YAJÈ - THE NEW PURGATORY: Page 2
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The banks of the lower Putumayo.
"The jungle is for the native and when not for him, for the obstinate.
For the stubborn, romantic and masochistic rebel from the city
who senses that it offers some mysterious illumination when all
evidence points to the hard truth that it is a crude, uncomfortable,
uncouth and lonely, very lonely, existence for an outsider. And
yet . . .How beautiful the Putumayo is when you really see it
! First it happens with yajé, a transitory inspiration, to be
sure, but one that strengthens your determination to stick things
out. Then a few days pass and - since the sessions only take place
once a week - the perception fades and vanishes. Tedium overpowers
you and you slide back into desperation. But even though you are
not aware of it, the spirit of the vine is within you, alive and
subtly working away and this being will not allow the wish to
recover that happy sensibility to die - if you trust in him."
If the taitas, as they bring yajé to our world, have already
broken many of the traditional rules, why can't they or we go
even further ? Indeed, if the magic of yajé is in the plant itself,
if it is a spiritual force and therefore an eternal one, why do
we need indigenous guides at all ? Why, when we have such a different
formation, should we be bound by the values of one particular
culture - values which, by definition, are relative and temporal
? What is to stop us from removing the non-essential elements
- the ones that appeal to our nostalgia and longing for the exotic
- and use it in a way that is relevant to our own time and our
own culture, as Jonathan Ott suggests ?
These are not only legitimate arguments in themselves but also
- strangely enough - they find some support in the very indigenous
tradition which they question. The taitas themselves say that
the plant is the teacher and they its adjuncts. They emphasize
that you must drink as much of it as you can and the only valuable
lessons the ones you learn, the hard way, for yourself. Yet they
themselves would never dream of abandoning their hierarchical
practice of communicating knowledge from master to apprentice
within a rich and ordered ritual context.
These are complex philosophical questions and even if I (or any
one else) were capable of answering them, it wouldn't really matter.
The march of time will determine the future of yajé, probably
in a way that is not to my liking but then I have to remember
that it is, precisely, the decadence of the indigenous culture
that allows me to participate in their rituals. The only thing
that is clear to me is that yajé has escaped from the hands of
its indigenous masters and anything may happen to it from now
on. In more pessimistic moods, feeling the dilution of many of
the rituals I now go to in Bogotá compared to those which marked
my initiation in Buenavista and knowing that those, in turn, were
a degeneration of what went on before, I project a situation where,
in fifty or a hundred years, many thousands of people will be
drinking yajé in different parts of the world but no one will
understand what it is about anymore. Not the true depth and majesty
of it.
I stick with my committment to the indigenous tradition, at least
as I know it, for the simple reason that it works, both for me
and my companions. When we do yajé with bogus shamans (some of
whom may be Indians, for it is not really a matter of the practitioner's
race but his respect for the tradition), we realize that there
is a big contrast between the two experiences. A contrast which
can be observed, not in vague terms of feeling but in specific
phenomena. If the shaman ignores this law, you may not vomit at
all, your pinta will be disappointing or non-existent, you are
more likely to fall asleep and the yajé won't inspire to sing
and dance.
Tikuna girl in ceremonial costume. The homeland of the Tikuna
ethnic group is the Colombian Amazon, the most important nuclei
living around Leticia on the big river and important tributaries
like the river Amacayacu, which, as the first part of the word
suggests, is the "river of the hammocks". This is the territory
of the fabled Amazonian river dolphins, which are sacred animals
that figure in many Tikuna myths. The famous pink dolphins or
"bufeos" are said, in these legends, to sink canoes and strike
those who fall from them until they drown. The other class of
dolphin, the "toninas", which are gray, are by contrast benevolent
spirits which help those who fall from canoes to reach the banks
and also push fish towards the canoes to help the Tikuna fishermen.
The Tikunas practice ayahuasca ceremonies but little is known
about their practices.
Tikuna man with headdress. Note the characteristic brightly-colored
bird´s feathers and the strip made of "yanchama", a bark that
is used for a variety of ceremonial clothing.
Exterior view of a maloca
Interior of a maloca of the Colombian Amazon. The maloca is the
"Long House" of the indigenous people of the Colombian Amazon.
