Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (37 page)

However, most cases result in several days of serious misery and then recovery. More rarely, skin grafts may be necessary.- The fatality rate even for
untreated pit viper bites is low, and the reported rate of permanent local injury
is less than io percent." In most cases, swelling and reduced function, even
without antivenin, last for two or three weelcs.'u

It is hard to judge the effectiveness of any of the remedies used for snakebite
in the Upper Amazon. There are few records; there is little long-term follow-up;
Crotalid envenomation is frequently self-limiting. Moreover, a pit viper strike
can create both a puncture wound and severely compromised tissue; therefore,
in the jungle environment, sepsis must be a frequent complication. There is evidence that a number of plants traditionally used to treat snakebite-especially
those in the family Urticaceae, such as ishanga blanca-have anti-inflammatory,
immunomodulatory, and therefore potentially antivenom activity, which remains to be investigated.13

NOTES

i. Sullivan, Wingert, & Norris, 1995, pp. 681-683, 704-705.

2. Fan & Cardoso, 1995, p. 668; Minton & Norris, 1995, p. 713.

3. Manock, Suarez, Graham, Avila-Aguero, & Warrell, 2008, p. 1128.

4. Kricher, 1997, pp. 315-316; Minton & Norris, 1995, pp. 714-715.

5. Fan & Cardoso, 1995, p. 668.

6. lwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development, n.d.

7. Armed Forces Pest Management Board, 2008; Russell, n.d.

8. Fan & Cardoso, 1995, p. 679; Kricher, 1997, p. 317; Minton & Norris, 1995,
p. 715.

9. Sullivan et at., 1995, p. 685.

1o. Dart & Gold, 2004; Fan & Cardoso, 1995, pp. 673-674; Minton & Norris,
1995, pp. 718-719.

11. Gomez & Dart, 1995, p. 642; Sullivan et at., 1995, p. 702.

12. Dart & Gold, 2004, p. 1562.

13. Badilla, Chaves, Mora, & Poveda, 2006.

Just as there is folk medicine and folk sorcery, there are traditional pusangas, and dona Maria knew a tremendous number of these. Some are relatively
straightforward. If you take a woman's vaginal secretions from her clitoris,
she said, and rub it on your upper arm, you will become attractive to women.
Similarly, if you take the vulva of a bufeo colorado, pink dolphin-creatures who
transform themselves into irresistibly seductive human figures-and tie it
around your upper arm, you will be attractive to women, especially if you can
manage to have the charm touch the woman.

Another pusanga trick uses the leg bone of the tanrrilla bird, the sunbittern; these wading birds have long thin hollow leg bones, which are used,
also, as the stem of the wooden cachimbo, pipe, in which one smokes mapacho
or other psychoactive plants, such as the leaves of the toe plant or the bark
of the ayahuasca vine. Apparently the use of the sunbittern in love magic is
related to the fact that the bird achieves a spectacular erection.29 If, when you
shoot the bird, it falls on its back, the leg bone is no good; but the leg bone
may be used if the bird falls on its chest. Remove the left leg bone, Bona Maria
instructed me, and bury the bird in the sand, mouth up. Then take the hollow
leg bone and look through it three times at the person whose attentions you
wish to attract-like looking through a telescope. For example, she said, if a
woman you want is walking while you are looking at her, she will start to look
around for you; by the time you have looked at her three times, she will be in
love with you. But if you change your mind later, Bona Maria warned, and no
longer want her, that is too bad; she will continue to pursue you.

However, the most potent form of love magic, predictably, involves the use
of plants. For example, plants that cling, such as lianas and vines, are often
used for love medicine, especially the renaco, strangler fig, which clings to its
support tree like a devoted lover. Amor seco has small prickly leaves that cling
to the clothing or skin of passersby, and is similarly considered useful in love
medicine. The plant called sacha corazdn has heart-shaped leaves and clings to
the trunks of trees; it is thus used not only in love medicine but also in the
treatment of diseases related to the heart and blood.

The buceta plant, as do many plants in the Amazon, comes in two forms hembra, female, and macho, male. The female plant has two leaves on each
stalk, the smaller of which clings to the underside of the larger and looks
very much like a vagina-clearly a pusanga signature; in fact, the word buceta
means vagina in slang Brazilian Portuguese.3° Dona Maria made a buceta potion, which is to be applied to the inside of the vagina; the potion causes such
intense pleasure for the male partner, she told me, that he will never leave his
lover. She noted that her buceta potion was popular among prostitutes.

