Sacharuna Library

4.8.1 Me; methodolgy; using ethnographic material because by watching the system we are a part of ineracting with its others, at the periphery, we can gain insight into its dynamics, and obtain a clearer perspective on its workings (like with a genealogy that does it through time, and/or an archaeology, this does it in space). So, rom the pespective at the periphery of how people are ensnared into submission to market and state through debt and obligation, so it is possible, and should be done, to expose the same dynamics at work within our society, whereby individuals are quickly ensnared into complience and conformity to societies predilect lifestyles. I owe, i owe, so of to work I go!!!. Soon enough the majority of people in this society sell their souls to the devil, hoping to gain from it (a house, a career, a car, etc), without having to pay a great price (outwitting the devil). but white man’s magic against the state devils seems to be ineffective, unlike runa’s magic against their devils (maybe ther are much more resourceful, being much more entuned to transformational structures)[See Kane Pahntom, gringo boat]. For their devil does extract quite a price, enslaving people to a life of toil without freedom of choice (indentured labour?), ultimately sucking all of their lifeforce to benefit the state/company, ruining the health and happiness, the body and soul of the poor culprit who wanted some goods to enjoy.

5.2.1 Me: Control of power, important. Reempowerent is not just about its acquisition, but is controll, concept odfmastery. True socializationis to have dominion over oneself; Mastering desire, food, shitting, sleep, sexual desire, etc. master/slave dialectic, to master one’s fear of death, to risk it all to gain a measure of autonomy? But not by killing another. Vision quest, sundance, sessions, etc. Other ways te be endangered, confront death and its fear, without having to subject another one in the process.

5.6.1 Me: yes, check Bruce Chatwin’s writtings on nomads/barbarians and the civilized. Same with kristevas’ on otherness??

5.8.1 yes, maybe quote goes in front? Aesthetic of danger, risk, willing to let go of the known in order to wrest the difference; death and rebirth, and the possibility of a social order to be cancelled, grafting ourselves onto another economy!!!! Also, the infinitude of possibilities that lie in the region of the unknown...infinite possibilities...not a closed economy of options. dreams and fantasies can be true. What about the INSIGHT: any thing i can dream of for my future is not good enough, for i can only imagine it from my present state and its corresponding set of limitations. better to acknowledge the mystery, and be willing to accept what comes, acknowledging that God’s will/plan might be much more awesome than we might ever be able to hope for/imagine ourselves.

5.12.1 Me: for an individual to become like a Shing-yi master, rooted on heaven and earth, connected with the macrocosmos, capable of receiving the energies that come its way and transforming/neutralizing/destroying them, respinning and returning them transformed, obeying now one’s own will, not another’s/the state’s. To know oneself, then to become one’s enemy and take the power away. Go in, master oneself to then be able to go out, master others. letting the energy of the other economy grafted onto and flowing through us transform what is around us energetically, but also cognitively[?], obeying to a purpose, controlled.?.

6.2.1 [Nueva Esperanza]..the hamlet and all others like it ...represent a regime of chaos that mediates the antinomies of indigenous society and its system of ecosystem exploitation and maintenance on one side, and national developmentalist, stratified, cpitalist society, on the other. people flee the chaos born of contradiction; their flight reinforces the growing the growing structure of antimony that envelops them. PP57

6.2.2 Chagra is in the forest yet it contrasts with the forest. Chagra and forest depend upon water. But rain unbuffered is tremendously destructive. The water world-the hydrosphere-encompasses both sacha [forest] and chagra. The encompassment itself is the domain of Sungui, the corporeal manifestation of whom is the anaconda. By extension, forest boas ...are thought of as manifestations of Sungui. Sungui is both male and female; as anaconda s/he may devour any living animal. Amasanfa, forest spirit master, is also male and female.. His many transformations (Amasanga tucuna) include not only a great tree (Ila supai), and the forest-cave-dwelling foreign people’s spirit master (Jurijuri Supai), but also the waterfall spirit (paccha Supai), and a spirit demon whose heart is carried outside his body (ingaru Supai). Amasanga’s sacha world borders on and intrudes into the world of water and the domain of demons. Demons, who also may devour people, live in the water world and the forest world; but they are intruders-they are neither from the domain of Sungui nor from that of Amasanga. the word supai is used to tag spirits that are of their respective domains and to name intrusive demons. PP60

6.2.3 Forest spirit in male and female manifestations are givers of animals, of life, but they are also harbringers of death. A man may , for example, have a jungle spirit woman -sacha huarmi- whom he visits in a dream and who gives up much game to him. but if he takes her as wife he goes to live with her in a cave, in a hill, or under the water, and she devours him...The forest nourishes and devours itself, and in its balance it depends upon the water for continuous nourishment, while at the same time providing its own source of that very water. It is forever perilously close to the domain of Sungui. PP62-63

6.2.4 Sacha and chagra are discreet entities: the first is the object of male predation through hunting and gathering; the second is the realm of female domestication through planting and harvesting. men cut trees in the chagra and hunt there too-they are chagra predators in contrast to women, chagra domesticators. Mythically, women drive men, as animalsfrom the chagra. both chagra and sacha are contained by the hydrosphere-by the ever-present, life-giving, potentially destructive force of the encompassing water world. these relationships are both natural andspiritual. To tamperwith them is to produce culture, and to court disaster. PP63

6.2.5 Huasi, this is the hpusehold, the oval structure symbolizing a contained universe divided into male and female parts. The male part may face in any of the cardinal directions, but the female part may not face west, the Andean land of the sunset. The male side is janaj, uo-river or above, and the female side urai, down-river or below. Beyond the female side, ...is the woman’s pottery shed.ππ63-64

6.2.6 The huasi is analogous to a cell in biology. It is a nuclear, specialized structure that contains all the general material to replicate society, the material to transcend its internal form while projecting that form outward. The female huasi group, composed of wife-mother and her unmarried children, work the chagra together. the male huasi node is husband-father, and he brings to the huasi its primary allyu (kinship) continuance just as, through mother wife, mama, his ayllu continuance is regenerated in their birth of their mutual children. PP64

6.2.7 When ayahuasca trips are taken, at night, in the female part of the house, an ancient waterfall or rain comes down over the top as shaman and patients sit on representatives of reptilian forms. The over-all cosmography suggests that huasi is analogous to the chagra forest encompassed by water formation, a contined cultural universe within a tremendous hydraulic system of water above, below, and all around. Cusca, straight up, and ucu, straight down, are conceptualized from the center of the house. Drawing a line straight up and straight down through this center gives us the familiar axis mundi of Amazonian Cosmology...Earth below and Sky above are encompassed by, and permeated by,water. The household is not only a replicative structure of the ecological one described above, it is also itself embedded in the ecological form and thereby bounded in its embeddedness by hydraulic power. PP65

6.2.8 With the ayllu or kinship system we come to the unity of segmentary onness that binds the correspondences of chagra-sacha and huasi into one social formation. A powerful analogy is employed here to evoke the fudamental trope that unites the cosmos and biosphere, and places kinship and shamanism in their most enduring, mystical dimensions: Runa ullu amarun tian (‘The Runa penis is anaconda’). A myth segment...expresses this analogic trope that connects the natural world of sexual relations and indigenous kinship with the spirit world of Sungui, the water world, predation in garden and forest and contained power. PP66

