Marisol De La Cadena -Chamanismo Andino

8/18/2019 Marisol De La Cadena -Chamanismo Andino

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Te Lewis Henry Moran Lectures / 2011

presented at Te University o Rochester

Rochester, New York


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MARISOL

DE LA CADENA

EARTH BE INGSEC OL OG IE S O F

PRA CT I CE ACR OSS

A N D E A N W O R L D S

Foreword by Robert J. Foster and Daniel R. Reichman

Duke University Press Durham and London 2015


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© 2015 Duke University Press

All rihts reserved

Printed in the United States o America on acid-ree paper ♾

Desined by Mindy Basiner Hill

ypeset in Garamond Premier Pro by sen Inormation Systems, Inc.

Library o Conress Cataloin-in-Publication Data

Cadena, Marisol de la, author.

Earth beins : ecoloies o practice across Andean worlds / Marisol de la Cadena.

paes cm — (Te Lewis Henry Moran lectures ; 2011)Includes biblioraphical reerences and index.

978-0-8223-5944-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)

978-0-8223-5963-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

978-0-8223-7526-5 (e-book)

1. Ethnoloy—Peru. 2. Shamans—Peru. 3. Quechua Indians—Medicine—Peru.

I. itle. II. Series: Lewis Henry Moran lectures ; 2011.

564.434 2015

305.800985—dc23 2015017937

Cover art: Collae usin photoraph by the author.


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T O M A R I A N O A N D N A Z A R I O T U R P O

A N D A L S OT O C A R L O S I V Á N D E G R E G O R I


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Ausangate and surroundings.

Ocongate

Pacchanta

AusangateMountain

AusangateMountain

N

0

0 4 62 8 km

3 421 5 mi

DEPARTMENTOF

CUZCO

Map Area

Lima Cuzco

P E R U

R o a d

to Cuzco

to Madre de Dios(Amazon rainforest)


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C O N T E N T S

F O R E W O R D

xi

P R E F A C E

Endin Tis Book without Nazario urpo xv

S T O R Y 1

Areein to Remember, ranslatin,and Careully Co-laborin

1

I N T E R L U D E 1

Mariano urpo: A Leader In-Ayllu35

S T O R Y 2Mariano Enaes “the Land Strugle”:

An Unthinkable Indian Leader59

S T O R Y 3

Mariano’s Cosmopolitics:Between Lawyers and Ausanate

91


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S T O R Y 4

Mariano’s Archive:Te Eventulness o the Ahistorical

117

I N T E R L U D E 2

Nazario urpo: “Te Altomisayoq Who ouched Heaven”

153

S T O R Y 5

Chamanismo Andino in the Tird Millennium:Multiculturalism Meets Earth-Beins

179

S T O R Y 6

A Comedy o Equivocations: Nazario urpo’s Collaboration with the National Museum o the American Indian

209

S T O R Y 7

Munayniyuq: Te Owner o the Will(and How to Control Tat Will)

243

E P I L O G U E

Ethnoraphic Cosmopolitics273

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

287N O T E S

291

R E F E R E N C E S

303

I N D E X

317


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Nazario Turpo, 2007. Trekking Ausangate and blowing k’intu.


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S T O R Y 5 CHAMAN ISMO AND INO

IN THE TH IRD M ILLEN N IUM

M U LT I C U LT U R A L I S M M E E T S E A R T H -B E I N G S

When Alejandro oledo was inauurated as president o Peru in 2001, I wasin Cuzco preparin to start fieldwork: upradin my Quechua with privatelessons, contactin individuals in Mariano’s vast networks o riends and ac-quaintances, and trying to get access to as much inormation as I could beoretravelin to Pacchanta. In the thirty years that had passed since the ararianreorm in 1969, important changes had occurred in Peru and internation-ally. At the national level, in 1980 the Shinin Path—a Maoist roup, led bya philosopher and expert on Kant—bean a war that occupied the countryor more than a decade. Te war took a particularly bi toll in the country-side, where both the military and the Shinin Path ravaed peasant villaes.Parallel to the war, and as a consequence o it, the rest o the oranized lef(known as the “leal lef”) became an electoral orce with varyin impacts.Afer 1989, with Marxist class rhetoric receding around the world, neolib-eral and lefist multiculturalism came to occupy political discourse in Peru.

In keepin with the new rhetoric, and ollowin the corrupt administrationo Alberto Fujimori, Alejandro oledo, a man who flirted politically with his

potential indienous ancestry, was elected president o the country. Durinthe electoral campain, his wie—Eliane Karp, a Belian citizen—addressedthe public in Quechua and donned Andean style clothes, thus addin a dis-tinctive pro-indienous quality to the moment.

oledo was sworn in as president in the usual official ceremony in Lima,at the National Conress on July 28, 2001. wo days later another ceremony

was held in Machu Picchu—the icon o Peruvian tourism—where the new president would usher in the new multicultural era. Te ceremony was or


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Nazario Turpo during the ceremony that inaugurated Alejandro Toledo

in Machu Picchu. Photograph from Caretas, issue 1739,

September 2001. Used by permission.


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C H A M A N I S M O A N D I N O I N T H E T H I R D M I L L E N N I U M 181

national and international officials, and despite many efforts I could not etmysel invited. I did not consider this a setback; my fieldwork, I thought,had nothin to do with oledo or his wie. I had a hint o how wron I was

when, hal an hour into the ceremony, I received a phone call rom TomasMüller, the German photorapher who had beriended Mariano back in the

1980s and who had ound his archive. Tomas is also a journalist and, in suchcapacity, had become riends with the new presidential couple. His voice over

T H E W O R L D O B S E R V E D T H E P O W E R F U L

M A J E S T Y O F M A C H U P I C C H U

“Te history o a powerul people, Peru’s past and present, convered yester-day in a transcendental Andean ceremony that showed the world the wealtho our culture and the wonders o our land. Te invocations to the Apus, thedivinities o the Andes, admired in this ritual were accepted according tothe experts, because they allowed the o [to dissipate] and the rain to cease,ivin way to a radiant sun that contributed the appropriate context to theunoldin o this act.

“Behind the Andean ceremony in which President Alejandro oledo as-sumed the supreme command, the Hatun Hayway [bi servin] in the mainsquare o the Incan citadel o Machu Picchu provided an opportunity or theeyes o the world to ocus on an unprecedented act in the history o the re-

public. Te ritual bean beore the arrival o the head o state, the First Lady,and the retinue o dinitaries, which was announced with the sound o putu-tos [indienous conch trumpets].

“Since early dawn, the altomisario [ sic ] Aurelio Carmona, and the paq’o[ sic ] Nazario urpo Condori, Andean priests, prepared the religious cere-mony to ive thanks to pachamama (the earth) and the Apus (the mountainods), thanks to whom the soil provides ood, shelter, and well-bein to the

people. As they proceeded with the ritual, and placed the offerins or tinka [ sic ] on the fire, the priests invoked the Apus or the success o the overn-ment that beins in Peru.”


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182 S T O R Y 5

the phone sounded very excited: “Did you know that Nazario urpo is ointo perorm a despacho in Machu Picchu? He was contacted by Prom Perú[the official state institution or the promotion o exports and tourism]—somehow they knew about him.” No, I did not know—and who is Naza-

rio urpo, anyway? Tomas told me Nazario was Mariano’s eldest son—theone who worked or Lauramarca, once it became a cooperative and beore it

was dismantled. “Te ceremony is oin to be televised—you may even et alance o Nazario,” he said, and we finished our conversation. I would meetNazario or the first time six months later, in January 2002.

