Under the Rainbow: Nature and Supernature among the Panare Indians 9780292772168

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Under the Rainbow Nature and Supernature among the Panare Indians

The Texas Pan American Series

Under the Rainbow Nature and Supernature among the Panare Indians

by Jean-Paul Dumont

University of Texas Press, Austin and London

The Texas Pan American Series is published with the assistance of a revolving publication fund established by the Pan American Sulphur Company. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Dumont, Jean-Paul, 1940Under the rainbow. (The Texas pan-American series) Revision of the author's thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 1972. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Panare Indians. 2. Structural anthropology. I. Title. F2319.2.P34D85 1976 301.29'87'6 75-22049 ISBN 0-292-78504-5 Copyright © 1972, 1976 by Jean-Paul Dumont All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

Set at the University of Texas Press in 11 point IBM Baskerville Printed and bound by Edwards Brothers, Inc.

To my French parents who bore me, as well as to my Panare family who embraced me

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Contents

Acknowledgments 1. Introduction

xi

1

2. The Geographical Frame 3. The Historical Frame

7

17

4. An Ethnographic Presentation 5. Inhabited Space

67

6. Time and Astro sexuality 7. Hearing and Taste 8. Conclusions Bibliography Index

173

159 167

131

91

29

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List of Illustrations

FIGURES 1. The Conceptualization of Panare Settlement Position 2. The Diameter of Seasonal Migrations 3. Churuata

75

4. Churuata

76

5. Churuata

77

6. Hut or Rancho

15

71

78

7. The Rhythms of Time and Space

81

8. Remarkable Star Movements in the Yearly Cycle 9. The Structure of the111-TemperedAstronomy 10. The Structure of Reversed Sexuality

96 108

119

11. The Kinship Relations of the Named Stars Visible in the Sky of the Dry Season 122 12. The Structure of Sexual Astronomy

126

13. The Structure of Normal Sexual Behavior 14. The Structure of Time

128

127

MAPS 1. Panare Territory

8-9

2. Turiba Viejo: Main Settlement, Campsite, and Gardens 3. Settlement of Turiba Viejo

73

TABLES 1. Monthly Temperature and Rainfall at Maripa 2. Inventory of Equipment Items 3. Panare Cultivated Plants

12

36-39

46

4. Palm Fruit Consumed at Turiba

51

5. The Denotata of the ataarama Category

52-57

6. The Paradigms Xz in the Context otisexpayu (ataarama) Xz 59 7. Inhabited Space

83

8. Inhabited Space, Time, and Sensible Categories 9. The Use of Particle can 10. Sex of Celestial Bodies

86

88 105

11. Structure of Pathological Endogamy

112

12. Correlations and Oppositions of Masturbation and Bachelorhood 117 13. Structure of Pathological Exogamy

118

14. The Paradigm "to Eat Something"

149

68

Acknowledgments

The field work that forms the basis of this study took place between the summer of 1967 and the summer of 1969 under grants received from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (New York), the U.C.L.A. Latin American Center (Los Angeles), the Fundación Creole (Caracas), and an Andrew W. Mellon predoctoral fellowship (Pittsburgh). The field work itself was greatly facilitated in Venezuela by the cooperation of the Instituto Caribe de Antropología y Sociología, the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, the Servicio de Malariología, and the Universidad Central de Venezuela. In its original form, this study was submitted as a doctoral dissertation in the Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. It would be impossible to list here all the individuals, Panare Indians, Creole peasants, Caracas residents, and Venezuelan, American, and French faculty and students who have generously given to me their time and hospitality. My gratitude toward each of them in particular is not less strongly felt than it would be if I could list each of them here. However, I must expressly thank Myriam and Leonard Leeb, without whose critical and patient encouragements the present work would certainly never have been written. Let their names represent here a metonymy for all those in whose debt I stand.

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"Any true feeling is actually untranslatable. To express it is to betray it. But to translate it is to dissimulate it. True expression hides what it makes manifest. It opposes the mind to the real void of nature by creating in reaction a sort of fullness in thought. Or, if one prefers, in relation to the manifestation-illusion of nature, it creates a void in thought. Any powerful feeling arouses in us the idea of the void. And the transparent language that prevents the occurrence of that void also prevents the occurrence of poetry in thought. That is why an image, an allegory, a figure that masks what it would reveal, has more significance for the mind than the transparencies acquired through analytical words. " A. Artaud, Le Théâtre et son Double

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Chapter One Introduction

The present study has two objectives. First, it is an attempt to fill a gap in the anthropological literature. Despite the fact that the Panare Indians of Venezuelan Guiana can be easily reached during the dry season within twenty-four hours by jeep from Caracas, at the time of my field work no one had yet made any extensive report on their culture. The second objective is to give account for (or an account of) the way in which the Panare think of themselves; in other words, this study is an excursion into Panare philosophy as manifested in their culture. We shall be interested not in the individual philosophy of a particular " I " but in the common philosophy of a collective "we"—that is to say, in the exercise of the "savage mind" in Panare culture. For Lévi-Strauss, "savage thought . . . is not the thought of a primitive or archaic humanity, but rather thought in its savage state as distinct from cultivated thought" (1966, p. 219). However, our purpose is not to develop further the reflection on savage thought per se but, more modestly, to understand how it is actualized in the context of Panare culture, where we assume that "savage thought is both thought in the savage state and the thought οf savages" (Godelier 1971, p. 107). In order to elicit the thought of the Panare, we rely upon the empirical data collected in the field. The problem is to decide which data to examine in our analysis. Myths are par excellence conceptual manipulations, products of this thought, as LéviStrauss has so brilliantly demonstrated in his "tetralogy" (1964, 1967, 1968, 1971). But as early as the Ouverture to Le Cru et le Cuit (1964, p. 12), Lévi-Strauss announced: ". . . this book, admittedly devoted to mythology, does not refrain . . . from calling frequently upon ceremonies and rituals. We reject, indeed, overhasty statements about what is mythology and what is not, and we

2 Introduction claim the right to deal with any manifestation of the mental or social activity of the peoples under study that seems likely to allow us, in the process of the analysis, to complete or to shed light on the myth, even though it may not constitute what musicians would call an 'obbligato' accompaniment." In the present work, a similar but reversed procedure will be followed. Although reference will be made when necessary to mythical and ritual data, the main emphasis will be placed on different aspects of daily behavior that by themselves do not appear, at first, as privileged conceptual manipulations. For instance, we shall see that Panare food is particularly good, not only good to eat, but also good to think. Some progress in our understanding of the conceptual manipulation involved in cuisine has already been made by Lévi-Strauss (1968, pp. 396-411) himself in his now famous "culinary triangle." In displacing the emphasis toward an implicit mythology that, in many respects, is more acted out than spoken in the flow of daily behavior, we shall be able to explain a number of facts that could not be explained otherwise and remain generally as incongruous residuals in the notebooks of the anthropologist. Being implicit, this mythology evidently cannot be immediately perceived by the observer. This is because the symbols that it manipulates are not given per se, as in myths, but are always conglomerated with other facts, the rationality of which is to be found elsewhere: in the ecology, in the level of technoeconomic development, that is, in the infrastructure (in the Marxian sense) of the society under consider- . ation. Ultimately, what we shall look for is the symbolic element that is to be found in each fact, since it is that which will allow us to discover in turn the conceptual system through which the Panare conceive of themselves. To reach this objective, we shall rely upon the structuralist method, as spelled out in Lévi-Strauss's Structural Anthropology (1968). Since the literature on structuralism has become available in English in the recent past (see, among others, Lane 1970, Ehrmann 1970, Hayes and Hayes 1970, Leach 1970, and, above all, Piaget 1970), I need not explain the method but need only summarize some of its principles. A structure is a supraempirical construct that therefore cannot be observed. What is observed in the field are facts or events that are themselves the products of a structure. The facts can be considered as messages that are expressed according to a certain code. The analysis consists therefore in breaking the code, in decoding

3 Introduction the messages in order to build a model of a given structure. It does so by starting from the empirical data collected in the field. To define the structure, it can be stated that a structure is a combination of elements that are organized according to certain rules. No element of a structure can be identified by its position, only by its relation to the other elements of the structure. The phonology of a given language provides an excellent example of structure. Each element (phoneme) is defined in terms of oppositions and correlations, and each element can be defined only in these terms. The English phoneme /b/ exists only because it is correlated and opposed to all other phonemes of the English language and particularly to the phonemes of its series, such as /d/ and /g/, and to the phonemes of its order, such as /m/ and /p/, while in Panare the phoneme /b/ does not exist because it is not opposed to the phoneme /p/. In addition, structures themselves can be combined in turn—according to certain laws—to constitute a system. For instance, a given economic system will result from the combination of three structures: production, distribution, and consumption, and in turn the structure of production results from the combination of three elements: men, tools, and resources (Godelier 1966, p. 245). Therefore, what is an element at one analytical level can be a structure at another level; what is a structure at one level can be a system at another level. On the other hand, it can be seen that the structures of a system are not independent from each other, and logically it is feasible to pass from one to the other. This is called a transformation. Such transformations are by no means causal; they are transitive, and they allow us to shift from one code to another. The structural method is particularly effective in dealing with semiotic systems, and we are going to consider that the cultural facts with which we shall deal are, in part or in totality, all signs that manifest Panare thought. What these signs say, or rather how they say what they say, is the object of the present work. The present analysis attempts to elicit certain structures that represent a principle of intelligibility: the rationality of Panare ideology, that is, a superstructure in a Marxian sense. To reach this intelligibility, it is necessary to start from the empirical categories of sensibility, and I share "the structuralist ambition to build bridges between sensibility and intelligibility, as well as its repugnance for any explanation that would sacrifice one aspect for the other" (Lévi-Strauss 1971, p. 618). Structures can be elicited only after certain social and cultural

4 Introduction data have been presented. Chapters 2 and 3, therefore, give the geographical and historical context of Panare culture. Chapter 4 is entirely devoted to an ethnographic presentation of Panare culture. The analysis itself begins with chapter 5, in which the structure of inhabited space is examined. Chapter 6 deals with the structure of time as expressed through a theory of astrosexuality. Finally, in chapter 7, we turn toward the logic of sensible categories. Arriving at this point, we shall not have exhausted our topic, but we hope to have sufficiently shown how the Panare perceive themselves in relation to nature and supernature.* To a large extent, the choice of our point of departure with inhabited space is contingent, and there is no necessity other than the logic of our own reasoning to start with it. Once the first choice is made, however, it will be the logic of the analysis that will bring us, almost despite ourselves, to elicit the other structures. In effect, the diachronic order of presentation is irrelevant, since the paradox of this type of analysis is to scatter in the linearity of the analytical discourse what is essentially synthetically condensed. In fact, our analysis will be an attempt to unravel or unspin the seamless web of Panare thought. To clarify this point, let us come back to the phonological example that we used above. There is no reason in the elicitation of English phonology to begin by identifying one phoneme rather than the other; in fact, whether it be the phoneme /f/ or the phoneme /i/ that is identified first is irrelevant, but what is relevant is to identify ultimately all the phonemes that constitute the phonology of English. Starting from one or the other, the same correlations and oppositions will be established. In our analysis, the problem is in this respect identical; but a major difference instantly appears. In a phonological system, there is an end to the analysis that occurs when all the phonemes have been identified. At the cultural level, where we work, such is not the case. While a phonological structure is closed, a symbolic system always remains open, and indeed we do not and cannot pretend to be exhaustive in our analysis of it. Then, in a sense, there is no end to our analysis. Like the point of departure, the moment to end (but not the end itself) is largely contingent. As a result of this openness in symbolic systems, there are many different ways of arriving at the same conclusions. We shall stop when we are satisfied that we have proven our point several times over; other dem*I shall consistently hereafter use supernature instead of the more common usage supernatural, because this form parallels the forms of the words nature and culture.

