Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (60 page)

But there are differences as well. Beings of the jungle are frightening-indeed, able to turn one mad with fright; beings of the water are sexually dangerous-able to seduce, abduct, and steal you away forever.

WANDERING SOULS

The air, especially at night, is full of souls-souls of the dead, souls of departed and powerful shamans, and what doiia Mari used to call almas olvidadas,
forgotten souls, the wandering souls of those who were neglected and abused
while alive. The wandering and sorrowful soul of a dead person may appear as
a being called a tunchi.3 An evil spirit of the dead, driven by malignancy rather
than sorrow, is called a maligno or an alma mala, an evil soul.4

The term tunchi is multivalent in the Upper Amazon: among the Aguaruna,
the term refers to a shaman;5 among the Shuar, the term refers to a special
kind of tsentsak, magical dart, made from certain small spiders;' among the
Achuar, the term refers to a sickness caused by sorcery, as opposed to a sunkur
or ordinary sickness.? Among mestizos, the tunchi is a wandering bodiless
spirit that cannot be seen but can be recognized at night by its mournful
whistle. As Cesar Calvo says, few have seen it; many have heard it; everyone
fears it.' A tunchi is the departed soul of a deceased human being;9 children
are taught that a whistle at night is a spirit of the dead.'° Tunchis may cause
sickness, especially the sickness called mal aire, bad air;" and the souls of the
murdered dead seek revenge.

Although frightening to encounter, mostly tunchis are pathetic creatures,
often birdlike, who can be kept away by tobacco smoke.12 But you must never
mock a tunchi, for the infuriated soul will chase you, whistling, so that even
the most courageous become panic-stricken, fleeing to madness or death.13
People in Iquitos may present themselves as skeptical, but, when pressed,
everyone has a story about meeting a tunchi-or something that might have
been a tunchi.14

Sometimes tunchis are those who have suffered a particularly tragic death,
especially by drowning; sometimes humanlike ghosts of the drowned can be
seen in phantom canoes, moving upriver, back toward their former homes.15
You can hear them drifting alone in the jungle night, whistling like birds, like
sorcerers. This is closely related to a widespread belief in almas que recogen sus
pasos, souls retracing their steps-the shadowy souls of the still living visiting,
shortly before their death, the places where they have lived. "I saw him walking on the street," someone will report, "and he was in the hospital dying! n6

There is a striking relationship between these wandering souls and nocturnal jungle birds. Take, for example, the ayaymama or potoo. The name
ayaymama reflects the belief that these birds are transformations of children
abandoned in the jungle by their mothers, and their disconsolate cry asks, Ay ay mama, why have you abandoned me? During the day, the birds perch
motionlessly out in the open, on the ends of branches or broken-off stumps,
virtually invisible in the jungle, with their mottled brown or gray coloration.
At night they hunt flying insects in swooping flycatcher-like flights from their
exposed perch.

At night, too, their eyes are highly reflective, and their brilliant eye shine
can be seen even at great distances; their cry, heard especially on moonlit
nights, is one of the most haunting sounds of the jungle-melancholy and
lamenting, a series of loud wailing notes that gradually descend in pitch. The
cry starts out loud enough to be startling if you are close; and as you turn toward this mournful sound, there in the moonlit darkness you see the shining
and seemingly disembodied eyes.

THE CHULLACHAQUI

The chullachaqui is a demon of the jungle, known to almost everyone in the
Amazon, frightening and pathetic.'? He is characterized by having one or both
feet deformed-either both turned backward or one shaped like that of an animal, such as a deer or jaguar;" the name is Quechua, meaning uneven feet. The
deformed foot is emblematic of his nature: turned backward, it leaves false
tracks; but it cannot be disguised, revealing his identity. He takes on the form
of a friend or relative, or of an animal to draw in hunters, and lures people
deep into the jungle, where they become hopelessly lost. People thus stolen
away he then abandons, makes sick, enslaves, or drives mad.

