JOEL GRIFFETT

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When war broke out in Peru during the early 1820s, the mining industry all but ground to a halt. The rich mines of Cerro de Pasco were one of the primary points of contention as battles took place all across the Sierra. The two sides of the war of independence took turns destroying the mines and the town of Cerro; Royalist troops of the empire went first, to ensure the Patriots could never get their hands on Spanish silver. The Patriots whirled through and destroyed what was left; Cerro de Pasco and the mining industry signified everything wrong with Spanish rule in South America. By 1824 and the Battle of Ayacucho, the tide had turned irreversibly in favour of the Patriots, who now controlled Lima and many strategic points across the Andes.

Total war had been looming for decades across High Peru (the Spanish term for the area that now encompasses Peru, Bolivia and some of Chile) but this didn’t deter Cornishmen like Richard Trevithick to sail across waters of the Atlantic, around the treacherous Cape Horn and arrive onto the desert plain where Lima was slowly growing into the hot mess it is today. From 1819 onwards investors and merchants in Lima slowly began to remove their money from the market. War was almost inevitable now and there was no profit to be made amidst the unstable backdrop of violence. As the mines emptied, many of the English and Cornishmen fled back to Lima to wait out the storm. Some left the country entirely, returning home to Grey Britain. Most of those who stayed had little to do and weren’t as proactive and restless as Trevithick, so they succumbed to the eternal pastime of Brits abroad and at home: heavy drinking.

One lone Cornishman, however, refused to leave Peru let alone the Andes, and stayed up in the clouds as all his compatriots drifted back down the hill to Lima. No one would ever find out why he stayed here, all alone, in the inhospitable reaches of the province of Pasco.

The Last Cornishman in the Andes

Somewhere up in the Andes, in the province of Pasco, was a cluster of houses barely resembling a village. On his travels through the mountains Captain John Miller happened upon this largely abandoned crumbling village, thinking nothing of it. Such a state of ruin was only inevitable given the tornados of civil war that had ripped through these parts in the last few years.

Absolutely nothing whatsoever was amiss until he spotted something, nestled away in the far corner of the village: the signs of life. A brick chimney had caught his eye – the faint curl of smoke drifting up into the air. He rode slowly towards the smoke. He had seen plenty of his countrymen stumbling about blind drunk in Lima; he was also well aware that all the miners had abandoned these haunts, yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was about to encounter a familiar face.  

He called out as he approached. The door of this inferior dwelling swung open and the inhabitant emerged, ducking underneath the small front door and standing for a moment bleary eyed in the brightness of Andean sunshine. Miller’s hunch was right – the last and most unexpected of pale faces stood before him. The two men stood in silence for a moment face to face, before the inhabitant, a Cornishman named William Bevan broke down in tears and embraced the Captain.
He had left his native Cornwall for pastures new, to work in the mines in and around Cerro de Pasco, employed by Pedro Abadia but following in the footsteps of the great Trevithick like every other miner who arrived during the rest of the 19^th century. When war broke out everyone fled to Lima but Bevan stayed put, for reasons unbeknownst to everyone, including himself. Convinced the war would end soon, or horrified at the thought of returning home to Cornwall if it didn’t, he had remained defiantly, despite falling victim to the same fate as the mines. The hut he inhabited was attacked by both sides of the conflict. His dwelling was repeatedly stripped of its roof and his front door set on fire. Yet none of this perturbed Don Guillermo enough to leave his new home and set forth towards Lima or even Cerro de Pasco in search of company and a slightly less barren existence.

How he had yet to succumb to heavy drinking and alcoholism in this, the most bleak of surroundings, was impressive. According to Miller, he was far too intelligent to allow himself to overly-indulge in such vices. But since a single man living in near complete solitude tends to gravitate towards peculiar hobbies, Bevan had taken instead to taxidermy, stuffing an immense collection of birds he was intending to send back to Britain.

His persistence paid off, becoming the renter of a government mine near Yaule, and even being put into contact with an investor thanks to Miller. When his dwelling became completely untenable, he moved deeper into the mountains and lived an increasingly distant existence, and unfortunately died two years later. Had he made it back to England we would know a great deal more about Don Guillermo Bevan, but his odd refusal to abandon a war zone will remain another Cornish mystery in the highest of places.

Like all the Cornishmen I have discovered in South America, he walked the tightrope between bravery and stupidity with great care and concentration. He possessed that same indomitable spirit and forever refused to admit defeat – traits akin to national characteristics that have unfortunately been lost as Cornwall moved into the 20^th century. The heavy drinking never let off, but the ingenuity did.