With the exception o the official newspaper El Peruano (I quote romit above), the mainstream press scorned the event. It was demaouery, re-

porters wrote, usin Indians and their ritual paraphernalia to boost oledo’s

spurious claim to indienous roots. I had my own critical interpretation, ocourse: the presidential couple was usin a recycled 1920s indigenista rheto-ric to promote tourism. Tis was not news in Cuzco, where tourism first

peaked as a reional industry in the 1950s and acquired expertise at deploy-ing the Inkan past; I had written about this already (de la Cadena 2000).Tis time, the differences accorded with the times. One was the apparentneoliberal promotion o tourism: in the past it had been basically a reionaleffort, but now it seemed to be backed by the central state, and it was moreefficiently lobal. Another difference was multiculturalism: unlike previousrevelries, oledo’s inaugural celebration in Cuzco was not a representationo Inkan nobility; instead, it eatured contemporary indigenous practices,translated to a national audience as reliious rituals. Tus the ceremony wasa “reliious ceremony to ive thanks” to the “pachamama” translated as tierra (earth) and the Apus rendered as dioses de las montañas (mountain gods).Curiously, the official newspaper quoted above also mentioned that perorm-

in the ritual were the “ altomisario” Aurelio Carmona and the “ paq’o” Na-zario urpo Condori, both “ sacerdotes andinos” (Andean priests). Tis wasnecessary, my criticism continued, to accord with the First Lady’s words sum-monin the surroundin mountains, which accordin to a lossy maazine

were: “Yaqtayay [my people- place], apu Machu Picchu, apu Huayna Picchu,apu Salcantay, apu Ausanate. . . . oday the circle is closin, today the oodtimes o ood order will return” (quoted in “¡Apúrate!” 2001). Great dema-ouery (or wishul thinkin at best), I thouht. o me, this was her attempt

to leitimate a development project described as a orm o “capitalist mod-


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ernization respectul o Andean roots,” while the profits rom tourism, i any, would remain in the city. Te presidential couple’s neoliberal indigenismo ave me a eelin o déjà vu.

Although more nuanced, my interpretation o the story was not unlike the

one the newspapers published: the ceremony was a political maneuver thatused both oledo’s indigenous looks and his neoliberal agenda to advancehis political appeal amon the nonprivileed and to boost tourism to Cuzcoand the rest o the country. My understandin was similar to recent ethno-raphic commentary about the packain o “ethnicity” or “indienous cul-ture” or tourist consumption (see, or example, Babb 2011; Comaroff andComaroff 2009; Galinier and Molinié 2006). My critique was accurate butinsufficient: neoliberal multiculturalism was perhaps the most powerul and

obvious aspect o the event, but there was more to the event than this aspect.Te practices that composed this “more” were perormed and participated inthe political economy o tourism, and they were also enacted rom a different(i partially connected) world. Tis story describes this complexity, which isnot unique to the inauuration o oledo as president o Peru: a similar in-tricacy underpins the practices known as “chamanismo Andino” that haveemered in Cuzco, attracted by the converence o lobal tourism, practices

with earth-beins, and the decay o the reional wool market.Tree years afer the ceremony in Machu Picchu, Nazario urpo described

his participation and the event as ollows: Carmona sent a message through Radio Santa Mónica; they said oledo wanted to make a despacho, and I went

to Cuzco. When I arrived, they told us they did not need us anymore; then wecalled the Museo Inka, and they said they wanted me only. But I had to workwith Carmona, so I told them he had to come. In Machu Picchu they told us that

we could not do the despacho, that the Q’eros were going to do it. We did a des-

pacho or the president’s oot—do you remember that [during the inaugurationday] he was limping? Tey told us that we could not do the main despacho—but

we did one just the same. Te Q’eros did not do a good one—they did not burntheir despacho, and they had brought very ew things. Instead we had a lot othings: sweets, and corn, bread—a lot o ood. We also brought incense and chi-cha [corn beer], and we burned the incense and sprinkled the chicha when the

people were still there—and then we did burn the despacho. Tat was the most

important thing that we did that the Q’eros did not do—they did not burn any-

thing. I told them, “Why aren’t you burning the despacho? Tis is not going to


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184 S T O R Y 5

be useul i you do not burn it.” I warned them. But they were the ones who didnot burn it, and they were the ones who were chosen to make the despacho or the

president. It is not our ault; they did not let us make the despacho, we did a despacho or oledo’s leg and he healed. We did not do the despacho or his govern-

ment . . . probably that is why it is going so badly. Tey did not burn anything, so theirs [the Q’eros’ despacho] was not effective.

Nazario was invited to participate in the event in Machu Picchu throuhthe networks that Mariano urpo, his ather, had built. As the oranizer othe event, Prom Perú souht the advice o anthropoloists to implement thenewly elected presidential couple’s request to stage a pago a la tierra—the

phrase used by tourist aencies to identiy practices o despacho. Afer con-tactin several other people, the officials in Prom Perú ot in touch with Car-

mona, one o the two anthropoloists who had accompanied Nazario to theNational Museum o the American Indian in Washinton, D.C. A reminderto the reader: Carmona had worked in Lauramarca in 1970 (as a unctionaryo the ararian reorm—I have more to say about him below) and learnedto make despachos rom Mariano urpo. Nazario considered that Carmonadefinitely knew ( pay yachanpuni; the suffix puni indicates the certainty o

what it qualifies, in this case the verb yachay, to know) how to make despa-chos. Afer some negotiation with Prom Perú officials—probably, I specu-late, about the criterion o “authenticity” that Carmona (an urbanite whodoes not “look Indian”) did not meet—both were invited to the ceremony.oether, they made a very ood despacho (one with the best supplies thatcould be ound locally) and burned it. Tey requested health or the presi-dent, and accordin to Nazario, they did a very ood job—unlike the otherroup o indienous specialists, who hailed rom the Q’ero ayllu. Teir invi-tation to the ceremony must have ollowed a rapevine similar to Nazario’s,

or anthropoloists have made them well known in Cuzco as “the last InkaAyllu” (Flores Ochoa 1984). Disputing their aura o authenticity—whichmay have been the reason the Q’ero were chosen as the main ritual specialistsin the presidential ceremony—Nazario criticized their practice because theyhad ailed to burn the despacho, thus disrespectin the surroundin earth-beins. At the time o our conversation in 2004, thins were not oin wellor oledo’s overnment, and Nazario speculated that the Q’ero’s despachomiht have somethin to do with that.

Nazario’s narration o the ceremony revealed a acet o the event that the


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Aurelio Carmona and Nazario Turpo, Plaza de Armas,

in Cuzco. Photograph from Caretas, issue 1739,

September 2001. Used by permission.


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186 S T O R Y 5

critics—includin mysel—had inored even thouh it had been perormedin ront o our eyes. Nazario described his relation with earth-beings and howthe president fiured in it. Te pundits and I had seen a neoliberal president,alon with the appropriate institutions, brinin indienous cultural mani-

estations to a modern ritual o the state to promote tourism. Followin theepistemic rain o the state, I had missed what its modern archive was unableto rasp: an occasion when earth-beins and the state shared the same publicstage. Such moments—more than one world and their stories, composing thesame complex event—are not inrequent, but it is usually the story the stateis able to tell that matters; the other is either inored or disavowed as belieor ritual—a cultural issue that does not really matter. Tis may be a recurrentcondition when it comes to the interaction between runakuna and the state

in the Andes. Te inauguration o the agrarian reorm in Lauramarca wasan analoous event: state officials representin the Peruvian president aveMariano a handul o soil representin the land that the peasants had ouhtor. Mariano—and throuh him his ayllu—received pukara, the earth-bein

with whom a process o reconciliation would then begin. Te dominant pub-lic narrative in both cases was a biopolitical account o economic proress,throuh ariculture and tourism, respectively. Also in both cases, the indie-nous narrative brouht earth-beins into the events. More than one and lessthan many, these events are inscribed in history—they even make it, and theyalso exceed it. Mariano’s archive, discussed in story 4, illustrates this process.