The poet Cesar Calvo pictures chullachaquis as zombielike creatures-creations of great shamans, sculpted out of the air, or formed from kidnapped
children. If a kidnapped child is charged with evil powers, the right foot becomes deformed, self-contradictory-an animal foot when the chullachaqui
is in human form, a human foot when in animal form. But there is also a
second type of chullachaqui-benevolent, a person of the good, "a deceit in
the service of the truth," with no deformity. In either case, the kidnapped one
does not return.19

Chullachaquis are also known as yashingo, curpira, shapingo, and shapshico.
Two generic terms are also applied to chullachaquis-supai, demons, and
sacharuna, jungle people. The term sacharuna, jungle people, makes the chullachaqui the land equivalent of the yacuruna, water people.

Yet there is something sad about the chullachaqui. He dwells alone in the
inundated forest, where the chullachaqui caspi tree grows, or under lupuna
trees, with which he has an "indissoluble agreement of love.120 He keeps a garden in which he cultivates only sacha caimito, and lives on its fruits.- Sometimes he appears, comically, as a small man wearing huge red shoes, red
pants, and a hat; he may be challenged to a wrestling match, and one who
defeats him will be given good hunting and happiness.22

Colpas

A colpa is a watering place where animals come to drink and bathe and where
there may be salty clay to eat. Water from a colpa may be used in pusangueria,
love magic, since animals at a colpa, even enemies, are said to behave in peace
and harmony. Perfumero Artidoro Aro Cardenas uses agua de co(pas in his healing and protecting flower baths.,

NOTE

1. Castonguay, 1990, p. 29; Chaumeil, 1983/2000, p. 179; Heaven & Charing, 2006,
PP-149,176.

The chullachaqui is also madre del monte, mother of the wilderness, the
master of animals; by following the appropriate diet, one can propitiate the
chullachaqui, who will grant success in hunting but punish those who take
too many animals. In this, the chullachaqui is like other madres of the jungle-the mothers of the trees, the mothers of the colpas-who protect their
domains from foresters and hunters.23

There has thus developed, in the last few decades, a new version of the
chullachaqui, born out of an increasing awareness of commercial encroachment on the jungle-the chullachaqui as defender of the forest, enemy of
lumber and oil companies; he heals wounded animals and punishes those
who cut down the trees and hunt animals out of greed.14 "The chullachaqui is
a protective spirit of the jungle," says one description, "who can harm or help
people, depending on whether they mistreat or respect nature in the jungle. 1125
This new chullachaqui "is generous with those who make rational use of the
resources of the forest, but is harmful toward people who invade his space
without permission and destroy its plant and animal resources.""

Don Agustin Rivas tells of a jungle encounter with a small man who had
an aged face, curved nose, small brilliant eyes, and very small mouth, and was
missing one foot. Although the man was dressed normally, don Agustin recognized him immediately as a chullachaqui. Don Agustin expressed his delight in finally meeting a real chullachaqui, and they smoked a pipe together;
don Agustin mentioned that he had been having bad luck in hunting lately,
and the chullachaqui said, "Those are my animals. You need to ask my permission first, and you have never asked me before shooting an animal. But
today you're going to kill an animal." Don Agustin suddenly felt dizzy and fell to the ground in a faint; when he awoke, the chullachaqui was gone. Almost immediately, he came across a very large deer and shot it-a perfect shot
through the heart.27

THE SERPENT MOTHERS

Two great snakes inhabit the land and water-the sachamama, mother of the
jungle, the boa; and the yacumama, mother of the water, the anaconda. But
these are not ordinary snakes. They are huge, as large as trucks, as large as
steamboats, their eyes shining in the dark like searchlights. The sachamama
lies still, looking like a fallen tree, for hundreds of years, attracting its prey
with its rainbow hypnotic powers. When it moves, it knocks down trees like
a bulldozer. It can be used as an arcana for protection and as a weapon for
attack, when called by the proper icaro. The yacumama is thirty to forty feet
long; its bones are marble, and its multicolored skin flashes in the light. It
may in fact appear as a steamboat filled with people, and is sometimes called
supaylancha, spirit boat-a battleship or submarine carrying powerful shamans, great doctors. Almost everyone who has been out on the water at night
will tell at least one tale of a terrifying encounter with a yacumama.z1

BEINGS OF THE WATER

While the jungle is fearsome and uncanny, the water is alluring, sexually dangerous. The three primary types of other-than-human persons that live under the water-water people, mermaids, and dolphins-overlap considerably
in their attributes, abodes, and erotic dangers; they are all seductive spirits
who live in great underwater cities, take human form, and entice or kidnap
humans for sexual purposes. When fishermen do not return, when husbands
disappear, when young girls do not come home at night or become mysteriously pregnant, the answer is clear: they have been seduced and abducted by
the erotic creatures of the uncanny depths.