In their complex mythologies, it represents, among many other
things, an anaconda, whose mouth faces the river and is represented
by the door of the men; the opposite end of the maloca represents
its tail placed over the door of the women; its excrement fertilizes
the chagra or food plot. The long house constitutes the axis of
religious ceremonies and for this reason the spaces, beams, posts
and roofs represent the universe, while the different structural
designs, which enable light to be projected from the roofsaddle,
facilitate the observation of sun rays, which establish the agricultural
cycle with a certain precision. The maloca is equally the ancestral
path of water and therefore an umbilical cord which, with its
branches, connects the communities with the mouth of the native
name for the Amazon: the "River of Milk" - that is, the river
of white water - which symbolizes, in turn, the branched stem
of the hallucinogenic plant "kana" (yajè).
Below: Stages in the construction of a 'maloca' recently built
on the reservation of the Yucuna indigenous group, near Leticia..
Traditionally, at least among some ethnic groups of this region,
the 'maloca' served as a multi-family residence but the former
practice is dying out and in this particular case it only serves
as a ceremonial center, that is, a place where the ritual imbibing
of coca and tobacco goes on and traditional community dances are
held. These dances sometimes go on, day and night, for three days
without a break, to the music of exotic indigenous musical instruments,
like flutes, seed rattles, sounding staffs and, above all, the
"maguaré", a long hollowed log whose resonance is tremendous:
the original bush telegraph Participants wear ceremonial costumes
of bark cloth, feathers, etc and paint their bodies blue with
a vegetable dye called "huito". They dance in a sort of conga
line that goes weaving around the precinct as they sing the chants
learned from their ancestors. But it is informal, you can take
a break and rest in your hammock when you get tired. In the middle
of all this, you will always find some of the elderly men in a
corner taking part in the ritual ingestion of coca, which stimulates
them to enounce their reflections on life. And often there is
also thee of drinking of "chicha", an alcoholic brew made from
fermented fruits or tubers. Even so, this informality is deceptive:
it is, in essence, a spiritual ceremony, designed to bring harmony
to the cosmos through a dance and music that evokes the spirits
of the jungle, ethic the ancestral culture and the joy of life.
The person who built it is a friend of mine, the leader of this
particular community, Juan Carlos Yucuna, an example of the younger
generation of indigenous people who have received a western education
and are perfectly at home in the white man´s world, but nevertheless
are proud of their traditions and want to get back to their roots.
The structure may look pretty basic, but this is deceptive, because,
in the first place, the location of the hut and the alignment
of the doorways, posts and other features have to follow strict
spatial coordinates, in line with traditional mythology and customs,
and every step of its building must be accompanied by rituals
expressing respect for the spirits of the forest. Then, the choice
of the timber, palm-leaves, tie vines and other materials is not
random but must conform to traditional practices, which in any
case are the most practical ones. This means, for example, that
a gang of workers had to drag big logs for miles through the forest
for the four main posts. Gathering together the amount of palm
leaves needed for the thatch alone is a tremendous job, to say
nothing of weaving the leaves and installing them on the framework.
In the olden days, all of this was done a voluntary basis by members
of the community and their neighbors but, increasingly, with the
inroads of the money economy even on isolated indigenous groups,
this is becoming a thing of the past, so that Juan Carlos, in
addition to all his other responsibilities, had to raise the money
to pay workers to help him. Nevertheless, the voluntary spirit
of the 'minga', the traditional community work gang of Indians,
has not entirely disappeared. In one photo, we can see, perched
on the structure in white tee-shirt and beard, a friend of Juan
Carlos and mine who is helping out for the fun of it and because
he is committed to the conservation of the indigenous culture:
Germán Ochoa, an environmentalist from the Leticia campus of the
National University of Colombia, where I myself worked as an English
professor for a while.
Indigenous riverside settlement, Colombian Amazon
Jungle vegetation
"Constantly surrounded by the forest, I eventually came to recognize
some its common plants and animals and gain a small idea of how
its components related to the whole but, for the most part, it
was too taxing for my powers of observation. I lacked a method
for classifying, for breaking down what I saw, having to depend
instead on vague poetical impressions that were too influenced
by my passing moods. The jungle had an invasive force that was
so intense that, at times, I would literally become dizzy before
the breadth and complexity of it. Without some kind of objective
approach to this bewildering world, you had, if you were at all
sensitive, to shut off at some point or risk short-circuiting
your sensory apparatus. Unless you were a genius like Schultes,
who, on one occasion when he was facing a wall of forest in the
company of Reichel-Dolmatoff, murmured to himself, "I know every
tree, every single tree one can see from here".