The use of such pusangas is very widespread; both men and women may be
pusangueado, ensorcelled by love magic.31 Peruvian newspapers carry classified
advertisements for ready-made pusangas "to conquer, control, and attract
your impossible or resisting lover." It is now, of course, possible to buy pusangas for all purposes on the Internet. In a plot worthy of 0. Henry, anthropologist Marie Perruchon tells how she and her Shuar husband once turned
out to have placed love spells on each other.32

It is important to note that pusangeria includes not only sexual magic but
the enhancement of personal attractiveness for the purposes of business as
well. The shimipampana, arrowroot plant, has a root that is considered to look
like a fist and therefore is used as a pusanga to tame a mujer mala or mujer celosa, an ill-tempered or jealous woman. The root is crushed, Bona Maria told
me, and put into the woman's cafe con leche. In addition, the root can be rubbed
between the hands, and the resulting liquid is mixed into a lotion that, when
applied to the face, will guarantee success in business negotiations or bring
justice in court. Perfumero Javier Arevalo similarly recommends a pusanga
of alacransillo, heliotrope, for good fortune in legal affairs:33 the plant's small
lavender flowers are curved in a way that resembles the stinging tail of the
alacran, scorpion.

Most important, dona Maria made a mixture of dried and powdered plants
she called diez poderes, ten powers, because it contained ten plants, some of
which have been difficult to identify, although dona Maria gave me a sufficient
supply of the finished product to meet my personal needs for the foreseeable
future. In fact, over several conversations, dona Maria named more than ten
plants as ingredients of her pusanga. This may be because from time to time
she conflated several different recipes, or because some of the plant names
she used were in fact synonymous. The pusanga powder is used by dissolving it in cologne or aguardiente, distilled cane liquor, and applying it like perfume. Most commonly used among the colognes, of course, is agua de florida;
but, when making a romantic pusanga powder for a woman, perfumero Javier
Arevalo suggests instead the use of the fragrance Tabu.34

One who wears this pusanga becomes irresistible in matters of both love and business. The ingredients include renaco, strangler fig: carinito, little
love; mashushingo; shimipampana, arrowroot; motelillo; amor seco, dry love;
pinshacallo, toucan's tongue; lengua de perro, dog's tongue; and sangapilla. There
are a number of variations of this recipe; but the key ingredients are the renaco, strangler fig; lengua de perro, dog's tongue; and carinito, little love plant.

When making this pusanga, dona Maria would stay in the monte, the highland jungle, for four days, smoking mapacho, singing the icaros of the plants
to be used, and observing la dieta, the diet, especially avoiding salt and sugar.
On the first day, she would rise early, go into the jungle, and spend the day
gathering the necessary plants. She would spend the remaining days preparing the pusanga-cutting up and drying the plants, grinding them, and finally
sifting them through a new clean cloth to make a fine powder. All this time
she would sing the icaros of the plants, and especially the song of a spirit
named Mayita, who is the genio, spirit, of the pusanga.

Mayita is an elegant beautiful woman, a perfumera and hechicera and pusanguera-a caster of spells who creates love potions through the use of perfumes. When doh a Maria sings her icaro, Mayita comes and dances before
her, wearing necklaces of plants, accompanied by many other women. Dona
Maria especially can smell Mayita's very fragrant perfume; it is this perfume
that enters into the pusanga and gives it power. Other spirits may come as
well-the yacurunas, the water people, and the sirenas, mermaids, the sexually seductive dwellers beneath the water.

Sometimes the pusanga is, in effect, a special-purpose commission: a man
or woman has come to her with a specific love object in mind. In such a case,
while dona Maria sings, she calls the names of the man and woman for whom
the pusanga is intended, bringing together their spirits under a yarina, ivory
palm, whose leaves are used to thatch houses and which therefore symbolizes
marriage. "Under the renaco tree," she sings, "I will put you with this spell,"
so that nothing will ever separate them. Their spirits are como un viento, like
a wind; they leave and enter through their coronas, the crown of their heads;
when the soul has left the body, she says, it is haire, air. She brings the souls
of the man and woman together; where a man has left his wife for another,
for example, he will begin to dream of his wife and feel sad for having left
her. Such a pusanga can take as long as fifteen days to create, or even longer,
singing the icaro of Mayita every Tuesday and Friday, during the regular ayahuasca healing ceremony, for three months, whereupon the straying husband
will have returned.

