THE DOWNFALL OF OP

THE DOWNFALL OF O.P.

At the beginning of November the annual Feria took place in Cochabamba and the project took a stand. The Cochabamba tea representative, who owes the tea company a lot of money, wanted to have half the stand for himself, but Robert said he could not because the deposit he had made on behalf of the project was not really a payment made out of his own pocket as he had construed it but was merely being deducted from his large debt.  So, the stand was to be shared by all the plants and he could participate purely as a guest of the project.  Before this was all thrashed out this man had arranged for his daughter and a friend of hers to be on the stand selling tea.  However, when his original plans were forcibly changed, he decided only to have his daughter on the stand and, although he paid the other girl, she was not to be there.  Nobody in the project knew anything about this arrangement at all.

On the last day of the Feria the girl and her mother arrived on the scene and, when the mother saw the cholitas (indigenous girls wearing their polleras or voluminous skirts), she was furious, rounded on G. and said "So you turned down my daughter in favour of these cholitas!"

"No, not me," he said. "It was him" pointing at René, the manager of the dairy.  Then the woman launched herself at René, but he pointed out that the project worked with these people and that is why they were there and that Mr. G’s arrangements had nothing to do with him.  Whereupon, she turned around again,
"You poof, so you are blaming someone else for your own scheming.  Take that!" and she slapped him squarely on the face.  (The insult she used is very strong here in Bolivia where nobody ever uses swear words or insults unless tempers are running high, and even then it is not very common).

G's daughter, seeing the women slap her father, slapped her friend's mother.  At that precise moment O. P. Z. arrived on the scene.  He is a Peruvian tea consultant who was working for the project when Robert arrived.  He is tall, well-built and pompous in the extreme.  Walking in his usual decorous fashion, he had barely turned the corner of the stand when G ´s daughter said, "It´s his fault".  The irate mother turned on him and started to vent her anger, shouting "You son of a bitch!" and jumping up to slap him on the face.  The cholitas were all scandalised at such language and their eyes were out on stalks seeing the whole affair going on in the passage in front of the stand.  "Señora, señora" he said, but on she went slapping him, so he just slapped her back.  The daughter then ladled into him and he slapped her too.  At that point the daughter warned that she was going to get her boyfriend and then he would see .....

The boyfriend duly arrived, gave O. P. Z. a few good left hooks as a result of which he had to have six stitches above his eyebrows.  Then events took an unexpected turn.  A girl who was working on the stand next door came rushing into the passage, squared up to the boyfriend saying "So, you are her boyfriend!  Take that!  (wallop, wallop) I am supposed to be your girlfriend.  Since when have you got another girlfriend?" and a great barney ensued between "the boyfriend" and the two girlfriends who started pulling each other's hair.  

When the boyfriend saw the great gash in O. P.’s forehead and realised that he had beaten up "un señor" he was repentant and kept begging pardon - maybe as a way of extricating himself from the insults raining down on his head from the two girlfriends.  


The only disappointment about this whole affair is that the video cameraman was so shocked that he didn't film the episode so we have no documentary evidence.  One thing is sure: never again will the campesinos stand in awe of O. P.!  Now Robert just says "señoras, señoras" and everyone falls about laughing just thinking of pompous O. in such demeaning circumstances.