Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (61 page)

Tsunki lives in the whirlpools of the remote waterfalls and appears in the
form of a beautiful woman, a water snake, or other water being.4° Thus there
is ambiguity: the term tsunki can refer to the water people generally; to a particular water person, often a seductive female with long hair and large breasts,
at least as reported by men; and to Tsunki, the primordial shaman.4' An Achuar widow or unmarried woman may become a shaman and remain celibate,
except for her sexual relationship with Tsunki.42

The Achuar tell a story of a woman carried off by Tsunki, who dwelled with
him under the water, where there were great towns built of stone and people traveled in canoes as swift as airplanes. She returned to visit her grieving
mother, who thought her daughter had been eaten by an anaconda; but the
woman had become a great shaman while living with Tsunki, and the people
of her village sought to kill her as a sorceress. So the woman said, "If that's
the way it is, I shall go away forever, back to my husband Tsunki." And she
disappeared into the lake, never to return.43

Similarly, among the Canelos Quichua, the master of the waters is Sungui
or Tsungui, symbolized by the anaconda, and may be male or female or both.
When male, he sits on the turtle seat of power in a house whose poles are anacondas; when angry and fierce, Sungui becomes the rainbow; Sungui is
the first shaman of the water people. Don Rodrigo Andi chants that he has
acquired the power of Sungui from the great lagoon, that he now has powerful medicine with which to heal; he fends off pathogenic projectiles with the
shield ofSungui.44

Mermaids

Amazonian sirenas, mermaids, look just like the mermaids of the classical
European imagination-beautiful blond women with the tail of a fish, sometimes with several fish tails, who have melodious voices and hypnotic eyes
and live in caves beneath the waters.45 They travel on boas. Sometimes they
even turn into boas; if the woman sleeping next to you turns into a boa during
the night, that is a good sign that you have been seduced by a mermaid.46 Like
dolphins, they can transform into human beings and seek sex with human
men, just as dolphins seek sex with human women. Handsome young fishermen in their boats are at constant risk of abduction by mermaids.47 That is
why some men go out fishing and never return.

Sirenas will seduce men with their sweet sad songs and carry them off to
their underwater world. A sirena sings her songs on a lonely beach or on a
precipice by the water. A young man who hears her song will approach and
yield to her, abandoning everything and going off with her forever. The family
of the one who has disappeared think he has drowned, but the body is never found; if they ask a shaman, he tells them that the young man has been
bewitched by a sirena and has gone to live with her in her kingdom in the
depths 48 Or the missing person may speak through the mouth of the shaman:
"I am alive in an underwater city where there are mermaids and men with fish
tails. There are great doctors, and life is beautiful and eternal. 1149

Both mermaids and yacuruna can become powerful allies of the shaman.
Mermaids can appear in ayahuasca visions singing beautiful icaros, by which
they exercise power over the underwater world and which they will sometimes
teach to a fortunate shaman. Like dolphins and yacuruna, mermaids can be
powerful shamans, often summoned to aid in pusangueria, love magic. Offspring of humans and mermaids can be powerful healers, who live underwater and can be called among the healing spirits at an ayahuasca ceremony.5°
The word yara is sometimes used to denote a sexually seductive mermaid,
with blond hair and mother-of-pearl skin. Don Agustin Rivas tells how, while
following la dieta, a beautiful strange female spirit named Yara would appear
to him at dawn, lift his mosquito net, and lie down with him. He would awake
just before having sex with her.5'

Dolphins

The bufeo Colorado, pink dolphin (Inia geoffrensis), is considered a powerful
shaman, which casts spells when it surfaces, perhaps because its blowhole
makes blowing and whistling sounds similar to those made by a shaman.52
Much dolphin behavior supports belief in their intelligence. They are curious,
and they will swim near boats and approach swimmers in the water.53 They
will chase a school of fish, allowing fishermen to go upstream and set their
nets; the dolphins will then remain on the outside of the nets, easily capturing any fish that escape-a curiously symbiotic relation between humans and
dolphins.54

Mestizos firmly believe that dolphins seek sexual intercourse with human
beings. A menstruating women in a boat is in particular danger; a dolphin will
ram her boat and overturn it, dragging her to the river bottom for sexual intercourse, where the woman may drown. Dolphins also turn into human form in
order to seduce women and to make children that will later serve them. They
appear primarily as fair handsome men dressed in dapper white linen suits
and Italian fedoras, who attend parties, buying drinks for everyone and stealing or seducing women amid the noise, confusion, and dancing.55 An infatuated woman may disappear, having thrown herself into the river out of her
desire to stay forever with her dolphin lover.56 If a young woman is impregnated and the father is unknown, the pregnancy is often blamed on a nocturnal liaison with a dolphin, who presumably lured the maiden into the water.57

But just as chullachaquis cannot hide their deformed foot, dolphins cannot disguise their blowhole, and always appear wearing a hat; and they will
not drink, since being drunk may break the spell and reveal their true identity.
Such an interloper may be frightened away by removing his hat and revealing
that he is really a dolphin.