No, it was better to stick to the near and familiar, consoling
myself with the illusion that if you knew only one flower well,
you would understand the jungle as a whole. Yet at other times,
when yajé stopped me from trying to make sense of things, all
became clear: the jungle went inside you and you surrendered to
its colours. A feverish abstraction of its complex forms would
penetrate your awareness, revealing the inner logic of the confusing
impressions of waking life. You would taste the bitter plants,
the sinister flowers, the proud, evasive beasts. You would feel
the sourness of the forest inside you, lying heavy on the stomach,
until you would go mad with the dense texture and die, realizing,
as you vomited, that it was spirit."
Taita Antonio, with one of his maestros, Taita Emilio Jojoa. The
picture was taken, around the nineteen fifties, in el Santuario
de las Lajas, a famous Catholic shrine in the Department of Nariño
relatively near to the upper Putumayo and especially popular with
the indigenous people of the south of Colombia.
"Despite the persecution they suffered, many indigenous people
of the older generation in the Putumayo still have a grudging
sort of feudal loyalty to the Catholic Church. The first to be
educated by the missionaries, they are grateful to them for having
brought “civilization” (especially, literacy) to the Indians of
the region. Behind this attitude is a more primitive feeling that
was found throughout the indigenous jungle in the early days of
the Catholic missions. Namely, that the Latin Mass, baptism, ceremonial
vestments, icons, etc were not so much an ideology that you had
to commit your belief to as a kind of magic that it was advantageous
to possess. The strictly doctrinal part you could take or leave
- it wasn’t really central to one’s Catholicism. What mattered
was to grab hold of part of the power of the Church, which was
also the mystery of firearms, motor boats and all the rest.
Autocratic and narrow-minded as the Catholic missionaries were,
they had a close, paternalistic relationship with the indigenous
people. Originally fanatic opponents of the vine, the Catholic
priests gradually came to understand that it didn’t really threaten
their ascendancy and nowadays, even if they don’t particularly
like the ritual, they at least tolerate it. Some priests, for
reasons of friendship with indigenous shamans and intellectual
curiosity, have even done yajé in an experimental way.
This not a new happening. One of the legendary Capuchin fathers
of a previous generation, Marcelino de Castellví, the virtual
ruler of Sibundoy Valley for nearly half a century, had not only
taken yajé but (in his condition of a dispenser of Western medicine)
sometimes recommended his indigenous patients to go the taitas.
It sounds unlikely, because the Spanish priests who staffed such
missions were extreme puritans, but Father Marcelino himself was
an ethnographer and botanist, which makes the story a bit more
plausible. Another of these explorer-priests of the early twentieth
century (heroic figures even to an anti-clerical person like myself)
, Father Bartolomé de Igualada, who participated in a Capuchin
mission to the tribes that lived downstream from the Sionas, is
reported to have championed the indigenous use of yajé.
This attitude was astute because the taitas, in general, were
also devoted Catholics and this, through the characteristic syncretism,
strengthened, rather than weakened, the Church’s hold on the indigenous
people.
Taita Querubín Queta, a Kofán shaman from the lower Putumayo,
is one of the most respected native healers in the country. Despite
his severe appearance in this photo, he is actually a kindly,
approachable and modest man, with a great sense of humor. Tragically,
two of his apprentices were recently murdered by paramilitary
groups of the extreme right, victims of the terrible violence
that afflicts Colombia and has been particularly cruel towards
its indigenous people. For more information on the wicked and
perverse destruction of the indigenous cultures of yajé in Colombia,
see: http://www.mamacoca.org/llamados_cofanes.htm
The late Taita Juan Hansasoy and his wife, playing harmonica and
drum during a yajé ceremony. The favorite teacher of don Antonio,
Taita Juan belonged to the Kamsá indigenous nation that shares
the valley of Sibundoy with the Inganos and are equally devoted
to ayahuasca.