Such abductions are-like the water beings themselves-physical. In this
they differ clearly from various types of soul loss, such as in the sickness
called susto or manchari, where the physical body remains but the shaman
must summon the soul to return. These beings of the jungle and the river,
sacharuna and yacuruna, steal the body, and the shaman must persuade them
to give it back.

All the water spirits are believed to live in beautiful cities in their underwater world, to which they carry their abducted victims, and which great shamans can visit, to learn their songs and secrets. These cities may be shared
by water people and mermaids; dolphins may live there too, as guardians and
police. Don Agustin Rivas tells how, during an ayahuasca vision, the sirenas,
mermaids, took him to visit their realm beneath the Amazon. "There were
buildings and beautiful women dancing in front of me," he says, "wearing celestial dresses of clear pink, and dresses made of algae with diamonds, snails
and precious stones. They were riding on the backs of large serpents and invited me to journey with them. Sitting on these women's tails, I was traveling within the water of my vision." They took him to a spaceship, which they
launched into outer space; the yacuruna traveled into space with him, singing
the most beautiful and marvelous songs.29

Yacuruna

The yacuruna, water people, look more or less like human beings, except that
they live underwater in beautiful cities, often at the mouths of rivers. Sometimes these cities are described as upside-down mirror images of human cities-that is, like reflections on the surface of the water. Here the yacuruna live
in palaces of crystal with multicolored walls of fish scales and pearl, reclining
on hammocks of gazelle feathers, under a mosquito net of butterfly wings.
These tropes can be extended: the hammocks of the yacuruna are boas, their
seats are turtles, their canoes are alligators.3° In different accounts, yacuruna
may be hairy, or have their heads turned backward, or even have deformed
feet, like the chullachaqui.31

People stolen away by the yacuruna come in time to resemble their captors: first their eyes and then their head and feet turn backward. When the
transformation is complete, the stolen one has turned into a yacuruna and can
never return.jz Or the yacuruna may turn around the head of the one they have
abducted immediately, so that the person cannot find the way home, but must
continue onward into their city under the water.

The yacuruna are also great healers and can be summoned to help the shaman in his work. The yacuruna may teach an abducted person the healing arts
and, when trust has been established, turn the person's head toward the front
again and let the person return to the human world.33 Similarly, the yacuruna
may be the source of shamanic powers.

Don Juan Flores Salazar tells of how his little sister was pulled under the
water while swimming and disappeared. Years later she appeared to him and
said that she was still alive, married to a yacuruna, turned into a mermaid, and
a healer of the waters. He continues to consult with her, for she knows many
remedies. He thinks that this is perhaps their destiny, for her to be a healer in the waters and him to be a healer on the land, to transmit their knowledge to
each other.34

Belief in powerful underwater beings is found elsewhere in the Amazon.
Among the Achuar, the tsunki are male and female spirits who resemble humans and dwell in rivers and lakes, very much like the yacuruna among the
mestizos. Tsunki social and material life mirrors that of the Achuar; they are a
source of shamanic powers, and they engage in sexual relations with humans.
Married Achuar men speak casually about their double life with their human
family, on the one hand, and their adulterous underwater tsunki family on the
other.35

Among the Shuar, the shamanic power of the water people is made explicit, and they attribute great shamanic power to the tsunki. Indeed, Tsunki is
the primordial first shaman, the source of all shamanic power, the origin of
knowledge about the use of tsentsak darts, who continues to live beneath the
waters in a house made ofanacondas, using a turtle as a stool. Tsunki can give
to favored shamans a type of tsentsak made of crystal, which are particularly
deadly; and he can kill shamans with whom he is angry.36 It is possible to receive tsentsak directly from Tsunki in a dream or vision, instead of receiving
them from a human shaman.37 It is sometimes said that only those who have
had a vision ofTsunki can become shamans.38 A Shuar shaman sings, I am like
Tsunki. I am like Tsunki. And again: I am sitting with Tsunki.39