What was specific to the inauuration o oledo in Machu Picchu was thatthe event was broadcast on television throuhout the country; it attracteda heteroeneous audience. As the event unolded, some people miht havebeen payin attention to despachos and the earth-beins summoned to the

presidential stae, as well as to the potential economic consequences or the

region o a revamped tourism industry. Political economy and state ritualsneed not occlude earth-beins, or when the audience is more than one, theevent may be such as well.


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C U Z C O , “ W H E R E T H E G O D S B E C A M E M O U N T A I N S ” :

E A R T H - B E I N G S A S S A C R E D M O U N T A I N S

Well, I rew up lookin at Ausanate throuhout my childhood,knowin that it is the most important peak that all the people watch

or sins to find out what is oin on. Is the snow too deep? Is the snow

too low? We observe the relationship o the sun’s direction in specific

times o the year, like this. But most important it is the Apu o the

Cuzco reion, and the owner o this entire reion. . . .

I’d like to mention the belie o the herders fom the highlands known

as the puna. For them Ausanate is the owner o the alpaca and llamaherds. He is the one who controls the herds.—Jore Flores Ochoa,

in Ausangate, a documentary (emphasis added)

As I explained in story 1, in Cuzco—and perhaps in other Andean regions—

the indigenous and nonindigenous, city and countryside, Quechua and Span-

ish emerge in each other forming a complex hybridity in which the different

elements composing it cannot be pulled apart for they are both distinct and

part of each other. More specifically, in Cuzco, people socially classified asindigenous and nonindigenous share ways of being and they also mark differ-

ences between themselves—almost in the same breath. In the quotes above,

all produced for a documentary film, Jorge Flores Ochoa (the anthropologist

who—along with Carmona—went with Nazario to the National Museum of the

American Indian in Washington, D.C.) embraces Ausangate as “the Apu of the

Cuzco region, and the owner of this entire region.” At the same time he dis-

tances himself from “herders”—runakuna like Mariano and Nazario, the so-

cially quintessential Indians, and lowest in the social hierarchy of the region—

by referring to their “belief” that Ausangate is the owner of their herds. Nazario

would not use the word belief to explain his own relationship with Ausangate,

yet he would perhaps acknowledge that urbanites like Flores Ochoa relate to

Ausangante’s ownership of herds as a belief. I never asked Nazario specifically

about the quotes I am using; I am speculating from Nazario’s response when

I asked him to explain his relationship to Ausangate; he said that it could be

“ like belief” ( kriyihina ) was to me but that it was not belief, for Ausangate wasthere—couldn’t I see it?


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In Cuzco, “belief”—as relationship with earth- beings—might both couch

the difference and make possible the convergence between those like Flores

Ochoa and Nazario, literate urbanites and runakuna. Through this difference

that allows for convergence, Cuzqueños of all paths are able to recognize

leading earth-beings in the region—what to me are majestic mountains. Con-ceptually, it is not far-fetched to say that Nazario and Flores Ochoa partici-

pate in each other’s worlds, and that they are acquainted with the differences

between them. Tweaking the well-known phrase by Bruno Latour (1993b), one

has never been indigenous, and the other has never been nonindigenous.

Rather, they emerge as such from a boundary-making practice whereby what

they have in common becomes difference through practices of translation

that I see working like Bertolt Brecht’s “distancing effects” (1964). Producing

something like an identity standstill, Flores Ochoa uses the word belief , with

which he takes a distance from “them, the puna herders” (who these days also

have jobs as chamanes Andinos—like Nazario), while at the same time being

with earth-beings and the practices that enact them. Cuzco is an indigenous

and nonindigenous aggregate—a circuit of connections that does not form a

homogeneous unit, but where the fragments that compose it appear in each

other, even though they are also different (Green 2005; Wagner 1991). Accord-

ingly, in Cuzco the distinction between “colonial self” and “colonized other”

does not cancel out their similarities, even if the distinction is replete with

power differences and violent social hierarchies.

“Where the gods become mountains” was a ubiquitous slogan introduced

in 2009 by the Peruvian tourism industry. I thought it was clever. Seemingly

suggesting the impossible, the phrase conveyed a message that packaged

Cuzco as a tourist attraction: Cuzco’s mountains are a wonder, ambiguously

straddling the natural and the supernatural. Thus located—via a commercial

translation that can allow for natural and spiritual bewilderment—mountainshave become popular tourist destinations, and they have acquired a poten-

tially profitable personality. As important (and perhaps less obvious), their

being more than nature has become public in the region, encouraging Cuz-

queños in all walks of life to openly share their complex sameness (and dif-

ference). Once a shameful “cultural intimacy” (Herzfeld 2005) because of in-

digenous connotations, interactions with earth-beings/mountain spirits—by

way of despachos or coca leaf readings—are currently publicly performed

by Cuzqueños regardless of their background. This is far from irrelevant. It

suggests the possibility for intriguing changes in the regional cultural politics


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for indigeneity could emerge as an inclusive trait of the region, stretching to

urbanites who call themselves mestizos and even those who identify them-

selves as white. This complexity—the public collaboration among indigenous

and nonindigenous Cuzqueños, their sharing that which makes the “other”

such (which therefore, makes them all the “same”)—underpins thriving formsof tourism, particularly those in mystic or ecological packaging. Rather than

sheer imposition, domination, and exploitation, the successful commoditiza-

tion of “indigenous culture” in Cuzco results from the encounter of the global

tourist industry (neoliberal and capitalist, to be sure) multiculturalist policies,

and a decaying regional agricultural economy. In this encounter, practices

with earth-beings—which runakuna and non- runakuna Cuzqueños share—

provide an organic template to organize the networks of collaboration that ar-

ticulate the proliferation of what is currently known as “chamanismo Andino,”

or Andean shamanism.

Unexpected Collaborations: From Haciendas to Andean

Shamanism (through Local Anthropology)

Beore becomin a political oranizer, Mariano was well known as a yachaq;I have explained that Cuzqueño urbanites usually translate this word as“knower.” raveling across the countryside over which Ausangate presides,he cured relations between earth-beings and humans, animals, water, andcrops and was paid or it, but not much. Te little he earned he spent onliquor, as drinking was indispensable in the procedures he perormed. AsNazario put it, working or runakuna, he earned one or two soles, working or

them is not or money. And when he went to work or runakuna he had to drink.Some o the character o this activity in the urpo household would chanein the 1990s, and the change would arrive through Mariano’s connections

with urban intellectuals, includin several anthropoloists.In the 1970s—afer the ararian reorm, when Lauramarca was already a

cooperative—a man arrived in the urpos’ villae. Te reader has already methim: his name was Aurelio Carmona. Althouh back then he was a state em-

ployee, he turned out to be the first in the lon line o anthropoloists that

the urpos met. Nazario recalled: Initially Doctor Carmona was a merchant;that was during the time o the agrarian reorm. Ten he used to come distribut-


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190 S T O R Y 5

ing money, lending money to runakuna so that they would weave ponchos. . . .