Peruvian indigenous yajecero William Muzumbite in his chagra near
Leticia. He is holding strips of "yanchamas", a natural plant
fabric used for a variety of ceremonial costumes. William, with
the help of his Huitoto wife, was carrying out one of the first
steps in its preparation, carefully beating the stripped bark
with a piece of wood to give it greater strength and consistency.
The indigenous people of the Amazon utilize the bark of Ficus
glabrata var.obtuso, for fabricating these "yanchamas".
With the help of plant brushes and dyes from the fruit of the
"morado" (Renealmia alpinia), "achiote" (Bixa orellana)
and certain tubers, they produce paintings, masks, clothing and
other objects for their ritual ceremonies. The employment of tree
bark involves complex techniques for the selection of raw materials
and the manufacture and termination of the finished article. One
must stretch and dry the bark until it becomes soft and smooth.
Indigenous healer William Muzumbite showing his "chakruna" plant.
To prepare the psychotropic drink known as yajé or ayahuasca you
always use the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and generally leaves
from one or another of the two most common admixture plants: "chakruna"
(Psychotria viridis) and another whose scientific name is Diplopterys
cabrerana. The popular names for these two plants are very confusing.
In Colombia it is the latter which is known as "chagropanga",
which is the common name for the former in Peru and Ecuador. Likewise,
yajé or ayahuasca may variously describe the vine or the admixture
plant, though it is invariably the term for the finished drink.
The admixtures may be called "complements", "mixtures", or just
plain leaves.
The orthodox scientific opinion is that it is the admixture,
not the vine, which gives the visions, the latter merely serving
to counteract certain enzymes in our stomach which prevent us
from taking advantage of the innate visionary properties of the
admixture. Curiously enough, a lot of indigenous shamans agree
with this, by saying that it is the "chagropanga" that gives the
visions or makes them brighter.
However, I find several objections to the theory. First, the
fact that in the great majority of indigenous cultures it is the
vine, not the leaf, which is the supremely sacred plant and its
varieties are named in accordance with the different kinds of
visions they are thought to give. But perhaps the most striking
contradiction lies in the widespread reports of ethnic groups
who only prepare yajé with the B. caapi vine and have visions
that are as vivid as those from the brew with the two components.
Let´s not forget that what was possibly the first rigorous scientific
description of the yajé experience with visions and all, at least
from an ethnographic point of view,was done by the Austro-Colombian
anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, who had the unusual
privilege of doing yajé with the Tukanos of the Vaupés region
of Colombia. It still stands as a classic description of the visionary
rapture of yajé but - one little-commented detail - the brew he
drank was prepared with yajé vines and nothing else, and not cooked
(as usually happens) but raw. I myself have once drunk something
similar and it didn´t seem to be essentially different from or
less effective than the orthodox preparation.
William Muzumbite standing behind a bush of Pariana sp. in his
chagra in Leticia. The leaves of this plant are used for the "fans"
which many indigenous and mestizo shamans use in yajé ceremonies
to "blow away" the evil spirits that are thought to be responsible
for illness in the shamanic cosmogony. These leaf-fans are known
as "schakapas" in Peru, but they have different names in Colombia:
"wayra sacha" among the Inganos and "mame-oko" amongst the Sionas.
The Pariana is a common jungle bush, with long, thin, oval leaves
and a bamboo-like stem. The leaves have a papery texture when
dry and are tied in a cluster with a cord.The leaf-fan is the
"wind that blows away evil spirits".
The awesome stinging nettle of the jungle, "pringamoza" (Urera
baccifera, among other species), used in yajé ceremonies. In many
but not all indigenous yajé communities in Colombia, a bundle
of stinging nettle leaves is used by the shaman to calm someone
who is having a bad trip with the vine, but it is up to the patient
to decide whether he wants it. I have even seen experienced drinkers,
including once or twice a shaman, self-flagellate themselves for
the same purpose.
In some places, it also used, along with the leaf fan, to effect
a psychic cleaning of the yajé-drinker, even when he is not in
a bad way. It is painful, of course, but in the frenzy of the
vine this seems secondary and one definitely feels the beneficial
effects. It is like an electric-shock treatment with a vegetable
voltage: the nettle invigorates, cleanses and makes you tranquil.
This tree-like nettle isn´t used in all parts: in the mountainregion
they use a smaller variety that is like the one we know in northern
climes, but it is just as burning.