5

Introduction

onstrations are possible along other lines of investigation that would, in their own way, corroborate our findings. The field work upon which the present study of the Panare is based was undertaken between the summer of 1967 and the summer of 1969. When I arrived in Venezuela, I had to wait until the end of the rainy season, since most of the Panare territory was inundated. In September and October 1 9 6 7 , 1 surveyed several Indian groups: the Cariña, Arekuna, Makiritare, and Sanema. In November, I began surveying the western part of the Panare territory, and I established myself in a settlement called Turiba Viejo, where I remained from December 1967 to November 1968. During the months of January and February 1 9 6 9 , 1 worked in settlements of the middle Cuchivero and tried, but in vain, to enter into contact with the Shikano. During March and April, I undertook a systematic census in the area of San Pablo and La Emilia. Finally, I worked for about a m o n t h in the middle Cuchivero area. I briefly revisited the Panare in January and February of 1970 in order t o check some of the information that had been lost when, at the end of July 1969, leaving the Panare world, my canoe capsized. This was catastrophic: twothirds of my genealogies, my two-year log, about half of my vocabulary files, and all my plant and insect samples had vanished. That is to say, about half of " m y " Panare culture had disappeared forever in the dark swollen waters of the Cuchivero. Indeed, I was lucky enough not to lose my life in that incident. Four or five hours earlier that day, a Panare had attempted to prevent my leaving by telling me that I would die when I left them for the world of the whites. As I was drying out on the bank of the river, full of self-pity, I began to cry miserably. I was suddenly back into the forgotten academic world. I was beginning to remember. Before reentering, conceptually this time, into the Panare world, it is necessary to help the reader by severed editorial notes. The reader may find it curious to be confronted at times with an " I " and at times with a " w e . " These two words have not, however, been employed at random. " I " is used when I refer to my personal experience of the field; " w e " is reserved for our common analytical adventure. In the course of the present work, we use the following symbols: for transformation a : b :: c : d

for a is to b as c is to d

6 Introduction for opposition for congruence

+. 0

the use of these signs varies depending upon the context: plus, minus; presence, absence; first, second term of a pair of oppositions the use of this term also varies depending upon the context: zero, neutralization, or intermediary term

Creole Spanish terms and Panare linguistic forms are always given in italics. The following phonetic notation has been adopted, but it must be remembered that I am not a linguist and that it can only be a tentative enumeration of the phonemes of the Panare language: a as in art e as in met i as in dim o as in dome u as in doom o as in dumb y as in yet w as in wet Ρ t k m η as in net in initial or intervocalic positions, as in ring otherwise r this rolled r ranges from an almost d to an almost / and is a flap s as in huts in initial or intervocalic positions, as in us otherwise c as in chip in initial or intervocalic positions, as in ship otherwise χ as in Spanish jota or German ach Finally, it should be noted that, unless otherwise specified, material originally in French or in Spanish has been translated into English by this author.

Chapter Two The Geographical Frame

Geographical Sketch The Panare Indians occupy the northwestern tip of the Guianese shield in Venezuela, more precisely the northwestern corner of the Cedeño district within Bolivar State. They can be roughly located between 6° and 8° N, 65° and 67° W. Precise maps of the area are still lacking. The southernmost part of their territory is hardly known. Moreover, territorial limits are fluctuating as the Panare population is increasing and expanding into new areas. These three factors make it difficult, if not hazardous, to trace exact boundaries for the Panare territory. Nevertheless, such territory appears roughly as a triangle delineated by the Suapure and Cuchivero rivers and the right bank of the Orinoco between its confluences with the former two. Both the Suapure and the Cuchivero spring from the Serranía Guamapi, although they take a different course: the former takes a general direction west-northwest, the latter north-northwest. The middle Orinoco, which flows around the Guianese shield in this portion of its course, takes a general east-northeast direction. The only navigable rivers of the area are the lower Suapure, the middle and lower Cuchivero, and the Orinoco. Rapids and falls impede navigation upstream on the former two. The other rivers of the area, known as caños, are so short that they are useless for navigation. They are quite shallow and can be forded easily during the dry season. Yet, the Panare do not settle along the middle and lower Cuchivero or lower Suapure and rarely reach the right bank of the Orinoco. In this territory of about 20,000 km 2 , each river flows from the ancient crystalline rock formations of the Guianese shield toward the Orinoco. Their upper courses, often impetuous with

8 The Geographical Frame

Map 1. Panare Territory

9 The Geographical Frame

10 The Geographical Frame their raudales ("rapids") and falls, strongly contrast with the meandering laziness of their lower reaches, which, at least in the case of the smaller caños, sometimes disappear in dried-out beds or sinks. There are two distinctive geographical environments in this territory. The lowlands, produced by air- and waterborne sediments and seasonally inundated by floods, form a 10-to-80-kmwide strip paralleling the Orinoco. Consisting of tertiary and quaternary sands and clays, the lowlands offer the rather desolate landscape of a bare plain, the .monotony of which is broken by gallery forests, by the deep green of palm trees rooted in shallow little depressions, and by the edge of the tropical forest dominated by a bluish, mountainous horizon. The altitude here is never more than 200m above sea level. Most of the landscape is made up of savannas, interrupted by sand banks, in which dispersed and stunted chaparros (mainly Curatela americana, but also some Byrsonima sp.) grow amidst an abundance of gramineous plants. With the start of the rainy season, this area changes dramatically from a brownish, sun-scorched, desolated desert into a gigantic swamp in which vegetation is quickly revivified. The lowlands are the product of the progressive erosion of the highlands of the Guianese shield. Rather than being a wellorganized complex, these rock formations have been correctly described as "eminences without a definite system" (Toro 1905, p . 209). The Guianese shield is a primary formation highly eroded by weathering. As a result, prominences that vary in altitude from 200m to 1,000m tend to be isolated from one another by short plains. The slopes are typically steeper close to the base than to the tops, which are often quite flat mesas. Where the lowland strip is close, the rock formations are more dispersed, often to the point of becoming isolated cerros. Moreover, the farther one goes away toward the southeastern corner of the territory, the denser the mountainous system, whose disorganization has been noted by Vila (1960, p . 60): "Actually, the relief consists of mesas and highlands; of mountains, hills, and peaks; of hollows and plains with waterfalls, chutes, and rapids. Such are the characteristics of the terrain in the Guiana. This rather chaotic morphology is the result of a powerful erosion acting upon a vast surface of sandstones and conglomerates, crisscrossed by eruptive intrusions of gabbros and porphyry and laid upon a primitive peneplain of granite, gneiss, and schist, that is a part of the original Gondwanaland in the American continent."

11 The Geographical Frame Despite the dichotomy between lowlands and highlands, the climate to which the Panare have to adapt remains quite uniform, since they live at an altitude that varies between 60m and 500m. For example, the altitude above sea level of Caicara is a bit less than 50m; Turiba is about 110m, while the Sierra Cerbatana culminates at 1,320 m. At 400m, temperatures are lowered by about two degrees centigrade, due less to elevation than to continuous pleasant breezes. I shall hereafter refer to the astronomical seasons when I use the words summer and winter. The trade winds blow all year round, but their strength is broken by the mesas. The northeast trade winds are dominant during the winter, the southeast ones during the summer. Although quite warm when they blow in the lowlands, these mild winds are often pleasant but rarely strong enough to clear the air of mosquitoes. A chubasco ("thundershower") often ends summer afternoons. While the strength of this miniature cyclone brings relief from the plague of insects, it remains a mixed blessing, since it is always accompanied by heavy rains that pour through every crevice in the thatched roofs and is often blown in great gusts into the huts. On such an occasion, up to 100 mm of rain can fall in one day. The temperatures follow the dominating pattern of the Amazon-Guiana rain forest. "The change in temperature between seasons is negligible, that between night and day important. Day and night throughout the year are of almost equal length, and normally the cooling of the atmosphere at night is enough to bring a daybreak that is decidedly chilly" (Sauer 1963, p. 332). The yearly mean temperature varies between 27° and 28° C, warmer during the winter, cooler during the summer, but as a rule the temperature drops about 8°C at night. The year is divided into two seasons extremely contrasted in terms of precipitation. Climatological data are available for the small hamlet of Maripa, which, although a settlement slightly outside the area under consideration, reflects quite well the characteristics of the Panare territory (see table 1). The importance of the seasonal rhythm for the yearly cycle of activity is obvious. We shall return later to this point. Let us note here that the dry season extends from November to April while the rainy season extends from May to October. Although the former corresponds to the astronomical winter, it is known in Venezuela as verano; similarly, the latter is called invierno. However, it is noteworthy that the Panare ignore the Spanish

12 The Geographical Frame Table 1. Monthly Temperature and Rainfall at Maripa (Approximately 7°30' Ν and 65°10' W, 45m above Sea Level) Jan.

Feb.

Mar.

Apr.

May

June

Temperature

26.2

26.1

27.1

27.6

26.5

25.6

Rainfall mm

59

16

21

134

330

475

July

Aug.

Sept.

Oct.

Nov.

Dec.

Temperature

25.8

26.0

26.6

27.1

27.0

26.2

Rainfall mm

440

550

306

118

117

78

°C

°C

Sourer Vila 1960:168. month names except for diciembre and mayo, the two months when new seasonal activities begin. Since about 90 percent of the rainfall occurs during the rainy season, the main problem, particularly in the lowlands, is to find water during the dry season and to avoid it during the rainy one. I still remember having quenched my thirst in a filthy pond of stagnant water that we had found after a four-hour walk under a high March sun. And my memory is as vivid of a twohour walk in the forest in August, with water above my calves, as I stumbled on every root and fallen tree hidden in the totally inundated area. Flooded or dried out, the savanna offers more extreme contrasts than the forest. The landscape typically associated with the mountainous zone is a forest cover of deciduous trees frequently interspersed with small savannas; naked rocks often appear on the surface of this poor soil. Here is the northeastern edge of the extended Guiano-Amazonian tropical forest. The tops of the trees, 20 to 40m overhead, form a dense cover that shuts out the sun. The air, constantly saturated with humidity, does not become very warm in the heavy undergrowth. Many a writer has correctly depicted the almost tortured rococo architecture of such vegetation: an abundant profusion of trees, lianas, and epiphytes entwines over a thick bed of decayed and decomposing leaves. The oppression of this stuffy atmosphere is alleviated only by occasional muted noises and scattered touches of bright colors. The vegetal debauchery of

13 The Geographical Frame

this world without horizon nearly sets a scene of contemplative closure. In contrast, a certain tension reigns on the open savannas of the plains: horizon outstretched to the infinite, m o n o t o n y of a landscape where the air quivers under the weight of the heat.

