Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (59 page)

It is possible to take fish just with your hands. It is not as hard as it sounds;
I have caught beautiful trout with my bare hands in a stream in the Esacalante
Wilderness. In the Amazon, people wade close to shore in muddy water, gently
feeling for fish under rocks and in the mud. In particular, the carachama, the
armored sailfin catfish, constructs burrows in the muddy banks of the cochas
and rivers in which it lives, each a few feet deep and generally angled downward.
You only need to feel around for a burrow, reach in, and very carefully-because
carachama have very sharp spines on their dorsal fins-pull a carachama out of
its hole and toss it up onto the bank. They are delicious.

People in the Amazon often fish with hook and line-an innovation dependent on the availability of steel hooks and high test monofilament fishing line.
All you have to do is tie a hook to a length of line on the end of a stick, put a
piece of grasshopper on the hook, and toss the hook into the water. Especially
in an overpopulated cocha, in just a few minutes you have caught a fish. You can
do this over and over again; in half an hour, you have caught enough fish for
several days. You can be creative and tie a piece of wood to the string as a float. If you have a family to feed, you can set out a trotline with baited hooks. Hookand-line fishing can be done where other methods do not work-at night; during
the rainy season, when the water is turbid; in the main current of the river. It is
considered to be-heck, it is-fun.

Fishing nets can be cast from a canoe or by wading out into the water. Casting
a fishnet requires skill clearly beyond my own, although, to my chagrin, I have
seen numerous young boys do it quite successfully.

Riberenos also fish using fish spears or bows and arrows-usually with
barbed metal two-tined heads-either from a canoe or from shore, sometimes
on the river right in front of the village. Spear and bow-and-arrow fishing is
largely limited to the dry season, when rivers tend to be clear rather than silty.
A fisher can also put a tabaje, a fish trap, across a cocha outflow. Tabajes are
woven from strips of cana brava, giant cane, or bombonaje. I have seen two
mestizo fishermen work a running stream by anchoring a woven barricade with
sticks downstream, driving fish into the trap from upstream, and then gathering
them by hand. In a few hours they had caught enough fish, after being dried and
salted, to last for a week.

Fish poison is also widely used in the Upper Amazon. The term barbasco can
be used to refer to fish poison in general or more specifically to Lonchocarpus
urucu, which is of sufficient importance that some indigenous peoples cultivate
it in their gardens. The procedure is simple: the root is dug up, carried to the
fishing place, and pounded with sticks so that the milky sap can be drained
into the water. The primary active ingredients are rotenone and deguelin, which
affect gill function in fish, inhibiting their ability to breathe.' Within fifteen minutes or so fish begin to float on the surface of the water, where they can be collected by hand or in baskets, hit on the head with a machete, speared, or shot
with a bow and arrow.~3

Fishing with barbasco in a cocha is simple; squeeze the milky sap into the
still water, watch it spread, and then collect the fish. It only takes one or two
people to fish a cocha in this way. On the other hand, in a flowing stream or river,
you have to build a dam at the upper end of the fishing area to slow the flow,
and another at the lower end-sometimes with a woven basketry net-to make
it easier to capture the stunned fish. Such temporary dam construction may require additional people, which can, of course, turn into a party.14

COOKING

Small mammals are generally gutted but not skinned. Once I was helping Moises field dress an agouti. "In North America," I said, "we generally take off the
head." He looked at me as if I was crazy. "Lots of good things in the head," he
said.

Once gutted, the entire animal is thrown onto a fire. When the hair has been
singed, any remaining hair is removed by scraping. Riberenos may then roast
the game over hot coals. The large rodents-agouti, paca, and capybara-have
particularly tender meat and can be quite tasty when prepared in this way.15 Moises was able to conjure remarkable meals out of jungle game, adding albaca,
wild basil; ajo sacha, wild garlic; grilled plantain, panguana eggs, and palm
heart salad; and ripe huito fruit for desert.

In indigenous villages, on the other hand, the carcass is chopped indiscriminately into pieces, put into a pot of boiling water without seasonings, and boiled like crazy. This is not gourmet cooking. I tried to introduce the Shapra to the idea
of a nicely trimmed monkey roast, but they were uninterested. They preferred
just to boil the bejeezus out of their meat and make monkey soup.

There are, I think, two reasons why small mammals are not skinned. First,
there is no use for the skin. Indigenous peoples of the Upper Amazon appear
to lack material goods because they can make anything they need very quickly
from resources that are ready at hand. I have seen Shapra make a basket out of
leaves in just a few minutes, fill it with gathered fruit, carry it back to the village,
and simply discard it. It is easier to make the basket than it is to keep it. Second,
there is reason to believe that the subcutaneous fat of small game is one of the
few sources of fat in the indigenous diet. This may also account for the preference for boiling into soup, which preserves the fat, as opposed to roasting,
which does not.

Nonmammalian small game-birds, turtles, caimans-is treated pretty much
the same way: inedible parts, such as feathers and shells, are removed; everything else is chopped up and boiled. Attractive feathers are kept for making
crowns and jewelry; other inedible parts are thrown away. One exception I have
seen has been the drying of peccary hides to be carried downriver to market. I
remember spending two days in a speedboat filled with the smell of gasoline
in 55-gallon drums and a pile of raw peccary hides decomposing in the heat.
Vividly.

Fish may be boiled with plantains or roasted directly on the fire. Fish is often
prepared as a patarashca, wrapped in one of the large leaves of the bijao palm
and placed on the hot coals.i6 La Patarashca, a restaurant in Tarapoto, serves
doncella stuffed with shrimp in a sauce of cocona fruit, and as a patarashca with
tomato, onion, and sweet chili.