William and I posing behind a vine in his chagra.
Jimmy with the maestro Vides, a well-known mestizo shaman from
Tabatinga, the Brazilian town that is adjacent to Leticia. The
maestro Vides is a "vegetalista" from Peru who is now settled
in the Amazon. He is typical of the kind of shamans, close to
the indigenous tradition but uprooted from the original culture,
who work in an urban setting in the towns and cities of the Amazonian
regions of Peru, Colombia and Brazil and provide the poor with
a cheap and effective service of healing with medicinal plants.
But he also has a following among educated ayahuasqueros from
Bogotá and other Colombian cities.
Though largely self-taught, like most "vegetalistas" he is an
heir to the long tradition of plant medicine that the mestizo
population of South America got from their indigenous forebears:
he is the grandson of Inca-descended peasant-farmers who taught
him their science when he was a boy.
If we look a bit spaced-out in the photo, it is because it was
taken at dawn after an all-night session in his house. Among his
other talents, maestro Vides knows how to prepare a potion I have
never seen anywhere else, one so concentrated that you only need
a spoonful or two, not a cup, to feel the full effects of the
vine.
Jimmy in the maloca of Juan Carlos Yucuna near Leticia. Juan Carlos
is weaving palm leaves onto one of the laths that forms the framework
of the roof and holds the thatch.
The following description gives some idea of the complex meanings,
both practical and mythological, of the spaces of the maloca.
It was written by a friend of mine, a Colombian theater director
called Juan Monsalve, who has studied the ritual dances and music
of the indigenous groups which live in malocas and has incorporated
them into his work, which also draws on the traditions of indigenous
races in different parts of the world, including India, Indonesia
and Japan. The maloca described in the text does not belong to
the Yucuna ethnic group but another from the same part of the
Colombian Amazon. Although each ethnic group has its own beliefs
and customs about the maloca, what he says applies, in a general
way, to that of Juan Carlos Yucuna and the Yucuna culture to which
he belongs.
"The maloca is built in the image and likeness of the cosmos
and its space is divided in accordance with the laws which order
and determine the life of nature and of mankind.
In a horizontal sense, it is divided into two halves, one male
and ceremonial, and the other female and domestic. In the female
half, whose door is oriented towards the stream that provides
water for domestic use and the paths that lead to the chagras
(food plots) are found the fires for the budares (flat ceramic
pans) for preparing casabe (cassava meal) and toasting coca leaves
and the fires for cooking other foods. This is the domestic space,
delimited by the door and the central pillars. Here the female
activities are carried out and the objects and utensils that have
to do with them are kept: pots, baskets for storing cassava starch;
vessels for water and the sieves and strainers used for the preparation
of foods. In the male half, whose door is oriented towards the
landing stage on the river and the paths along which visitors
arrive, are placed the male objects, like the hollowed-out trunk
that serves as a mortar for preparing coca and tobacco: there
ritual objects are fabricated and the men gather to chew coca.
The center of the maloca, a square delimited by the four central
pillars, is considered to be the center of the world: it represents
the place of origin of the tribe. There, the shaman, seated in
his ceremonial stool, communicates with the spirits of the ancestors
to obtain his oracles, heal the sick, bless the food, etc. There,
the men dance with masks and through the dance relive the deeds
that gave life and form to the tribe in the Origin.
Every object has its place, according to its male or female character
and use. Many ritual objects are placed at a high level: they
hang from the roof or from the posts or on shelves built between
the wall and the roof. There they keep the most sacred objects,
which may only be touched by the elders, like feather headdresses
and ceremonial staffs. In a vertical sense, the maloca represents
the different worlds of their cosmogony: the area between the
floor and the upper border of the surrounding wall of posts, represents
the middle world, inhabited by men, animals, trees, rivers, fish,
etc. This is the tangible, corporeal, material world.
From the point where the surrounding wall joins the roof and
along the roof, separated by the crosspieces, there are a succession
of different heavens, inhabited by the spirits of the mythological
heroes, ancestors, lords of the animals and other elements of
nature. All of these immaterial and ethereal beings live in malocas
and are only visible to the eyes of the shaman, just as if they
were real men. In one of these heavens is the maloca of the ancestors
of the tribe, from which newborn children come and to which the
dead return.