Panare Conceptualization This subjective perception of the geographical frame is not far removed from the Panare conception of it, which we now have to examine. Let us first note that the objective description of the environment in itself accounts for very little as long as it remains separated from the native theory. The latter is undoubtedly based upon the objective constraints of the environment, which we have briefly reviewed. But their conception is in itself an ideological model, that is, an expression of the social subjectivity of the Panare. It is grafted onto ecological constraints, which may be apprehended objectively. Apprehension of an objectivity in one case, apprehension of a social subjectivity in the other— the relation between these two is, by definition, a dialectical one. Their separation results only from an analytical necessity that, nevertheless, remains rather artificial. Keeping this difficulty in mind, we shall now consider the location of Panare settlements. They exhibit a rather simple, recurrent pattern. The Panare are generally settled at the foot of a rocky formation where the plain begins. In these locations, where savanna and forest meet, close t o a supply of water, the Panare clear off all stones and ground cover on a roughly circular site (ca. 100m in diameter) and ensure that the site slopes sufficiently to permit the runoff of rain water. At its center they erect their communal house, known in Venezuela and referred to in this study as churuata, which is often flanked by one or several workshop-huts. In such settlements, the number of inhabitants varies from less than twenty t o about sixty. Settlements are separated from one another by no less than 15km, or a twohour walking distance. In my estimation, there were about fifty Panare settlements at the time of m y field work. There are essentially three reasons for the Panare to build a new churuata: (1) when the churuata in which the group lives is aging and the shifting gardens begin to be too distant for comfort, that is, after about eight to ten years; (2) when, because of a population increase or political frictions, the group splits; and (3) when the headman dies—the churuata is then supposed to be

14 The Geographical Frame burned, but this rule is manipulated as, for example, in Turiba, when the headman's workshop-hut was burned instead because the churuata was "too new to be destroyed." This brief résumé of the location of Panare settlements does not account for the view that the Panare themselves have of their own settlement or of their environment. As we are going to see, the Panare perception of their geography is in fact a cosmology. Few settlements are located close to large rivers, and, in most places, the source of water supply can dry out at the peak of the verano. Then, the Panare either have to move temporarily to another point close by or to dig a shallow well. Now, the drought, as with the other inclemencies of the weather, is due to the cultural demiurge (manataci), the were-anaconda who is also responsible for the present state of the world. Manataci, who stands among the clouds (kano), appears in the shape of the rainbow (manataci). The Panare seem to conceive of the organization of geographical space along a vertical axis, whereby the settlement is placed midway between two opposed waters: the sky water (kano), abundant during the invierno and falling from above, and the scarce well water (tuna), raised from below. This opposition by itself would remain formal (and meaningless) if it were not congruent with another one, which will validate it a posteriori, and which immediately appears. The only other occasion on which the Panare dig a deep hole in the ground is for the burial, close to the settlement, of their dead. However, in this case, it is a dry well in which the corpse is allowed to rot. This opposition of life and death, of water wells and dry tombs, is carried still further. The rainbow, which appears only from time to time, mainly in the rainy season, is opposed to the Milky Way. This other and equally luminous band appears across a dark sky almost every night and most frequently in the cloudless dry season. The Milky Way (toepinkomune) consists of countless stars, each representing the burning soul (icin) of a dead Indian. An icin begins to glow when all the flesh has decayed in the tomb, that is, when the image (yimalye) has been destroyed. On the other hand, the world that circumscribes the settlement is not amorphous, and the Panare strongly emphasize the opposition between forest and savanna. The forest is peopled with spirits less to be revered than feared, and nobody dares venture on a trek after dark. When a delayed hunter is not back after sunset, the villagers become nervous. Such an attitude does not prevail if the hunter is known to be in the open savanna. The forest is indeed a sacred world; the open savanna, a profane

15 The Geographical Frame

Fig. 1. The Conceptualization of Panare Settlement Position world of dazzling light, the world of the Creoles. Its dangers are of another type. As we have just seen, each Panare settlement is located at the intersection of one horizontal axis (where savanna and forest are opposed as nature and supernature) with a double vertical axis through which is sketched a dialectic of life and death. The first vertical axis locates the settlement between two deaths and opposes a rotting process (natural decay of all flesh) to a burning state (the souls of the Milky Way). The second places the Indians between two orders of life and opposes two types of water: one granted by the supernatural cultural demiurge, a superior form of being; the other one, to be reached to insure a mere physical survival, an inferior form of life. On the other hand, the two cultural activities (tomb and well digging) are opposed. The tomb is prepared for the rotting of the dead while the well is dug so that the living may not dry up. What is already set here is a series of oppositions and correlations between dry and rainy seasons, day and night, life and death, and so forth, to which we shall have to return frequently. At any rate, the locus of the settlement results conceptually from a confrontation between nature and supernature in which culture itself is the mediating agent. Supernatural causes, such as spirits for health and Manataci for weather, bring about very natural consequences, such as death and drought. Through cultural manipulations (digging), religious in one case (the nonburied individuals would in turn become spirits), technological in the other one (the water shortage would lead to death), the settlement, a nexus of conceptual intersections (see fig. 1) asserts its own existence between two orders: nature and supernature. At this cultural nexus, these two orders are rejected as alien; at the same time, they are mediated. This cultural mediation, strong dialectic of a frail balance, asserts itself as an order, that is, as the Panare order.

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Chapter Three The Historical Frame

When I asked whence the Panare came, in a foolish hope of hearing their myth of origin, several informants answered, "ryo tattaya monkay manataci ötnyepaya" ("Manataci is to the Panare what God is to the Whites"). Then, I was really ready to listen, but my informant was somehow puzzled that I wanted to know more. Waiting for a while, he would add, "tyakope iskye" ("there is no more"). In its brevity, the statement was locking me out of the mythology forever. If it was Manataci who, many rainy seasons ago, in the upper Cuchivero, had shaped the world the way it is now, I would never learn much more about this event. Turning to the written sources is actually an equally frustrating experience. We still know very little about the past of Venezuelan Guiana Indians and still less, if possible, about the past of the Panare, even for the most recent years. The otherwise comprehensive bibliographies compiled by O'Leary (1963) and Fuchs (1964) reflect the paucity of available data that, on the whole, carry very little useful information.

Linguistic Identification The Panare belong to the Carib linguistic stock, as it was first established by Rivet (1924, p. 661). Wilbert (1963, p. 24) asserts that such an affiliation has been corroborated by Kleinecke (1952), but I have not been able to trace the latter's manuscript. However, the elements of vocabulary published by Delgado (1949, pp. 20-21), Antolínez (1952, p. 281), and Riley (1959, pp. 89-93), along with my own data, tend to prove this affiliation.

18 The Historical Frame Lacking archeological data for the Panare, we have only the linguistic evidence upon which to rely. As Rivet (1924, pp. 559660) writes: "The center of dispersal of the Carib family seems to have been the area included between the upper Xingú and the Tapajoz, between 10° and 12° S. From there, their diverse tribes scattered throughout the North, the Northwest, and the Northeast, over the northern half of the continent and part of the West Indies. . . . North of the Amazon, the Carib tribes constitute one compact mass that occupies almost all the left bank of that river as far upstream as the Río Negro, a large part of the Orinoco basin, eastern Venezuela, and the Guianas." Speculations on linguistic data have been extended some more by Layrisse and Wilbert (1966, p. 67), who state: "If our glottochronological computations are correct, the Panare language seems to go back considerably farther in time than do any other languages of the northern continental Caribs, and it seems to be closely related to the Bakairi of the Xingú River." This statement must be read with extreme prudence. I have some difficulty in believing that the Panare language is no more closely related to that of the neighboring Cariña, Makiritare, and Yabarana. The sampling of Panare words at the disposal of the authors was certainly not extensive, and I am under the impression, although I am not a linguist, that the analysis of a more extended sample would give quite a different result. The Arawak-speaking groups, who were formerly installed in Venezuelan Guiana, were evicted by the Carib migrations. The expansion of the latter caused the displacement of the former on the left bank of the upper Orinoco, where such groups as the Bare, Baniba, and Mandahuaca are still settled. The Carib expansion was still going on when the first Europeans arrived.

European Exploration The spread of European exploration has been the repetition of the same pattern almost everywhere. The rivers were the main avenues for travel while the means of access to the interior were greatly restricted or almost nonexistent. An examination of religious settlements in the tropical forest, even today, would reflect the fact that missionaries do not bother to settle far from accessible river banks. As a result, Indian groups that settled on

19 The Historical Frame the banks of the main rivers were contacted early and subsequently destroyed (the former being followed by the latter with an implacable logic), while inland groups were little troubled. This does not mean, however, that they have not been affected by the conquest, especially by goods that reached them much prior to their first meeting with any white man. Such is the case for all goods of European origin, like metalware tools, that the Indians retraded among themselves. Since 1500, when Vicente Yáñez Pinzón "discovered" the Orinoco, there have been constant attempts to "develop" Venezuelan Guiana. In 1531, Diego de Ordaz, mandated to discover and people Guiana, sailed along the Orinoco up to Caicara and farther to the Raudal Atures. This first contact with Indians was not altogether peaceful. Most of the following expeditions on the middle Orinoco resulted in bloody clashes with the naturales, whether they went upstream to Cabruta like Alonso de Herrera in 1536, or downstream from the Meta River like Antonio de Berrío around 1590. From the very beginning, each expedition was accompanied by religious personnel, a result of the papal bulls edicted by Alexander VI on May 3 and 4, 1493. In 1652, the Spanish king ordered that military action against the natives be stopped and replaced by a religious colonization. Different religious orders were in competition along the Orinoco. The first Jesuits, who arrived in 1664, were French; the first Capuchins, who arrived in 1682, were Catalans. Finally, the Jesuits were in charge of the middle Orinoco between the Raudal Atures and the Aro River until their expulsion in 1767 by Carlos III. Their missions, the notorious reducciones, were then taken over by the Capuchins, who are still active today despite the century-long interruption that followed the War of Independence of 1811. The Jesuits have been most prolific chroniclers. At the time of their expulsion, they had founded on the right bank of the Orinoco between the Suapure and the Cuchi vero the following: Uruana (i.e., La Urbana) with the Cabres, El Raudal with the Otomacs, and La Encaramada with the Maipure and Tamanac (see Armellada 1960, pp. 19-22). All these Indian nations have now become extinct (see Acosta-Saignes 1961). Not only had the Jesuits not "reduced" the Panare, but they also apparently had not even contacted them. Their name does not appear in the works of Gumilla (1741) or Gilij (1780-1784). Nevertheless, the latter may have been the very first author to mention them as Oye (1965, 1:26, 60-61, 131-132), which is still today the Maki-

