Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (58 page)

A chacra is a cleared space, limpia, clean, just like the ubiquitous soccer
field or the wide clear path leading into the village from the riverbank-plantless, the result of human action, nonjungle.s' Conversely, the monte is despoblado, unpeopled, the place of least human cultural interference, the place of jungle spirits and wild Indians.52 They are wild because they live away from the
rivers and out of contact with riverine commerce, in the center of the jungle;
they are naked, and they eat their food raw and without salt. In short, they live
with a minimum of cultural mediation between the jungle and themselves.53

Platanos

It is surprisingly difficult to find bananas in villages in the Upper Amazon. Plantains are distressingly common, eaten at almost every meal. Roasted plantains
are tasteless and dry, and I got really tired of them; fried plantains are generally
more palatable, but may be forbidden during la dieta. It was a great treat when
someone would bring a bunch of sweet bananas in from the jungle.

Jungle Indians may be referred to contemptuously as chunchos, devoid
of civilization and thus with no culture-even, from the viewpoint of official
Peru, without legal existence, uninscribed in civil registers and therefore not
citizens; uncivilized, unbaptized, naked, hunting with bows and arrows, without salt.54 The savagery of the indigenous is exemplified by their saltlessness.
Outsiders being given food by indigenous hosts can insult them by asking
for salt. Anthropologists Norman and Dorothea Whitten describe a Catholic
priest and his entourage at a Canelos Quichua celebration, telling each other
how the indios use no salt. "They even eat raw meat," says one. "And they grow
no crops," says another.ss

Chacras that have been left fallow are called purmas.56 The term includes a
wide range of fields, from recently overgrown chacras to thirty-year-old successional forest.57 Purmas continue to be utilized for building materials, including hardwood poles and palm leaves, and a variety of fruits. 51 Purmas also
provide food and low dense brush for cover and nesting for a number of game
animals-armadillos, agouti, paca, opossum, spiny rats-which are called,
collectively, purmeros.59

Purmas are not simply abandoned chacras; they are the result of active
forest management. When chacras are cleared, the seedlings of useful trees
are often spared and protected, to be utilized when the chacra is left fallow.6°
These plants include fruit trees intended to attract game animals, which are
primarily frugivores;61 white-lipped peccaries, for example, consume a diet
composed of 66 percent fruit, primarily palm fruits.62

MESTIZO CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY

Among the mestizos, social relationships are often expressed geographically,
as horizontal spatial relationships. A feature of ribereno culture is a persistent dualism of river and jungle, water and earth, yacu and sacha. Each realm has its
own gigantic guardian serpent-yacumama, mother of the water, the great anaconda, and sachamama, mother of the jungle, the great boa. Each realm has its own supai, mysterious other-than-human inhabitants-yacuruna, the Water
People, the owners of the rivers, and sacharuna, the Jungle People, the owners
of the jungle, the chullachaquis. This dualism is reflected also in the distinction between the ribereno, who dwells on the river, and the Indian, who dwells
in the jungle, and between the chacra, swidden garden, which is cleared and
cultivated, and the monte, jungle, which is wild and unmanaged.

Soccer

Soccer-which is, of course, fttbo(-is played and followed with almost religious
intensity throughout Peru. According to sociologist Julio Cotter, soccer played
a major role in forging a Peruvian national identity when, in 1970, the Peruvian
national team surprisingly eliminated top-ranked Argentina to qualify for the
Mexico Cup. For the first time, the games were broadcast nationwide, and soccer
became a national passion., Indeed, when, in 1996, Movimiento Revolucionario
T6pac Amaru (MRTA) guerillas captured the Japanese embassy in Lima and held
seventy-two hostages for 126 days, the occupation was broken by a surprise raid
when the guerillas had gathered for their daily afternoon soccer game.

Iquitos has two professional soccer clubs-Colegio Nacional Iquitos and Hungaritos, the Hungarians-and several amateur leagues, as well as an endless
stream of pickup street games, which can last for hours and are played right
through the pouring rain .3 Ribereno villages throughout the UpperAmazon have
soccer fields, and often a game is played every day in the evening.