Heaven is a atemporal, eternal and is in permanent communication
with the world through the shaman, who travels there and invokes
the favor and protection of the spiritual beings. During such
rituals, the space of the maloca merges with the space of the
heavenly malocas. Men and their creators meet, recognize each
other and renew their links.
From the floor of the maloca downwards are the ?earths? that
form the underworld, which is associated with the female, the
heat of menstrual blood which is harmful for the ethereal and
cold male energy. In the depths of the red earth is the great
hearth on which life is cooked and around which the ancestral
anaconda has rested since the day in which he finished the journey
in which he brought the ancestors of the tribe to their place
of birth. The men try not to disturb its sleep, because each movement
of the anaconda causes an earth tremor. The dead are buried beneath
the floor of the maloca with their possessions.
Although there are no rooms or partitions in the interior, each
of its inhabitants has his precise place, according to his or
her sex, age and relationship with the owner of the maloca. Along
the corridor between the round wall and the lateral posts several
compartments are formed, in which each family places its hammocks,
forming triangles with a fireplace in the center.
In the female half, on either side of the door, are the family
of the owner of the maloca and the families of his children or
close relatives. In the triangle surrounding the fire that protects
them from the intense cold at night sleep the parents, younger
children and daughters. In the corridor formed by the lateral
and central posts sleep the young unmarried men, further from
the fire. In the male half, visitors sleep, following the same
arrangement."
Translated from: EL BAILE DEL MUÑECO Lavinia Fiori Juan Monsalve
www.banrep.gov.co/blaavirtual/letra-b/baile/vida.htm
Jimmy with a basket full of the leaves used in the thatch of the
maloca. The basket, woven from the leaves of a different kind
of palm, is made on the spot where the palm leaves for the thatch
are gathered. A sort of tubular cage, it is filled with bundles
of the thatching leaves and carried to the maloca, where the thatching
leaves are plaited onto the lath, as seen in the previous photo.
It sounds easy, but the dexterity with which this capacious and
sturdy carrying basket was assembled, with no tool other than
a machete, was amazing and even more so the job of carrying it
through the bush, along slippery trunks bridging jungle streams
and muddy paths overhung with vegetation. Compressed to the maximum
degree (Juan Carlos tied the carrying basket to a fallen trunk
and pushed them in with his feet), the leaves must have weighed
close to a hundred pounds. In short, this photo of Jimmy lifting
one is posed: he was only able to hold it on his back for a minute.
That, however, is only the first part of the job. As the previous
photo shows, once the leaves are in the maloca, they are plaited
onto the laths, a job where, once again, Juan Carlos showed incredible
skill, twisting the stems of each palm frond over, around and
across the lath to form a tight weave. Depending on how far from
the maloca you have to go to find the leaves, the work of gathering
the leaves, filling the basket and returning to the maloca may
take an hour or two, and the plaiting of the leaves from each
basket may take up half the day. When you consider that there
are thousands of such laths in the structure, you get some idea
of the difficulty of the job. Nowadays, some indigenous people
around Leticia buy the laths with leaves from specialists in that
art when they build a maloca, but what they gain in time they
lose in money, so either way it is a challenge. The owner of a
maloca needs a gang of workers to help him build it: they may
be family members who do it on a voluntary basis or paid workers.
In either case, it takes about a year to build one, and, the most
frustrating part, the thatch only lasts ten years at most, so
you have to put on a new roof, or, what a lot of people do, construct
a completely new one on a different site. It is not easy to live
in the traditional way in the jungle.
Jimmy´s son with some typical arts and crafts of the jungle. The
sausage-like object in his hand is a long, tightly-compressed
roll of home-grown Amazonian tobacco leaves, wound round with
a natural jungle fiber. These rolls are produced along the Brazilian
stretch of the river and sold in ordinary stores, but their production
is seasonal, so you can only buy them at certain times of the
year. This roll was bought in a store in Tabatinga, the Brazilian
city that adjoins Leticia. In his lap is a tortoise shell.
Beside him is a "banca", the ceremonial stool used
in indigenous coca and yajé ceremonies. This one actually comes
from an ethnic group in the Andes, but similar ones are found
in the jungle. The one he is sitting on, which has a different
shape, does come from the jungle region of the river Piraparaná
and is associated with ethnic groups which use yajé, as is the
first.