20 The Historical Frame ritare name for the Panare. This Jesuit (Gilij 1965, 1:131-132) offers an enumeration of the different groups settled on the territory that is currently occupied by the Panare: In part to the right and in part to the left of the Cuchivero are the Quaquas, a nation often mentioned by missionaries and also often rebellious to the gospel. Their neighbors are the Aquerecotos, who are still savage and who have been reduced to almost nothing by their Carib neighbors. Similar to these in number, though quite different in temperament and customs, are the Payuros. The neighboring nation to these, still confined to the forests, is called Oye. The Aikeam-Benano nation, made up solely of women, who might be called the Amazons of the Cuchivero, is the neighbor of another nation made up of men and women, called Voqueares. The latter is also savage. In the middle, after the foregoing, and partly above and partly below the overland route to the Ventuari, I place the Parecas. But these, having been Christianized by me, are now to be found, I think, at La Encaramada. Next to the Parecas live the Potuaras and two other nations whose names it being impossible to render in Italian, I will put in their language. The first nation calls itself Uara-múcuru . . . the second, Uaracápac hilt. . . . I can state that all the above-mentioned nations, except the Quaqua, speak the language of the Tamanacos, but in the form of numerous and difficult dialects. Some comment on this summary is necessary. All these groups were Carib-speaking except the Quaqua, related to the Piaroa who are now the southern neighbors of the Panare and occupy the basin of the Ventuari. The Voqueares are most probably the Wökiare mentioned by Koch-Gruenberg (1922, pp. 233-234), as well as the Guaikiare who, according to Hitchcock (1948), would now be absorbed by the Yabarana of San Juan de Manapiare. The Payuros are interesting in that Gilij (1965, 3:172) gives three words of vocabulary from them which are unmistakably Panare: I you cassava

yu ama u

It seems to me reasonable to venture the hypothesis, not of course without obvious necessary precautions, that the Payuros and the Oye, if distinct people, might have both been ancestors

21 The Historical Frame to the present Panare. All the other groups mentioned in Gilij's quotation have been subsequently wiped out. The western part of the present Panare territory was occupied by the Pareca, while the Tamanac were settled along the middle Orinoco bank between La Urbana and Caicara and were the enemies of their inland neighbors. The Pareca territory extended from the Guaniamo basin in the east to Pavichima in the west (Gilij 1965, 1:61). Pavichima still exists today as a Panare settlement. The Pareca territory extended south to the Sierra Turiba, close to the Areverianos (Gilij 1965, 2:105). Two easy walking days from the Orinoco, Gilij had founded San Severio de los Parecas, a reducción that was closed because of epidemics after three years of operation. The site must have been close to the Sierra Cerbatana, but I have been unable to locate it with precision. After the departure of Gilij, we have very little information about the area. Even the otherwise fruitful travels of Humboldt and Bonpland (1807-1835) remain disappointing from our viewpoint. They give details only about the mission of La Urbana, established around 1748 by Espinosa after Gumilla's initial failure. When they visited La Urbana, the settlement included five hundred "souls," part Otomac, part Cabres (Humboldt 1956, 3:279), but no mention whatsoever is made of the Panare. From the sixteenth century, civilians were colonizing around the mission stations. Apart from the beginning of an intensive hunt for the Orinoco tortoise (Podocnemis expansa), an extensive cattle breeding began in the area. At first, the colonists did not venture far inland for fear of the "savage Caribs." This rural population of Creoles, the result of interbreeding between Spaniards, African slaves, and, to a much lesser extent, Indians, constituted a revolutionary force against the Spanish-dominated bourgeoisie of the Venezuelan cities. Here, the social forces that would confront each other during the Revolution of 1810 were set. The impact of these events in the area, minimal at first, marks, however, the beginning of an intensive movement of conquista del sur by the llaneros. In 1815, several republican leaders, Monagas, Cedeño, and Rojas, organized an army of 1,300 men who then crossed the Orinoco and defeated the Royalists at Moitaco. Prior to this battle, Cedeño had established his quarters in the area of El Tigre, in present Panare territory. No incident with the Indians is reported, which leads me to think that the indigenous Indian

22 The Historical Frame groups had already disappeared, and the Panare had not yet arrived. In 1816, Piar joined Cedeño. They left El Tigre to defeat Spanish troops first on the Caura and, in January, 1817, at Angostura (Siso Martínez 1965, pp. 341-352, 372-380).

Turiba Meanwhile, the Panare had probably not yet expanded out of the upper Cuchivero basin. Most likely, they did not begin spreading westward prior to the end of the nineteenth century, but the literature is silent on this point. Gillin (1963, 3:809) still locates them as follows: "At the sources of the Cuchivero River, a right tributary of the lower Orinoco (lat. 7° N, long. 66° W) (KochGruenberg 1922, p. 235). On the Mato River, a left tributary of theCaura River, according to Rivet (1924)." When the Panare were first accurately described as occupying their present territory (Antolínez 1944; López Ramírez 1944), the agricultural colonization of the lowland savannas of the area had been successfully achieved by the Creoles. This colonization occurred primarily during the dictatorship of General Gómez, whose rule lasted from December 1908 to December 1935. During this period of bloody disturbance, when the exploitation of rubber (Hevea sp.), chicle (Acras sapota), and tonka bean (Dipteryx odorata or D. oppositifolia) boomed, when the crude oil of Venezuela was abandoned to the imperialistic powers of the northern hemisphere, self-made caudillos terrorized the country. While the Makiritare still remember this time, during which they were shot like rabbits by crazed gunmen, the Panare had a less overtly tragic experience. The first contact was even peaceful in some cases, as at Turiba, whose history we shall now examine. Around 1900, Turiba did not exist, either as a Creole village or as a Panare settlement. The direct ancestors of the Panare with whom I lived and worked were settled at that time some 80 km northeast of Turiba in the Sierra Cerbatana. There might have been one or two isolated Creole houses in the area, but the direct ancestors of the Creoles of Turiba were then living in the city of Coro in the Falcón State. Around 1910, about six hundred people came from Coro and reached Caicara, around which some of them scattered. About a hundred of them, divided into two groups headed, respectively, by "General" Expectación

23 The Historical Frame Vargas and "Colonel" Domingo G. Flores, set up a cluster of hamlets that would later become Turiba. For several years, the village was established at the present location of the Indian village, that is Turiba Viejo; it was later moved upstream to its present location. These pioneering Creoles arrived by canoe from Caicara. They paddled upstream on the Orinoco, passed La Urbana, turned into the Suapure River until its confluence with the Turiba River, thus repeating the journey undertaken two centuries before by Gilij (1965,1:60), who reported: "This [Turiba] river is small, and not only full of rocks, but also of trees of various kinds that fall into it from both sides. There is abundant wild honey to be found, and there are birds t h a t . . . do not crow." Finally, the pioneers settled close to the confluence, upstream from a small raudal that protected them from any unwelcome fluvial visitors. Besides its natural protection, the location of this place was determined by a number of other ecological factors. Coming from La Urbana, this is the first place to offer a fertile forest environment. A large desert sandplain (banco), interspersed with a few eroded hills, lies between La Urbana and the Suapure-Turiba confluence. The Turiba area is at the southeastern border of this sandy plain, where it meets more mountainous and more forestcovered areas. The pioneers knew, according to their descendants, that they could rely on slash-and-burn cultivation. But the reason for their move was the hope of wealth through the search for rubber and chicle on the one hand, and for tonka beans on the other hand, both plentiful in this zone and relatively easily transported in canoes to marketing places (La Urbana or Caicara). Panare recent history in the Turiba area has been tentatively reconstructed through interviews with both Indian and Creole informants. In the summary that follows, Panare individuals will be referred to by their Spanish names for the sake of clarity. Around 1930, two Panare brothers-in-law, both born in Ochi (now disappeared) in approximately 1895, left their birthplace to settle on their own at La Raya on the southern edge of the Sierra Cerbatana, about 80 km northeast of Turiba. About ten years later, a split of La Raya led to the establishment of three new settlements. The founders of La Raya left it and followed the edge of the Cerbatana on its western side; Manuel Hernández settled at El Paujil, while José Medina settled farther north at Morichalito. A third group departed. Heading southeast, Manuel Blanco settled first at Los Gallitos, which has since become the Creole village of Turiba Nuevo. The first contact between Panare

24 The Historical Frame and Creoles took place there. Finding it a convenient place propitious for cattle breeding, the Creoles began building their mud houses around Los Gallitos. In 1945, in order to avoid both the Creoles and their cattle, the Indians had to move, and their village split again: one party, headed by Casanova Viejo, established itself at El Muerto, about 10 km north of Turiba; the other one, headed by Manuel Blanco, crossed the Turiba River and founded Guamure, only 5 km northeast of Turiba. Guamure split again in 1964: a group settled at Los Pozos, about 10 km south of Guamure, while Manuel Blanco went to Turiba Viejo, the original settlement of the Creole colonists. When, in December 1967, a few weeks after the death of this headman, I myself arrived at Turiba Viejo, there was no Panare settlement south of the Suapure River.

Cultural Subdivisions Since I have now briefly introduced the portion of the Panare territory in which most of my field work was carried out, it seems relevant to ask whether the chosen location was representative of the whole Panare culture. It is the sharing of a common territory and of a similar culture that accounts for Panare homogeneity. However, the Panare do not constitute a tribe stricto sensu : there is no activity that links all the local groups together. I have avoided the word tribe because the Spanish word tribu is used regionally to refer to each local group, for example la tribu de Turiba ,la tribu de Colorado. Due to the lack of political unity among the Panare, several authors have been easily led to introduce cultural subdivisions. For Antolínez (1946, p. 54), the Panare "are divided into three groups: the forest dwellers, the hill dwellers, and the savanna dwellers, with three divergent types of culture. The forest dwellers are largely gatherers. The hill dwellers are mainly cultivators, but with a considerable amount of hunting. Less nomadic than the first mentioned, with agriculture mixed with some animal husbandry, are the savanna dwellers, who are occasionally sedentary." On the other hand, Delgado (1949) and Riley (1953 and 1954) were the first to differentiate the northern from the southern Panare, divided by the Raudal Mantecal (a rapid that, according to the authors, impedes fluvial navigation on the upper Cuchivero), and by the lower Guaniamo. Such a distinction is

25 The Historical Frame also adopted by Wilbert (1959 and 1963). According to him, in the northern area the llanos with their scattered stands of palm trees characterize the landscape, whereas in the southern part there is a dense forest landscape. Such an ecology would imply different economic orientations (more fishing in the north, more hunting in the south) and different degrees of acculturation. Although completely isolated during the rainy season, the northern Panare would be in closer and more regular contact with the Creoles. Although I myself have observed cultural variations among the Panare, I cannot agree completely with either of the above-mentioned classifications. Antolínez seems to overlook the fact that the Panare settle at the intersection of savanna and forest, of plain and mountain. These four environments exist all over the territory. The differences that he noticed exist but are overemphasized. Finally, to the best of my knowledge, the Panare had nowhere turned to cattle breeding. Several settlements I visited had a donkey or a few suckling pigs, but I never saw a Panare settlement with cattle. Even the most daring of Panare are more frightened by cattle than by horses. Since several other authors have mentioned cattle breeding (López Ramírez 1944, Delgado 1949, Wilbert 1959 and 1963), I wonder whether the attempt has been abandoned or is pursued in certain settlements that I was unable to visit. The division between the northern and southern Panare does not seem to me totally accurate. First of all, the Raudal Mantecal does not impede navigation; if any, it is the Raudal Alto that does so. Relevant differences are rather between the southeastern part of the territory and the remainder of the territory. By the southeastern part, I refer to the settlements east of the Cuchivero or along its banks, south of Candelaria. For example, pottery is still made there, as are belts of human hair. I have already alluded to the ecological argument. It could never have been put so strongly by these authors if they had been aware that the mesas of the western part are inhabited. There are at least five settlements in the Sierra Cerbatana; their altitude is an irrelevant factor in their location. What is relevant for the location of these Panare settlements is their placement at the intersection of four types of environment—savanna and forest, plain and mountain. The Panare language presents several dialectal variations. For example, the word for child (over 2 and less than 9 years old) is tikon, except in the southeast where it is kokon. Riley (1952, p. 6) made a similar observation. A few examples of these varia-