6.2.9 [The younger brother’s elongated penis was cut up by yacu puma]...while yacupuma went down-river in his canoe, throwing the segments into every stream, every lagoon, each side of a big river, into the mouths of rivers and into the oxbow lakes. There the segments remain amarun, just as the penis remains ullu with the boy in his house. The male ullu [penis] in each huasi corresponds to the amarun in each river. PP67

6.2.10 Anaconda [amarun] today comes out of the encompassing water domain-out of stream, river, lagoon or mud...to hunt humans and other animals and to devour them...Men kill ana onda-boas and use their fat, brains, and jaws to ‘make friends,’ to prevent an enemy from expressing anger, to prevent one in authority from exercising his power...They never eat an anaconda however. Shamans call the anaconda to the huasi during healing sessions when cosmic ruptures have occurred and when diagnosis is needed. to control the anaconda is to control power, to unleash the anaconda is to unleash floood, to destroy the earth world and its inhabitants. PP68

6.2.11 ...The Runa are one people, one system of male descent, but the segments of the oneness have been cut by time and by distance....Wherever the amarun is found there too is our ayllu, for the human penis is anaconda. PP69

6.2.12 [a] baby inherits his soul substance from his father and from his mother’s father...a constant constructionist occupation of the Runa is being sure that the soul substance (aya) from one generation to another is a replication, at least in part, of the segmentary unity through marriage occurring in past generations...The male child is extended into the huasi by the male substance of mother’s father and child’s father. As he grows he extends his soul substance out of the huasi, maintaining the ayllu. as the ayllu is maintained, so too is the huasi structure reproduced. PP69

6.2.13 As Christianity made tenuous inroads there developed a duality of ethnic patterning between the native person of the hamlet, of civilization, of christianity-Alli Runa- and the person of the forest, of the animistic universe, of the spirit world-Sacha Runa. Alli Runa/Sacha Runa, I argue, are one and the same, the former facing the world of Christian conquest, its trade goods, destructive potential, and mystical power, the latter facing the indigenous world of ecosystem knowledge, society integrated by ayllu segmentary continuity, intermarriage, and mythology, and by its own system of spiritual power. PP75

6.2.14 Caserio is the Spanish word for hamlet. the hamlet replicates feasible corporate features drawn from national culture and national society with an eye to increasing incorporation into regional administrative structure. A caserio is said by national developers to represent the stable, settled, agricultural. developing. Christian, civilized, ‘whitening’ side of national life as opposed specifically to the unstable, nomadic, hunting-fishing-gathering, backward, heathen, savage, ‘Indian’ side of Amazonian life. In the caserio people must draw from national infrastucture for capital support, just as they endeavor to maintain a meaningful set of lifeways and life-styles within a techno-economic relationship with the habitat that provides for basic subsistence needs. PP81

6.2.15 neither mestizo nor zambu peoples are regarded categorically as acceptable outsiders. they are intrusions from an Andean-coastal world that is not of the comogony that imparts soul, spirit substance, and acceptabilit in unai tothese peope. representatives of this modern sector of the andean world came with the Spaniards as Conquerors; they sought to dominate the Runa. they did not evolve out of ancient time-space; they are clearly ‘here,’ but not ‘from here.’ They are forceful, coincident ubiquities. The nature of their soul substance is questionable. PP82

6.2.16 During the Amazonian rubber boom, peoples with zambo features came both from Amazonia and the Ecuadorian-Colombian coast. These darker peoples came out of the land from beyond the outsider Andeans-by extension they were lamarmanda (from thesea). they penetrated Runa territories and left progeny there. They represent, by this reasoning, the destructive power of the water world, the power called upon by shamans. Dark phenotypical features became tenuously attached to a concept of potential destructive power, something to be controlled. PP87

6.2.17 as the [a] household expands a kindred forms, the locus of the kindred being the husband-wife pair who founded the household. The men andwomen who settle within a half-day’s walk from the founding couple make up a localized kindred from the standpoint of the househol founders. those who live further away make up a dispersed kindred. Kindreds that expand in a territory so as to create a llacta system focus upon men who can manipulate paradigms so as to mend what might be called rifts in a cosmic network. In anthropology we call such men shamans. ...A llacta is like a huasi with a shamanic node, and a caserio is like a large house built in town rather than in a forest or chagra. Shamanic nodes are complemented in the femenine dimmension by women who are master poters. PP88

6.2.18 The caserio is a chaotic place. people are in flight from it today. one pole of such flight is the relative security of Upper Amazonian cultural ecology with its nurturing components of sacha-chagra-huasi-ayllu. The other pole is found in Puyo itself, where a full-scale microcosm of national economic, social, ethnic, and political structure exists. In its chaos the caseriomediates and exacerbates the forest-swidden-riparian Upper Amazonian socially egalitarian system of complementary oppositions as this system is encompassed by nationalist, developmentalist, capitalist plans and practices, on one side, and the nationalist urban scene as this scene is beset by counter-national forces, on the other side. PP100

6.2.19 Flight to town and flight to forest chagra lead to encounters with others similarly engaged. the whole system hold together due to tie developed away from the caserio rather than within it. the complete, multifaceted, face-to-face interrelatedness of those within the caserio plus mutual alienation from and mutual dependence upon the contradictory modes of livelihood preparethe members of the ‘caserio’ for a radically changing ‘real world.’ PP101

6.2.20 What is it that binds the people in nueva esperanza to a hamlet structure that satisfies neither their cultural-ecological needs nor their urban aspirations? First, ...hamlet structure is a requirement of national political economy; without this nucleated residential structure the people would not have a ‘place’ on the comuna, and the comuna would not have a viable system by which to demonstrate its continuing existence in the political economy radiating out of puyo. Political economy articulates with cultural ecology; but the economy/ecology systems are fundamentally incompatible with one another. The coincidence of oppositions adheres in multiple, contradictory ways by means of a mediating formation. This formation -the caserio- becomes one of continuing perturbation as well as mediation. PP101

6.2.21 Second, as a consequence of the first, the hamlet formation provides all of its members with A CLEAR SENSE OF COMMON, EXTERNAL OPPONENTS IN BOTH THE INDIGENOUS AND NONINDIGENOUS WORLDS. ˆT GIVES an urban, natoinal, stratified locus to llacta egalitarian territoriality, which, in turn, gives an egalitarian rural locus to stratified, urban life. Third, alliences shift more rapidly in the caserio than in the dispersed settlement pattern...Finally, caserio life encapsulates the system of complementary oppositions and thereby provides a ready mechanism (or locus) to create a higher level of contradiction and a higher level of complementarity. such raising of levels and the creation of anitnomy is an inevitable consequence of the contained mediated coincidence of incompatibleformations. This encapsulation, which raises the levl of contradiction, generates visible and tangible antinomies that throw into sharp relief salient dimmensions of the upper amazonian cultural ecology andthe stratified, bourocratic world of nationalist, capitalist developmentalism. PP101-102