[He would say,] “Here [take this money] so that you weave a poncho. You willmake it or next week, it will wait or me, and then I will complete your money.”Ten he became an anthropologist, and began working at the university. He

begged my ather: “each me,” he said. And because my ather was his fiend, hetaught him everything. Now he is a proessor at the university; he became a doc-

tor because he learned fom my ather. So Doctor Carmona became an anthropologist [because] my ather taught him.

“Calls to Peru and the rest of the world”—an Internet cabin

in Ocongate offers services to locals and tourists. August 2008.


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When I talked to Carmona, he lauhed at the idea that Mariano tauhthim anthropology, but he remembered their relationship ondly. Te firsttime Mariano saw him, says Carmona, he told him, “You are with estrella” (is-trillayuqmi kanki)—which, as I have explained, means that he could become

a yachaq. Tey developed a riendship. Mariano taught Carmona what heknew, and they became partners in their relationship with earth-beins: Car-mona was lluq’i and Mariano was paña—or lef and riht, lower and hiher,silver and gold, underground water and river water, respectively. Both Na-zario and Carmona concur that this partnership was effectively powerul.Years later, when Carmona bean a career teachin anthropoloy at the mainuniversity in the reion—the Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad delCusco—he took his students on field trips to Ausanate, where they met and

worked with Mariano. When Mariano was too old to work with Carmona’s students and per-

orm as Carmona’s partner in practices with earth-beins, Nazario replacedhim: My ather visited the university because o Dr. Carmona. My ather washis teacher, his instructor. Tat is why Dr. Aurelio always invited him to the uni-

versity, saying, “You, dear Mariano, you are my teacher. You know much morethan I do.” Tat is why they knew my ather at the university, because Aureliocame here to Ausangate every month o August. Later on he would also call me,

saying, “Come, I will introduce you to my fiends.” Back then, I did not knowthe university; I only went to Dr. Aurelio’s house. Ten he took me to the univer-

sity himsel and introduced me to all his fiends: “Tis is urpo’s son; he is the son o my teacher. He also lives in Ausangate” [ Paymi urpuq wawan. Paymi

pruesurniypa wawan. Paymi Awsanatepi tiyallantaq ]. And then one day he said to me, “Your ather knows about remedies, you surely know as well.” Tat ishow I became known at the university. Tat is why I thought, “Dr. Aurelio is the

reason that I know these things, that I can know these things.” Trouh Carmona and the urpos, the circuit o earth- practices reached

the teachin o anthropoloy courses at the local university. Mariano tauhtCarmona and Carmona tauht a course he called “Andean Ritual,” which re-quired that students travel to Pacchanta and interact with Ausanate. DoctorCarmona became an anthropologist [because] my ather taught him, Nazariohad said, and this is not ar rom right. aught as an academic discipline,Cuzqueño anthropoloy is a hybrid o Euro-American structuralism, Marx-

ism, and the reional leacy o indienista liberalism; but it also connects an-thropoloists with knowers like Mariano and with earth-beins, which then,


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192 S T O R Y 5

intriuinly, become part o the discipline’s curriculum. Cuzqueño anthropoloy is a multiaceted practice: while or some anthropoloists, it is an aca-

demic discipline, or others, it is their way o making sense o their world, andstill others combine both orms o practice: they make a livin explainin the

reional “others,” which they also are.Carmona was not the only local anthropoloist to arrive in Pacchanta and

learn about and rom Mariano’s relations with Ausangate. Juan Víctor Núñezdel Prado, a Cuzqueño anthropoloist, also did. Núñez del Prado has usedhis personal intimacy with indieneity, his ethnoraphic fieldwork with theQ’ero villages, and his conversations with yachaqkuna (including Marianoand Nazario) to create a field he calls “Andean Mystic tradition” composed o

practices that he has labeled “Andean priesthood” ( sacerdocio andino), which

include a sophisticated and ever-increasin New Ae–compatible local vo-cabulary (Núñez del Prado 1991, 136; Murillo 1991). Around this field he hasbuilt a successul tourism business contributin to the expansion o turismomístico, or mystic tourism, in Cuzco. Juan Víctor—named afer the amousAndean ethnologist John Victor Murra—is the son o Oscar Núñez delPrado, an active fiure in Cuzqueño anthropoloy in the 1950s and 1960s.Te ather was known or his ethnoraphic work with the Q’eros, the ayllurom which the tourist industry currently draws most o the runakuna who

work as chamanes Andinos.Núñez del Prado and Américo Yábar (a member o a ormer landownin

amily rom Paucartambo, the reion where the Q’eros live) were the first tointroduce the urpo amily to tourists. Tis must have been durin the mid-1990s, when calm had returned to the countryside afer the civil war betweenthe Shining Path and the military. In those years Flores Ochoa, Carmona,and Núñez del Prado all worked in the Anthropology Department at the

Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco and this may have been where they shared the ideas that led to the current practice o Andean sha-

manism. But these ideas could just as well have been developed on the rural paths connectin Paucartambo and Ausanate, which Yábar used to hike in

his youth, accompanied by runakuna who worked on his amily’s property. When the first tourist groups arrived to visit Mariano and possibly learn romhim, Mariano could still work grazing sheep and alpacas in Alqaqucha—a remote site where pastures are richer, it was also one o Mariano’s avorite

places to send despachos. Nazario remembered: He worked with them, andthey paid my ather a little money. Te tourists paid, but my ather did not ask


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or money; out o their will they gave him something, twenty or thirty soles, they paid—it was something then. But [my ather] did not go to Cuzco, he did not go anywhere like I go; only here [in Pacchanta] he worked with the tourists. Imy ather would have been like me, my age, my ather would have gone on that

first trip to Washington—both o us would have gone. But when they saw my ather was so old and he could not do things well . . . he did not go, only I went.

Tat is how I went .Te partnership between runakuna (like Mariano) and ormer land-

owner’s offspring (like Yábar) might have seemed impossible during haciendatimpu, the time o the hacienda. Yet it is a currently requent association inthe tourist industry—the owner o Auqui Mountain Spirit, the aency thathired Nazario as its Andean shaman, was also the son o the owner o a lare

hacienda. Te ararian reorm took over the property afer bitter conronta-tions with runakuna. I used to muse about this: the son o a landowner andthe son o one o the most combative leaders o the opposition to haciendas

workin toether to produce chamanismo Andino! Nobody would have pre-dicted this partnership at the time o the ararian reorm, let alone beore.Ironic, indeed, but it also made sense. Te state evicted hacendados in the1970s, and in the 1980s runakuna organized into peasant movements to orcethe transormation o ararian cooperatives into communal property, which

was then divided into peasant amily plots. Land scarcity—due to popula-tion rowth—and low prices or aricultural products are orcin people too to work in the city o Cuzco as masons, servants, and street vendors; themost unortunate carry loads in the market (or ten cents o one sol—or twoU.S. cents in 2006—per load). Tey also spend stints in the eastern lowlands,

where men pan or gold and women work as cooks—and this only in thebest o cases. Lare landholdins disappeared, and runakuna acquired direct

access to their amily plots, but these did not enerate enouh monetary in-come which then had to be souht workin in non-aricultural activities.