Don Emilio Andrade similarly whistles the icaro de la piedra, song of the stone, which calls the souls of the man and woman along with a spinning
black stone. He attaches the souls to the rotating stone; the woman feels dizzy
and afraid, and she clings to the man at her side, loving him forever. Or he
uses the icaro de la aranita, song of the little spider, calling a spider to weave
a web around the souls of a man and woman. The sleeping woman dreams
of the man and, upon waking, thinks of him and tries to contact him.35 Don
Jose Curitima Sangama, a Cocama shaman, not only calls the soul of the beloved with song but also places a doll on the altar and perfumes it with sweet
plants, the fragrant palm sangapilla, the orchid named huacanqui, which in
Quechua means You will cry. "And if the girl doesn't love you," he says, "the
black boa lends us its colors, and we adorn the face of the doll with the colors
of the black boa. We also lend the doll its tongue. These are the secrets of love
magic. "36

Dona Maria sees her use of pusangueria as consistent with her practice of
pura blancura, the pure white path. She will not, she says, supply a pusanga
to a married person in order to have an extramarital affair; that is, she says,
against the laws of God. Perfumero don Artiduro Aro Cardenas takes a similar
position regarding his use ofpusangas. "Supposing the man has gone off and
left his family," he says. "I pull him back so he returns to his home so the family can consolidate again. In a short time he will be thinking of his children
and his wife, and he comes back.... I call his spirit back to his family home. I
blow smoke to reunite them. 1137

Dona Maria has rebuked her colleagues who use their pusangueria to
get sex, especially from turistas gringas. One such shaman was a young man,
whom I knew, who had a thriving urban practice in Iquitos, worked with
several promoters of ayahuasca tours, and had a number of highly emotioncharged affairs with American and European tourists-including, purportedly, an Italian countess-with claims and counterclaims of financial and sexual
exploitation. Dona Maria saw in a vision that he kept his pusangas under his
bed, and she told him, in no uncertain terms, to throw them out. But he did
not-perhaps predictably-listen to her. The young shaman for a time promoted his ayahuasca tours on his own Web site.

Don Roberto also does pusangeria when he is asked, but he defers to dona
Maria's expertise in this area. He also collects plants, which he dries and powders; but the pusanga must be curado, cured-don Roberto says that you must
darlefuerza, give it power-by the icaro, of which the most common is simply
called the huarmi icaro, woman icaro. Most healers have their own huarmi
icaro, learned from the appropriate plants; as with other generically named icaros, such as the icaro de ayahuasca, each one is different. The imanes, spirits, of the plants in the pusanga, he says, look like little boys and young girls;
but it is their smell that gives the potion its fuerza, power.

There are limitations to the power of a pusanga. If love is imposed on an
unwilling victim, the effect will last only around three months and then will
fade-or turn to hatred. Realizing that one has been manipulated in this way
is thought to cause rage and conflict.38 In one case with which I am familiar, a
man seduced a fifteen-year-old girl with a pusanga prepared, I am told, by don
Roberto; he married her and had several children with her. But they began to
fight and argue, the love generated by the pusanga faded away, and she went
to don Roberto for a counter-pusanga, so that she could be free of her husband; don Roberto refused, because they were now married and had children.
So she took a lover instead.

MALE POTENCY ENHANCERS

Very popular forms of Amazonian plant medicine are male sexual enhancers,
sold in stalls and shops all over the Upper Amazon. These drinks are probably as well known for their names as for their ingredients: Rompecalzon,
Rip-Your-Shorts; Levantate Lazaro, Arise Lazarus!; Para Para, Stand Up! Stand
Up!; Tumba Hembra, Knock Her Over; Siete Veces Sin Sacar, Seven Times
without Pulling Out; Levantate Pajaro Muerto, Arise Dead Bird!-the word pajaro, bird, being Peruvian Amazon slang for penis.