Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (62 page)

• Una de gato, cat's-claw, is a vine whose stems have small hooklike appendages, so the plant is used to claw out tumors and inflammations.

• Shimipampana, arrowroot, has a root that is considered to look like
a fist, and therefore is used as a pusanga to tame an ill-tempered or
jealous spouse. The root is crushed, dona Maria told me, and put into
some cafe con leche. In addition, the root can be rubbed between the
hands, and the resulting liquid can be mixed into a lotion that, when
applied to the face, will guarantee success in business and in litigation.

• Sangre de grado, dragon's blood, a tree whose red latex looks like
blood, is thus used to treat wounds, ulcers, and skin infections. I have
also often heard the sap referred to, because of its color, as sacha iodo,
jungle iodine. This is a new signature; the sap is good for wounds because it resembles the iodine of biomedicine.

• Jergon sacha, jungle viper, is a shrub with a brown-green-gray mottled
stem that resembles the skin of several South American pit vipers. A
drink made from the root is used to treat snakebite; a poultice, or the
root itself, may be heated and pressed directly on the wound. It can
also, dona Maria told me, be used to treat cancer, which also bites,
like a snake.

HISPANIC CULTURAL SYNDROMES

The idea of "culture-bound syndromes"-amok in Malaysia, koro in Indonesia,
perhaps anorexia nervosa in North America-has been the occasion of considerable debate in medical anthropology.'° Still, there is little doubt that the
names and descriptions of certain sicknesses-susto, empacho, mal afire-are
found throughout Hispanic communities in both North and South America,
and do not correspond to sickness concepts found in other communities.

Much research has been done on these Hispanic sicknesses and on their
complexity and variety.,, Among the Hispanic sicknesses that don Roberto
and dofia Maria have told me about, and which they regularly encounter in
their practice, are susto, fright; pulsario, bloating; mal de ojo, evil eye; mal
aire, bad air; and saladera, bad luck. 12

Susto

Soul loss in mestizo shamanism is almost certainly derived from the Hispanic
concept of susto, soul loss due to fright; indigenous Amazonian shamanic
traditions of soul loss appear to be too distant geographically and conceptually-for example, among the Wakuenai-to have significantly contributed to
the idea.13

Among the Hispanic diagnostic categories, susto is probably the one most
commonly invoked by both don Roberto and dona Maria, and also probably
the Hispanic sickness most investigated by researchers.14 Don Roberto and
dona Maria frequently use the term manchari for the same condition, presumably from the Quechua manchay, to be afraid.' People afflicted with susto are
said to be asustado or often caido, fallen, since the inducing fright in childhood
susto is often considered to have been a fall. Such people are thought to have
suffered a loss of their soul because of fright: they commonly lose their appetite and strength; they are listless, restless, depressed, withdrawn, and lacking
in motivation. They must be cured by restoration of their soul.,' Children with
susto have symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea, constant crying, and insomnia.,?

Many people suffering susto have experienced a sense of inadequacy and
helplessness even before the symptoms begin; anthropologists have given the
examples of a man who experienced an attack of susto after an embarrassing
accident at work that evoked laughter from onlookers, and a woman who suffered an attack after she got into a fight with her unfaithful husband and he
hit her with a rock.,' An epidemiological study of susto has reported that asustados differed from controls without susto in both physical symptoms and
role stress-that is, loss of appetite, loss of weight, fatigue, and lack of motivation, on the one hand, and, on the other, discrepancies between their expectations and their performance in their prescribed social roles.19 Poet Cesar
Calvo writes that manchari "is a different fear, more difficult than the fear we
all know, the one even animals can sense. The manchari enters like a soul into
a body, and the person in that body becomes incapable. 1120

The concept of susto functions as an etiological category. When a person
suffers from certain forms of social dysfunction-listlessness, depression,
lack of motivation-family members or a healer search the past for a frightening event that may have caused the soul to leave the body.- When persons
believe that they are performing their social roles less adequately, according to
their own criteria, than others in the community, the illness category of susto provides a framework within which to conceptualize their experience and seek appropriate healing; perceived social and personal failures are attributed
to a culturally defined sickness. The cure is for the shaman to call back the
soul with the appropriate icaro and the help of the appropriate spirits. The
soul comes back into the body through the corona, the crown of the head,
dona Maria told me, como un viento, like a wind-except for the lost souls of
children, who always appeared to dona Maria as angels.

Pulsario

Dona Maria and-to a somewhat lesser degree-don Roberto introduce a
number of additional Hispanic syndromes into their sickness discourse. The
term pulsario appears to refer to virtually the same disorder that is called empacho elsewhere in Hispanic culture.22 Empacho is caused by a lump of poorly
digested or uncooked food believed to be blocking the intestines, manifesting as a feeling of gas and fullness in the abdomen, lack of appetite, stomach
ache, diarrhea, and vomiting.23 Pulsario has many of the same symptomsdiarrhea, pain, loss of appetite-and manifests as a lump in the stomach just
above the navel. "Doctors call it an ulcer," dona Maria explained to me. The
condition is caused by not eating regularly; dona Maria considered the sickness to be the result of anger or shame.