Important changes in the region’s political economy made possible the previously unathomable business partnership between ormer landowners

and runakuna. When runakuna “walked the queja” during the 1950s and1960s, wool was the main commodity, and land ownership was an impor-tant source o power and prestige. oday, land has lost its grip on power,and alpaca wool rom the southern Andes is not the internationally coveted

commodity it used to be back then. Instead, the successors o the ormerlanded class have turned to tourism—a profitable industry or some—and


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194 S T O R Y 5

have made “Andean culture” an important reional commodity. Rather thanbein ready-made or the consumption o tourists, this “culture” is producedthrough the power- laden, yet still collaborative effort between runakuna(especially those who continue to live in remote rural areas) and memberso the ormer landed elite, currently urban intellectuals who are also tourismoperators (like Núñez del Prado, Yábar, and the owner o Auqui MountainSpirit). Teir collaboration draws rom the regional indigenous practices thaturban entlemen and runakuna share and that also is replete with sharp dis-

tinctions between them. One main distinction, which has withstood the shifrom wool to chamanismo Andino, is that althouh the descendants o the

Nazario urpo’s amily was no exception to the economic rule. Beore tour-ism knocked on his door, Nazario’s oldest sons mirated to the eastern low-

lands or el valle (the valley) and to the city to make money. (An older son diedrom an undiagnosed disease afer a sojourn panning or gold.) Te ood theyrew was always or their own consumption; they used potatoes to barter orcorn, but there was nothin to sell. Te amily has one o the larest exten-sions o aricultural land in Pacchanta: five masas, possibly eiht hectares ounirriated land. Tis is insufficient to sustain them or a whole year; theyhave to buy potatoes, corn, and basic staples (noodles, suar, rice, and evenruit, onions, and carrots in times o abundance, and limited to candles and

matches in times o duress). Tey also have a mixed herd o alpaca and sheep,and wool is another source o money, but income rom that is meaer. Forexample, in December 2006, Nazario and his eldest son Rufino (who has hisown herd) sold their herds’ wool toether. Between them, they collected 130

pounds o alpaca fiber; at ten soles per pound, they ot 1,300 soles—rouhly$400 at that time. December, the rainy season, is when wool prices reachtheir peak or the year; they can be as low as two soles per pound in the dryseason (May throuh November). In contrast, durin the hih tourist sea-son Nazario could make $400 in one month workin or the tourist aency.Luckily or the amily, the high tourist season was July through September—

when prices or wool were low.


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ormer landed elite need (and even depend on) runakuna to sell “Andean cul-ture,” they still own the economic and social capital to oranize the business.Runakuna continue to be their subordinates.

Nazario: From Yachaq to Chamán

In his amous treatise about shamanism in southern Siberia, Mircea Eliade wrote that “the ods choose the uture shaman by strikin him with liht-

nin or showin him their will throuh stones allen rom the sky” (1964,19). He would be lad to learn that bein struck by lihtnin is also how ya-chaqkuna (the plural o yachaq) are revealed in the Andes. Yet considerinhis interpretation o shamanism as an “archaic” religion, Eliade might also

be disappointed to learn that the interaction between a decayin ariculturaleconomy and a dynamic lobal tourist industry fiures prominently amonthe conditions or the prolieration o current chamanes Andinos. Accord-in to Nazario, because they can earn money, young people are now more inter-ested in despachos. Now that they can work as chamanes many young people areinterested in learning . . . “teach, teach me” they say. Eliade also mentions thatthe word shaman traveled rom place to place with voyaers—merchants orscholars—who adopted it to name those whom they saw as “individuals pos-sessin maic- reliious powers” (1964, 3). oday the word travels rom placeto place, but it does so with tourists and their socially heterogeneous localuides. Tey transport a notion o “shaman” across lare distances, and, as inthe olden days, they apply the term to individuals whose practices are opaqueto modern ways. In many parts o Latin America the translation is enerallyeffected throuh the combined lanuaes o anthropoloy, New Ae spiri-tuality, indienous cultural activism, and non- Western healin practices (La-

bate and Cavnar 2014). In Cuzco a similar translation is additionally nour-ished as it circulates in the complex circuit o regional indigeneity, whichincludes urban intellectuals turned into tourism entrepreneurs; in additionto economic resources, they deploy both their academic credentials and theirindigenous know-how to endorse the packages o “Andean culture” theyoffer or tourist consumption.

While shamanic practices are widespread in the Amazonian lowlands andanthropologists have written about them (see Rubenstein 2002; Salomon

1983; aussi 1987; Whitehead 2002; Whitehead and Wriht 2004), in theneighboring Andean highlands the word “shaman” owes its popularity to


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196 S T O R Y 5

tourism. In act, the term chamán was oreign to Nazario even as late as 2002, when I first met him. Ten he was only beinnin his work with tourists, and

he preerred to be called a yachaq runa, a person who knows, like his ather.In addition to reading human urine and veins (he was not as good as Mariano

in these practices, he said) people hired him to look into coca leaves, and tosend despachos to earth-beins to propitiate the happiness o animals, crops,and homes; in return, he received a small amount o money. Because o hisexpertise, he was also known as a healer: curandero in Spanish, andhampiq in Quechua.

Becomin a chamán andino—which to Nazario meant bein paid to per-orm despachos and read coca leaves or tourists—came as a surprise or him.He had not expected that his practices as yachaq or hampiq would be useul

to anyone other than runakuna. It all happened when he returned rom theUnited States, afer his first trip to the National Museum o the AmericanIndian. Te travel aency that had manaed the details o his trip had beencontacted by the museum through the same network o anthropologiststhat had invited Nazario to be a cocurator at the . Te aency bouhthis airplane ticket and handled the paperwork necessary or his U.S. visa;the agency owner ound a place or Nazario to stay in Lima while he wasin transit to Washington and gave him basic inormation about the differ-ences between the U.S. dollar and the Peruvian sol. Tis man also invitedNazario to spend the night beore his departure (rom Cuzco to Lima) atthe agency. When Nazario returned to Cuzco rom the United States, hespent the night at the agency once again. Te owner asked him about histrip: what had he done, who had he met, what had he learned? Not muchtranspired, and Nazario returned to Pacchanta. Several months later, Naza-rio returned to Cuzco on a routine trip to buy provisions or his household.

He also wanted to see his son, Florencio (who was working as a mason inthe city), and ask him or a loan. Florencio had no money to lend, so Naza-rio went to the aency to spend the niht but also to see i he could earn alittle cash cleanin the place, and perhaps find temporary employment as an

arriero (a muleteer), drivin horses and mules or the visitors who venturedonto the trekkin paths in the oothills o Ausanate. He had seen many othose groups, and people rom Pacchanta were already working or them;thinkin that this aency also worked with travelers, he planned to ask them

to hire him or this kind o work.Tings went better than he had hoped. On the night he spent at the agency


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beore leavin or Washinton, Nazario had read the coca leaves or two othe workers there, a man and a woman. He had told the man that he wouldbuy a lot to build his house, and the woman that she would have a child. Bothevents were coming true. Having confirmed that Nazario was a good coca

reader, the man and woman asked him i he could do despachos, and aferhe said yes, they insisted that he talk to their boss, the owner o the aency.He could hire him as the aency’s chamán, they said, and o course they hadto explain to Nazario what that meant. So he told the owner that he coulddo despachos, and the owner asked Nazario to do one or him. A Cuzqueño

worth his salt, the owner o the agency could distinguish good despachosrom worthless ones. He was testing me [ chaykunapi pruebasta ruwawaran ] ,remembered Nazario. He passed the test, and was hired. Te first time he

worked or the aency as a shaman, the owner and Nazario both spent twodays with a small roup o tourists at a nearby laoon. Nazario rememberedreceivin 300 soles ($100 in 2002) or readin coca and sendin a despachoto Ausanate: Tat was my first work, in Wakarpay [the name o the lagoon]—that is where I made my first despacho or tourists; I was there only two days,he paid me 300 soles, [and or] my ticket as well—I returned happy. Tat wasmy first work with gringos. When he died in 2007, Nazario had been work-in with the aency or five years; he would travel rom Pacchanta to Cuzco

when tourists requested a shaman. Both the owner o the tourist aency andNazario were content with the relationship, and Nazario was lad to be theonly runakuna hampiq working or them: At the agency, I am the only onethey call chamán, there is no other chamán. I am the only person that does theceremony o the pago.