6.2.22 The world of the Runa is poised between two orders, each of which controls its ramifyimg chaos in different ways. The caserion (or centro or even comuna, as it is often now called) formation replicates the systemic, chaotic order of the nationalist world, caught up as it is in processes of internal dependency. The caserion brings the urban world to it, contains it, and forces it back out, and its residents gat caught up in these nerve-racking centripetal-centrifugal currents. the caserio feeds upon an outer, developing political economy, and its wastes permeate its expansive cultural econolgy. it also feeds upon its artificially divided sylvan-swidden-riparian resources, in a system of ecosystem managment that is restorative. PP103

6.2.23 The caserios of the comuna San Jacinto represent an indigenous cultural-ecological frontier zone that faces back at the system of urbanization and urbanism. On the rim around puyo, and in the rim around Amazonia, we find a polar system of converging and conflicting frontiers organized into a system of segmentary unity and nucleated divisivness. yet consistency reigns in this intercultural system of chaos, for the Runa have developed a way of creativale utilizing disorder to reproduce order. PP103

6.3.1 "Poised delicately between defeat and success, forever entangled in the mire of the underworld and the shining clarity of spiritual enlightment, the healer is in constant process of ascending a hierarchy of purity and power from which he can be easily toppled. Receiving power ‘fromabove’ is contingent upon giving it ‘to below,’ to the afflicted. It is only through helping the afflicted and thereby engaging with the powers of evil that a healer can ascend.

6.3.2 "power comes from this chain of reciprocal exchanges. And these exchanges of reciprosity, so it would seem, assume connections going back to the beginning of time through the spirits of generations of Indian shamans and folk Catholic saints. The phenomenology of yagé[ayahuasca-soul vine] is basic to this, because thevision and the worlds it reveals, so sensuously and vividly, cascade into ever-widening cycles of understanding of cosmic history and one’s place in it.’-Michael T. Taussig, ‘Folk healing and the Structure of Conquest in Southwest Colombia" (1980), p.255. PP106 Intro to the chaptr.

6.3.3 At the very base of the Ecuadorian Andes, male shamanic tradition has long been syncretized with female ceramic tradition; the result is a male-induced-female-induced conjoined system of cultural transmission that relates private imagery to public imagery, vision to knowledge, thought and reflection to practical action. to understand this syncretic tradition that provides consistency in a system of radical change, and that utilizes disorder to reproduce or create order, we must come to closer grips with the Canelos Quichua concept of power that includes ideas about knowledge and vision, about ‘our’ culture and ‘their’ culture, the sense of parallel transmission of cultural knowledge, a paradigm of ecological imagery, and a fundamental contrast in two hallucinogen-induced forms of visionary experience. PP108

6.3.4 POWER{Subtitle}.. The verb ushana in Canelos Quichua meANS TO be capable, to be able to respond to contingencies in life. Usually one hears the term as a negative, invidious reference to the capabilities of another person...Utipana, a synonim for Ushana in the Napo dialect, is sometimes used in the sence of cosmic power. When Lluhui [a powerful shaman] died...there were clear rifts in social and cosmic orders that lasted for some time. In the course of a brief stay there a month after his death, I reported occurrences to my friend’s...ranging from strange noises and vibrations to a brief period of possession while dreaming; utipanamanda was given asthe source of such disturbances, and the people said that they came from ‘beyond,’ where fire and water merged. PP108

6.3.5 Ursa (or jursa) from the Spanish fuerza, is the most frequently heard positive term of capability, and the adjective sinchi, strong, is affixed to a noun denoting capacity. to have capacity is to prove oneself; the term for proof is camai. Proof must be tangible; one must not only succeed in a task, but produce something that another can feel. PP108

6.3.6 For example, one who says he senses a beauty (suma) within himself can prove this by playing a flute or by singing. In both cases another concept enters-samai, breath. One’s samai carries with it something of the force of one’s will, shungu, and something of the invisible (to humans, when awake) and yet tangible proof of inner strength. The proof of the strength of one’s breath for communicating musically through a flute can make the person receiving the musical beauty reflect on the evocative meaning of the unsung words and the heard melody, and perhaps make him sad, perhaps happy. When one plays a poignant song its beauty evokes love, sadness, or melancholy, and ‘proof’(llaqui)...Camai, proof, a tangible manifestation of samai, breath, and llaqui, also as proof, are concepts that imply reciprocation in interaction. They must be recorded by alter from ego and ego must be aware of alter’s reception. For another example, a shaman’s corporeal heart-throat-stomach area (his shungu, his will) contains specially sharp and dangerous objects that protect him but that can also be blown as projectiles. When one gets hit with such a projectile, it is proof of the strength of a shaman; the projectile is in a shaman’s class, sami. When a shaman dies, hard proof of the strength of his tangible breath appears as small snails (called samhuai) near his grave.because a shaman’s-class projectile is strongerthan a non-shaman’s class, proof exists of reciprocal asymmetry. A shaman of the same or a higher class must be consulted for a cure and for redressing the wrong of the reception of a missile from another. Shamans also keep many stones (rumi). Each rumi in the shaman’s class, yachaj sami rumi, contains the life force, causai, of a deceased shaman, of a spirit, or of a soul (or of some combination). One proves that a rumi is shaman’s class by blowing gently on it with one’s own breath...if condensation appears on the shiny surface, the stone ‘has breath; it is powerful shaman’ (samai tian sinchi yachaj). Such stones are ‘like soldiers’ (soldado shina). The shaman with his phalanx of animated shaman’s-class stones is like the center of a military formation. PP109

6.3.7 For a third example, a woman making a pot must control the breath of the fire, nina samai, as this heat leaves a pot after firing. if she does not do so the fire’s samai will cause the vessel to crack or burst as it cools. The completed pot is her camai, her proof of ability to control clay, water, fire, and breath, and also, with the forces of clay, rock,fire, and water, to produce color, design, and form. Finally, for a fourth example, actual song unmediated by a musical instrument projects a particular synthesis of mythic time-space, knowledge of sacha and chagra, interpersonal-intersubjective reality, and skill into the cosmos across space and through time. Songs are received by those to whom they are sent, by souls and spirits, and by powerful shamans. Pp109

6.3.8 These examples show something of the asociationally complex cultural elements with which people of Nayapi Llacta work to maintain a sense of inner strength and integrity. PP109

6.3.10 The shaman moves the threshold between our culture (and the plane of existence of our quotidian world) closer to the edge of other cultures and other worlds. He himself passes from our culture and our world to others, and he returns, thereby exploring the other while maintaining and enriching the dynamic inner integrity of ours. the shaman maintains and manipulates series of analogic relationships such that novel interpretations may be presented on an enduring symbolic template. The shaman, in the traditional Canelos Quichua system, is a person who, above all others, has mastered the art of forging concepts of beauty to the bidding of the unusual power to heal. The shaman is also the node of the ayllu and llacta system, and the broker between indigenous culture and the outside world. The shaman is called yachaj, one who knows...In order to ‘know’ and to continue to learn through one’s growing mastery so as to respond to the vicissitudes of ordered and disordered worlds, the concept of yachana must be balanced with another concept -muscuna-which means to dream, to envision, to be insightful. Yachana, as knowing, has a real ‘depth’ to it, and this depth manifests itself inthe various forms of ‘proof.’ ..A yachaj knows by degrees; and the more he knows, the stronger he becomes. PP114