Children's Sicknesses

Dona Maria, given the nature of her healing practice, frequently referred to
certain traditional Hispanic sicknesses to which children are especially susceptible-mal de ojo, the evil eye, and mal aire, bad air. Evil eye beliefs are
found in many cultures, and encode differences between acceptable and dangerous forms of eye contact.24 The harm caused by the evil eye is intimately
connected to envidia, envy; the Spanish envidia is etymologically related to the
Latin invidere, to look askance, to look with enmity. In Amazonian mestizo
culture, the infliction of the evil eye may be caused by looking upon another
with such envy or even inadvertently, by admiring a baby, for example. Courtesy requires that great care be taken not to look too long or too hard at a child.
It may also be considered rude to look at a child without touching it.

The belief in mal aire is widespread in South America; it occurs, dona
Maria told me, when "something evil passes by"-almas malas, malignos,
demonios, tunchis. The disease can be contagious. When adults, out at night,
encounter one of these wandering souls, it can touch them as they pass by-a
shock, a shiver, an apprehension-and then they can bring the sickness home
to their children. When such invisible vaporous malignancies pass by a baby, the symptoms resemble those of susto-diarrhea, vomiting, unrest, fevernot an uncommon childhood syndrome, often diagnosed in North America as
a result of the invisible vaporous malignancy called a virus.25

There are different types of mal aire. Illness produced by the spirit of a
dead person may be called mat aire de difunto.21 There can be mat aire del monte,
evil air from the jungle, and mat aire del agua, evil air from the water.27 The cure
for this sickness is a bano, bath, pungent with flowers and spices-rosasisa,
cominos, cumin, all cooked together. The child should be bathed in this rapidly, doh a Maria taught me, and the baby's head, soles of the feet, and palms
of the hands should all be sealed with crosses.

HUMORAL MEDICINE

Humoral medicine conceives the universe as made of basic opposing qualities-in the Greek system, hot and cold, wet and dry-and physiological
functioning as a set of interactions among basic humors-blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile .21 According to this theory, health is a matter of balance among humors and their qualities.29

In Hispanic communities in both North and South America, the original
fourfold intersecting classification of hot, cold, wet, and dry has been truncated to considerations only ofwarming and cooling. Varying degrees of hot and
cold are assigned to foods, activities, emotions, sicknesses, and therapies,3°
and the goal of medical treatment is to overcome temperature imbalance. In
Guatemala, for example, diarrhea is classified as a cold disease, and therefore
penicillin, a cold medicine, is not appropriate for treatment. But dysentery is
considered a hot disease because of the presence of blood, and then penicillin is acceptable because the hot disease and the cold medicine balance each
other.3'

This hot-cold distinction seems to have disappeared entirely in South Texas Hispanic communities,32 and it has become vestigial in the Upper Amazon,
overshadowed by the location and extraction of darts and other pathogenic
objects. Still, mestizo shamans specify cold plants, such as chiricsanango
and chiricaspi, to treat hot conditions, such as fever, diarrhea, wounds, and
inflammations.33 Warm plants, such as abuta, ajo sacha, chuchuhuasi, clavohuasca, and ipururo have, as mestizo shaman Manuel Cordova Rios says, "the
effect of warming the blood" and are used to treat cold conditions, such as
arthritis, rheumatism, and male sexual inadequacy.34 We should not be surprised to find some lack of consistency in these attributions.

CATHOLICISM AND SHAMANISM

If you look at the mesa of many mestizo shamans, you will see the usual ritual implements-ayahuasca, agua de florida, camalonga, a shacapa-and a
book. The book is a collection of Catholic prayers and protections.

Most mestizo shamans will tell you they are Catholic, and they are probably
about as Catholic as most mestizos living in the Amazon. More than 8o percent of Peruvians say they are Roman Catholic;2 according to the 1981 census,
93 percent of the rural residents ofMaynas province-within which Iquitos is
located-are Catholic.3 The Peruvian constitution recognizes Roman Catholicism as deserving of government cooperation; public schools offer mandatory classes in Catholic religion, from which non-Catholic parents must request
an exemption in writing from the school principal.

This is not to deny that evangelical Protestantism has made significant
inroads into Catholic hegemony. There are now estimated to be around i.5
million members of evangelical churches in Peru. Few self-identified Catholics attend mass regularly. Thus the number of active Protestant churchgoers
is comparable to that of practicing Catholics.4 In many rural villages, while
the Catholic Church is left padlocked, the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons
or Adventists or some other Protestant group have set up a prayer group and
a meetinghouse.5 "Catholicism has the cathedral," one commentator notes,
"but the Evangelical preacher has the crowds. "I

In fact, there is a long-standing scarcity of Catholic priests throughout
South America.? In the small ribereno villages along the jungle waterways,
masses are performed infrequently; a priest may appear once or twice a year
and hastily perform marriage ceremonies for all the cohabiting couples,
sometimes after a man and woman have lived together for decades.' And there are also some not-so-subtle anticlerical attitudes among the riberefios.
A popular toy is a carving of a Franciscan monk in a robe; pulling on a string
lifts up the robe, and a huge erect penis pops up, like a jack-in-the-box. People
think this is hilarious.

Such humor taps into the widespread belief in the immorality of the clergy.9 And such disdain is often reciprocal. Anthropologists Norman and Dorothea Whitten tell ofa Catholic priest castigating a number of Canelos Quichua
participants in a celebration. They are drunkards and dope takers, the priest
says, spending their time with ayahuasca when they should be working for
their wives; the celebration is slothful and savage.'0