting their ancestors and the universality that lives within their culture. For a pre-Columbian Inca, it wasn’t unusual to believe that every word holds a secret or hidden meaning. This was also the case for our Western origins, but somehow we’ve forgotten those roots. Thus, the universal language that resides in Tawi is the hope of return and a proposal of syncretism. It’s a plea to discover what unites us above all the artificial divisions that still prevail.
The forbidden and unjustly repressed love between Huascaran, a gentle and brave mortal, and Huandoy, the daughter of the god Inti, was transformed into the beautiful snow-capped mountains Huascaran and Huandoy by the curse of her father god and the sentence of the Apus. Their story connects with the personal experiences of Guillermino Ghayin, Tawi's grandfather, who is saved from a tragic end during a mountaineering journey and is rumored to be rescued by Huandoy herself. This legend is not so different from our Western ones, in which undeserved punishment is softened by the grandeur of nature. Mother Earth is always a magnificent transformer of harsh curses into the most beautiful landscapes.
As a consequence of this rescue, the love of Tawi's grandparents, Guillermino and Yocha, mirrors the love of this mythical couple condemned to the snowy mountains. Tawi's father, the engineer Angel Ghayin, is the firstborn son of this union and therefore marked by this destiny. Angel found love in Zulema, a beautiful young woman from Yungay. This was the announcement that the prophecy would be fulfilled and its most beautiful result, an Indigo goddess, would be born of this union.
However, the pressures, the moral limitations of the era and Angel's longing for a firstborn son after having five daughters, meant that Tawi's birth was marked by rejection instead of celebration. From her early childhood, Tawi must struggle with these antagonistic forces, while the plot reveals the purpose of each generation that precedes her.
The Andean universe is built on and nourished by the understanding of parallel worlds – the spiritual and the material – that communicate with each other in constant dialogue. The sun king and the celestial divinities converse with those of the present and material world, such as Mother Earth (Pachamama), in a dance between the visible and the invisible.
Chapter after chapter, Tawi invites us to become part of this dialogue of myth, shamanism and ancestral deities, intertwined with the stories of the era’s society, the necessary criticism of the woman’s situation in a patriarchal society and the work of the hydroelectric engineers in the construction of tunnels that would bring improved communication and prosperity to the region. It’s a dialogue between the present, the future and the ancestral, which Tawi comes to recognize. She begins to honor the marvelous cosmogonic vision that still resides in every corner of this great people.
The figure of Paco Nazario, shaman and healer, present from the beginning of the story, amazes us with his determination to channel nature’s spirits and make Tawi’s birth possible. Perhaps this is one of the best allegories that this magical story offers us: it invites us to overcome obstacles and gives us the conviction that, no matter how difficult they may be, they can be overcome. This shaman, who knows the place of the sacred altars in the fourth dimension, is capable of making the four lines of the Crux Constellation or the Chakana Incan Cross visible across this great Peruvian land. This provides us all, especially the West, with the dose of transcendence that we need.
The heiress of this shamanic magic is Lawra, the granddaughter of the shaman Paco Nazario, who is present in Tawi's life from the start. With the consent of her grandparents, Lawra works as a nanny for the Ghayin Betelgoza family and thus helps with Tawi's birth. Her premonitions are crucial to save the family from the danger of an explosion that destroys their home. From the first moment, she is a guide, protector and mentor for little Tawi. She’s the one who will help her find and assume her destiny.
Tawi is a book of discovery, miscegenation and reunion. In it, the author has managed to transmit a universal vision, an ode to nature and a well-deserved tribute to the wisdom of her roots. As the shaman Nazario said, Tawi will find her power in contradictions. And so it is true for all of us – that in our contradictions, we must find our power and meaning.
The written word is a link, a purifying potion that accompanies us in a visionary trance. The text becomes a ritual and a conduit for readers to become one with the synchrony of the four cardinal points and the four lines of Chakana – those images that reveal the interdependence of the whole universe. This great symphony within Tawi is conducted by the Quechua baton to heal wounds, mark growth and hand us the seeds for the prophecy’s fulfillment. These seeds cannot awaken if we remain separated from nature. And therein lies Tawi’s truth. There’s no more room to live without hope. The ancestral Apus have always been present and the Incas have never forgotten their origins – to their joy, but also to ours, to everybody’s.
Tawi is the hope lost after colonization, but she’s also the new and renewed lifeblood that achieves the synchrony between both cultures. The native descendants of the Incas announce the prophecy and invite us to be part of this magical birth “when enough Seeds are awakened, freed from fear..." The seed is the symbol and metaphor of knowledge, and there’s no understanding without freedom from fear and the marking our own footprints. With magical words, we will learn that the key to committing to the essential is found in nature. Follow your own footsteps, learn from the rivers, trees and rocks. Honor your brothers and sisters. Honor Mother Earth and the Great Spirit. Honor yourself and all Creation. Look with the eyes of your soul and commit yourself to the essential.
If nature’s spirits are favorable, we will find in Tawi that portal, that crossing into universality and connection as all humanity."
In Madrid, on March, 27, 2021
María Pilar Astray Chacón
Magistrate and writer
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