6.3.11 One of the proofs of increasing strength of a shaman is acquisition of a special shaman’s song, taquina. Only when the shaman is strong enough to ward off in-coming projectiles of all other shamans can he actually sing out the song (send it out through his samai). When the beauty of the taquina is received by other shamans, they blow (shitana) back at the singer to test his strength. This is not the tangible blowng (pucuna) of, say, a dart through a blowgun. Rather, it is a dangerous blowing of unseen tangibility. If he is now ‘strong one who knows’ (sichi yachaj), he may sing his shaman’s song without harm to himself or to huasi members; the fearsome beauty of the heard song proves the shaman’s strength. He then may continue shamanic activites privately, within his own family, or more publicly, by curing others from his ayllu and, eventually, as he becomes stronger, people from other ayllus and other cultures. PP115

6.3.12 Ricsina is yet another verb that deals with knowledge in a somewhat different way, in a more immediate sense. it means to know, to experience, to perceive, to comprehend. This sort of knowing is experiential, and it must be backed up by depth and also balanced with vision. One who is central to the reception of information -a curaga in the past- could be known as ricsij runa, a sort of know-all, see-all person [prophetic powers?].There has never been such a person in Nayapi Llacta, though the concept exists in the Quechua-speaking world. PP115

6.3.13 Yuyana...which means to think, to reflect....a few people who had studied us said we were yuyayuj runa-sort of professional students. A true insider, however, balances his thoughts and reflections with his immediate and deep knowledge, and -always- with his visionary activity. People who reflect upon canelos Quichua culture (as we do) may be classed as shuj shimita yachai...’other speech knowledge.’ By contrast, to so reflect and work within the semiotic paradigm of Canelos Quichua culture oneis ‘ñucanchi yachai (‘our cultural knowledge’) or ñucanchi ricsiushca runa (‘our people’s perception’). PP117

6.3.14 ...the sichi yachaj has attained a level of control such that he is sufficiently powerful to balance his knowledge with his visions, to relate his visions to cultural knowledge, and to relate his thoughts and reflections to knowledge and to his visions. To know more about that which is within, the shaman must increasingly know more about that which is without. the shaman becomes a paradigm manipulator. he continuously reproduces cultural knowledge, continuously maintains the contrast between our culture and other culture, and continuously transcends the boundaries that he enforces. His work must, in part, be based upon experiences with other peoples soeaking other languages...[these others] give to the shaman ‘other speech knowledge’ (shuj shimita yachaj). the shaman at the same time maintains native paradigms and expands the paradigms by drawing from hisknowledge of other cultures. The shaman controls the process of syncretism. PP118

6.3.15 Master potters, all of whom are women, do the same thing. PP118

6.3.16 Yachaj qualities exist in most [runa] men-perhaps in all. Most men must be able to ‘see’ that there is something wrong within a huasi, and may actually ‘see’ projectiles when they take soul-vine brew. At a certain point however, in obtaining shaman’s-class status (yachaj sami) one must acquire a taquina from another shaman. His breath then must be balanced with ‘proof’. he becomes sinchi yachaj, powerful one who knows, and he both anchors and manipulates a cultural paradigm. Few men reach this level...at least two of these [three] men have acquired sinchi yachaj taquina, but only one is strong enough to sing out, and he does so only secretly within his own house. PP118

6.3.18 The women’s role in paradigm manipulation faces inward, drawing sustenance from ancient knowledge thathas been imparted to her by instruction, by demonstration, through secrets, and through extensive impartation of private imagery drawn from myth and song by other women...Seated on a split-bamboo mat that faces away from the Andes, she sculpts an array of ceramic pieces that represent the cosmos, the mythic orderin of all social life, imparting always something of the novel, something of herself, and something of the insights that link private thought and reflection to publicly acknowledged intracultural knowledge...Ceramic manufacture is especially elaborate in preparation for a festive event, when a deliberate rift is made in the fabric of ñucanchi yachaj in the form of invited intrusion from the right side of the semiotic paradigm [shuj shimita Yachai:’other people’s speech, knowledge’]. PP119

6.3.19 An internal disjuncture of ñucanchi yachai within a cosmic network from human to spirit, through cosmos, and back to human triggers the activities that create a situation in which prominent male paradigm manipulation takes place. here a shaman, working in the woman’s side of the household, faces both inward and outward. His paraphenelia includes a split calabash shell for drinking ...ayahuasca; a smaller container for snuffing tobacco water, a cigarette for blowing cleansing smoke on whatever he wishes to ‘see into’; an array of stones which themselves contain the life force (causai) of contained spirits, each with its own soul. Within him exists an array of hard spirit substances that form a shield (lurira) to protect his body. These substances are brought into his throat to help him diagnose the cause of illness, and they may be projected outward on his breath if he chooses to blow harm at an enemy. When these inner substances are so blown as projectiles they are supai biruti, spirit darts... One who has felt the hard, living proof of sent evil (shitashca) approaches the shaman and asks for help in exchange for pay. PP120

6.3.20 The shamanic seance takes place just after dark and may go on until dawn. The shaman is seated (tiarina) on a carved stool that symbolizes the amazonian water turtle. While he is seated and AFTER HE HAS DRUNK, SPIRIT FORCES COME TO HIM IN THEIR CORPOREAL MANIFESTATIONS. THEN OTHER SPIRITS COME TO HIM AND A SPIRIT SHAMAN APPEARS STANDING (SHAYARINA). PP120

6.3.21 As spirits appear standing to the shaman while he is seated on his stool, he also travels to other lands where he appears standing to the spirits. To so appear standing is to be poised, to be ready, to be capable, to feel power. While still seated the shaman sings of where he is going and where he has been and of the power to see and to cure that he has obtained. he identifies the cause of illness as an object (perhaps a spider encased in a blue mucous within one’s kneecap) and as an agent (the shaman living on the Llushin river) and as an agent’s client (jorge...), and, if he is paid to do so, he calls a demonic spirit; while seated and in a state of possession he sends forth a harmful projectile of his own. PP120

6.3.22 ...when after takin ayahuasca the anaconda appears to the shaman, he cannot see it well; but women working with him snuff tobacco water and clarify the image, even speaking for it: ‘I am peron Yacu mama.’ In their activitie the shaman faces both outward and inward (in terms of our culture-their culture) and the potter faces primarily inward. PP121

6.3.23 The force field created by the shaman protects the people while at the same time drawing additional strength from the outer world. Te world to which shamans turn for power must be outward as well as inward, but the world to which women turn is expansively inward. For example, when a shaman flies to the right side of the pastaza river to engage the killing spirit force of the legendary Chirapas, he makes them different as he crosses the boundary between them and us, and takes the power of them back to us. But if a woman trades today with people from that same area for her clays and dyes, then she makes them like us, for marriage and kin ties are manipulated so that the material flow in the female domain is a manifestation of existing social ties. PP121

6.3.24 As women and men transmit not only traditional culture and ancient syncretisms in a parallel, mutually reinforcing and mutually reinterpreting fashion, they also transmit, in a continuing if transformed parallel fashion, much of the new syncretic formations as both males and females intensify their own gender-specific ordering of cultural domains, while expanding those domains by exchange and interaction with bearers of other cultures. In the process of expanding sensory perception of ‘us’ and ‘them’ frawn from paradigms of ecological imagery are constantly invoked. This imagery loates the cosmology of Nayapi Llacta solidly within the Amazonian culture sphere, but also with syncretized elements of the ancient Andean world and the world of the Hispanic conquest, and the invidious, pernicious exclusion of the peoples of Nueva Esperanza from the national system. PP122

