Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (5 page)

The Attack by Don X

In the late iggos, dona Maria was employed from time to time to do healing
ceremonies for ayahuasca tourists at a lodge about two hours by boat from
Iquitos. There she worked alongside a well-known ayahuasquero whom we
will here call don X.

As we will discuss, accusations of sorcery are not infrequent in the Upper
Amazon, and can have serious consequences. Although I knew don X personally-indeed, I was living with him in his jungle tambo during part of this period-the constraints imposed by the relationship of confianza I had with dona
Maria and her friends prevented me from asking him for his side of the allegations against him. Hence his anonymity.

Now, don X had a son whom he had trained as an ayahuasquero, and who
was able to pick up occasional employment at the lodge when dona Maria was
unable to attend. According to dona Maria and her friends, don X decided that
if dona Maria could be eliminated, the way would be open for his son to take
her place in the relatively lucrative business of healing gringo tourists. So don
X attacked dona Maria with virotes, magic darts, sending them deep into her
chest and throat, causing her to suffer a serious stroke.

The attack took place at the tourist lodge, at night, when dona Maria was
sleeping. She tried to get out of bed to urinate, but, when she got up, she
fell to the floor, partially paralyzed, unable to move. She cried for help. One
worker came, but he was not strong enough to move her; eventually, with the
help of the gringo owner, she was lifted back onto the bed. "She was just like
deadweight," the owner later told me. "It was all I could do to get her up to
her bed myself."

Dona Maria spent the next six weeks in the hospital, slowly recovering
from her stroke. She had originally resisted hospitalization, because she believed that the injections she would be given there would kill her. She felt
herself to be lost. "Where will I find help?" she thought. Throughout this
period, she heard a wicked mocking brujo laugh-the voice, she realized, of
don X.

When she returned home, she was cared for by a Cocoma Indian shaman
named Luis Culquiton, who was able to remove a few of the virotes, and who
took care of her for six months. Don Roberto, her maestro ayahuasquero, had
gone away to his chacra, his swidden garden in his village, but sent her medicine from afar. Although she recovered slowly from her stroke, she was unable to drink ayahuasca. She was thus cut off from the very sources of her protection; indeed, part of the cleverness of the attack was to separate her from
her protectors by making it hard for her to drink ayahuasca.

The problem was that Maria continued to work with don X. She did not tell
anyone that she had recognized his mocking laugh. Don X, as brujos do, allegedly concealed his malevolence under the guise of concern and sympathy.
The virotes in her throat kept Maria from being able to sing at the healing
ceremonies. "See, she can't sing," said don X to the gringo owner. "She is still
too weak. You need to bring in my son."

Finally, after six months, don Roberto returned and sucked out the remaining virotes, but Maria continued to be weak. After her stroke, she said, her
brain was "blank," and all the power she had received from ayahuasca was
taken from her. She lost her visions, she could not drink ayahuasca-yet, she
said, her spiritual power remained, because that came from Jesucristo and
Hermana Virgen. "Whatever happens," she told me, "you must keep going
forward, never give up."

Slowly, she began to drink ayahuasca again. As she drank more and more,
she began to recover some of her powers. Yet, at the same time, she continued
to work with don X, who actively suppressed her ayahuasca visions with his
secret songs. Indeed, one of the ways a sorcerer attacks another shaman is
by using an icaro to darken the vision of the victim. I do not know why Maria
continued to work alongside her attacker-perhaps concern over accusing a
well-known ayahuasquero, although, over time, she let the identity of her attacker be known; perhaps bravado, a demonstration of her own fuerza; perhaps-and this seems to me most likely-a demonstration of the forbearance
she prized as part of her practice of pura blancura, the pure white path.

In July 2oo6, dona Maria died of complications resulting from the stroke.
She continued her healing work, especially with children, to the end.

Dona Maria often shook her head in dismay at my questions, my blockheaded inability to absorb the immense plant knowledge she offered to me. What I needed to learn I would learn, over time, from the plants themselves,
she said; the way for me to learn was to "continue on, and all will be shown
to you." This was typical dona Maria. When I would say I couldn't learn any
more, she would scold me. Study, study, study, she would tell me. Follow, follow,
follow.

PRELIMINARIES

It is getting dark, and the room is lit only by a few candles. People are beginning to gather. They talk quietly in small groups or lie in mute and solitary
suffering on the floor. People tell jokes and exchange stories; they talk about
their neighbors, about hunting conditions, about encounters with strange
beings in the jungle. Some of them will drink ayahuasca, and some will not;
some will drink for vision, and some for cleansing. Some drink in order to
see the face of the envious and resentful enemy who has made them ill, or the
one who has caused their business plans to fail, or the one with whom their
spouse is secretly sleeping. Some drink to find lost objects, or see distant relatives, or find the answer to a question. Some may use 1a medicina as a purgative, a way to cleanse themselves. All are here for don Roberto to heal them.

