The titties of María Guevara

Michael Gilleland has discovered the tetas de Pinedo, but the finest in all South America have to be María Guevara’s, at Margarita:

Desde el ferry se divisa, erguidas con esplendor:
son las tetas de una india, que fue un poema de amor.
Antes de llegar a la Restinga,
amigo turista, voltea la cara,
y veras los cerros, y veras los cerros
los cerros que forman, los cerros que forman
los cerros que forman, las tetas de María Guevara.

Literally:

From the ferry you’ll see them, erect in all their splendour:
they’re the titties of an Indian, who was a poem of love.
Before you arrive at Restinga, tourist friend turn your head,
and you’ll see the hills, the hills that form
the titties of María Guevara.

Here’s a transcription for the cuatro, a small four-stringed guitar. This site, of which I’ve been a fan for years in various locations, has transposable chords for a great number of songs, with LH and RH versions. Some other favourites:

1. El marciano: think of what I’ll make if I exhibit a Martian to the public.
2. El clavel celoso: the beautiful boy in the gateway needs flowers, but they’re all trying to seduce one another, and the carnation is jealous.
3. Las hormigas: happily go the ants, forming carbon thread, hand in hand, in train metaphor.
4. El mango, the mango: fine ladies wouldn’t think it indecent to eat mangos if they were imported.
5. Madrugada llanera, dawn on the plain: the moon hides itself, the moon loses itself, and a dog barks at it, and a dog follows it.
6. Y ni na ni ná: white ladies who go to mass and do nothing, nothing.
7. Zumba, que zumba, a boasting song: here I am and there’s no one sings like me.
8. La pulga y el piojo: the flea and the louse want to get married, but they’re short of bread; will the other animals help them? (There’s a sequel in which the flea gets pregnant, and a name must be found. Antonio Banderas, Tom Cruise, Billy Clinton? No, says the louse, call him after me.)

I can play merengue rhythms, but I still can’t dance them or anything much else, and I broke a toe once, plunging up and down in the enthusiastic embrace of an extremely large and drunken lady somewhere down Caracas way. Who’d be a gigolo?

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