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Family Background
As of May 17, 2005
FIRST PART The Osterling – Álvarez-Calderón Family A. My Parents
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The Álvarez-Calderón Granados
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The Granados |
My Great-Great-Grandfather Andrés Álvarez-Calderón Olaechea
(1821 – 1876 )
My great-great-grandfather Andrés Álvarez-Calderón Olaechea, born in Ica (1821 — 1876). He was the most important family member of the 19th century becoming, during the 1850s one of Latin America wealthiest men and one of Perú most influential politicians. Born in 1821, the same year that Perú declared its independence from Spain, Andrés’ mother belonged to one of Ica’s most influential families involved in agriculture and in wine production. His future wealth was amassed from dealings in guano, from the mid 19th century until the 1870s war with Chile. During the war with Chile, Peru’s guano businesses as well as the guano-related financial empires that several entrepreneurs such as my great-great-grandfather had built were destroyed. Top
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Great-great-Grandfather Andrés Álvarez-Calderón Olaechea Paris, 1867 |
Rosa Mascaro de Álvarez-Calderón |
My great-great-grandfather, a brilliant entrepreneur and politician, included among his friends Peruvian President Jose Balta (1868-72) and Italy’s King Vittorio Emanuele II (1820-1878). Anecdotes about my great-great-grandfather recall that he played cards regularly with President Balta and that the President’s friendship probably contributed to his success in obtaining guano contracts. On the national scene, Andrés was a member of the Peruvian Congress for more than ten consecutive years from 1858 until his 1869 appointment as Peru’s Ambassador to Italy. His friendship with Italy's King Vittorio Emanuele II may explain the various honors he received from him, the most important being his investment as an Italian Count on February 29, 1872.
Twice a widower, he was married three times. After the early death of his first wife, in 1845 he married Agustina Flores-Chinarro in Ica. With her he had thirteen children. After her unexpected death in 1868, the following year he married Rosa Mascaro, his children's governess-housekeeper. Family anecdotes tell us that after being appointed Peru’s Ambassador to Italy, Andrés, with his third wife and twelve children, moved from Lima to Rome. His oldest son, my great-grandfather moved to England that same year. After his tour of duty in Italy, Andrés returned to Perú as well as two of his five sons. However, all of his eight daughters remained in Europe married. Andrés is buried in the mausoleum he commissioned for his descendants at Lima’s old Presbítero Maestro cemetery where my grandmother, uncles and great grandparents are buried. My grandfather Carlos knew him and to say that he was influenced by him would be an understatement. Later, he would have a similar impact on my life. Top
Great-Grandfather Eliseo Abelardo Álvarez-Calderón Flores-Chinarro
(1847-1911)
My great-grandfather, Eliseo Abelardo Álvarez-Calderón Flores-Chinarro (1847-1911), known to the family as Abelardo, was Andrés' eldest son. He was a true citizen of the world. Born in Lima on 1847, as the eldest son of Andrés, he was the only family member that did not accompany his family to Rome, his father was Peru’s Ambassador there, because that same year he married Clarisa Olavegoya e Iriarte (b. 1853 - 1953). He was 22, she was 16. After their 1869 wedding, my great-grandparents moved to London where they lived for almost three decades. They had ten children, all born and raised in England. My grandfather Carlos, born in 1874, was their third child.
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Great-grandfather E. Abelardo Álvarez-Calderón (1847-1911) |
Afternoon Tea, Great-grandmother Clarisa Álvarez-Calderón 1892 Oil painting by E. Abelardo Álvarez-Calderón (1853 - 1953) |
One of Peru’s best known portrait painters and sculptors, during the 1870s and 1890s, my great-grandfather Abelardo lived in Europe the life of a distinguished, wealthy, and bohemian artist. In 1880, he founded the St. John's Wood Art School on Elm Tree Road, London. It was a preparatory school for entry into the Royal Academy School. His works were praised for his ability to bring life and passion to his characters. Two of his most important works are Afternoon Tea, and La Encantadora. Both are in private collections in Perú. These two paintings were part of my great grandparents private art collection and were imported to Peru in 1896 when they returned to Peru.