Nazario could become a chamán Andino because he convincingly metthe requirements o “close distance” that Walter Benjamin identified with

what he called an “aura o authenticity” (1968, 220–21)—in this case, an “in-dienous aura” o course. Nazario was affable and approachable to travelers,

yet middle-class Euro-Americans (and also upper-class Limeños) could easilyreconize him as “other” to them: he lived in a remote enouh place, spokeonly Quechua, and lived off o agriculture and raising llamas and alpacas.Bein el chamán de la agencia—the tourist aency’s shaman—was somethinthat Cuzqueño urbanites, no matter how versed in thins indienous, couldnot perorm; their indieneity lacked the aura o authenticity that oreiners

saw in people like Nazario. ourist entrepreneurs inevitably needed runa-kuna who, in turn, could not be chamanes on their own: they lacked the


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198 S T O R Y 5

money, the connections, and the Western languages necessary to enter the world o tourism independently. Nazario knew this o course: Tose people

that work with tourism know how to do everything [I do] but they call runakuna; we are the ones that tourists want .

Nazario was intrigued by the questions tourists posed, and how theyranted him the ability to correctly answer every one o them. Perhaps, Na-zario said, tourists thouht he just remembered everything fom the Inkas andthe Spanish times. And I think that at least some questions were inspiredrom what tourists perceived as Nazario’s timelessness—how he, accordinto tourists, inhabited a “close distance” between past and present, Inkas andCuzco: Tey call me because they want to know about the works o our Inkas,that is why they call me. Tey ask me: “How were the Inkas beore you? Who

made these ruins? Do you know—or do you not know? Was it the Inkas, theSpaniards? Or people like you did that? Or the mistis might have built it? Or

perhaps those ruins, those temples, the walls just appeared by themselves?” I say,“Te Spaniards have not made that. It was only our Inkas, the ones that builteverything: the pueblos, the houses, the temples, the streets. It was not us nor

the Spaniards,” saying this I answer [ nispa chhaynata cuntestakuni ] . And ocourse there were those tourists who asked about runakuna lie as peasants,

which they sometimes imained to be as unchaned as (they also imained)the ancient buildings that welcomed them: Some o them want to [know]

about the clothing, who made it, how was it made. Who has taught your wie[how to weave], and your wie’s mother, and her ather, her grandather, who

taught them? How have they taught them, doing what? Or is it drawing or onlythinking that they have made them? All those things they want to know.

Perhaps tourists would have been disappointed to learn that some o Na-zario’s practices as chamán were developed in conversation with the owner

o the travel aency, his boss. For example, he asked Nazario to chane hisusual clothes—pants, long-sleeved shirt, and V-neck sweater, all made o

polyester—to create instead an image that would match his clients’ expec-tations o what a “Cuzco Indian” would look like: a pink or reen vest beau-tiully embroidered with buttons, his chullo, and knee- length black pants,

woven o wool rom local sheep—“authentic runakuna clothes” that can bebought in the nearby marketplace. In contrast to the aura that this imagemiht project, he never pretended to have timeless knowlede in response to

the questions tourists asked: I tell them what I remember—what I have beentold, or what I have heard . He did not he eel that his contemporariness a-


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ected what tourists miht have thouht about his authenticity. In act, henever sugested to me a notion that I could translate into “authentic,” andhe was certainly not concerned about transressin any market/non- marketboundaries or “mixin” cateories; afer all, what we deem to be mixtures was

the stuff that his lie was made o. However, he was concerned—very con-cerned—with enacting practices respectully and using the right words toname thins: I speak things as they are. Tis was a requirement o the utmostimportance, since his “speakin thins” summoned them into his lie and thelives o tourists. His job as a shaman required Nazario to navigate his waybetween the obliations incurred toward earth-beins and the demands thattourism—reulated by the state, the market, and the subjectivities o its con-sumers—imposed on him.

P E R F O R M I N G D E S P A C H O S I N M A C H U P I C C H U :

S A T I S F Y I N G E A R T H - B E I N G S A N D T O U R I S T S

Performing a despacho in Machu Picchu is the practice that best exempli-

fies Nazario’s response to the challenge of satisfying both earth-beings and

tourists. A lay observer would translate the despacho as a packet contain-

ing dry food, seeds, flowers, and kind words that runakuna burn so that it

reaches the mountains. On a closer ethnographic look—although of course

still a translation—the despacho brings about a specific condition between

humans and the earth-beings summoned into it; its medium is the smoke of

the burned despacho. Thus the burning of the despacho is key to enabling

the process. Furthermore, the place where the packet is burned becomes

part of the relation, and thus it is carefully chosen and subsequently caredfor. To prevent transgressions, it is hidden from view. When Nazario and Car-

mona performed the presidential despacho in Machu Picchu they burned the

packet; but in so doing they transgressed local regulations that (not surpris-

ingly) forbid making a fire in the ancient citadel. On that occasion, Nazario and

Carmona got away with it; it was part of the presidential ceremony and an ex-

ception could be made. On a tour, a despacho cannot be burned in Machu

Picchu. To follow regulations, chamanes and tourist operators have agreed to

make despachos en crudo (raw despachos), meaning not burned or cooked.

Raw despachos satisfy tourists; they get to see the visually colorful display


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200 S T O R Y 5

that the making of the bundle presents and to listen to the chamán’s Quechua

words (which someone else translates, usually into English) as he invites the

surrounding earth- beings to the ceremony. Tourist agents are proud of the

spectacle, particularly when performed under a full moon in the midst of one

of the “New 7 Wonders of the World.” Nazario considered it a difficult andrisky performance: not burning the despacho leaves it incomplete. It means

summoning earth-beings and offering something that is not delivered. This

format was dangerous; it could cause him serious trouble. To avoid negative

consequences, he continued the ceremony somewhere else, usually by taking

the bundle to the small town of Aguas Calientes, at the foot of Machu Picchu,

where he spent the nights when working for the agency. Before going to bed,

he would burn the packet and asked Wayna-Picchu (the local earth- being) for

understanding.

