Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (57 page)

NOTES

1. Duke, 2006, p. 3.

2. See generally Duke & Vasquez, 1994, pp. 75-76; Hogue, 1993, p. 289; Walden,
1995, pp. 403-404.

Directions are generally expressed in terms of the river-other places are
abaja, downriver; arriba, upriver; or a la banda, on the other side of the river.
Special verbs are used for river travel. To go upriver is surcar, to plough, slice
through; to go downriver is bajar, to go down; to cross the river is chimbar, a
verb apparently not found outside the Peruvian Amazon.22

RUBBER

Mestizo shamanism is found in an arc from southern Colombia and Ecuador to northern Bolivia, through the present-day Peruvian departamentos of
Loreto and Ucayali, westward along the Rio Maranon, and spilling over eastward into western Brazil. This distribution is the result of historical factors,
one of which was the great rubber boom-a period of about thirty-five years,
approximately from 188o to 1914, which transformed Amazonian culture in
ways both profound and irremediable.

There are a number of rubber-producing trees in the Amazon, but two genera are of primary importance. Hevea species produce a latex called siringa, and Castilloa species produce a latex called caucho.23 To understand the formation
of mestizo shamanism, we have to understand the biology of these two types
of rubber trees.

The latex of Hevea brasiliensis was considered the finest in the Amazon.
Moreover, this latex will flow from shallow incisions in the bark, and the tree
can therefore be tapped for years without serious damage. But Hevea trees
have two significant disadvantages. First, although they are capable of growing in the uplands, they are found primarily in low-lying periodically flooded
areas, where they can be tapped only half the year, during the dry season.24

The ideal would therefore be to create upland plantations, where the trees
could be readily tapped year-round. But here there is a second disadvantage.
Hevea trees are susceptible to a fungal disease called South American leaf blight,
caused by the fungus Microcyclus ulei, native to the Amazon. The fungus is
transmitted from tree to tree, and effectively precludes growing the trees close
together on plantations. The latex must be tapped from wild trees, which
grow widely separated in the jungle-about two trees per hectare.25

A seringuero, a collector of siringa, lived in a hut, perhaps with a small
garden, and regularly followed a path-called an estrada-that he cut through
the jungle to two hundred or so Hevea trees, tapping half on one day and half
on the next. Seringueros were essentially tenant farmers, held in peonage by
constantly increasing debt, subject to disease, harsh weather, poor diet, and
insect pests.21 At some point, many gave up any hope of ever ending their
bondage to the rubber trees.27 At the same time, since seringueros were sedentary and steady sources of high-quality latex, rubber bosses and overseers
had economic motives to limit violence and abuse of their tenants .21

Caucho, the latex of Castilloa trees, was considerably less desirable. Since
the trees grew above flooded areas, they could be exploited year-round. But
the trees could not be tapped, since incisions yield little latex. Rather, the latex had to be gathered all at once, with deep cuts in the trunk, branches, and
roots, which produced a large amount of rubber but killed the tree.

A cauchero was therefore constantly looking for more caucho trees to
drain. Caucheros frequently worked in teams, since it is almost impossible
to bleed a large caucho tree alone. Always on the move, they were in constant
danger of becoming lost in unfamiliar jungle; they could not grow gardens, as
many seringueros did, and became increasingly indebted for supplies whose
price was set arbitrarily by the rubber bosses to maintain indebtedness. If they
became sick, no one would bother to look for them, because their location at
any moment was unknown.29

The itinerant nature of caucho production required a permanently mobile labor force and constant territorial expansion.3° Rubber bosses had no incentive to create long-term commercial ties with seminomadic and fungible caucheros.31 The relative isolation of the rubber tappers allowed cauchero bosses
to set up regimes of terror, using torture, mutilation, and murder to keep the
collectors in line and producing as much caucho as possible.32 This was most
infamous among the Huitoto in the Colombian Putumayo, where anthropologist Michael Taussig has described a "culture of terror, space of death," and
where egregious abuses of indigenous laborers shocked even those hardened
to the excesses of extractive colonialism.33

Caucho collection was the predominant form of rubber production in the
Upper Amazon.34 And although caucho was considered less valuable than siringa, it could be gathered more quickly. A tapped Hevea tree yielded five to seven pounds of siringa annually; a seringuero might collect about i,ooo pounds
of siringa in a year. In contrast, a mature Castilloa tree could yield 200 pounds
of caucho in two days, and a pair of caucheros could collect i,ooo pounds of
caucho in a month.35