6.3.26 Our task is to present aspects of scosmology systematically so as to comprehend something of the ordering of chaos, and the use ofdisorder to maintain or reproduce wanted and unwanted consistencies. PP123

6.3.27 Let us begin with the concepts of aya and supai, which I define...as soul and spirit respectively. Everything that is living or once lived (causana) has a soul. The soul’s existence is both dependent upon its living substance, causai, and potentially independent of it. A supai is a living spirit force, being, or image which itself has a soul. Sometimes one hears that there is no difference. Sometimes one hears that there is no difference between a supai and an aya. For example, atree...called ila...is a soul, is a human, is a spirit...also...it is asacha supai runa ...(‘jungle spirit person). Many such souls/spirits are prefixed by either sacha, chagra, or yacu. And such spirits with forest, garden or water prefixes may also be regarded as tucuna (transformation) of a highly allusive concept of spirit force specific to one of the three domains. i call such concepts sign images...; each may be described as a master spirit or as a key symbol. The master spirit sign images are called Sungui, spirit master of the water domain (hydrosphere), Nunghui, spirit master of the garden soil and of pottery clay, and Amasanga, spirit master of the forest. PP123 [see photocopy for indepth descriptions]

6.3.28 With the concept of Singui we encounter a consistent set of analogies with the runa shaman, with the origin myth of ayllu, and with the observations that the nodal figures of the ayllu are powerful shamans. Tucuna in quichua may be translated as ‘become,’ and in canelos Quichua as ‘transform,’ and tucurina means ‘to end everything.’ Both of these concepts are linked to Sungui. In the first it may be said that a shaman person is an anaconda transformation; that the anaconda changes into one’s soul; that the anaconda is a human penis. In the second, the amarun may be brought forth ceremonially to end the world (tucurina) in a great flood. PP125

6.3.29 Potentially destructive force is linked to Sungui as torrential rains promoting flood, erosion, and landslide. Perhaps syncretized with Andean concepts is the idea, expressed only in times of crises, of the ultimate merger of fire and water producing thunder, lightning, earthquake, volcanic eruption, and flood. Also linked to the domain of Sungui, and to amyth of the sun, is the concept of rasu tamia (ice rain), also called ninatamia (fire rain). Such hard ice-hot rain, it is said, comes to the Runa when God (Dios) is punishing them...Sungui is potentially unleashable nature (or nature occasionally unleashed) imbued with natural shamanic strength. Sungui must be controlled. PP125

6.3.30 Nunghui is often described in Quichua with the suffix mama...Nunghui is, above all else, the spirit of domestication, of culture...does not control nature. She exists within achagra set within a forest cleared by men. She domesticates plants, helps women grow domesticated root crops, and imparts to women the secret of conversion of clay and water into ceramics. PP128

6.3.31 Amasanga, whose domain sorrounds that of Nunghui, is, in turn, surrounded by the domain of Sungui. [It] is not only the spirit master of the rain forest..., but also the personification of the antithesis of national urban culture...My opinion is that the specific forces pertaining to the forest have become syncretized by negative analogy in the face of centuries of Western proselytization that stressed the concept of the jungle, its people, and its properties as metonymic sets of invidious contrasts to ‘civilization’. Amasanga transformations today include ...Jurijuri supai, Foreign people’s Amasanga [machin runa’s]. he is the master of monkeys and lives in the underground, urban centers. PP128-130

6.3.32 The concept of control of nature imbues Amasanga with special character, though he is regarded as outside the domain of human domestication...Amasanga and Nungui are from the domain of Datura, Sungui is not. The corporeal representation of Amasanga is the black jaguar. This forest creature embodies the sense impressions of yellow-red (orange) and shadow (black). Whereas humans see a reflected vision of their own aya through their shadow, Amasanga’s aya is prominent in the black jaguar, where one must look closely to see the hidden jaguar’s color underneath, so to speak, his tangible external shadow. PP130

6.3.33 In the forest Amasanga controls the weather; thunder is his drumming, and lightning is his as well. Strong wind is his breath, coming from a cave within a hill...He is the curaga of animals and his pet is the bush dog. he helps humans create things out of jungle wood and animal skins. for example, when a man is making a canoe Amasanga helps by not allowing the log to split...Man does not domesticate nature by his wood-working. he shapes it, and with Amasanga’s help partly controls and partly ‘plays’ with it.PP134

6.3.34 If Amasanga is a syncretized sign image, then we could see the nature/culture (Sungui/Nunghui) dichotomy as a fundamental contrast mediated by Amasanga...[who] seems to be a set of syncretized imagery builtreflexively out of Western denigration of the rain forest and indigenous dependence on its ecological relationships. The relationship of Amasanga imageryto that of Sungui and Nungui is that of control over the power of nature on one side and lack of control over the power of domestication on the other. PP134 [????]

6.3.36 [The Runa] actively seek meaning in dreams, using the concept set forth in the paradigm to guide them. Dream imagery as sense experience (muscui) is related to the univarse of souls and spirits, to unai, to known history, to culural, ethnic, and social space.PP134

6.3.37 Dreams are part of life. They are real but not tangible under ordinary circustances. Their origin is problematic and they provide the stuff from which creativity and imagination born of reflection are made. One’s causai exists in corporeal and noncorporeal dimensions; its reflection, in the latter, is seen when awake in one’s shadow and in one’s eye. These reflections, in runa thought, are said to be just that, even though they may be called aya or alma. The fundamental mystery of simultaneous existence of both flesh and soul is not overcome with any sense of soul detached from body, detachment and attachment are complementary facets of life processes. The aya(soul)/aicha(body) contrast is analogous to the shayarina (standing-appearing)/tiarina (sitting-being) contrast. The former is the reflexive form of shayana, to stand, the latter of tiana, to be. PP135

6.3.38 [When i visit my compadre]...both of us must be sitting on something that itself is on the floor; we sit on a bancu, which, for the household head, is carved in the form of an amazonian water turtle; for the visitor it is a long bench symbolizing the amarun.PP135

6.3.39 Ecological imagery is with us, the huasi contains us, we are rooted...in that huasi by our mutual sitting; we are real, corporeal; we are not ‘standing appearances’ to one another. To be ‘standing apearing’ is to be ‘seen’ there, in contrast to ‘being’ there. We are real to one another in a waking world...PP136

6.3.40 Ayahuasca.- ...The black paint, from huiduj(genipa Americana) is painted on in the evening, after being cooked, and it does not show up until the next day. Huiduj and ayahuasca must be cooked; each is associated with the moon, which in turn is associated with disorder, and with Runa origin and continuity. PP137