26 The Historical Frame tions are given, although not with great accuracy, by Antoínez (1952, p. 281). These variations do not impede mutual comprehension between speakers of each dialect. An informant I had brought from Turiba to Candelaria told me when we were alone about the "funny accent" of his hosts. Since I undertook my field work mainly in the western part of the territory (above all in the area of Turiba), I shall not refer to the southeastern part of the territory unless otherwise specifically stated. The cultural differences between the two areas seem minor. Although my experience was necessarily limited, I have everywhere observed basically the same cultural traits in terms of ritual, social organization, and material culture, although there are minor linguistic differences and technological variations resulting primarily from differing degrees of acculturation. In both areas, the Panare refer to themselves as ötnyepa.* This very same word is also used to designate any other Indian by opposition to the word tatto, which is applied for any non-Indian. Obviously, non-Panare Indians do not refer to themselves by this word; and in any given situation the Panare perceive very clearly the difference between "us the Indians" and "us the Panare." Although the Carib root pana ("ear") can be recognized in the word Panare, its origin is still unknown. It can be compared to a Carib word panari that could be translated as friend, companion, attested for the Tamanac by Gilij (1965, 3:136): "Friend, what you will eat tomorrow . . . in Tamanac, it is said: Panari, chonbe manapuchi coronare." This meaning also seems consistent in the following quotation from the Barama River Carib (Gillin 1936, p. 121): "Two dollar, panari . . . Me have good time, panari, good time. . . . Den me buy one black gal, nice black gal, panari, pretty black gal, man." It is difficult to make population estimates for the Panare, and striking contradictions appear in the literature. The first estimate comes from Cruxent (1948); his approximation of 1,800 individuals seems to me quite accurate. To the best of my knowledge, all other estimates were done during the 1960's. Krisólogo (1965) and López Sanz (1968 and 1971) propose similar figures: 2,500 *Since the completion of this work, I understand that my linguist colleagues in Venezuela transcribe Panare self-denomination as e'niapá. Not being a linguist, I bow to their judgment. Yet, I shall stick to my own transcription for the sake of consistency and as long as I am not confronted with their description of Panare phonology. Some linguistic description of the Panare language has been undertaken by A. Cauty (1974) since the writing of this book.

27 The Historical Frame for the former, over 2,000 for the latter. My own estimate (Dumont 1971) varies from 1,500 to 2,000 individuals, not including the southeastern Panare, still mostly unknown. This estimate should be considered as minimal. Such a figure shows a total discrepancy with the Comisión Indigenista Nacional's (1960), as with Wilbert's (1963), estimations. According to the CIN, there would have been only 146 individuals and, according to Wilbert, 412. The former never had the means nor the will to do any serious census. Although the latter carefully distinguished between actually counted and estimated people, by his own admission he surveyed only a few Panare settlements. The most striking characteristic of this population may be the strength of Panare cultural resistance to acculturation, particularly when compared to the weak resistance offered by the proselytized Piaroa of Isla Ratón or with the creolized Makiritare of the Paragua River. The Panare have maintained grosso modo their traditional way of life despite the fact that they are totally surrounded by Creoles. This is not meant to imply an absence of relationship between Indians and Creoles.* Some idea of the nature and frequency of such contact will be indicated, although never systematically, in the pages that follow.

*For an analysis of such relationships, see Dumont 1974A.

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Chapter Four An Ethnographic Presentation

Turiba Viejo, the Panare settlement, has as its bearings 66°42'12"W and 6°35'58"N. Finally, in medias res, somehow suddenly dazzled and blinded to discover the Indian settlement hidden behind the gallery forest that followed the river bed, I was submerged in a tropical ambiance: heat buzzing under high-noon sun, the atmosphere was refreshed only by the clear sounds of running waters. I was full of naïve enthusiasm as two men began to ferry my boxes and myself across the Turiba. The jerking of the rough dugout canoe caused by these inexpert paddlers did not stop my wonderment. For the moment, even that was exotic. I had come there to exorcise this exoticism, to demystify it by resetting its components in the more appropriate frame of Panare daily reality. Who was stranger to whom? Them to me or me to them? The fifty-eight inhabitants of the settlement, bemused by the ostentation of my luggage, were all—a front line of men behind which women were peeping—gathered at the bank, commenting, gabbling, giggling, glaring, greeting, gushing. I stepped out of the canoe and walked up the steep bank. From the river itself, one could have missed the settlement, some 50m behind. "Tankön aman" ("here you are"), Marquito said. Even the Panare referred to the headman by this Spanish name. We emerged in the clearing. Approximately at the center of it stood a churuata, flanked on each side by several workshop-huts. It was in following day after day the activities of this settlement that I would familiarize myself with Panare culture. The information presented in this chapter has been largely supplemented by repeated visits to other settlements. A brief presentation of the culture will provide a general background for a deeper understanding of the Panare. In no way can this presenta-

30 An Ethnographic Presentation tion be considered as complete, but it should prove useful to orient the reader, if only in a sketchy way. The topics discussed in this chapter are directly relevant to the further understanding of our analysis. In addition, other information is presented that should help the reader gain a more complete view of Panare culture. In other words, were it not for its brevity, this chapter, based on direct observations, could be in itself an ethnographic report. But the reader should bear in mind that there is always an element of arbitrariness in what is presented, since the observer sees mostly what he is prepared to see.

Physical Appearance Physically, the elegant harmony of Panare bodies is quite striking. The height of the men varies between 1.65m and 1.70m, but some individuals reach 1.75 m. Women are just a little shorter. The musculature of both sexes is very well developed, but never does a Panare man appear as sturdy as the shorter Piaroa or Makiritare. Individuals above sixty tend to be rather spare. A few women, all in their forties, have become rather heavy, but I never saw a fat man. To be fat would be considered as a strong indication of laziness. Maybe this slim and muscular aspect reinforces the impression of height that the Panare project. The skin color is of a light yellowish brown, but most of the body surface is quite darkened by sun tan. Not only was I reputed tame ("ugly") for being "hairy like a howler monkey," but also some children would pretend to pluck off my chest hairs at unexpected moments. Men and women carefully remove all hair, including pubic hair for women, with the help of a sharp wooden stick with which the hair is lifted up and then grabbed with the nails. A depilated body is reputed to be ayape ("pretty"). Another reason for such care is that hair catches ticks as one walks bare legged and bare chested. The more hair, the more ticks, as I painfully discovered. Facial hair (except for the eyebrows) is removed, too, and I was mostly referred to as tansipoto ("the bearded one"). But it is noteworthy that in the southeastern part of the territory several prestigious old men wore goatees, à la Ho Chi Minh, which was ridiculed in the area of Turiba. The straight, thick, black hair of the head is cut straight across the forehead about midway between the hairline and the

31 An Ethnographic Presentation eyebrows, tapering down on the sides to the level of the earlobes and cut straight across in the back at the nape of the neck. It is combed straight down from the crown of the head with cheap plastic combs or fingers. When his hair reaches his shoulders, each individual has it shaved off to weave into cords. Such cords are used in two ways: (1) as an ornament rolled into two strips of variable width below and above the calves, and (2) as a belt for males. A belt is made by doubling and redoubling the cords so that their width depends upon the length of hair that was originally available. Young male children have only one length of cord around their waists, or they wear the belt without any other form of clothing.

Material Culture The belt is designed to hold the men's loincloth, a rectangle (about l m by 40cm) with pompons on the four corners. The cloth is redoubled over the belt in front but often allowed to hang freely behind to the back of the knees for elegance. Practicality requires that the back pompons be tucked up on the side to avoid their dragging in the dirt. The men often wear an old loincloth for outdoor activities, such as gardening or hunting, and change into their newer and cleaner one when they come back to the settlement. The women's loincloth is much smaller. One cotton cord maintains a tiny rectangle (20 cm by 10 cm) of woven cotton that passes over the pubis, tightly pulled up between the legs and attached in the back over the sacrum. Two pompons at the rear corners dangle tantalizingly on each buttock. In the southeastern part of the territory, a few loincloths were made of beaten bark. In addition to this basic clothing, several ornaments may be worn, and an individual may wear none, part, all, or any combination of them. Apart from the hair strips on the legs, beads are of paramount importance in Panare fashion. As soon as a baby is born, he or she will be adorned with beads. A little boy will be adorned by his father with bead strings at the ankle and above the calves, at the wrists, and above the biceps. He will also wear a one-strand necklace of beads regularly interspersed with howler-monkey canines, which demonstrates the hunting prowess of the boy's father. Conversely, a little girl will be adorned by her mother with bead strings at the ankle and above the calves, at the

32 An Ethnographic Presentation wrists, but not above the biceps; she will also wear several necklace strings of beads interspersed with one-Bolivar silver coins (which have not been in circulation in Venezuela since 1968), several strings of beads crisscrossed in bandolier fashion, and finally a ring of beads through her pierced ear lobes. Only men wear small white and small pale greenish blue beads that alternate every one or two centimeters in the strings that they wind above the biceps, thus characteristically deforming these muscles. Women not only wear scores of necklaces, but also scores of strands crisscrossing the chest. They never wear any beads above the biceps. Although trade beads are very desirable, women often have to substitute large seeds (Coix sp.) for them in their necklace strings, especially when contact with Creoles is infrequent. The daily outfit of men is often more elaborate. A feather stem or a little piece of wood may be worn in the septum of the nose. Round bits of wood as large as one centimeter in diameter or a bunch of little green parrot feathers can fill their pierced ear lobes. The same feathers may sometimes be inserted in the bead strings for the biceps. Long black feathers of curassow are used in the southeastern part of the territory for the same purpose. In addition, men may wear crisscrossed chest bands of cotton (the only weaving that men do). All these ornaments are used daily. On ceremonial occasions, however, or sometimes for no other reason than being ayape, the red paint wacye (Bixa orellana) is applied to the face or the whole body. The same product is used to dye all cotton belongings. Such a paint has a reputation of keeping mosquitoes and other insects away, but the Panare rarely coat themselves in this way when they travel. They would, however, stop a few hundred yards before entering a settlement to which they had come for a dancing spree and apply this cosmetic. An application as casual as this aims partially at discouraging the spirits who love the green of the forest and will avoid a red-dyed body. For ceremonial occasions, men use the black dye anku (Genipa americana), and, with a little piece of wood or a carved stamp, they draw geometric figures on their chests or over their entire bodies. Finally, the reddish brown and sticky ayawa (Protium sp.) is used as a prophylactic on children (a double circle, dotted for girls, is made around the eyes, shaped a little bit like motorcycle goggles), and also as a general therapeutic on everybody (dots are applied on the "sick" part of the body). In the western region, the cleared area of the settlements is