Because some of these ribereno villages are small, they often play a downsized version of soccer called fulbito, with five or six players on a side. Famed
writer Mario Vargas Llosa, in his novel The City and the Dogs, describes a fulbito
game: "They wore sneakers, ... and they made sure the ball was not fully inflated, to keep it from bouncing. Generally they kept the ball on the ground, making
very short passes, and trying for goals from very close, without kicking hard."4
Fulbito is thus a close sport, sometimes even played indoors; the MRTA guerillas
were playing fulbito in the embassy grand dining room when the raid occurred.
Some commentators have claimed that playing fulbito rather than soccer from
childhood has kept Peruvian soccer players from developing kicking power, so
that they are considered skilled rather than strong opponents 5

Games played against neighboring villages are a major social event and may
involve three or four communities, with wagering, feasts, beer, dancing, and
battery-operated CD players blaring cumbias. These games can be very exciting, especially in the rainy season, because the fields become quite muddy and
slippery, with spectacularwipeouts, and everyone winds up covered in mud.'

The enculturation of indigenous groups to the ribereno lifestyle almost inevitably includes the adoption of soccer.?

NOTES

1. Smith, 2005.

2. Guevara, Loveman, & Davies, 1997, p. 302; Whyte, 2005, pp. 24-25.

3. Wittig, 2006, pp. 340, 342.

4. Vargas Llosa, 1963, p. 27.

5. Aranibar, 2006.

6. Chibnik, 1994, pp. 92-93; Wittig, 2006, p. 343.

7. See Johnson, 2003, pp. 37, 126-127; Wittig, 2006, pp. 344-346.

The mestizos also maintain a threefold model of the relationships among
Amazonian peoples. The ciudad, city, such as Iquitos or Pucallpa or Puerto
Moldanado, is the home of knowledgeable whites, the commercial and cultural center, and the source of manufactured goods such as shotgun shells
and flashlight batteries. The monte, jungle, is the home of Indians, uncivilized but skilled in magic and jungle lore. Ciudad and monte are the extreme
poles of human space. Mediating between the two are the mestizos, moving
between city and jungle, carrying commodities out of the jungle and manufactured goods out of the city, acting as the pivot of knowledge.63

The spatial category that connects city and jungle is the river; once again,
the river dweller, the ribereno, mediates between white and Indian. This geographical model is also expressed in terms of river direction. From the mestizo point of view, the city is always abaja, downriver, and afuera, outside; the
jungle is arriba, upriver, and en el centro, toward the center. Movement downriver toward the city takes one away from the jungle, the center, from stillness
to noise, from wildness to commerce. The same spatial model occurs on a
smaller level within towns and villages, divided up into barrios, quarters, with
the shops, bars, and houses of the mestizo population concentrated in the
center of town, "by the river," while native people live away from this center,
"towards the

GENDER AND COLOR

Among Amazonian mestizos, the world is often viewed in terms of male and
female, macho and hembra. Not only animals but also plants-even inanimate objects-appear in both male and female forms; rain, for example, can
be male or female, depending on the force with which it falls; ifa plant species
has two varieties, one with thorns, the one with thorns is considered male.65
The plant mucura, for example, considered by botanists to be a single species,
is held by mestizos to have a male form with round leaves and a female form
with elongated leaves.66 The red huayruro seed is considered to come from the
female and the red and black huayruro seed from the male form of a single plant; botanists consider these two plants to be different species in the same
genus.67 What mestizos consider the male and female forms of the buceta
plant are classified by botanists in different genera entirely.68

The Jungle Cookbook

FOOD

Gerineldo Moises Chavez, my jungle survival instructor, taught me that it is impossible to go hungry in the jungle. The jungle is filled with game, fish, and wild
plants, all ready to be gathered and eaten.

Small game is a staple in the diet of both mestizo and indigenous peoples.
Frequently hunted mammals include large rodents-such as anuje, agouti; majds, paca; pacarana; and ronsoco, capybara-and small spiny rats, called generally rata, rats, ratdn, mice, or sacha cuy, wild guinea pigs. In addition, small
game mammals include carachupa, armadillo; intuto, opossum; huangana,
white-lipped peccary, and sajino, collared peccary; sachavaca, common tapir;
venado, gray and red brocket deer; and monkey, especially coto, howler monkey, and maquisapa, spider monkey.