According to Andrew Potter, of London's Royal Academy Library, my great grandfather exhibited two paintings at the prestigious Royal Academy of Arts: Oh for the days of faith! When patient thoughts etc., in 1892, and Afternoon Tea, in 1894. Álvarez-Calderón trained in Paris under Jules Lefebvre and exhibited his paintings in the Paris Salons, the official exhibition venue for members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture.
The son of one of Latin America's wealthiest men and married to the daughter of one of Perú wealthiest families, he lived the life of a wealthy man as the heir to one of Peru’s largest fortunes. During almost three decades, my great-grandfather lived in the fast lane, alternating between painting in London and exhibiting in Paris. In Paris, he also developed an intimate relationship with a French woman who was the principal model in several of his works, including his famous La Encantadora. He had two homes, one in London, where his family lived, and had a secondary residence in Paris, where he studied and did some of his paintings.
My great-grandmother Clarisa decided to return to Perú in 1896. Exhausted by her husband's bohemian lifestyle, running low of funds due to the collapse of the guano business following the 1879 War between Peru and Chile, with a daughter, Nelly, suffering from tuberculosis, and a husband developing a craving to Absinthe, the entire family moved from Surrey, England, to Jauja, Perú, via the seaport of Callao and Lima.
The decision to move from England to the Andean highlands was not an easy one for my great-grandparents. In the late 1890s, as it continues to be in today's twenty-first century, Perú was a caste-like, divided society, where wealthy, upper-class families, of European ancestry based their power and wealth on the ownership of mines and large estates or plantations, many of them located in the Andean highlands or in the Amazon basin, while their owners lived in Lima. Those families who did not live in Lima were called provincianos and, from a sociological perspective, belonged to a lower second stratum, from those who lived in Lima. Within the provinciano category, there was a further distinction between those who lived in the old, departmental capital cities of Arequipa, Trujillo, and Cusco and those who lived in other provincial cities such as Jauja and Huancayo. The latter where considered to be predominantly of highland mestizo and Cholo origins. At the bottom of Peru’s social structure were the Quechua- and Aymara-speakers who lived in the Andean highlands. Many of them have now moved into the major coastal cities.
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1902, Great-grandmother Clarisa and Children |
1950, Great-grandmother Clarisa |
Stories about the return of the Álvarez-Calderón Olavegoya family have become part of my family's oral tradition. When their ship arrived in Callao and relatives went to meet my great-grandparents, none of the ten Álvarez-Calderón Olavegoya children spoke a word of Spanish. Furthermore, all the Peruvian side of the family was surprised that the Álvarez-Calderón Olavegoyas would not settle in Lima, the only place where Peru’s "good families" were expected to live particularly during a period when Abelardo’s first cousin, Manuel Candamo, was President of Peru (1903-1904).
My great-grandmother chose Jauja, located in the Andean highlands, because of its dry climate, ideal for tuberculosis patients. Her very wealthy family, the Olavegoyas, owned land and one of the country’s largest cattle companies of that time, the Sociedad Ganadera del Centro, a holding company of various haciendas.
Shortly after their return to Perú, the entire Álvarez-Calderón Olavegoya family took the train to Jauja. My great-grandparents were in their forties, my grandfather was twenty-two, and his siblings were teenagers. Having lived most of their life in Europe and speaking only English, they were not prepared, psychologically or physically, for the hardships they encountered during the six-hour railroad trip from Lima to Jauja. Beginning at sea level, the train rapidly starts climbing the Andean mountains until it reaches Ticlio, the world’s highest railway pass, at 4,829 meters above sea level.
In Jauja my great-grandparents’ marriage continued to weaken because my great grandfather Abelardo, short of funds, returned to Lima to paint four enormous paintings commissioned by the Cathedral of Lima, that currently hang on the walls behind the choir of the main altar of the Cathedral and to get actively involved as a Board of Director member in the management of the Sociedad Ganadera del Centro, his wife’s family business. My great-grandmother became restless with life in the Andean highlands, particularly with all the hardships she encountered—altitude, limited educational opportunities for her children, and very cold weather.