33 An Ethnographic Presentation generally kept clean by the women. The floors of the houses are even neater, being swept almost every day. Apart from the hearths, which remain on the earthen floor, everything else is hung, inserted in the thatch, or laid on platforms made in the framework of the building. Every married woman is responsible for her hearth. At night the fire is maintained. To keep the sleepers warm, not only are the hammocks slung close to the hearths, but also often a dish full of glowing embers is placed below the hammock. Hammocks are woven out of cotton and on rare occasions from fibers of the moriche palm tree ankayo (Mauritia flexuosa). All cotton work is confined to women. Men are responsible for the elaboration of silk-grass ropes used for, among other things, the slinging of the hammocks. When hammocks are not occupied, they are tightly stretched overhead so that the occupants can easily move about. The Panare have a strong sense of humor but do not play mischievous tricks, and I have never seen or heard of anyone having unslung someone's hammock. But, one night when the hammock in which a couple was making love collapsed, it was the source of much laughter and of week-long comment in the settlement. Men sit often on the shell of a previously eaten yara (the tortoise Testudo sculpta). They still prefer to squat or sit on a piece of firewood, rather than soil their buttocks on the earth. Women infrequently sit on a tortoise shell, and they generally use a rectangular mat of palm leaves, mostly of the cucurito palm tree osaayo (Maximiliana regia). Just as weaving is a woman's activity, basketry is confined to men. From palm leaves, they plait rectangular mats (sunwa), fire fans (papey), and huge round carrying baskets (tawa). A type of wicker (called tirite by the Creoles and manankye by the Panare) is used for the fabrication of baskets of all sorts. Men make a rolled string (kitnyatö) from the barks of unidentified trees (wanayo and kauttayo). This string is used to sew up the baskets and fasten the thatching to the frame of the houses. A single strip of this bark is used as a head- or chestband for carrying the round basket (tawa). Plaited strings of moriche (Mauritia flexuosa) fibers are made by men, although they are not very much in use in the Turiba area. In the past, women made pottery (inye), but it has now entirely disappeared from all but the most remote parts of the territory. It is now replaced by aluminum pots (mara) acquired—as are all metal objects—from the Creoles. Woodworking, a man's task, is reduced to a minimum, and the

34 An Ethnographic Presentation Panare are very unskilled in this activity. Canoes and beer containers are made from roughly hollowed-out tree trunks (Ceiba pentandra), and both are called by the same name (kanowa). The wooden cooking spatula (yikö) has a shape similar to the canoe paddle, and both have the same name. Each settlement has also at least one sugar-cane grinder: karanapicto is the trapiche of the Creoles. Knives (para), cutlasses (ecpara), and axes (cictyö) are used by both sexes, since women have the responsibility for cutting and carrying firewood (waxto means fire as well as firewood and matches). Metal working by men is very limited. Blades are roughly sharpened with files (rima, a word borrowed from the Spanish lima), then whetted to a razor-sharp edge on a sandstone grinder. Men file down old cutlasses to make lanceolate spear blades, which, once worn out, are reused for making harpoon heads. One essential part of Panare equipment is traded directly or indirectly from other Indian groups (Piaroa, Makiritare, Shikano): the blowgun (watta). The Panare make their own curare (mankowa) and darts (waimo). The needle-shaped darts are made of the seje (kaxseco, Jessenia bataua) or cucurito (osaayo, Maximiliana regia) palm leaves. Air compression is insured by fixing at the rear of the dart a tampon of tapari, the white woollike envelope of the ceiba seeds. Apart from the exceptions already mentioned, the traditional technology is entirely manufactured from the resources of the environment by two adults of opposite sex who, together, know all the techniques of their culture and form a complementary and almost self-sufficient unit. A man or a woman alone would not survive. The sexual division of labor determines to a large extent the property rights over the means of production and the products of an individuad. The Panare have a strong sense of individual property. Not only could I not buy a cassava bread from a man without the consent of his wife, but I also could not even borrow a pot from him in her absence, since both items are women's property. In fact, very few items are borrowed or lent, since any couple can make any of them. An individual owns all the tools that he or she uses, and the same is true of his or her products prior to their redistribution. To a large extent, an identical remark can be made for children's goods. For instance, if a man makes a basket for his wife, he alone may sell it; once she has been given it, she alone may sell it.

35 An Ethnographic Presentation At this point, we shall list (table 2) the equipment of a man and a woman, for it will provide us with a convenient summary of the most material aspects of Panare culture that constitute the necessary frame of our study. Such a list has been established from an inventory made in three different groups of the same area: Turiba Viejo, Los Posos, and El Muerto. Checking has been repeated at random among other western groups, without showing any discrepancy. Of course, this sort of list can never be complete. Although no significant item has been omitted, it should be kept in mind that in every village totally unexpected items can be found: in Turiba Viejo, Domingo Flores had an old bicycle that I saw him use only once. Domingo Barrios had a pair of glasses that he wore the day I arrived and on two or three other occasions Felipe Casanova treasured the rusted parts of a dead transistor radio in a biscuit box. Examples could be multiplied almost ad infinitum. Every man, but no woman, has weird items of this sort. These items have been entered in the list as varia. Each item has been listed in English, in Spanish Creole when relevant, and in Panare. The origin has been indicated, whether it is made by men (M), by women (W), acquired from the Creoles (C), or from other Indians, mainly Piaroa (P) in the area of Turiba. Items are owned by men (M), by women (W), by both (M&W), by either (M/W), or by the entire group (G). All food and drinks are excluded from the list. From table 2 it can be seen that the property of a Panare man and woman is relatively small in amount, and most of it is produced from the resources of the environment. The attitude toward each item varies tremendously with its economic value. Two examples will clarify this. The fabrication of a basket (tawa) requires two hours' work for a man. The availability of palm leaves is constant. The basket can be replaced easily, and little care is taken of it, although this item is permanently needed. The greatest amount of work in making a hammock, on the other hand, is spent not in weaving but in spinning the 300 to 500m of cotton cord that are necessary. From the picking of the cotton (but excluding its cultivation) to the dyeing of the hammock, a woman spends about 150 hours of work. The greatest care is taken of this absolutely indispensable item, which lasts for about two years. In both examples, the economic cost, expressed in terms of production time and exchange value, is a determinant of the attitudes toward these goods, as it is for items obtained through for-

Table 2. Inventory of Equipment

Items Owner

pereka kanowa kanowa karanapicto

M M M M

G G G G

pereka

M

M

Spanish

Panare

main building canoe & paddle beer container sugar-cane press

churuata

trapiche

other buildings than main basket

guayare

tamadye

M

M

basket bark string silk-grass thread black paint basket black paint

guapa

wapa kitnyato kawa anku karamatö

M M M M M

M M M M M

basket varnish

macyo

M

M

spear dart sheath

rencita or patama parana

M M

M M

darts

waimo

M

M

dart tampon

tapari

M

M

curare pots

mankawaye

M

M

curagua genipa

Comments

3 in Turiba, only for river crossing 1 per year, 1 per group 2 in use at Turiba, often only 1 per group includes the hut and rancho of next chapter made as needed by men in forest and not reused afterward almost exclusively for sale made on need, not stocked from a cultivated plant, stocked produced on need, not cultivated used as soon as produced; made from the ashes of an unidentified tree used as produced; made by adding water to the dried and powdered bark of the macyo tree more than 2 per man the name comes from the hollow bamboo that it is made of; in the western area the top is decorated with basket work; 1 per man a stock of 50 to 100 per man is maintained constantly stocked in quantity, 1 full tawa per man stocked in 100 g pots, made once a year; 1 man makes between 5 and 10 pots a year

36 An Ethnographic Presentation

Origin

English

saco

cow horn

cacho

tortoise seat cotton bandolier

petnya sako

M M

M M

kacu or pakapanasikun yara picpwö ?

M

M

M M

M M

cooking spatula mortar & pestle manioc grater

yikõ xako utokyeto

M M M

W W W

manioc squeezer manioc sieve fire fan mat spindle basket

sinkõ upa sunwa amuye tawa

M M M M M M

w w w w w

M&W

? kawaye

M M

M&W

brown paint firestones earthenware pots

ayawa intyetey inye

M W W

M/W W W

baby strip

nyamcaye

W

w

calabashes

kattöm 8c kuökö & maraka

W

w

hair belt

uyipomwicto

W

M

basket tobacco pouch

papey mapire canasto

M&W

at least 2 per m a n man's shoulder bag made from the skin of any felidae 1 per man; used for call and as container as previous item 1 per man all initiated males e x c e p t older m e n have o n e pair; n o specific

name except tokötö ("cotton") was given to me at least 2 per woman 1 per woman metallic plaque on wood support; 1 per woman 1 per woman 1 or 2 per woman 1 per woman 1 per woman; not transported wooden; 1 to 3 per woman used for storage and transport; average of 5 per individual for storage, but mostly for sale tobacco is prepared daily by men and carried in a leaf bag stock of 250 g per couple 3 per hearth, not transported pottery has disappeared except in SE of territory women use this cotton strip to carry babies prepared by women; used as liquid containers; the last one is also used in rituals this hair belt has now disappeared among western groups

37 An Ethnographic Presentation

harpoons cat-skin bag

Table 2 (continued) Spanish

Panare

Origin

Owner

red paint

onoto

wacye

W

M&W

beeswax torch

köropo

W

M&W

loincloths

katyö

W

M&W

hammock resin

tato makiya

W Ρ

M&W

watta lintena kuca

Ρ G C

M M M

pocketknife

cictyõ cukapa rima parankin or kanoaca

G C C C

M M M M

b o w 8c arrow

kaka

C

M

shotgun

akapuca

C

M

h o o k s & line

DDT

unötö arete

C C

M M

plastic belt

timwicto

C

M

blowgun flashlights sewing needle

ax hoe file

peraman

linterna

lima

M

Comments prepared as n e e d e d ; anyoto means painting in general used inside the long-house, made from bark and b e e s w a x ; tend t o b e replaced n o w b y kerosene lamps 2 per individual, an old and a n e w

one 1 per individual except infants 1 bar per man, extracted from Morronobea montana 1 per man is a must 1 per man in the western groups 1 or 2 per man; mainly used for basketry 1 per man 1 per man 1 per man 1 man out of 2 had 1 before my distributions 1 in Turiba, but I never saw it used nor did I see another one anywhere else almost every group has 1 now, but there was none in Turiba easily lost and in constant demand mainly used to treat the tobacco plantation these belts have replaced the hair belts in the western area