There is also an amazing abundance and variety of fish in the Upper Amazon. For both mestizo and indigenous peoples, the lakes and rivers are an endless source of food, with more than two thousand species of freshwater fish.,
Machiguenga greet strangers by asking, "Are there fish in the river where you
live?",

There are catfish of all sorts-carachama, doncella, maparate, shirui, and especially the delicious dorado, which can grow to a hundred pounds in deep river
channels and oxbow lakes. Other commonly caught fish include acarahuazO, boquichico, corvina, gamitana, lisa, palometa, and sdbalo, as well as papa-better
known under the Portuguese name piranha-and paiche, the largest freshwater
fish in the world, whose flaky and delicately flavored flesh has been featured in
Gourmet Magazine .3

The rivers also yield turtles-taricaya and charapa, the latter routinely exceeding thirty inches in width-and their eggs, laid on the sandy beaches, as
well as lagarto negro, black caimans, which as adults range from eighttoten feet
long.4 Everyone likes surf, the grubs of palm beetles.

In addition to the fruit that grows in their active gardens, riberenos forage fruit and edible plants from fallowed gardens and the jungle. Among the
most important fruits are the palm fruits-huicungo, ungurahui, aguaje, and
pijuayo-which are eaten fresh, made into drinks-ungurahuina, aguajina, or
pijuayina-and even, in the cities, made into frozen desserts .5 One survey of a
ribereno village near Iquitos lists thirty-eight plant species collected from fallowed gardens and jungle, including palm fruits, bananas, pineapples, lemons,
oranges, cashews, breadfruit, and sugarcane 6

HUNTING

The ribereno weapon of choice for small game hunting is a 16-gauge shotgun. In
North America, we generally use 20-gauge shotguns for birds and 12-gauge for
larger game; the 16-gauge is, in fact, an excellent all-around shotgun, useful for
hunting medium-size jungle game-tapir, capybara, agouti, peccary, monkey.

Hunters tend to follow existing trails or canoe along local streams to established campamentos, campsites, or tambos, huts. From these locations, they
cut trails to salt licks, watering holes, ravines, and fruiting trees-places where
they know animals tend to congregate? Hunters generally do not track game;
rather, they have a detailed knowledge of animal behavior, and carry their shotguns to places where animals are likely to be found. They are also skilled at
imitating animal cries and at locating any animals that respond.

When moving through the jungle, as when pursuing game, ribereno hunters
are skilled at leaving sign. Trails are cleared with the ubiquitous machete; but,
just as important, what appears to be almost casual cutting of trailside growth is
a way of leaving sign for the return trip, as is the similarly casual turning over of
leaves while moving through the jungle. The underside of many jungle plants is
lighter in color than the top; when you look back, the turned-over leaves mark a
path as clearly as highway signs, if you know how to see them.

Hunters also canoe upstream from camp during the day and then drift silently downstream after dark, shotguns ready, using a flashlight to target eye
shine at beaches where animals come at night to drink. Shooting platforms may
be erected in trees near colpas, where animals come to drink and eat salty clay;
or feeding sites, such as the base of a fruiting tree; or along cleared trails, where
hunters wait at night with a shotgun and flashlight." Shotgun booby traps with
trip wires may also be set near salt licks and colpas9

Trampas, traps, including both snares and deadfalls, baited with manioc or
pijuayo fruit, are also commonly used to catch small game, including agouti,
monkeys, and spiny rats.'° The cleverest snare I have ever seen was taught to me
by a Shapra, out past Lago Rimachi.

FISHING

There are four places in the Upper Amazon where a fisherman looks for fish.
First, large and medium-sized rivers in low areas often form numerous meanders that, when the river changes course, become cochas, moon-shaped oxbow
lakes. These cochas often have sediment settled on the bottom, relatively clear
water, high temperatures, and therefore rapid plant growth, which in turn supports quite large fish populations. Sometimes too you can see strips of clear and
very slow water in a river. These are quiet places where plankton tends to grow,
and fish can often be found downstream. You can also find fish under cama(ones, places where aquatic vegetation has formed a dense mat on the surface of
the water. Finally, fish love to move into the waters covering seasonally flooded
forests."