Thus, as opposed to indigenous laborers, many of whom had been recruited to rubber tapping by correrias, slave raids, many mestizos became caucheros
voluntarily, lured by the possibility of quick riches, only to find themselves enganchado, hooked, like a fish, by the system of habilitacion, debt peonage.36 Isolated, far from family, deep in the jungle, away from their beloved rivers, when
mestizo rubber tappers became sick, they went to indigenous healers, including Yagua and Shipibo shamans.37 In some cases, the caucheros became apprentices to those who had healed them, and upon their return home served
their own communities with the skills they had learned.

The rubber boom in eastern Peru saw a massive migration of mestizos
from west to east, a shift from agriculture to extraction, and a move from river
to jungle.38 Entire areas were depopulated by 50 percent or more all over the
lowlands as rubber contractors removed populations for work.39 In the town
of Moyobamba the population dropped from fifteen thousand inhabitants
to seven thousand between 1859 and 1904; the indigenous village of Jeberos
saw a population decline from three thousand to three hundred in the same
period.4°

The rubber bust reversed these trends.4' The price of rubber fell precipitously on the international market; the tapping of wild trees in the jungle
could not compete with Hevea plantations in Asia, where there was no leaf
blight. The mestizo rubber tappers migrated westward, back to their riverine
homes, their communities, and their swidden gardens, bringing with them
the healing they had learned from the indigenous people of the jungle.

MESTIZO AND INDIAN

There is a complex and often troubled relationship between mestizos and
natives, encapsulated in the tale told by Manuel Cordova Rios, an Iquitos ayahuasquero who claimed he had been kidnapped by Indians, taught their language, and made their chief, finally escaping with their shamanic secrets. The
appeal of the tale is archetypal: a civilized person is stolen away by the savage
hidden people of the wild places, learns their ways, becomes their chief, and
brings their redemptive secrets back to the civilized world.

This tale feeds into the mestizo assumption that jungle Indians are the ultimate source of shamanic knowledge, and that any powers acquired directly
from them are of particular value.42 As anthropologist Jean-Pierre Chaumeil
notes, there are few mestizo shamans who do not claim to have had at least
one native teacher or who do not assert the indigenous origins of their knowledge.43 At the same time, to the mestizo, natives are dangerous, unpredictable, treacherous, and sensual; Cordova Rios, for example, began his life with the Indians as an unwilling captive, just as humans can be kidnapped and
held captive in the sensual worlds of underwater beings; the Indians are specialists, after all, in pusangueria, love magic.

Manuel Cordova Rios and Cesar Calvo Soriano

The story of Manuel Cordova Rios is recounted by Bruce Lamb as he purportedly
heard it from the mouth of Cordova Rios himself.'There is little doubt that Cordova Rios was, in fact, a skilled and knowledgeable mestizo shaman; but the plausibility and veracity of the story he told have been challenged and defended.

The story, as told by Lamb, has had two unexpected literary children-a
lengthy poem about Cordova Rios written by Pulitzer prize-winning poet and
translator W. S. Merwin and a novel of acknowledged genius by Cesar Calvo Soriano, an important Peruvian novelist and poet .3 Calvo, a native of Iquitos, is
perhaps best known in North America as the author of the poem Maria (andoa Cando is an Afro-Peruvian song form-set to music by famed Peruvian singer
Chabuca Granda and heartbreakingly rendered by Afro-Peruvian singer Susana
Baca.4 Calvo's novel, Las tres mitades de Ino Moxo yotros brujos de (aAmazonia,
The Three Halves of Ino Moxo, builds its mythic structure on the tale told to Lamb
by Cordova Rios. The multilayered novel takes place in the mind of its author,
searching in the jungle for the healer under his Indian name Ino Moxo, during a
single night, illumined by ayahuasca mixed with toe, "that other powerful and
disconcerting hallucinogen."5

NOTES

1. Lamb, 1971/1974, 1985.

2. Carneiro, 198o; de Mille, 1990, pp. 452-453; Dobkin de Rios, 1972a; Ott, 1996,
pp. 234-237; Lamb, 1981a, 1981b; Luna & Amaringo, 1993, p. 19.