38 An Ethnographic Presentation

English

dogs

krinapon

C

M

plata

arata

C

M

cassava griddle

budare

utokyeto

c

W

mara wax to ötnan

c c c

W M&W M&W

kerosen

krosen

c

M&W

machete cobija

para ecpara kuwiya kamica

c c c c

M&W M&W M&W M&W

comb mirror

manha cikiri

c c

M&W M&W

aspirin

tunyein

c

M&W

scissors varia

meda

c

M/W M

metal pots matches beads

kerosene lamp

knife bush knife blanket mosquito net 8c western cloth

all

39 An Ethnographic Presentation

cash

the only domesticated animal is traded from the Creoles; at least 1 per man the cash provision of a man rarely exceeds the equivalent of US$20, but each man has with him a minimum of US$1 1 per woman; flat stones of schist are still in use in the southeast 5 to 10 per woman constant supply maintained probably the most appreciated of all goods; few women still use necklaces made of seeds complement or supplement of the beeswax torch; made by recycling tin cans 1 per individual at least 1 per couple 1 per individual the word comes from Sp. camisa for shirt; every individual wears clothes in front of Creoles 1 per couple generic word for all glass items; 1 per couple each individual always has a supply of about 10 tablets 1 pair per couple from all origins; items are obtained bv men

40 An Ethnographic Presentation eign trade. Among the latter items, only one is both delicate (as opposed to an ax) and economically important (as opposed to a comb or a mirror): the blowgun is the object of constant care, and it is about the only object that children are not allowed to touch. When bought with cash, its price is about the equivalent of twenty U.S. dollars. Moreover, it cannot be easily replaced. The Panare say that a blowgun is worth a dog, which, in turn, is worth a hammock, although they export none of these items. With the exception of the blowgun, the Panare are rather casual in the treatment of their property. A few examples serve to illustrate that even the loss or destruction of possessions is not always a matter of great concern. Mirón broke a machete in his garden, and he reacted with laughter, provoking the same reaction in other men. Similarly, Ramón Gallardo once made a trip to a Creole settlement to trade tobacco leaves for a dog. On his way, he slipped and fell in the water, losing his stock of tobacco. Everyone laughed about the incident, but nobody commented on his lost tobacco. This casual attitude toward even valuable goods reflects the fact that, after all, goods can always be replaced. The easier an item is to replace, the less concern; the harder, the more. Beads, hammocks, blowguns, and dogs are the objects of greatest concern. For these four items the Panare almost have some feeling, and their loss is considered as catastrophic. I once saw a woman cry, having lost her beads in the water after catching her necklaces on a branch. The loss or death of a hunting dog—a rather frequent happening—leads to a similarly strong emotional reaction. Felipe Casanova, a generally vivacious man, was on the verge of tears when he reported to me the accidental death of his dog in very much the same manner he had reported, two months earlier, his wife's miscarriage. The dogs are the only domesticated animals to be found in every settlement. They are necessary for detecting and retrieving game. The Panare, like many other Indians, capture alive and keep as pets the young of almost any bird or mammal. They also have chickens, which are more pets than poultry. I have never seen one eaten, and in two years hard-boiled eggs were eaten only once. If one of these animals dies, however, no great emotional attitude prevails. A definite gradation of attitudes prevails toward the "objects" of Panare culture. Strongly contrasting with the casual attitude toward replaceable objects is the attitude toward women, whose participation is indispensable not only for economic pro-

41 An Ethnographic Presentation duction but also, obviously, for sexual reproduction. Indeed, the attitude toward women is very possessive. From linguistic evidence, it can be said that of all goods, women are the most precious. A Panare cannot say "I am married" but must use the form "I own a wife" ("pwi monayu") as he says "I own a basket" ("tawa monayu"). This feeling toward women is manifested through a permanent lack of confidence in them. Indeed, one man cannot steal anything from another except his wife (or wives). Most political conflicts are the results, real or pretended, of sexual misbehavior. In fact, sexually desirable women are never really trusted, frequently suspected, and under almost constant watch. The Panare fear little for their goods and much for their women, who are taught to behave modestly in front of strangers and to fear foreigners. If a married woman had sex with a stranger, she would be "killed," said the informants; and if she had sex with a foreigner she would be "very killed." Although the Creoles are quite ready to brag about their exaggerated exploits, they admit that access to Panare women is impossible. I, myself, as any foreigner, was perceived as a threat, and it took me about a year before I could even engage a woman in conversation. In Panare culture, women are essentially ambivalent. On the one hand, women are the source of political trouble between groups and between men of the same group who are competing for their "possession"; on the other hand, women are indispensable to the very existence of the group and of the society, since they constitute the basis of interindividual and intergroup alliance and solidarity. We shall see later that this contradiction is solved in several ways. An examination of the main economic activities reflects at the same time both the complementary character of the work of men and women and the supremacy of male performance.

Main Economic Activities Economic production is centered around gardening and predatory activities that include hunting, fishing, and collecting. Horticulture clearly provides a constant and regular supply of food, which guarantees the survival of the group. Although the Panare recognize its importance, they emphasize more strongly the importance of the predatory activities of which they are most proud. Such activities are one of the important ways by which

42 An Ethnographic Presentation they oppose themselves to the Creoles, who are tincakye ickye, that is, literally, ignorant. But this word has a range of derivative meanings from coward to lazy and stupid, which account for the ineffectiveness of Creoles at predatory activities. Panare are well traveled in the area and know that most of the time the Creoles eat plain rice and beans without any flesh. If we are to understand the Panare attitudes toward the different sectors of their productive activities, we cannot think of production per se. Production is production of something, and the value of products among the Panare is not wholly equivalent to their economic cost but is also partially determined by the ideological value system. In such a system, the rank of horticultural products is very low. In other words, such products are of "low quality." This is independent of the fact that indeed their "quantity" is probably greater than all the predatory activities together. In a market economy, there would be little difficulty in converting quality into quantity through the universal equivalent of money, but the Panare do not use Venezuelan currency as a universal equivalent, and convertibility is almost impossible. Consequently, the estimate of quantity can be done only in terms of weight, which is of little analytical interest. In effect, what is relevant is that almost no prestige at all is associated with the production of horticultural products. Overproduction is looked down on, and, in this respect, entrepreneurship is discouraged. It is considered as tincakye ickye to produce too much in too big a garden. The man who would do so would not be said to be tiripe ("a hard worker"), but, on the contrary, he would be ridiculed as a fool who has poorly planned his work and has worked too hard for nothing. Such an attitude is entirely reversed when we turn toward the predatory activities in which the maximization of production is encouraged. Hunting is the male activity par excellence. No woman ever takes the least part in it. The more successful a hunter, the more prestigious he is. Such a prestige gives access to women. But there is no direct word to distinguish hunting from fishing, and, in effect, it is the bringing of flesh to the settlement that provides prestige. Fishing is, however, second to hunting, and to catch a big fish is not as prestigious as to kill a tapir. And the Panare state that even a woman could get fish; in fact, women participate in collective fishing, but no woman ever fishes by herself. Collective fishing and collective hunting bring prestige to the headman of the group, in addition to the members of the party.

43 An Ethnographic Presentation A successful headman is one who has led his group to plentiful fishing and hunting grounds. A successful hunter is one who brings back large quantities of flesh to the settlement. The latter is tincakye ("the one who knows"); the former is tincakiptu ("the one who knows very much"). Collecting is a looser category, since it involves indifferently men, women, and children, and often all of them at once; little prestige is attached to it. Indeed, the Panare often said to me that women and children are tincakye ickye. They know nothing. But when I asked if women and children were to be regarded as as ignorant as the Creoles, the reply was: "tattaya aman tinca ickiptu; wunkiya tikon mo tinea kulye ikica" ("you and the Creoles know absolutely nothing; children and women do not know much"). A woman cannot gain real prestige, but she can gain respect in two ways, either by being tiripe ("a hard worker") or, above all, by begetting many children. Indeed, women are almost constantly active, not only involved in the productive process but also caring for children. This does not mean that they do not enjoy some rest during the day, but they work every day and, in any case, more than men. Men rest, on the average, one day out of three. There is little doubt that, prior to the introduction of steel tools, such a surplus of time was not available. No Panare can remember that remote epoch, and it is impossible to reconstruct with any precision the impact of such an introduction. At the time of my investigation, the average usual pattern of working time for men was to work one day outside the settlement, to work inside the next day, and to rest relaxing in their hammocks the third. A man says that he does not work today because he is pöröxpwö ("tired"). Men often go to visit the Creoles out of sheer curiosity without getting involved in any economic process, and it is not unusual to hear them say the following day that they are too tired to work, thus taking two days off in a row. The actual computation of working time is quite complex. A man may change his mind en route to the Creoles if he sees some game track; he may take some product of his garden that he will sell despite his initial intentions, and, finally, he may make some darts that he will sharpen when chatting with his Creole hosts. Most of these side activities turned out to be almost impossible to check. At any rate, Panare men and women are not constantly geared toward economic production and enjoy a lot of spare time for no other purpose than rest, men much more so than women. Keeping this in mind, we can turn toward a brief review of the different sectors of production.

44 An Ethnographic Presentation Horticulture The Panare practice a shifting slash-and-burn cultivation on garden plots (yimwo) that are usually concentrated close to a fertile river bank. The location of gardens is agreed upon by consensus of the men of the group. A well-drained forest area close to the settlement is chosen as the site of a new set of gardens. If possible, the gardens will be made in the immediate vicinity of the old ones. In any case, when gardens begin to be too far from the settlement, it is the location of the settlement that will be changed. The beginning of the Panare year corresponds to the disappearance of the Pleiades (yoroö) below the western horizon at dusk. When this event takes place, the horticultural cycle has already been initiated. It is when Orion's Belt (pecka) has passed its zenith at dusk (around late February) that it is time to clear the new garden plots. Only men are responsible for this operation, and each man works his own plot. Unmarried sons will not work on their own, but their garden is set within the limits of their father's. In other words, a man may say: "This part of my garden is my son's garden." Since there is no land pressure and since cultivation is shifting, land tenure is reduced to this minimum. The first operation by the end of February consists of felling (yimwiyaman) the big trees with axes. The felling of such trees is expected to provoke the fall of smaller trees, and the Panare are quite successful at it, thereby avoiding more axing. By midMarch, all trees should have been felled, and they lie in the sun until their foliage turns crisp and brown. Tree trunks, stumps, or branches are not removed from the field. Meanwhile, a further clearing is undertaken, and the bushy vegetation is chopped off with bush knives (yimwunan). At the end of April, on a clear, windy day, the garden site is fired (yimwuyukan). The effectiveness of the burning is of capital importance. The men pay close attention to the direction of the wind and carefully avoid counterfires. The drier the foliage, the better the burning. This is why there is a tendency to delay the burning until just before the first rains. It is important to forecast correctly, since an early strong rain could ruin this operation. Normally, if optimal conditions are present, that is, if no early rain has fallen, if the bush has been well cleared and the fire well set, the next operation is reduced to a minimum. The garden plot is cleared of small, halfburnt pieces of wood and remaining weeds (yimwupaman). From

45 An Ethnographic Presentation now on, a large supply of wood is available to women for their hearths, and men can wait with serenity for the arrival of the rains. At this time, the forecast of rain becomes a favorite topic of conversation. When heavy rain begins to fall during May, planting (yimwiyaxman) begins. It is exclusively a masculine task. An individual plants his own garden. A man helps another man neither in slashing nor in planting. The Panare cultivate the plants that appear in table 3. Spanish names are given when no common English names exist. The Panare names are followed by the scientific names, although identification should be considered as tentative.* All the plants cultivated in Turiba were cultivated among all other Panare groups that I know of. However, some plants that are not encountered in Turiba are cultivated in a few other settlements. Plants encountered elsewhere than in Turiba are marked (-) as of minor importance. Plants present in Turiba are starred according to their quantitative importance in horticultural production (***), (**), or (*). Finally, all cultivated plants are planted in the gardens, but some are, in addition, randomly planted at the fringe of the settlement clearing; these have been marked (S) for the latter and (G) for the plants never encountered outside the garden. This information has been checked for the three settlements of Turiba Viejo, Los Posos, and El Muerto, and it seems to be valid all over the western territory. It is not implied, however, that the case is the same everywhere, nor that in a few settlements another plant has not been dealt with in a similar way. This is intended only as an indication, and it should be remembered that the plantings at the periphery of the settlement are scarce and of little quantitative importance. The task of planting consists in softening the earth with the hoe and placing the shoots in the earth. A plot presents a typically crisscrossed pattern. For instance, plantains are aligned about every 5 m, and the two species of manioc every 40 cm by groups of three. On the other hand, sugar cane is not interspersed with anything else, but tobacco is often planted between manioc, and yams between bananas. Instances vary, but the general trend is to minimize garden space by planting close to each other those plants that remain compatible. *Sources for this tentative identification are Schnee 1960, Steward 1963, and Steward and Faron 1959.