My great-grandparents returned to Lima after their daughter Nelly died of tuberculosis in the early 1900s. They settled initially in Chorrillos and later in Miraflores with all their London home furnishings that had been in storage during their Jauja years. In memory of Nelly, my great grandmother’s family, the Olavegoyas, built in Jauja, the Sanatorio Olavegoya dedicated to the cure and treatment of patients with tuberculosis. The hospital is still operating after almost a century of its creation.
In the meantime, my grandfather Carlos had married and worked in the Central Railway of Peru owned by a London Company, the Peruvian Corporation Limited. Soon after the turn of the century, my grandfather purchased in the nearby Mantaro River valley a chacra (i.e., small farm) where he began developing a small dairy farm and a modern butter factory modeled after the ones he had visited while in England. As a child, several times I visited and enjoyed this old farm. It is there that I learned how to ride horses and where, for the first time in my life, I saw the cows being hand-milked by Quechua-speaking peasants and enjoyed the pleasure of drinking warm, raw milk.
Once my great-grandparents settled in Lima, during the early 1900s my great-grandfather Abelardo began to reemerge as a bohemian and his odd behavior became an embarrassment to his family, including his first cousin, Manuel Candamo, who was Peru’s president (1903-1904). My grandfather Carlos, aware of the anxiety that his father was causing his mother, invited his father to spend a long holiday at his farm in the central Andes where he continued painting until his 1911 death. My great grandmother survived him for 42 years and died in Lima in 1953.
I remember visiting my great-grandmother in 1951, when I was six. When I asked her how old she was and she said 98, I looked straight into her eyes and expressed my surprise at granny’s old age. I counted with my fingers 98, 99 and, when I reached 100, I drew my hand, palm down, across my neck from left to right in a throat-cutting motion and, to everybody’s surprise, very seriously said that once she turned 100 years old she would die of old age. Two years later, a few weeks before turning 100 years old, she passed away. Today, both great-grandparents are buried next to each other in the family’s mausoleum.
My Grandfather Carlos Álvarez-Calderón Olavegoya
(1874 – 1963)
My grandfather Carlos Álvarez-Calderón Olavegoya (1874 – 1963), also known as "Charlie", was born in Crawley, Sussex, raised in London, emigrated to Perú in 1896 at the age of 22, and died in Lima in March 1963 one month before turning 89.
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Certificate of Baptism -- 24th May, 1874 |
Born in Sussex (April 24, 1874) and raised in European opulence, my grandfather Carlos spent the first two decades of his life alternating between his parents homes in London and Paris, and his grandparents’ home in Rome. This was life, the way he knew it, before the Pacific War of 1879-1884, also referred to as the Chile- Peruvian War, which devastated his grandfather Andres’ financial empire.
In 1896, when Carlos was 22, his family moved from London, one of the world’s capital cities, to Jauja, Peru. Jauja was then among the poorest and more isolated corners of the world which resembled a rural settlement. His Peruvian relatives called him Charlie, to tell him apart from an uncle and a second cousin named Carlos. When Charlie settled in Jauja, he spoke only English, his mother tongue, and had to learn Spanish and some Quechua (Andean language) quickly. The main source of income for his entire family was his mothers’ investments.
Soon after he arrived in Perú, my grandfather met and married my grandmother Teodosia Granados Valle [de Álvarez-Calderón] (1882 - 1951) in Huancayo. They had thirteen children. A beautiful young lady, my grandmother Teodosia belonged to a relatively well-to-do Roman Catholic family whose parents had moved earlier to the Andean city of Huancayo, known as one of Peru’s major agricultural (wheat, corn, potatoes, and barley), commercial, and mining cities (copper and silver). His father was a successful businessman.
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Grandfather Carlos Age 46, Lima 1920 |
Grandmother Teodosia Huancayo, 1912 |
After their wedding, my grandparents settled briefly in Jauja at my great-grandparents Abelardo and Clarisa’s home so Teodosia could help her mother-in-law take care of her sick daughter Nelly.