The Vanishing Graves

As if the story of Bevan wasn’t already mysterious and random enough, it got even more confusing. I was surprised to find not one but two British Cemeteries in the middle of Callao. Upon entry I was hindered once more by Peruvian bureaucracy. I couldn’t just peruse the cemetery at my own leisure, I needed a name. Not that he was going to check; the doorman was sat in an army green cage that looked like it was for selling newspapers, armed only with a pen and a notebook to keep track of visitors. Considering that this was a cemetery full of foreigners, I could have given him my own name and he’d be none the wiser. My mind went blank for a moment and I pulled the name ‘William Bevan’ from thin air.

Naturally I didn’t find William Bevan, only a couple sharing the same surname who died some 100 years after the former. Very few outwardly Cornish names appeared to me at either cemetery. The ‘new’ Cemetery was enormous and it would have taken me days to wander through the neatly arranged rows of modest and uniform memorial stones and I could feel my skin beginning to scorch in the brutal early afternoon sun – it was cloudy when I left my room this morning.

I ducked into the office on the way out and asked if they kept a register of surnames. They did, but English surnames, especially mine, are for some reason completely incomprehensible to all the locals in South America, even in my best Spanish accent. Usually I am forced to spell out the name, but this time I was afforded the luxury of writing the names on a scrap of paper. I had no specific names in mind, so I again opted for William Bevan and a second, Andrew Vivian, one of the engineers who had been sent out with Trevithick’s engines in 1815. Poor Mr Vivian had, according to Trevithick, succumbed to strong drink like most and died in a pool of his own sorrow (piss) by the time Don Ricardo had arrived in Peru barely 2 years later.

These were the only two people I knew for certain had perished in Peru – nearly everyone else returned home (rich) – but I wasn’t sure where they were buried, or if they passed long before the opening of either cemetery. I sat down in the shade opposite the office and watched the man I’d spoken to immediately wander off to do something else. A few moments later he pushed over a wheelchair for one of the trio who had just managed to teleport through the locked gate. Like the majority of Peru, I wasn’t in any particular rush, so I sat and stared idly into the distance, appreciating the tranquillity of the compound. Birds rustled and shot out of the trees above me. A retarded sounding cat stalked the perimeter wall. Just ahead of me, a headless black bird fell from a high branch.  The sound of a bus beeping it’s thunderous horn shattered my illusion that anywhere in Lima was peaceful. If a cemetery isn’t, nowhere is. The man ushered me over, poker face engaged. I braced myself for disappointment.

Astonishingly, he had a record of both the men. Both Vivian and Bevan lay in the old cemetery I had visited this morning. Surely that couldn’t be true? I’d paced nearly every inch of the place earlier and found no trace. He handed me back the scrap of paper with two reference numbers scrawled underneath the names that would lead me to their plots.

***

“Where are your flowers?” taunted the American sounding Peruvian as I arrived back to the first stop on my wild goose chase.
“How do you know they’re not in my bag?” I replied.
He didn’t appreciate my sarcasm.

I tried and failed to decipher the grid system myself in lieu of the missing groundsman until he appeared at my side offering to help. He must have been lying prone behind a stone – when I scanned the compound I couldn’t see anyone. Handing him the scrap of paper, I followed along as he scampered across the soggy earth, stepping over and sometimes on the graves themselves. I had always been respectful in my stumbling, but clearly he didn’t give a shit about the potential ghostly revenge he would eventually face from trampling on the graves of foreigners and Latinos alike. The man explained the system and then proceeded to ignore it. When we reached the plot he counted aloud up to 10. Here it was, I thought. Nope. We both stood and stared down at an empty patch of grass without even the faintest trace of stone. The same happened again as we went in search of Andrew Vivian.
The groundsman looked increasingly bewildered. He babbled on the phone for a few moments, presumably to double check if there had been a mistake. Finally, he put the phone in his pocket and strode up to me completely lost for words.
“Sometimes, the stones move,” he declared.
“In the night?”
“Sure,” he nodded.
“Who moves them?” I asked incredulously.
He shrugged.
“Family come to visit their relatives and find they are not where they left them last time,”
Not only had he not answered the question, his final riddle left me wanting to ask more.
These two hadn’t moved, they’d disappeared altogether. I took one last look in the far corner of the cemetery, I don’t know why but my instincts drew me to the forgotten looking edges. If a Cornishman was laying anywhere, it was bound to be here…