Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (34 page)

And in some cultures, such as the mestizo, the shaman is also the carrier of
plant knowledge. Among the Piro and Conibo, knowledge of herbal medicine
is part of the shamanic curriculum." Tukano apprentice shamans learn to
pick the medicinal and magical plants of the jungle-those that cure, attract
game, kill enemies, or make women fall madly in love.13 Baniwa shamans
deal with manhene witchcraft-inflicted through secret poisonings-both by
sucking out the poison, which then appears as monkey or sloth fur, and by
recommending plant medicines, usually various types of root that counteract
the gastric effects of the poison.14 Cesar Zevallos Chinchuya, a Campa shaman, uses herbal remedies that do not differ from those used by other adults
in his area.15 Moreover, among the Cashinahua, the distinction is not quite as
simple as presented above: plants themselves are imbued with and vehicles of
yuxin, spirit matter and energy, just as the shaman is filled with materialized
yuxin power.,'

Finally, the distinction between shaman and herbalist seems to be dissolving in some cultures, apparently under the influence of mestizo practices. Shuar
shamans today, especially those who live near larger jungle population centers, increasingly incorporate Hispanic healing techniques from the mestizos-the use of Tarot cards for divination, cleansing with eggs and candles,
and the use of herbs.'? Indeed, the Asociacion Tsunki, a shamans' organization within the Federacion Shuar, has recently offered courses in Shuar and
Achuar traditional medicine, open only to uwishin, shamans, which have included training in gathering plants and preparing plant medicines.,'

Conversely, some mestizo shamans disclaim the need to use actual plant
preparations-strikingly, on a plant-by-plant basis. In some cases, but not in
others, if one knows the plant's icaro, then there is no need to use the physical
plant. For don Roberto, this is true for the spirit of the machimango, which
is so powerful that using physical medicine made from the machimango tree
may not be necessary; the machimango spirit can heal, where it is indicated,
all by itself. Similarly, don Emilio Andrade Gomez states that if you have
learned from ayahuma, "you do not have to go out to the forest to bring back
its bark, because you already know its icaro. "19

SINGING TO THE PLANTS

It may be worth drawing a distinction between the source of plant knowledge
and the source of plant healing. Many indigenous peoples assert that their
knowledge of plants and their uses comes from some other-than-human person who appears in a vision or dream.20 These spirits may, as in the mestizo
tradition, be the plants themselves, but not necessarily; when dona Maria
was young, for example, it was the Virgin Mary, not the plant spirits, who
appeared in her dreams, showed her the healing plants, and taught her the
plants to heal specific diseases.

On the other hand, the source of plant healing may be the physical plant
itself, or the physical plant as a substrate of magical power, or the spirit of the
plant acting independently of the physical plant. Joel Swerdlow, a scientific
journalist investigating plant medicine, tells a story that illustrates this point.
In Madagascar, he met with a rural healer who supplied him with leaves of
a plant said to be good for cancer. Tests by a Swiss pharmaceutical company
showed the leaves in fact to have anticancer activity. He returned, but the healer, concerned, probably wisely, about potential theft of his secrets, refused to
supply any more leaves. Swerdlow then himself acquired leaves from the same
species of plant; yet these, when tested, were ineffective.21

To mestizo shamans such as dona Maria and don Roberto, there is nothing puzzling about this. Swerdlow did not sing to the plants, did not cure the medicine with the appropriate songs. Herbalists-and poisoners-do not sing;
shamanic herbalists and sorcerers sing-charge the plants, cure them, call the
spirits that invest themselves in the healing process. "What good do you think
my remedies would be," says don Manuel Cordova Rios, a mestizo shaman,
"ifI didn't sing to them?122

The song may be-but is not necessarily-the icaro of the plants who are
in the medicine. In curing a woman made pregnant by a boa, the shaman prepared the fruit of the huito, but then he sang-"singing many icaros, blowing
on it, and putting in it arkanas"-calling the great serpent corimachaco, the
multicolored rainbow, the precious stones, the mud of the waters, the laughing falcon, the tiger, and the spirits of the pucunucho pepper and the hairy
rocoto pepper-both hot pepper plants with which to stun the boa who, with
its own spirit helpers, was supporting the pregnancy.23

As poet Cesar Calvo writes, the physical plants are simply "the visible portion of the healing.1114 The plants, in addition to being real medicines, contain
madres or genios, the beings who teach.25 Calvo says that the mothers of things
"are the origin of their purpose and of their use for healing or for harming. 1126
When we give the plants our love, we awaken their mothers, "so that they will
augment the strength of the cure with their love. 1127A cure is not caused by the
ingestion or topical application of an herbal medicine; rather, it results from
the benevolent intervention of the mother through the intermediation of the
plan t. 21

Both dona Maria and don Roberto-and most other mestizo shamans as
well-have an encyclopedic knowledge of the preparation and use of healing
plants, and frequently prepare and prescribe plants and plant mixtures for ingestion, baths, and sweat baths. But a plant is inefficacious by itself; it is the
spirit of the plant who heals, and the spirit is summoned by its song.

Perhaps the best way to conceptualize this is that, for mestizo shamans, the
physical plant is the same as the plant spirit. The physical plant is the part of
the plant spirit that you can see clearly all the time; the plant spirit is the part of
the plant you do not notice-you cannot see-until you have drunk ayahuasca.