My grandfather’s decision to marry an Andean-born woman, ruffled more than a few feathers among his snobbish Lima-based relatives. For them, Carlos was still marrying below himself, despite the financial setbacks of his parents. In those years, the marriage in Huancayo of my London-born grandfather, to my grandmother, Teodosia, seemed like a hypothetical marriage of an upper class London-born socialite to a woman from one of the central Andean region best families.
Living in Chacra Valdivia, Concepción, Junín
As a recent immigrant from the United Kingdom who had settled in one of Peru’s breadbaskets, my grandfather Carlos planned to develop a small dairy farm and to launch a modern butter factory, modeled after those he had visited during his childhood and youth when growing up in England. The farm and butter factory became my grandfather Carlos’ unfulfilled dream.
Soon after their turn of the century wedding, my grandparents purchased Chacra Valdivia, a very small farm in the Hualianta area, and moved there. My grandfather was in his 30s. During the following two decades, they purchased neighboring lots transforming Valdivia into a 30 hectares (74 acres) farm, even though the original plan called for a larger farm, and imported purebred dairy cattle from Europe. Since the Olavegoya family (i.e., his mother’s family) was a major shareholder in one of Peru’s largest livestock corporations, the Sociedad Ganadera del Centro, I am sure that grandfather Carlos sought and received technical advice from them.
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Grandfather Carlos, family, and guests Fundo Valdivia, Mantaro Valley 1920? |
Grandfather Carlos did not foresee that because of the region’s high altitude, twenty years later he would have to abandon all his plans in the region. During his mid fifties (late 1920s) he suffered a heart attack which directly adversely affected his finances when he was becoming old. Doctors ordered him to abandon his business in the highlands and move to Lima in less than 24 hours or face death. The timing and decision to leave was a very painful one as all of his savings and his fathers’ inheritance had been invested in the farm at a time when he was still interested in increasing the size of the farm and butter output. The butter factory began to bloom but was still dependent from the farm business. Once settled in Lima, in the back of an old family picture of the farm, which my mother owns, he painfully wrote “wasted years.”
Rather than moving to Chorrillos or Miraflores where their relatives lived, my grandparents decided to rent temporarily for close to four years a house in Barrios Altos, one of the capital city's oldest working class neighborhoods. This decision again shocked my grandfather’s wealthier siblings and relatives for whom it was socially unacceptable for an Álvarez-Calderón to live in a working class neighborhood.
The move to Barrios Altos was a wise choice to my grandfather when you consider the circumstances. He had no liquidity when he unwillingly left behind his farm and butter business. His assets were mainly the farm, cattle, butter factory, which was still dependent of the farm and crops pending their harvest. He also had to eliminate stress to avoid another heart attack and recover from his serious condition with the medicines available in the late 1920s.
The Barrios Altos years became his transition years to what he would become in his old age. He recovered from his heart attack while he rented out the farm, disposed of the cattle, sold the butter factory, sold some of the farms’ equipment, shut down his secondary home in the city of Huancayo, harvested his last crop, etc. He also paid down farm related loans while taking care of his eleven children—two had passed away—some of whom were already attending or about to attend foreign universities (the older boys) while the younger children (my mother) were still attending high school. For example, my uncle Demetrio attended an American mining school in Colorado, USA, my uncle Domingo, graduated as a physician at a German medical school; my uncle Roberto (Bobby) graduated as an agricultural engineer at Peru’s most prestigious La Molina Agricultural College.
While all of the above was taking place, grandfather decided to experiment by supplementing his living by raising chickens and selling eggs in the nearby marketplace, which was both a source of income and entertainment. In those years, chicken was an expensive luxury, eaten only during special occasions. People ate fish and steak when they could not afford chicken. Grandfather subsequently decides to shut down his poultry business and became a part time English teacher, teaching in different high schools and universities.