The Politics of Chamanismo Andino: Negotiating Worlds

Te emerging chamanismo Andino is an intricate condition. It is a job or which there is a new market, and runakuna are requently hired to perorm

the work in exchane or a salary. Yet chamanismo Andino is composed o worldin practices that brin about the entities they enact (earth- beins, or

example) and which history cannot represent. In these practices, words haveto be spoken careully because they count; they are consequential. Once,as we were walking in the city o Cuzco, a miffed Nazario challenged myquestions about his activities as paqu, which I had translated rom the wordchamán; I must have orotten the lesson I had learned rom my conversa-

tion with Mariano and Nazario’s brother, Benito. He said: And you, Marisol,where have you learned that? Who has told you about paqu? Paqu is difficult to

talk about, it is difficult to understand. It is dangerous. It is not easy to be paqu[ Sasa rimay sasa entendiy. Peligru. Mana acillachu paqu kayqa ] . Makingsure I would understand, he said danerous in Spanish— peligru. And thus Istarted callin him a chamán; runakuna were quickly adoptin this word in-stead o the local word paqu, or it lacked the power to bring about the condi-tion that paqu (or the even more dangerous layqa) did. By identiying himsel

as a chamán—still a neologism in Pacchanta during the years o my fieldwork, and a word that Mariano would not have used to identiy his own prac-


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tices—Nazario protected himsel rom the potential dangers o the othernames that his practice could receive: Paqu, layqa, when they call you that, itis dangerous. Tinkin throuh this, I liked to speculate that maybe a similarneed to control the powers o local words (which were not only such!) washow the word shaman came to be accepted around the world. Perhaps it trav-

eled around the world because once uprooted, this word lost the power it hadlocally and, becomin innocuous, it allowed or conversations between trav-elers (includin anthropoloists) and those they called shamans. Shamanismand shamans, my speculation continues, may have saely translated practicesand practitioners namin, which may have been otherwise danerous.

Listening to Nazario, I learned that being an Andean shaman (as my trans-lation o chamán Andino) and being a yachaq is not the same thing—butthese practices are not different, either. ourists access Andean shamans’

words and movements throuh several layers o translation. Te Cuzqueñouide’s interpretation into Enlish o practices perormed in Quechua is ol-

Nazario and Aquiles burn a despacho in their backyard. Both wear jeans

and polyester sweaters—not their ñawpaq p’acha or

“clothes from before.” August 2004.


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202 S T O R Y 5

lowed by each tourist’s interpretation o both the chamán’s practice and theuide’s interpretation. Mediated by this complex translation, tourists enaein relations with tirakuna that are obviously not runakuna’s. Yet the enae-ment summons earth-beins, and this can be disquietin to them i done or

utile reasons, like tourism. Tus runakuna constantly worry about how tour-ism miht affect in-ayllu relationship in villaes where chamanes hail rom.o avoid problems in Pacchanta, Nazario did not reveal much about his jobas an Andean shaman: Whether it is about coca, or a despacho that I make, I donot want to talk about it in Pacchanta. With Auqui the agency, I have an obliga-

tion, that is why [I send despachos]—but here I do not say anything; they would

get mad . Runakuna would et mad—so anry that they miht blame him orany local trouble: droughts; human, animal, and plant diseases; car accidents;

an increase in local crime—anythin. Tey could even accuse him and reporthim to local state authorities—also participants in the circuit o indieneityand thereore suspicious o the consequences o Andean shamans’ work withtourists. Even his closest riends, Benito and Octavio, were concerned thatNazario was practicing chamanismo too requently—it could be bad or him.o assuae this perception, Nazario requently used our conversations to ex-

plain to them—when either one o them was present—that what he did wasnot only despachos; he also talked about Inkas, ariculture, and clothin—

which was indeed the case: Brother Octavio, I have talked about our customsin Washington. I have not only walked there to make healings. I have not gone

there to make despachos, but instead or a conversation, that is what I was calledto do. Here, my people fom Pacchanta think I have only been walking as a paqu,

and that is not the way I walked there.Bein an Andean shaman has a protocol. In spite o its flexibility and re-

ardless o distinctions between the modern and the a- modern, the protocol

has to be ollowed at all times both in relation to humans and other-than-humans. Our conversations had to ollow the protocol indeed. Nazario in-structed me on the appropriate circumstances in which to invoke the names oearth-beings, and o course I could not respond to his instructions with seculardisbelie. Not only was it not into a sphere o belie or disbelie, let alone myown, that earth-beins were summoned i I pronounced their names. Rather,my invoking earth-beings would inevitably summon them into a powerulearthly space composed o hierarchies that needed to be attended to and that

was completely independent o my command: We cannot just talk about theearth-beings; to talk about them, we need coca, wine, alcohol, or cañazo [ suar-


35/40


cane alcohol ] . Only then can we ask or permission to talk about them; it is dangerous. I pronounced or perormed in these circumstances—which Nazarioidentified as doin thins respectully— despachos or coca- searchin sessionscould be ood ( allinmi kashan, está bien). Followin the protocol, Nazario’s

words and actions had to be precise; he had to careully name the riht wordand do the riht action: I do always what I know how to do—I do not add what

I do not know. I can make mistakes. Tis, however, did not mean that practicesdid not chane; Nazario tried new thins and experimented with new invo-cations and new inredients to improve his despachos and better please theearth-beins: I ideas come by themselves, I add them. Tere are always thingsthat can be added. I ask mysel: Will they be useul? Or will they not ?

While Nazario preerred to work with Ausangate (they were inherently re-

lated in-ayllu), as a ood chamán andino he traveled all around Cuzco withtourists to places he had not been beore; thus he had to become acquainted

with the many earth- beins in the reion and become known to them: It islike when you come to Cuzco and want to know the people, and the people want

to know you. I also want to know tirakuna; they also want to know me . ira-kuna were (o course) persons; it was a matter o courtesy or him to intro-duce himsel to those earth-beings that were not his original ayllu and askthem i they would accept his becoming part o them: raveling, going toCuzco, to the ruins, to Washington, I am speaking and learning, and I add [thename o] that [place] where I am. With that I add [the earth-being] that is [the

place where I am]. Sometimes I think, “I am not going to send a despacho only

for Ausangate. Now I am [also] going to call Machu Picchu and Salccantay”

[because] that is respect that helps more. Tose things also work; all fits together[everything works] when I call them, the people I call start healing in Pacchanta

also when I call [those other local earth- beings] . Nazario’s job as an Andean

shaman was not only such; perormed with respect, bein a chamán was alsoa source or innovations that he could brin home as a yachaq—or a paqu—to cure his animals, plants, and amily in Pacchanta.

In addition to resisting being called a paqu, Nazario never identifiedhimsel as altumisayuq—the most powerul yachaq who can talk withearth-beins and can listen to their words. Accordin to him and his atherMariano, these yachaqkuna had disappeared lon ao; Jesus Christ punishedthem because they had conversations with earth-beins. He tied their eyes,

ears, and mouth, and now nobody listens or talks to the earth-beins in the way altumisayuq did. Doubting this act, when Nazario’s mother was sick,


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204 S T O R Y 5

both he and Mariano traveled to ar-away places in search o an altumisayuq, but they could not find one. Ethnoraphic accounts contradict Naza-

rio’s conclusion about these practitioners. Xavier Ricard (2007), workin ina community that is also under the jurisdiction o Ausanate, has met indi-

viduals who identified themselves as altumisayuq. And ristan Platt (1997) participated in an event in Oruro (in Bolivia) where the practitioner (who

Platt identified as a yachaj [ sic ], not an altumisayuq) successully interacted with an earth- bein; it made its appearance as a condor in the room where

the event took place. In Cuzco, tourism has stimulated the upsure o these practices amon the local population as well. Cuzqueños rom all walks o

lie covet chamanes’ services, and those who identiy themselves as altumisayuq earn better salaries than plain pampamisayuq—those who, like Nazario,

can make ood despachos but cannot talk or listen to earth-beins. I askedhim aain and aain, explainin that I had heard that altumisayuq existed,but he held his round: People just walk saying that I am altumisayuq. Tey

also tell me “you are an altumisayuq fom Lauramarca—you live in Ausangate,

you live in the corner that has an alto misa.” I say, “I am not altumisayuq.” Itwould be a lie i I said I was altumisayuq. I am not going to lie, not even to themistis, even i I can charge them more. I say the truth; earing the apukuna, Italk legally. I I just do things or the sake o doing them, then something diffi-cult would happen, or the group, or the tourists. Also, something would happento me. Nazario could not lie without risking a bad relation with the earth-beins, which would not only ruin his business, but could also affect his lie.Money was not worth it—he respected tirakuna.

