Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
on a hollow
cukoi
tree able to call rain; and it is what could transform
ordinary men into fearless warriors through
chugu'iji
performances of
masculine rage, in which a man would don his potent
cobia
feathers,
recite the deeds of brave ancestors, and prepare himself for battle.
42
What seemed to be missing in the ethnography of the
Abujádie
and
in perspectival anthropology was a way to account for the relationship
between political power and meaning, or the mimetic faculty underlying
the chains of sympathetic imagery that imbued such ancient transfor-
mations with potency in everyday life. What reportedly distinguished
the human/nonhuman in such discontinued Ayoreo cosmologies “was
not merely classification, or even a simple cognitive or perceptual process
of objectification, but a reflexive process of meta-objectification, in an
abstracted and generalized form: that is, of the process of objectification
itself.”
43
This capacity for metaobjectification was inseparable from us-
ing mimicry to effectively invert negativity and transform the original
by shifting from proto-human spirit to animal form and human content
and back, using words that seamlessly moved from the time of myth to
the colonial present and the ideal future in order to resignify all.
Sympathetic magic was what Ayoreo elders invariably used to explain
the power of the
ujñarone
. It was also, as in this description of a successful
cure by the Totobiegose man Aasi, what they used to explain why such
potent forms were dirty, immoral, and in need of erasure:
We had many beliefs before. We respected and feared everything. It was as if we were
formed [
tocade
] from this respect before. It was bad because we were ignorant. We
were afraid of these things for no reason. But because we were afraid, they could make
problems for us. Once my mother nearly died. We did not know what her sickness was.
They came and sat around her. she was weak and she could not get up unless some-
one helped her. We made her a stick so she could push herself up. A woman named
Ugui'date remembered that the sick woman had put color on a
pamoi
sitting band.
But it was
puyaque
at that time of year for a woman. A woman should not touch or put
color on a
pamoi
. The woman
daijne
took off her skirt and folded it so she could sit on
top. she began to “heal by blowing” [
chubuchu
] on my mother. she began to cure her,
and she said, “I am going to try to cure her with the
ujñarone
of
pamoi
. That is the way
to save this woman.” she cured my mother because she knew the correct way to save
her. she knew that my mother had touched the
pamoi
that a woman should not touch
and that is why she could be saved. When she cured my mother, everyone knew that
her sickness had come from the
pamoi
. And my mother was saved.
In the case of the
ujñarone
, this sympathetic magic resided in the power
of words to conjure spirit and alter the present. Some people were said