By 1932, my grandparents were somewhat recovered and purchased a home in Miraflores, which was then one of Lima's most exclusive neighborhoods. The previous homeowner was one of my grandmother Teodosia’s sisters, Bernardina. A wealthy widow, who had no children, was selling her home, which featured six bedrooms, three living rooms, and a formal dinning room that sat 16 people. Grandfather Carlos purchased the home. Simultaneously he purchased an investment property with a large complex of low-income rental units (i.e., a callejón), becoming a landlord when he was close to 60s. He did all of this while retaining ownership of the farm, his prized possession. Moving to their Miraflores house was an important relocation for the Álvarez-Calderón Granados family. It reunited the family closer to their relatives and provided my uncles and aunts with a better neighborhood in which to grow up.
It was in this house that my grandparents, Carlos and Teodosia, finished raising their children, and happily spent the rest of their lives. It was in this house that I spent wonderful times with my grandfather, siblings, and other relatives. It was a large well-lit house, full of greenery, and always with dozens of birds, since upon his retirement as a teacher my grandfather loved working on his yard and raising canaries and poultry. I will never forget the couple of dozen canaries that my grandfather raised in a large cage near the house's pantry. It was lovely to sit down on the nearby bench and listen to the cocks singing melodies while the hen birds chirped. After retiring as an English language teacher, still full of energy, my grandfather decided to resurface his raising chicken years as a way to supplement his income. For him it was a combination of a hobby and a small personal enterprise. Raising chickens brought him pleasure, fresh eggs, and kept him busy doing something he always loved—working with his hands. His birds were always healthy, well fed, and lived in spotless coops. His “poultry enterprise” had a cold reception from his four unmarried daughters who were very unhappy by his father raising chickens in this exclusive residential neighborhood (comparable to raising chickens on a home off Massachusetts Ave. adjacent to the Embassy row section) which basically sent signals of “financial distraught” to their friends and relatives instead of an "eccentric father." The Miraflores house that he shared with four daughters had become too restrictive if he had to accommodate to the social needs of his now middle-aged daughters.
Since grandfather was financially and mentally independent, he decided to build himself a secondary home where he would spend most of his time away from his daughters so he could do as he pleased. Therefore, grandfather moved again, this time alone, he was in his 80s. He bought a plot of land and built a small cottage in the village of Chaclacayo, located some thirty miles east of Lima, in the foothills of the Andes. He chose Chaclacayo because of its warm weather and farm environment. In contrast to Lima's overcast skies, in Chaclacayo the sun shines almost every day. His Chaclacayo home became his primary home while keeping Miraflores as his secondary home.
My parents had built a cottage in the neighboring village of Santa Inés, to which he had the habit of escaping on a regular basis. This cottage inspired him to build his own. I still remember the day when my mother and I visited our Santa Inés cottage, and, to my mother’s surprise, my grandfather told us that he had purchased a 250 square meters lot of land in Chaclacayo. Later he asked her to help him contact the same engineer who had built our Santa Inés house, so that, using the same blueprints, he could construct a very similar one. Once his Chaclacayo home was finished, he began spending longer and longer periods in it, being only accompanied by a young, trusted live-in maid, and her baby son. He enjoyed the solitude and peace of Chaclacayo. For example, if any of my aunts asked to spend a mini-vacation in Chaclacayo, my grandfather would welcome them but, at the same time, he would immediately return to his Miraflores house to avoid them. Once my aunt’s vacation ended, he would gladly return to his cottage. Chaclacayo was his refuge.
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Grandfather Carlos age 88 At my parents cottage in Santa Inés 1962 |
One day, when his housekeeper’s baby was sick, my grandfather, then age eighty-eight volunteered to purchase some medication at Chaclacayo’s drug store, located ten minutes away from his house, in the very busy central highway. My grandfather drove there. On his way back, however, he suffered a horrible car accident. His Morris Minor collided with a truck that was heading to the Andean highlands. Although he survived that accident, Carlos was never the same. The energetic individual, who enjoyed his independence in his sunny Chaclacayo cottage, became an invalid. As a result, his days in Chaclacayo ended. After a couple of weeks at a hospital, my grandfather returned to his Miraflores house where he spent the rest his days accompanied by his daughters and visited by his grandchildren. My grandfather Carlos Álvarez-Calderón Olavegoya, age 88, passed away peacefully surrounded by his family on March 3, 1963 at his Miraflores house one month before turning eighty-nine.