Shamanic herbalists uniquely develop a personal relationship with the entire plant; the song, the whisper, the whistle, the rattling of the leaf bundle,
is the manifestation of that relationship in sound, puro sonido, the language
of the plants. Biomedical practitioners-or contemporary herbalists who see
plants as useful collocations of molecules-lack such a relationship; and they
rely for healing on the mercy of a part of the plant with whom they have no
relationship at all.

PLANT KNOWLEDGE

Among riberenos in the Upper Amazon, there is a body of traditional lore regarding both the uses and the administration of a relatively large number of
Amazonian medicinal plants. My jungle survival instructor, Gerineldo Moises
Chavez, who made no claims at all to being a healer, knew dozens of jungle
plant remedies, including insect repellants, treatments for insect bites, snakebite cures, and antiseptics.

Most riberei os know, for example, that the latex of the sangre de grado
tree can be used to stanch wounds and stop bleeding, both internally and externally; that an infusion of the leaves, bark, or roots of chiricsanango can be
used to treat fever; that chuchuhuasi is a male potency enhancer; that the latex
of the oje tree is an emetic; and that a drink or poultice made from jergdn sacha
can be used to treat snakebite.

Several compendia of such lore have been published, containing scores
of plant descriptions, which organize plant knowledge widely distributed
among riberenos.' While mestizo shamans claim to have learned the uses and
administration of their medicinal plants from the plant spirits themselves, it
is also true that their uses of the plants are, in most cases, consistent with
widespread folk knowledge about the plants.

Dona Maria, for example, was familiar with hundreds of plants, their indication, their preparation, and their application. Walking with her in the jungle
was like walking with a plant encyclopedia. She was constantly pointing to the
plants by name, giving their uses and their various methods of preparation
and application. This knowledge came almost entirely from her own experience-that is, she said, from what the plants themselves had taught her-and
from studying with other plant healers.

Dona Maria was, for all practical purposes, illiterate; for example, she was
unable to read a menu at a restaurant in Iquitos. I spent an afternoon with her
going page by page through the 105 plants described in the text Plantas medicinales de use popular en la Amazonia Peruana.z She could begin to sound out the
popular names of plants in the text until she could match the name with the
plant illustrated on the same page and then complete the name of the plant
from memory. Where the name listed in the text was unfamiliar to her, she
had difficulty sounding it out. But once she had identified the plant, primarily
from the illustration, she would give me a lengthy discourse on its qualities,
preparation, and medicinal uses.

There were two striking features of this exercise. First, dona Maria knew
every plant in the book. Second, the descriptions she gave of the medicinal
uses of the plant largely matched the descriptions given in the book, which
she could not read. Despite the visionary sources of her knowledge, her use
of plant medicines was generally consistent with popular plant medicine as
practiced throughout the mestizo community.

In keeping with her self-perception as openhanded with her knowledge,
dona Maria was a vociferous proselytizer for the traditional uses of medicinal
plants. In July 1997, for example, Maria was invited to speak at a forum on the
sexual and reproductive rights of women under the auspices of the Red Nacional de Promocion de la Mujer, the National Network for the Advancement
of Women, held at the Universidad Nacional Amazonia Peruana in Iquitos, to
address the birthing and care of children. She was one of six women invited to
speak to an audience consisting mostly of young mothers.

Maria had worked not only as a healer but also as a comadrona, midwife,
and she demonstrated basic natal care, including how to bathe a baby properly, and, of course, the use of plant medicines-in particular, cordoncillo, shoestring pepper, traditionally used as a tea and as a vaginal wash after birth, in
order to flush out excess blood.

In November iggi, having heard about it from a friend, dona Maria signed
up for a course offered by the Associacion de Medicos de Naturismo Practico
Tradicional de Loreto, intended to be a curso de actualizacidn y nivelacidn de medicina tradicional, a refresher and overview of traditional medicine. Maria took
the course in order to gain credentials for her healing and in the hope that
she would learn new things helpful to her work. "This is what I do," she said,
"and I wanted to learn more." The course was free, met twice a week for two
hours in the evening, and lasted for two years, until October 1993.

The course, it turned out, was significantly below Maria's level of knowledge. Other students, she said, would sit quietly and listen; but she-and this is eminently in line with her personality-would actively tell what she knew
about plant use and preparation, staying on in the course in order to help the
other students. The teachers actively encouraged her participation, she said,
telling her that she should be teaching the course because of her knowledge
of traditional medicine.

The key to healing with plants, according to dona Maria, is not only to
know which plant can heal which conditions but also to understand the proper way to prepare the plants for use. After a month of trying to teach me plant
identification, giving me the names and uses of more plants than I could possibly remember, she said to me, "We have all these plants here, cures for all
sorts of diseases; now that you have learned about them, you must learn how
to prepare them." And what I needed to learn I would learn, over time, from
the plants themselves.

DIAGNOSIS

Mestizo shamans deploy a number of diagnostic tools to detect the presence
and location of darts and other pathogenic objects in the bodies of their patients. One method of diagnosis is by touch. The place where the sickness is
lodged may be warm or cold to the touch; rheumatism feels cold, for example,
and an inflammation feels hot. The place may also be indicated by its pulsario
or pdlpito, a pulsation or throbbing, which indicates to the touch the presence of a magical dart. Pablo Amaringo says that shamans invoke the electric
eel because its electromagnetic waves sensitize them to perceive pulsations
in their patients.3 Don Sergio Freitas says that he is able to identify a sickness
by the smell of the patient.4 Piedras encantadas, magic stones, are believed to
stick to the place on the body where the dart is lodged for several hours, suck
out the sickness, and then drop off.