6.3.41 Both black jaguar and black anaconda appear as pairs; the former comes first as co-shaman from the forest domain, the latter then appears in black manifestation as canoe vehicle for the forest spirit-master as shaman. The black anaconda is from the water domain, the world of Sungui, who is himself a shaman. Yacumama in the form of a colorful anaconda or fish examines the runa shaman’s shungu, or will, and silently converses with him.The will has two manifestations -the inner essence that contains the shaman’s motivations, strengths and purposes, and the flesh of stomach, heart, and lungs. The shaman converses with yacu mama, and as he gains her knowledge about his will and about his patient’s affliction, his body swells. Then, sitting on his stool, now uffed up fat with visionary potency, the shaman converses softly with his patients. PP137

6.3.42 He sings out his taquina song and more spirits of the forest come. Spirits of Events come too-some are other indigenous peoples, some are animals marching as soldiers in the Peru-Ecuador war or as a karate expert who taught soldiers in shell a few years back. As these images come they dance, swinging left, then right; they are beautiful, and they are strong.PP137

6.3.43 ...he sucks noisily, again and again, taking the evil from the patient into his mouth, holding it, allowing his own spirit helpers from his shungu to examine and to take the soul of the evil substance from it; he then blows the evil substance, devoid of soul, into a tree outside of his house, and there it stays. PP138

6.3.44 If the shaman goes on with his seance performance he next calls the undersoil spirits of the forest in triple, femenine form, and they come to him under the house; there, unified as a single, powerful, killing spirit, they sit on him as their bancu. They then possess the shaman; he is bancu. Through him, they as one do as he has just done, AND TH EN THEYdivine the causal agent who initiated the action leading to illness, and ‘he’ as jurijuri-soulmaster of other people from other cultures (the spirit on shaman on bancu on ground with spirit force under the ground)-sends a killing missile out to rend the air with slight, high falsetto, but audible sound (quich hiaj) and to break into the biological, social and spiritual network of the agent and his shaman-into their bodies, protective shields, and into their ayllus- to do killing harm. PP140

6.3.45 BEFORE DAWN EVERYBODY IS HOME; THE DISORDER OF NIGHT CREATED WITHIN THE HUASI- AS The shaman stays seated on his bancu but appears standing to the spirits, while the spirits appear standing to the seated shaman until, finally, both spirits and shamans are together seated in one cosmic connection to project death-does not carry into day. The sun brings order out of the waters to the east. Day is a time of its own border/disorder. Ruptures which occur are usually mended at night by shamanic activity, just as this activity creates its own activities that then require a mender. Rupture that cannot be so mended demands that one enter the cosmos alone, to risk everything for a secure grasp on knowledge and a heightened ability to ‘see’[taking datura]. PP140

6.3.46 [Taruga’s trip to visit rodrigo Andi [shaman].. After more whistling the shaman takes out a pijuano, a vertical, shaman’s class flute, and again plays his taquina,...Don Rodrigo now hums two tones mm-MM-mm-MM. These sounds, it is said, are the only ones that humans made in unai. At that time humans crawled around as babies, and all other life forces were ‘human.’ The hum, or whistle, of the two tones is the sound analog of swinging from side to side; each brings the Runa world and mythic-time-space into the same cosmic dimension with known history and the spirit domains. With ancient and contemporary now one, and with a unity of history and now, don rodrigo has taken the steps necessary to establish a force field around himself and his amazonian water turtle seat of power; he again begins to sing. PP148

6.3.47 The shaman is now gathering the power to kill, for only when he possesses the this power will he be strong enough to cure his patient of the killing darts sent to him by a shaman working for a malevolent agent. PP149

6.3.48 Now there is no longer ambiguity about the seat of power and the control of power from the world of spirits. don Rodrigo himself is the seat ofpower for the powerful spirit, and the spirit chants through him. the shaman has become bancu for the spirit shaman. PP149

6.3.49 Although those present still see the shaman chanting, he himself knows that the chants are coming from the spirit, and he is now the spirit’s anchor and vehicle into the waking world of humans. The spirit chants that he will cure, that he is part of a bancu (here the shaman himself has become the bancu).In addition to the quelities of noise and vision the spirit now sings of strength. the spirit shaman now sings that he is like a sun pope, a spirit force of the sky...Then the spirit sings that he is Tsalamanga curaga, chief of the mystical water spirits of the deep, cold Andean lakes. he descends into a lake of beautiful ice inside of a mountain, where he sits on the seat of power there, still swinging from side to side, dancing and singing. note here that the shaman, as bancu, is still seated-being in his house on a high bank above the Napo River, but now his spirit possessor, who has traveled while seated on the shaman to the Andean lakes, is also seated-being in the Andean lake. The shaman with his spirit is anchored solidly in two domains, but as himself (shaman) he remains anchored where he is. there is tremendous danger in this procedure, for if the shaman loses his grip within his household-loseshis ground, so to speak-he will die. PP149

6.3.50 Now the spirit, singing through don Rodrigo, chants of his and other powerful, sentient living stones. Spirits are coming to him from such stones in the form of sharp, dart like projectiles. he grabs them, first from one side, then from another, swinging rythmically from side to side, taking from the left, then from the right. Where, in the first taquina rendition, the shaman was defending himself ...[now] the spirit shaman, working through the shaman, is now capturing the darts in the form of sharp stones and keeping them for future use. PP150

6.3.51 He bends over the child and noisily sucks out adart, blue mucus and all, taking it into his mouth and rolling it around. His own spirit helpers come up from his shungu to examine the inner substance of the dart and to take the essence from it, thereby increasing the shaman’s power by the addition of more spirit substance. PP150

6.3.52 SICUANGA Was pleased that his son and daughter in law had been able to cure their son, who himself was the embodiedment of the social and spiritual essence of the founding ayllus, by recourse to napo shamanic activity no longer securely available at home. but he was also uneasy, for the replication of structure-the tenuous, disordered, transcendental conjoining of opposites-by human volition invariably creates rifts elsewhere. PP151

6.3.53 CHECK PHOTOCOPIES FOR DESCRIPTION OF DATURA AND AYAHUASCA JOURNEYS

6.3.55 The semiotic structure of knowledge, vision, thought, and reflection creating the thresholds and portals between our culture and other cultures, together with the ‘negotiated proofs’ of the capacity to respond that develop out of such a structure, provide a symbolic template that can be endlessly elaborated. Reduction and elaboration are but complementary facets of an ongoing process of adaptation and cultural change, just as they are complementary facets of structural maintenance. PP163

6.4.1 "Power (macht) is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probabilty rests."-Max Weber, The Theory of Socail and Economic Organization (1964),p.152. From Intro to chptr. Pg166

6.4.2 Two scenes, one in nueva Esperanza, Challua, at his most humble, scolded by bank officials and indigenous leaders alike for not paying his bank loan...’On that day challua knew the effect of national control over every aspect of his being, and he felt the sheer force of a new capitalist order of existence’.Five days later in nayapi llajcta, ‘he talked long and laud, and as he talked...people were pleased with the strength in his voice, the projection of a common ‘proof’ of power in his breath. he talked of trees as though they were people, of the imagery of his mind when he could ‘see’ every bit of his territory and every bit of amazonian achuar territory far away, from whence he had come and to which he could always return...All who listened to him...knew that Challua had cut the bonds of Bank officialdom. he became the antithesis of the man who had walked slowly to the assembly meeting. He was quintessentially human in touch with all of the forces of forest and water, and his wife, Marta, was quintessentially chagra mama, the enduring basis for productive activity. PP166,167.