In line with the attributed sexuality of the dolphin is the belief that female
dolphin genitals are the same as-indeed, more desirable than-those of human females. It is said that no woman can compare with a female dolphin
in the passion or skills of sex, "more delicious in love than a woman, more
tasty," says poet Cesar Calvo.58 Stories are told of men who began to copulate with female dolphins and found it so pleasurable that they could not
stop, until first their semen and then their blood was completely drained.59
Don Agustin Rivas tells how, when he was thirteen years old, he in fact had
sex with a dolphin that had jumped into his boat-a dolphin, he says, "with
small breasts and pubic hair just like a woman." He thought the dolphin had jumped into his boat in order to have sex with him; he had heard "that dolphins could be more sexually gratifying than women," so he took off his pants
and had sex with it.6o

Dolphins are hunted not for food but for body parts. If a man wears the
ear of a dolphin on his wrist, he will enjoy large and lasting erections ;6, the
vulva of a dolphin tied on the upper arm makes one irresistible to women;
hanging a dolphin tooth around the neck of a child will cure diarrhea; a powder made from the pulverized eye, fat, teeth, or penis of the dolphin may be
used to seduce women.61 A sorcerer can attack a woman using the penis of a
dolphin, calling the spirit of the dolphin to inflict on the woman a voracious
sexual appetite, which she then alleviates with every available man.63 Because
of the slaughter of pink dolphins for these purposes, the species is now listed
as vulnerable on the Red List published by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature-that is, facing a high risk of extinction in the wild in the
medium-term future. 64

Four features of traditional Hispanic medicine have significantly affected
mestizo shamanism-the emphasis on limpia, external purification of the
body, including flower baths; the doctrine of signatures; Hispanic cultural
syndromes, such as susto and pulsario; and humoral medicine.

EXTERNAL CLEANSING

While the mestizo practice of vomiting and inner purgation clearly derives
from indigenous Amazonian culture, the use oflimpias, cleansing baths, and
sahumerias, sweat baths, reflect Hispanic influences. Sahumerias are used for
healing among Mexican Americans on the Texas border., Limpias are an important part of Mexican healing,2 and among Mexican Americans, baflos especiales defortuna, special baths of good luck, are used to protect people from
sacalio, bad luck, just as banos de flores, flower baths, are used by mestizo
shamans in cases of saladera.3

THE DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES

Don Roberto knows hundreds of plants, at least in the sense that he is familiar
with that many, in the same way that a biomedical physician probably knows
hundreds of medicines. I think that most shamans-like most biomedical
physicians-regularly use a few dozen plant medicines in their everyday routine practice and go outside that number only in difficult cases, perhaps after
consultation with a specialist. Even so, I have often wondered how a shaman
remembers all those plants.

The doctrine of signatures is often attributed to Paracelsus and was pervasive in Europe by the sixteenth century. The doctrine asserted that the
inner virtues of a plant are manifest in its signature, or outer appearancethat God had mercifully ordained that humans could read the healing powers of plants from their physical characteristics.4 For example, according to
a seventeenth-century herbal, we can know that Saint-John's-wort is good
for cuts and wounds because the leaves have holes in them, and the flowers,
when putrefied, look like blood, "which teacheth us, that this herb is good
for wounds, to close them and fill them up."5 In addition, the yellow color of
saffron suggests its usefulness for jaundice; the brain-like surface of a walnut
indicates its value for head ailments; the spotted leaves of lungwort, appearing like pulmonary disease, indicates its potential to cure chest complaints.'

The system in Europe was likely as much mnemonic as it was philosophical. It was easy to remember that the small celandine was good for hemorrhoids because its root had small nodules that looked like swellings. It also
helped that the name of the plant was pilewort.7

Mestizo shamans apparently inherited the doctrine of signatures from
Hispanic culture. I have found little evidence that there was any indigenous
Amazonian equivalent of this way of viewing plants. Ethnobotanist William
Balee, in his extensive study of Ka'apor plant use, devotes several pages to the
doctrine of signatures, only to conclude that, by and large, the doctrine does
not apply to Ka'apor medicinal plant use. And, certainly, the subsequent descriptions of medicinal plants bear this out; not one description relates plant
use to plant form, although some plants used to ensure good hunting are said
to smell like the game animal against which they work.'

For most mestizo shamans, the doctrine of signatures is an unstated premise of much of their plant medicine. This is most clear in pusanguerfa, love
medicine. Clinging plants, especially lianas and vines, announce their utility
for love medicine, especially the renaco, strangler fig, which clings to its support tree like a devoted lover. In the same way, buceta hembra has two leaves
on each stalk, the smaller of which clings to the underside of the larger and
looks very much like a vagina; amor seco, dry love, has tiny sticky leaves that
cling to the clothing or skin of passersby; sacha corazon, jungle heart, has
heart-shaped leaves and clings to the trunks of trees, and is thus used not only
in love medicine but also in the treatment of diseases related to the heart and
blood. Perfumero don Artidoro Aro Cardenas adds another signature: a plant
that attracts bright birds will also attract beautiful women.9

In the Upper Amazon, the system is probably more mnemonic than metaphysical: signatures provide a way to remember the uses of a plant. Here are
some additional examples:

• Cana brava, giant cane, can grow more than thirty feet tall, straight
up from the ground, even pushing its way through other plants-como
hombre muy macho, dona Maria glossed for me. It is thus used to treat
erectile dysfunction, called hombre caido, perhaps best translated as
male droop.