3. Merwin, 1994; Calvo, 1981/1995b.

4. Calvo, 1995a, Track 1; see Feldman, 2003, pp. 158-160, and generally, 2006.

5. Calvo, 1981/1995b, p. xii.

Some of this tension is reflected in the concept of cungatuya, a potentially
fatal sickness that slowly closes the throat of the patient, until the person is
unable to speak, eat, or drink.44 It is caused by a sorcerer sending a mashu,
bat, to drop its phlegm or saliva into water that the victim then unknowingly
drinks; the bat phlegm or saliva turns into worms that cause wounds in the
victim's throat and which must removed by a healer sucking them out.45 In
San Martin, according to anthropologist Francoise Barbira-Freedman, the
mestizos believe that this sickness is spread by Indians; and at feasts, weddings, and markets, mestizos warn each other about watching for phlegm in
shared glassware.46 As in other contexts with which we may be more familiar-drinking fountains and bus seats, for example-the Other is viewed as a
source of dangerous contamination.

THE CHACRA

Of central importance in ribereno life is the chacra, the swidden or slash-andburn garden. This is true also of many Amazonian peoples, for whom gardens-and garden magic-are a central feature of the domestic economy. A
chacra is made by clearing an area of forest, burning the felled trees and other
vegetation, clearing the movable remaining vegetation and reburning it, and
then planting yuca, manioc, pldtano, and other cultivated plants and trees
such as beans, palms, pineapples, papaya, and mango. After several years,
when the nutrients derived from the ash have been exhausted, the garden is
abandoned to become new-growth jungle, and a new garden is created. Such
gardens frequently demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of ecological
interrelationships among domesticated and wild plant species.

Yuca is a staple crop for small swidden agriculture and a primary source
of carbohydrate in the Amazon. Platano, another staple source of carbohydrate, is eaten boiled or fried. Although sometimes called banano, these are
plantains, not bananas. For reasons I do not understand, the people among
whom I have lived in the Amazon call bananas manzano, apples, or manzanito,
little apples.

Shamans frequently plant their own sacred and healing plants, primarily ayahuasca, chacruna, toe, and mapacho. Don Romulo Magin, for example, had a large bush of sameruca growing in his front yard, which he would
use to prepare his ayahuasca drink. Almost all the shamans in Colombia use ayahuasca vines that are deliberately planted for their use in healing ceremonies, as do many in Ecuador.47

Yuca

All yuca roots contain a poisonous cyanogenic glycoside. The two kinds ofyucadu(ce, sweet, and brava, bitter-differ in how this chemical is distributed. Sweet
yuca can be eaten simply by peeling off the bark and boiling the root. In bitter
yuca the poison is spread throughout the root and must be extracted before consumption; this is done by peeling and grating the root, and then squeezing out
the poisonous juice in a long mesh sleeve that serves as a yuca press.'

The two varieties are not clearly different in shape or color, so they can be difficult for the unsophisticated to tell apart. Often it is simply a matter of knowing
which type was planted; but, in addition, sweet yuca has two easily removable
skins, a thinner outer one and a thicker inner one, while bitter yuca has a single
skin that is difficult to remove.'

Among indigenous peoples of the Upper Amazon, cooked yuca is thoroughly
chewed by the women and spit into a pot, where it ferments into masato, a virtually universal recreational drink, regularly offered in hospitality and not to be
refused. Drinking masato-and it really is as awful as it sounds-is so common
that a wife will make her husband his own masato bowl, which he carries with
him when visiting friends or neighbors. When I was living with the Shapra, I
knew I had been accepted when I was given my own masato bowl to carry with
me.

NOTES

i. A detailed description of this process is found in Guss, 1990, pp. 28-30; see also
Schultes & Raffauf, 1990, p. 181; Walden, 1995, p. 404.

2. Lovera, 2005, p. yi.

Indeed, all the forms of toe in the Amazon are considered to be cultivars.
Ethnobotanist Wade Davis points out that the grotesque forms of many of
these cultivars, generally called borrachero in Colombia, "are caused by viral
infections. The Indians note that the varieties breed true and that each has
quite specific pharmacological properties that can be manipulated by the shaman.1148 These borrachero cultivars are given distinct names-munchiro borrachero, culebra borrachero.49 In fact, culebra borrachero, a small tree containing
high concentrations of scopolamine, classified botanically as Methysticodendron amesianum, may not be a distinct genus at all but, rather, a highly atrophied form of toe-the result of a viral infection or mutation recognized and
cultivated for its psychoactive effects.5°