T I R A K U N A O R S A C R E D M O U N T A I N SH A V E T O B E E R A D I C A T E D

It is impossible to take rom them this superstition because the

destruction o these guacas would require more orce than that o

all the people o Peru in order to move these stones and hills.

—Cristóbal de Albornoz, 1584 (emphasis added)

[We need to] deeat those absurd and pantheistic ideoloies thatbelieve that walls are ods . . . those primitive reliious orms that say


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“do not touch that mountain because it is an Apu, because it is ull

with the millenarian spirit o who knows what.” . . . Hey, the souls

o the ancestors are surely in paradise, not in mountains.

—Alan García (in Adrianzén 2011)

In the Andes the entities also known as mountains have been the site of con-

flict among worlds for centuries because they are not only mountains, and they

are important in all their beings. The above quotes illustrate such a conflict,

one between rulers and ruled. Notwithstanding the chronological distance,

the authors of the quotes (Cristóbal de Albornoz, an early colonial extirpator

of idolatries, and Alan García, a recent president of Peru) solve the conflict (or

attempt to do so) by deeming that the notion that mountains are not only such

is a belief—and a false one at that: inspired by the devil in de Albornoz’s opin-ion, and possibly a remnant of the same belief in the view of the former presi-

dent. The translation of tirakuna as “spirits” is also underpinned by the notion

that mountains as something else is a belief, and— specifically in the case of

Cuzco—an indigenous belief. Usually effected by tourism, as in the catchy

phrase “where the gods become mountains” quoted above, these translations

by travelers and industries allocate such beliefs to the sphere of “indigenous

religion,” of which Andean shamanism may be today’s best-known version.

But politicians may also effect the same conceptual move: García’s remarks

provoked antagonistic responses from leading leftists who defended the right

of indigenous peoples to what they called their spiritual beliefs and accused

the ex-president of evolutionary racism and religious intolerance (Adrianzén

2011).

Nazario’s job as an Andean shaman faced me with a paradox: while the

view of relations with earth-beings as religion was self-evident to travelers,

it was not self- evident to Nazario or his family. Thinking through this para-

dox does not yield an answer like “yes, it is religion” or “no, it is not religion,”

for perhaps it can be both religion and not. An either- or answer may be un-

able to consider that relations with earth- beings as religious practices were

effected by processes of conversion first to Christianity (executed by the colo-

nial Church and its representatives) and later to secular modernity (executed

by the state and its representatives). Conversion implied translation (Rafael

1993), and exploring translation may reveal the ontological complexity of these

entities—tirakuna, mountains, sacred entities—and their participation in dif-ferent, yet partially connected, socionatural formations, where they are more


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206 S T O R Y 5

than one, but less than many: the distinctive entities named above complexly

appear in one another. Let me explain further.

In the Andes, from early colonial faith to today’s sacred mountains or moun-

tain spirits, the language of religion has acted as a powerful tool for a capa-

cious translation enabling cohabitation (however uncomfortable) among dif-ferent worlds: worlds that make ontological distinctions between humans,

nonhumans, and gods as well as worlds that do not make such distinctions.

I speculate that what the Christians who arrived in the Andes encountered

was not necessarily what we know as “religion,” let alone what we might cur-

rently call “indigenous religion.” The ontological divisions between the devil

and God, humans and nature, and soul and body, that early modern practi-

tioners of Christianity used to translate the practices they encountered into

“idolatry” and “superstition” did not organize life in the precolonial Andes.

They came into existence in the Andes through processes of colonial transla-

tion (of words and practices) that acted as a genealogical foundation for the

later emergence of “indigenous religion” as practice and conceptual field—

perhaps in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, perhaps later. Translations

also converted other- than-human beings into nature, and, accordingly, the

practices that engaged them into practices with nature (beliefs animated by

the devil) or with supernature (beliefs about nature produced by culture). How-

ever, the translations did not cancel out the world where these entities (I call

them earth-beings here; de Albornoz called them guacas ) escaped definition

as nature. The worlds where guacas or current-day tirakuna—which may not

be the same—are not beliefs continued to exist along with the beings’ trans-

lation into devil-inspired superstitions, mountain spirits, or indigenous religion.

Thus what in the world of travelers, anthropologists, politicians, and priests

may be “religion” is also not religion, but interactions with other-than-human

entities that are neither natural nor supernatural, but beings that are with ru-nakuna in socio-natural collectives that do not abide by the divisions between

God, nature, and humanity.

Earth-beings in the Andes emerge not only from indigenous religious be-

liefs mixed with Catholic faith or from ancestral spirits that inhabit mountains.

Rather, tirakuna and runakuna also emerge inherently related in- ayllu. At the

risk of anachronism, I want to propose that along with the impossibility of re-

moving the idol because it was a huge mountain, it might have been in-ayllu

relationality that made colonial eradication of idolatries a daunting task. Un-

beknown to those in charge, their task required not only replacing spurious


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beliefs with legitimate ones. It would have also involved transforming the rela-

tional mode of the in-ayllu world, where earth-beings are not objects of human

subjects. Rather, they are together and as such are place. The form of the re-

lation in-ayllu is different from relations of worship or veneration that require

separation between humans and sacred mountains or spirits. De Albornoz

and others like him may have not been able to understand that, rather than

worship, what they saw was people with guacas (and vice versa) taking-placethrough such relation. Contemporary politicians like García and the leftists

who criticized his religious intolerance may have the same problem.

Moreover, most of us may find difficult to fathom runakuna and tirakuna

engaging in and emerging from both a relation of belief (or worship) that sepa-

rates humans and earth- beings and from in- ayllu relations in which earth-

beings (that are) with people take-place. Partially connected, both kinds of

relation may overlap and distinctly exceed each other. Practices with earth-

beings (including chamanismo Andino) can be identified as religious, but they

cannot be reduced to such, for the notion of religion may not contain all they

Nazario trekking with tourists through Ausangate—preparing to make a

despacho and having a good time. April 2007.


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are. This does not mean that the practices are not religious as well —which is

what thinking through units (and the either- or logic to which we are accus-

tomed) would lead us to conclude. Partial connections (and the fractal bodies

or fields that they articulate) instead allow a description that can be both reli-

gion and other than religion at the same time: a never eradicated earth-beingemerging in (usually Catholic) religious practices, and vice versa. The effec-

tiveness of both conversion and the opposition to conversion is perhaps best

viewed through the incompleteness of each of these processes. Considering

these practices as religious beliefs without considering what is not religious

beliefs that the practices also are simplifies this complexity. Enabled by a

historically powerful epistemic apparatus, such simplification is a political-

conceptual practice with the capacity to enact some realities and disavow

others. Nazario’s words were clear: Ausangate is not a spirit, can’t you see

it? It is there—not a spirit . Yet the tourist business for which he worked bore

the words mountain spirit in its name, and Padre Antonio earnestly welcomed

runakuna’s practices with earth- beings as indigenous religion. Similarly, as

I explain in the next story, the National Museum of the American Indian that

hosted Nazario as co-curator translated his practices as indigenous religiosity.

And yes, they are all of the above— but “ not only .”

Marisol De La Cadena -Chamanismo Andino

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