6.4.3 The public events that Challua’s activity triggered reveal contrasting sides of a set of contextually motivated stances vis-a-vis control of resources. The first shows Challua’s consciousness of nation-state control of capital resources and his consequent appropriate behavior in a juro-political meeting in nueva Esperanza. The second demonstrates his acute awareness of cultural-ecological control over productive resources within nayapi Llacta and in other Upper Amazonian settings. Both of these control systems constitute the bases of felt acknowledged, recognized, contradictory power systems that are conjoined not only in the technological and economic processes of development sponsored change, but in the very core of Challua’s psyche. PP168

6.4.4 The experience of taqking datura and going on a trip with huanduj supai is a rare and profoundly private event. Nonetheless, tales of such a trip, from falling into death through prophetic insights constructed on the threshhold of re-entry, are likely to be told to the most causal visitor....That which is ‘seen’ privately during a datura trip becomes part of public discourse, grist for every symbolic mill that condenses experiences born of antinomy to manageable, revealing proportions, while at the same time allowing for unending allegorical play that re-introduces multiplicities of meaning, evocative imagery, and charged emotional responses. PP168

6.4.5 To enetr completely the world of spirits by drinking datura is to cross over the universal threshold from life to enter the portal of death. ..many Runa do so only once, few more than three times.The most powrful images (muscui) are huandujmanda, from datura. the world of spirits and souls, of which muscui provide glimpses, are omniprescent. those living runa who have unusual insight, and who can even control their own process of dreaming, projecting the resultant inspirations into creative artistic work, are known as sinchi muscuj runa, or, more often, sinchi muscuj huarmi, the vision-filled, image-oriented, knowledgeable woman who is master potter, complement to the male shaman and in control of the beauty inherent in the household micro-universe. PP168

6.4.6 Passage into the domain mediated by ayahuasca, while extremely difficult for most, is effected quite regularly by a few men. these are the sinchi yachaj, the strong ones who know, who are at the center of internal consistency (ñucanchi yachai), and who regularly take the Canelos Quichua peoples to the very edge of contrasting, external consistency. These sichi yachaj, like the sinchi muscuj huarmi, must be governed by tremendous visionary powers, but they are also guided by the ability to move between worlds that exist simultaneously on different planes, and to intuit, interpret, and manipulate the correspondence between such planes. PP169

6.4.8 A threshold is ‘a beginning point of something.’ ..The concept of threshold signals the idea of entrance, which in turn evokes the concept of transformation as one passes from one domain into another. For humans to be in another domaIN IS TO BECOME, HOWEVER SUBTLY, SOMETHING SOMEWHAT DIFFERENT. TO AT LEAST A VERY MINOR DEGREE ONE ‘IS’ AS S/HE IS ‘SITUATED’ IN A SOCIAL INTERACTIONAL CONTEXT. IN EVERYDAY LIFE THE RUNA ARE NOT ALWAYS aware of their various public personae, but they become intensely aware of the self in relation to immediate and distant others during ayahuasca sessions and during festivals. In mythology, the self is radically different in each of the fantastic houses that it enters. PP169

6.4.9 Quotidian but symbolically significant passages are made regularly as runa go in and out of one another’s households and in and out of their own huasis, crossing the boundaries of plaza, chagra, sacha, llacta. They can and do speak of such passagesas moving through an entry-pungu-and even label entries in terms of social and spiritual personae. Examples from a swidden garden include ñucanchi pungu (our entrance), supai pungu (spirit entrance-something normally invisible but existing on annother plane), and perhaps even mashca pupu pungu (non0runa ecuadorian entrance- one placed at an easy to find trail to assist non-knowledgeable people so they don’t become lost). PP169

6.4.10 When a couple marries, the social passage from the status of youth to that of household founder is supercharged in terms of altered social relations....Then, for years after marriage, man and woman reADJUST THEIR MICRO-UNIVERSE OF FOUNDED HUASI IN MULTIPLE AND SHIFTING RELATIONSHIPS VIS-A-VIS PARENTAL HUASIS UNTIL, PERHAPS in their forties, a deep recognition of their transformed life situation within biosphere, noosphere, and cosmos provokes more conversation about such symbol ladden concepts as muscuna, ricsina, yachana and yuyana. By this time, on quotidian and spiritual planes, each adult huasi member is deeply embedded- on terms that he or she has negotiated- in both nayapi Llacta and in Nueva esperanza, and the nature of the embeddedness may differ in each of these sociosymbolic settings. PP170

6.4.11 Everyone is ricsij runa-one who sees-but no one today is sinchi ricsij runa. A person with such status did exist in Quito in past centuries, as sort of a powerful see-all (Salomon 1980), and many Runa say they have heard of such status elsewhere, including Quito, in ‘ancient times’. Such an indigenous person controlled humanand material resources within a nonindigenous power structure. but this indigenous control does not exist today . PP170-171

6.4.12 The Runa of nayapi Llacta say, ‘We are all very strong, for with the spirit masters we control forest and chagra and we know our waterways and terrain’...Everyone is also yuyayuj runa-one who learns, ‘for we not only learn from the old ones who knew more, but also from those of other cultures, of other languages’...But again, sinchi yuyayuj runa does notexist here, for this concept implies going ever outward into other systems. being able to ‘see well’ and being able to ‘learn well’ places everyone on the threshhold of change, for as highly intelligent, perceptive people, they are rapidly assimilating an enormous amount of information about other lifeways, much of it necessary for survival as questing human beings in a transformed Upper Amazonia. PP171.

6.4.13 The threshold of change is a moving one, wed to frontier dynamics which are in turn made up of the great contemporary antinomy of amazonian cultural ecology, on nayapi Llacta’s side, and national developmentalism, on that of Nueva esperanza. Pp171

6.4.15 Who controls what, under what circumstances, with what cosequences for other parties are fundamental questions to be asked...But if power is only control, then we don’t need a special concept for it...Moreover, we run the risk of reducing the problem of understanding the capacity to respond to a discussion of resource competition and the construction of ethnic boundaries. Power as the ability to carry out one’s will despite resistance- as the personal sense of energized ability to transcend boundaries and to move thresholds that Challua felt...-must also be studied in its symbolic dimmensions. Adams (see also Fogelson and Adams 1977) continuosly asserts...that although power rests upon control of energy, it must be understood in symbolic terms. In fact, Adams introduces the notion of symbolic control into his discussion, suggesting that we may define power, in part at least, as the systematization of symbol control by one party in contention with another party over something of mutual value in a known environment. Symbolcontrol mediates two systems: 1) the system of technological control over resources and 2) the cognitive system of ‘equivalence structuring’ (Wallace 1961; Adams 1975, 1977), wherein differentiation of control between contending parties is acknowledged publicly. PP179

6.4.16 Correspondence structuring occurs when people draw on experience in one domain to think or act ‘knowingly’ in another domain. When drawing from the domain of national political economy Challua knew he had to pay back money and thereby lose capital; he felt his powerlessness. But when he drew from the domain of cultural ecology he felt forceful, knew his resources, and re-entered Nueva Esperanza communicating a sense of felt power. PP181