Except for me. I am here not to be healed but, rather, to learn the medicine.
I am here to be the student of el doctor, la planta maestro, la diosa, ayahuasca,
the teacher, the goddess; to take the plant into my body, to give myself over
to the teacher, to become the aprendiz of the plant, while under the powerful
protection of don Roberto's magical songs, his icaros. I have been following
la dieta, the diet-no salt, no sugar, no sex, eating only plantains and pescaditos, little fish. I have drunk ayahuasca with don Roberto before, and with other
mestizo healers around Iquitos-dona Maria, don Rbmulo, don Antonio. I
am nervous about the vomiting. I wonder what I will see tonight; I wonder if I
will see anything.

Don Roberto comes into the room and moves from person to person, joking, smiling, asking about mutual acquaintances, gathering information,
talking about matters of local interest, getting the stories of the sick. Some
people laugh at a joke, feel the brief light of his full attention on them and their problems. He spends some time talking informally with each person
who has come for healing, and often with accompanying family members,
quietly gathering information about the patient's problems, relationships,
and attitudes. In addition, as himself a member of the community, don Roberto often has a shrewd idea of the tensions, stresses, and sicknesses with
which the patient may be involved. There are about twenty people present. Everyone is given a seat and a plastic bucket, filled with a few inches of water, to
vomit in.

Learning the Medicine

When I lived with don Romulo Magin in his jungle hut, we drank ayahuasca together, sometimes with his son don Winister, also a shaman, as often as I could
stand it. The goal of the sessions was not healing but, rather, for don Romulo to
guide my visions with his songs, make sure I kept the prescribed dietary prohibitions, and protect me from sorcerers who might resent my presence. None of
my teachers was concerned that I myself might not become a healer; it is not
uncommon among mestizo shamans to follow the ayahuasca path as a personal
quest for learning and understanding., Indeed, mestizo shamans may periodically gather just to share their visions, trade magical knowledge, and renew
their strength.

NOTES

i. See Luna, 1986c, p. 51.

2. Luna, 1986c, p. 142; Luna & Amaringo, 1993, p. 43 n. 69.

THE MESA

Don Roberto leaves and then returns, dressed for the ceremony. He is now
wearing a white shirt painted with Shipibo Indian designs, a crown of feathers, and beads. He smiles, makes a joke, and then spreads a piece of Shipibo
cloth on the ground, to form his mesa, table., On the cloth he places his ceremonial instruments:

• a bottle containing the hallucinogenic ayahuasca that will be drunk
during the ceremony;

• a gourd cup from which the ayahuasca will be drunk;

• a bottle of camalonga, a mixture of the seeds of the yellow oleander,
white onion, camphor, and distilled fermented sugarcane juice,
which he may drink during the ceremony;

• bottles of sweet-smelling ethanol-based cologne-almost always
commercially prepared agua de florida, but also including colonia de rosas and aqua de kananga-which he will use to anoint the participants
and which he also may drink during the ceremony;

• mapacho, tobacco, in the form of thick round cigarettes hand-rolled
in white paper, distinguished from finos, thinner and considerably
weaker commercial cigarettes;

• his shacapa, a bundle of leaves from the shacapa bush, tied together at
the stem with fibers from the chambira or fiber palm, which he shakes
as a rattle during the ceremony; and

• his piedritas encantadas, magical stones, which he may use during the
ceremony to help locate and drain the area of sickness in the patient's body.

PROTECTION

Don Roberto then goes around the room, putting agua de florida in cross patterns on the forehead, chest, and back of each participant; whistling a special icaro of protection called an arcana; and blowing mapacho smoke into the
crown of the head and over the entire body of each participant. Don Roberto
usually sings the same protective icaro at each ceremony. The song has no
special name; don Roberto simply calls it la arcana.

The goal is to cleanse and protect, on several levels. The arcana calls in the
protective genios, the spirits of thorny plants and fierce animals, and the spirits of birds-hawks, owls, trumpeters, screamers, macaws-which are used
in sorcery and thus the ones who best protect against it. Moreover, the good
spirits like-and evil spirits hate-the strong sweet smell of agua de florida
and mapacho, which thus both cleanse and protect the body of the participant. The goal, as don Roberto puts it, is to erect a wall of protection "a thousand feet high and a thousand feet below the earth."

PREPARING THE AYAHUASCA

Don Roberto sits quietly on a low bench behind his mesa, lights another mapacho cigarette, picks up the bottle of ayahuasca, and blows mapacho smoke
over the liquid. He begins to whistle a tune-a soft breathy whistle, hardly
more than a whisper-as he opens the bottle of ayahuasca and blows tobacco
smoke into it. The ayahuasca, don Roberto says, tells him-in the resonating sound of his breath whistling in the bottle-which icaro he should sing, and
he "follows the medicine." The initially almost tuneless whistling takes on
musical shape, becomes a softly whistled tune, and becomes the whispered
words of an icaro, which may be different at different ceremonies.

FIGURE 4. Don Roberto blowing tobacco smoke over the ayahuasca.