When hunting is good, extra meat and fish are smoked and salted. Meat to
be smoked is placed over the fire on a grating made of green wood; the smoking
process may take several days. People often snack on the meat as it is being
smoked; I recall a memorable snack of smoked salted monkey cheeks. Fish that
has been salted and dried in the sun makes excellent pack food for long trips;
fish may be salted and smoked or salted and dried in the sun on the kitchen roof.
Fish preserved in this way can last for several months.'? Farina-coarsely ground
dried yuca root-is the jungle survival food of the ribereno. It is light in weight
and easy to pack, and, believe me, a little bit goes a long way. It tastes like the
worst breakfast cereal you ever had. Farina can be mixed with water, lemon,
and-if you are not on la dieta-sugar, to make a drink called shibe, which is a
significant improvement.

NOTES

1. Kricher, 1997, p. 200.

2. Johnson, 2003, p. 63.

3. Maxim, 2007.

4. Hiraoka, 1995, p. 217.

5. Bodmer, 1994, p. 131.

6. Pinedo-Vasquez, Zarin, & Jipp, 1995, pp. 247-248, Tables 10.5-10.6.

7. Claggett, 1998, p. 11.

8. Chevalier, 1982, pp. 61-62.

9. Hiraoka, 1995, p. 210.

10. Hiraoka, 1995, pp. 210-211.

ii. U.N. Environment Programme, 1987.

12. Gupta, 2007; Ling, 2003, pp. 6-9.

13. See generally Hillard & Kopischke, 1992, pp. 97-98.

14. Chibnik, 1994, pp. 127-129; Hiraoka, 1995, pp. 212-221; Johnson, 2003,
pp. 63-67.

15. Brownrigg, 1996; Hiraoka, 1995, pp. 206-207; Rios, Dourojeanni, &Tovar, 1975.

16. Castonguay, 1990, p. log.

17. Hiraoka, 1995, p. 221; Johnson, 2003, pp. 68-69.

Dona Maria frequently distinguished between male and female forms of
the same plant; the spirits of many plants, too, can appear in either male or
female forms-sometimes both at once, as in doh a Marfa's first vision of the
ayahuasca spirit, in which two genios appeared, one on either side of her.
Dona Maria once showed me two cubes of commercially prepared camphor,
wrapped in clear plastic, while describing how she used camphor in some of
her preparations. "One of these is male, and one is female," she said. I asked
how she could tell. She looked more closely. "Oh, these are both female," she
said. "The male ones are a little larger."

Mestizos also use colors as a classificatory device, typically distinguishing
between light colors, usually white and green, and dark colors, usually red,
purple, or black. Shamans come in two colors-on the one hand, light, which
includes dona Maria's healing practice ofpura blancura, pure whiteness, and,
on the other, dark, which includes the magia negra, black magic, or, even
worse, magia roja, red magic, of wicked sorcerers. Similarly, jaguars fall into
two categories-the otorongo, or tawny jaguar, and the yanapuma, the black
jaguar, which are regarded as two distinct species, with different habits; Western zoologists consider both animals to be the same species, with the latter
being a rare melanistic form of the former.69

A distinction is also made between light and dark forms of the same
plant-for example, toe blanco and toe negro, white and black toe, considered by botanists to be in completely different genera, but conceptually linked
through their uses and effects; or ishanga blanca and ishanga roja, white and
red ishanga, in different genera but both with stinging hairs used to treat
snakebite; or verbena blanca and verbena negra, in different genera, but both considered to be cold plants to treat hot conditions such as fever and diarrhea.

Often the dark form of a plant is the one used in sorcery. Dona Maria often
called the darker variety morado, purple or dark, and the lighter variety verde,
green or light. Mestizos consider the plant called, variously, pinon rojo, pinon
colorado, or pinon negro and the plant called pinon blanco, which botanists
consider two different species in the same genus, to be the dark and light
forms of the same plant, with the dark form being a planta bruja; the same
is true for lupuna colorada and lupuna blanca. A similar distinction is drawn
between the plant-or, perhaps, plants-called patiquina morada or patiquina
negra and the plant called patiquina blanca or, often, just patiquina, which seem
to be a confusing variety ofDieffenbachia species, with a variety of leaf patterns
and colors. Dona Maria called these groups of plants, respectively, patiquina
morada and patiquina verde.

Mestizos in the Upper Amazon have a variety of beliefs about the other-thanhuman persons who inhabit the hidden realms deep in the jungle and under
the water., These beings are often conceived as inhabiting the three realms of
air, earth, and water; all of them are dangerous. They are different from the
madres or genios, the spirits of plants and animals with whom the shaman
interacts, although shamans often seek to enter into right relationship with
these beings as well. Ordinary people may, to their sorrow, unintentionally
and unexpectedly encounter these more or less corporeal other-than-human
persons.

Consistent with the mestizo conceptual dualism of jungle and river, there
are parallels between the realms of earth and water: the sachamama, mother
of the jungle, the giant boa constrictor, matches the yacumama, mother of the
water, the giant anaconda; the chullachaqui are often called sacharuna, people
of the jungle, in parallel with the yacuruna, people of the water. There is also
overlap among these figures; both the water people and the jungle people may
have bodily deformities, with parts of their bodies turned around backward;
both yacuruna and sacharuna trick people into entering their realms, where
they are abducted and sequestered, often for sexual purposes. Chullachaqui
and dolphins, mermaids and water people, can appear disguised in human
form. All the water beings are sexually seductive; mermaids and yacuruna are
often interchangeable.2