6.4.17 [As the priest waS TO LEAVE THE FESTIVAL AND GOBACK TO PUYO]...marta ran after him. ‘Padrecito...’she called, and she gave him the Jurijuri drinking bowl with the teeth growing out the back of its head that she had laboured over for this special jista...’take it’ she pointed to the three little crosses painted on Amasanga’s nose. Later, she told the women...that she had made Amasanga as a Jurijuri supai in the shape of a squash, ancient food of jilicu. The bowl also looked like a hill with a magical door at the top, where nayapi had once entered on a datura trip to make this his land. All the women now knew that a master condensed set of symbols was going into the Catholic Church, and they were pleased. The monseñor had really received a ‘gift’ someone said, a gift of ‘ñucanchi ricsiushca runa’ (‘our people’s perception’) bundled into ‘our tangible proof’ by the profound anchoring device of our own image-making woman. PP212

6.4.18 The duality of power generated by contradictory, oscillating systems of control is patterned and shaped in many ways. Just as a pulse beat from the national system of bureaucratic control diminishes Canelos Quichua culture into a nearly inaudible jumble, the inevitable counter beat amplifies its structure to unmistakeable clarity. The pulsating flow of complex messages that emanate from Puyo Runa festival activity derives its alternating base from male release and female containment. As men move out to the thresholds of change in both upper Amzonian cultural-ecological and national political-economic systems, women bring these thresholds into the festival houses themselves, into the symbolic enclosure of the expanding and contracting universe. And as men move the thresholds themselves ever outward, women give tangible pattern to the altered imagery through ceramics and audible imagery through song. PP213

6.4.19 The trouble with all analytical polarities is that they miss the fundamental point of human comunication itself-simply put, messages are forever relayed to those capable of reading them by ‘debundling’ the symbolic text. PP214

6.4.20 Thousands of such bundled messages are enacted ritually, and they are brought up into consciousness, reprocessed, and recommunicated at various levels of social discourse. Some of these systems of communication are direted at the national political economy as a coherent system of protest. Protest itself becomes a pulsating system of the communication of power, not only as it emanates from and is received by the Puyo Runa but also as it is received, reinterpreted, and directed back at the Puyo Runa, and through them to other peoples, by developers of the Ecuadorian nation-state. PP214

6.5.1 To obtain hard cash from organizatoins oriented to ‘helping Indians survive as Indians’ one must be of the indigenous culture as this culture is perceived in the eyes of representatives of the funding agencies. Simultaneously, to receive funds for national development one must be perceived as ‘developing’ or being receptive to ‘development’ by the money-givers. To obtain money in order to give value to a movement is to place the movement between capital formations such that outside needs are fulfilled by the inside, ideological stance. As this process of valorizacion of culture goes on, those Runa receiving funds from the outside are perceived by the runa in settings such as Nueva Esperanza as falling increasingly outside indigenousculture. But these very people are seen from the nationalist stance as ‘pristine’ representatives of native culture. Simultaneously, as the urban Runa representing the forest of indigenous diddidence to outsiders become more wealthy, townsmen view them as increasingly of the republic. PP230

6.5.2 Epochalism and Essentialism.- I draw these terms from Clifford Geertz (1973) but deploy them somewhat differently. Epochalism refers to the international validation of a nation’s statehood. Essentialism is the affirmation of a common style, quality, and culture -the oneness of a people- that revitalizes a sense of historical depth at each crucial moment of epochal emergence and consolidation. Stated simply by Anya Royce (1982:84), ‘Nations frequently borrow the image and rethoric of ethnicity.’ I am sure that she would agree to the converse of this, that in epochal emergence of ethnic blocs the essentialist imagery and rethoric of nationalism are often borrowed. PP230

6.5.3 Playing (pugllana) is the principal means by which the ideological structure of domination is debundled and recast in urban Puyo by the Puyo Runa. To be ricsij, one who sees, or yuyayuj, one who learns, is important here, for debundling occurs constantly. When Sicuanga sees, for example, reluctance to shake his hand and reluctance to give a cordial goodbye to him by bank officials, he knows that sheer accumulation of money cannot place him in a higher position in the eyes of the bank officials and their development friends.PP239

6.5.4 ...And when he hears a black esmeraldeño make a crack about savagery he can readily perceive that he and they are as far appart as can be imagined, while at the same time they are quite similar. Perceiving in this way is no more difficult than understunding that the discrete colors of the rainbow are a complex result of Indi’s eye looking through clear water, mist, or fog. And the perception of the national categories in all of their pejorative and oppressive dimensions is no more (and no less) frightening than the image of the mighty devouring anaconda. PP240

6.5.5 In Sicuanga’s mental play great leaps are sometimes taken that provide the insight necessary for him to perceive the mundane order of the social realm by reference to myth and legend. Stated another way, the political economy bearing down on him may be perceived in terms of revelatory power. For example, he knows, figuratively, and he believes publicly and privately, that the Runa penis is anaconda; that it comes out of the watery domain to devour humans (who then kill it and make substances [e,g, amarun shungu] increasing their response capacity); that the origin of the segmented ayllu system lies in the highly predatory act of the giant river otter, who, in Unai, chops off Cauchullu’s penis and salts it through Amazonia. He thinks sometimes in a bundle of images that are difficult to sort but are no less clear. For example....he knows that some outsiders to Amazonia have placed their seeds in the huarmiguna; the predatory trade system has seeded the growth of capital throughout Runa territories, and such outsiders (who are now insiders as well) could figuratively devour the Runa. He also ...knows, that the Runa themselves can use the substance of this devouring system to gain strength. When Sicuanga thinks in this way he violatesw the syntagmatic chains of association [of becoming civilized, put forth by civilized society], restructuring them on various mythic templates with a number of paradigmatic processes such as metaphor, irony, and synecdoche.PP240

6.5.6 To be in Puyo on a full time basis is as dangerous as to be in unai. it would be to move into another world, to die as a questing Runa.So Sicuanga thinks. PP241

6.5.7 [as bulldozers mking much noice approach the village]Marta looked quickly at my stereo recorder. ...’I am going to sing’. And she sang, for an hour and a half, sad songs, sending out, creating an emotional mood of unquenchable longing (llaquichina) to restore rifts in social fabrics. the listeners became pleasantly nostalgic, and a longing to continue being close to one another (llaquirina) was shared. Everything described in this book, and much, much more was condensed into nienty minutes of song lyrics, texts, and evocative imagery and reprocessed in Marta’s reflecting self, embodied as it was within the collective, emotional entanglement of nayapi llacta, hich was now utterly tied-up in urban, bureaucratic ensnarlments of nueva Esperanza-the great divided house that it had developed into. PP245

6.5.8 Nueva esperanza is a small community in a lovely setting becoming incorporated into the republic of Ecuador on its own terms, as constrained by shifting options, as negotiated constantly with national developers and with people whom they regard as ‘of our way; of our speech; of our culture; of us.’ They live in a known world characterized by two apparently reasonable principles or laws: that they are of urban Ecuador, and that they are of Amazonia. They seek to tap the political-economic control systems of the republic while retaining the indigenous power base of their own and cherished habitat. Their lives are racked by the ensuing antinomy and consequent contradictions, and the messages generated by the oscillations within a system of duality of power patterning are there to enrich the analytical capacity of anyone who cares to listen and tries to ‘see’ whatever it is that is going on. PP252