My Grandmother Teodosia Granados Valle de Álvarez-Calderón
(1882 – 1951)
My grandmother Teodosia Granados Valle de Álvarez-Calderón was born on May 29, 1882 and raised in Huancayo, the central Andean region. She belonged to an upper middle class, well connected family involved in local regional business. She was the youngest of four siblings and her mother, my great-grandmother Valle, was her father’s second wife. Soon after his arrival in Jauja, my grandfather Carlos Álvarez-Calderón fell in love with, and married, my very attractive grandmother Teodosia. Grandmother Teodosia married when she was in her late teens. She became a parent at the age of 20 and by 1923, at the age of 41, she had delivered 13 children, two of which had died while living at the farm. Grandmother spent her time between her primary home at the farm, her Huancayo secondary home to manage closely her children schooling and vacationing at her sister's home in Callao and Miraflores.
My mother never met her Granados or Valle grandparents. They were both dead when she was born. There were major age differences between my grandmother and her siblings from her father’s first marriage. Grandmother Teodosia was of the same age as some of her older nieces. Mother was closer to three of my grandmother Teodosia’s sisters: Virginia, Bernardina, and Rosa.
My mother recalls vividly her three aunts. Aunt Virginia Granados’ visits to Chacra Valdivia farm were hilarious. A great storyteller, mother recalls Aunt Virginia as a somehow unconventional woman who smoked cigarettes, and brought her family joy. Talking about her aunt Bernardina, mother always described her as an exceptionally generous, wealthy aunt, whose Lima house was always open to her sister Teodosia’s family. This was particularly important during my grandparents farm years (approx. 1903–1928), when my mother’s family needed a secondary home in Lima for rest and recreational purposes. During those years, it was in aunt Bernardina’s house where my grandmother Teodosia spent holidays away from her busy home household of twenty people on average, between family and home staff, and where my mother’s oldest siblings spent long holidays and were always welcomed.
I have very little recollection of my grandmother Teodosia Granados Valle de Álvarez-Calderón other than that as a small child I visited her at my grandparents' Miraflores house. She was a frail woman when I met her. She passed away in 1951 from a heart affliction at the age of 69. I was six years old. My grandfather Carlos outlived her for almost twelve years. Today, grandmother Teodosia is buried in the family's mausoleum next to her son, my uncle Abelardo the 3rd, my two great-grandparents, and my great great grandparents among other family members.
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In 1963, I was eighteen years old and was getting ready to enroll in a Peruvian Roman Catholic Seminary to study for the priesthood. I had already graduated from Colegio Maristas San Isidro, a boys-only, Peruvian parochial school run by the Marist Brothers, and had also spent a year as a high school exchange student at Fort Plain Central High School, a co-educational public school located in Montgomery County, Upper New York State.
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Cardinal Juan Landazuri Ricketts (1913 - 1997) Visiting my Seminary - Mid-1960s |
A few weeks after my grandfather's burial in 1963, I moved into a Roman Catholic diocesan Seminary where I spent four wonderful years of my life living in a cloister and studying to become a priest (1963-1967) while other members of the 1960s generation celebrated their youth more noisily and enduringly than any other generation. Those were also the days of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962–65). At the seminary, I was influenced by the tenets of liberation theology, a movement initiated by one of my professors, Father Gustavo Gutiérrez, the author of Teología de la Liberación (1968). Gutiérrez taught us that Christians must work for social and economic justice for all people and challenged the Roman Catholic Church to participate actively in changing the economic and political systems that fostered social injustice.
The year 1967 marked a threshold in my life. It was one of deep speculation and reflection about my life's choices and one of major decisions. Influenced by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, I decided that the priesthood was not my calling and I left the seminary. In November, my 56-year-old father had a stroke, entered into a coma, and passed away a week later. The following year I moved on to the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú to study applied anthropology. I was 22 years old.