46 An Ethnographic Presentation Table 3. Panare Cultivated Plants English or Spanish

Panare

bitter manioc utonye kitnya corn plantain paru parye parunye sugar cane karana tobacco köwa tokötö cotton sweet manioc amaka yam wanka sweet potato CO na ocumo tukwa ocumito papaya paya kampure banana chili pepper pimpi kawa silk grass wacye onoto kayein fish poison cakman ? mapuey kayama auyama peanut calabash flute tree rice watermelon pineapple

konyi kuökö kasanka aro patiya onkye

Identification

Importance

Location

Manihot esculenta Zea mays Musa paradisiaca

*** *** ***

G G G

Saccharum officinarum Nicotinia tabaccum Gossypium sp. Manihot dulcís Dioscores alata Ipomoea batatas Xanthosoma esculenta Xanthosoma sp. Carica papaya Musa sapientium Capsicum frute scens Brome lia sp. Bixa orellana Tephrosia sp.

*** *** *** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

G G G G G G G G S G S G S G

Dios corea trífida Cucurbita moschata & C. maxima Arachis hypogoea Lagenaria siceraria ? Oriza sativa Citrullus vulgaris Ananas comosus

* *

G S

* * * — — —

G G S G S G

After planting, the garden has still to be taken care of, and routine weeding (yimwiyakokan) is constantly performed by men. But as soon as the new garden begins to produce, women take it over to a great extent, since they are in charge of harvesting (yimwiyinyepun). As they dig for both species of manioc, they will replant shoots, which is important, since a plot does not produce as soon as it is planted. Of all food crops, bitter manioc may be the most important because its production is reg-

47 An Ethnographic Presentation ular. It takes from ten to twelve months before the rhizomes are ready to be dug, and even then they can be kept buried for another year without spoiling. When the Panare plant their garden, they say it is ipicpe yimwö ("a young garden"). As a few months pass, it is said to be ama ("unripe"). Meanwhile, the previous garden is still productive and is said to be tyakixse ("ripe"). Finally, the garden made two years before may still produce some manioc, bananas, or cotton; it is said to be wacon ("old"). The latter has already become overgrown with weeds, and secondary forest has already begun to grow in its place; its production is minimal. As a matter of fact, at any time, a man has two producing plots, since the life of a garden from slashing to abandonment extends over a period of about two-and-a-half years. During the second half of the rainy season, around September, men take special care of their tobacco, of which they are extremely proud. Of all horticultural products, it is the only one for which overproduction is planned for barter with the Piaroa and, to a lesser extent, for trade with the Creoles. It is also the only one that requires careful tending. Once sowed (kowa iyamwan), tobacco is sprayed (köwa iponana) with DDT, then hoed up (köwa imuntan) by the end of July; in September, the leaves are removed (köwa ikatan) and brought back (kowa inyepun) to the settlement, then hung for drying (köwa wutan). Only one harvest is made a year. Apart from the routine weedings, men will not intervene in the gardens before the dry season has begun, and the harvest of the corn in October is entirely left to women. In December, when women have finished with the main harvest of chili peppers, the sugar cane has reached maturity. Men will cut it and help the women a little in carrying it back to the settlement, but they help women mainly in extracting the juice, which is the basic ingredient for preparing the fermented drink used in the ceremonies of the first half of the dry season. Cultivated fish poison is ready for use at about the same time. When, around the end of January, the supply of sugar cane has been exhausted and ceremonies have come to an end, cotton is ripe and is picked by women, while men harvest silk grass. A few weeks later, it is about time to begin to fell trees for a new location. Tobacco, fish poison, and silk grass are the only three garden products in the working of which women do not take any part, while all other products are mainly harvested and further

48 An Ethnographic Presentation processed by women. It is noteworthy that the women's activities follow the men's. Women's work is not only a complement to men's work, but also men have precedence over women; this is a remark to which we shall have to return, as it appears to be characteristic of the whole process of production.

Predatory Activities While horticultural activities are generally looked down upon as dull, any predatory activity provides a constant source of excitement for whoever performs it. As we noted above, hunting is the most valued activity, fishing just a shade less, and collecting considerably less. This has to be understood in a rather loose way because it is sometimes difficult for the investigator to decide whether we are dealing with hunting or collecting, as in the case of tortoises, which are caught by hand, or of grubs, which are found in the trunks of palm trees. We could surmount this difficulty if it were only a matter of relocating grub collecting in the hunting category to fit Panare use. But there is a complete noncoincidence between our categories (hunting, fishing, collecting) and Panare categorization. This discrepancy ruins any effort to present Panare predatory activities according to our own categories, since, for instance, the word hunting does not translate any Panare word with any precision and would have to be used in a very ambiguous way. The whole difficulty is semantic. There is no general term to cover all the predatory activities. The predicate yimpwö, that is, "to look for," "to go for," is too broad a semantic category. Although the Panare use it constantly in giving account of a predatory activity, it also means "to want." Hence, the following sentences can be said: "arkon yimpwö yim" ("my father went for monkeys"); "kana yimpwö yim" ("my father went for fish"); "manko yimpwõ wunki" ("the women went for mangoes"); "amaka yimpwö wunki" ("the women went for sweet manioc"). The question "nexpa yimpwö" means "what are you after?" in an active sense, as well as "what do you want?" in a passive sense. So the answer "waxtaye yimpwö" can be translated by "I am looking for my matches," "I am going to buy matches," or "give me matches." Since we are unable to solve the problem with a semantic category, which is too broad, let us try one that may appear to be too narrow but will be helpful.

49 An Ethnographic Presentation When asked about the whereabouts of somebody who is not in the settlement, a Panare has to answer any one of the following: yimwiyika ("at the gardens"); ötnyepaya ("at another settlement"); tattowaya ("at the Creoles"); or ataarama. This last answer is the most interesting and deserves our attention. The preceding enumeration is not complete, since ataarama connotes hunting completely, fishing almost completely, and collecting only in part. In effect, while it is said of a man that ataaramanupwö ("he went ataarama"), this is never said of a woman. For the predatory activities that are not included in this category, one has to use a construction with yimpwö. A close examination of the uses of ataarama reveals that it is only employed for all activities related to animal life: game, fish, and anything else, such as insects or worms, which we usually regard as gathered. In addition, two plants that are also gathered are included. The liana roots (Derris sp.) used for fish poisoning and the roots (Strychnos sp.) used in the preparation of curare are both from leguminous plants, transformed into poison and closely connected with the getting of animals. Finally, honey (wunö) collecting belongs to the same category, being an animal product. In this respect, there is no doubt in the Panare mind, for they call the bees wunö yim ("father of honey") and the larvae zvunö inkin ("children of honey"). Nevertheless, it is worthwhile mentioning that, in the process of collection, honey belongs to the animal world, but, in the process of consumption, it belongs to the vegetal world. This will appear when we examine the predicates used for expressing "to eat." From this simple remark, the conceptual importance of honey in Panare culture can already be foreseen, since nothing else is conceptualized in a similar or comparable way. We shall present first the predatory activities that do not enter in the category ataarama. Only plant products enter into this category. These are picked by everybody in the group, independent of age and sex and nearly all year round. Most of the time it is an individual concern and follows a truly determined pattern only on rare occasions. Such a collecting of wild plants is performed with nothing but the simplest tools: a knife or a machete at most is necessary. Children pick up as they please seeds, berries, fruits, and so forth, which they play with or nibble on; and most adults will go for wild plants, in full or in part, as their needs require. The amount and variety of plants that are utilized during the year is enormous and, at any rate, only an ethnobotanist could make a complete list of them.

50 An Ethnographic Presentation It is useful to distinguish between the plants collected as food and the plants collected for other purposes, mainly as raw material for further technological elaboration. The plants to be manufactured are picked up by the individual who desires them; no time is lost in this process, since constant attention to the environment allows him (or her) to spot and memorize where what is, so that rarely is any searching needed. The most important items in this subcategory are the following: barks of timber trees used for making coarsely rolled cords; the multipurpose leaves of palm trees and the leaves of the platanillo (kanapayo, Heliconia sp.); and the unripe genipap fruit (anku, Genipa americana), the juice of which turns black when it dries on the skin. All bamboolike tubes are exclusively collected by men, who often organize collective parties in their search. The manankye (known as tirite among the Creoles) gives its name to all basketry that is made from it; the ediedi (probably Guasdua sp.) is used for the making of dart sheathes and nose and Pan flutes. Many plants are occasionally picked up as food by individuals, but they have a minimum importance in the Panare diet. At the beginning of the rainy season great emphasis is placed first on mangoes, later on palm fruits. Mango trees (manko, Mangifera indica) are abundant in the whole western part of the territory. These trees are not planted by the Indians. In May and June, the whole group relies almost entirely for food on the compote made from these fruits. Used to natural abundance, the Panare almost ruin the tree in collecting the fruit. The trees are encountered in the vicinity of Creole settlements. This collection often infuriates the Creoles, who cannot make the Indians understand that they are destroying the tree when they pick the fruit. In fact, men climb the trees and beat down the fruit quite ungently, breaking most small branches. Women fill the tawa baskets, which individuals of both sexes carry back to the settlement. In June and July, the group will turn to the collecting of palm fruits, which are abundant and ripe by that time of the year. In the area of Turiba, eight different palm fruits were eaten, which are listed in table 4. In fact, these fruits provide the essential diet of the Panare at the time of collection. They are not really eaten, but sucked. It is their fat that is appreciated, and only the most oily part is consumed, even in the case of the mopan, whose taste is unfortunately reminiscent of soap. Let us mention here that the acema are nonfat acorns; they are eaten and not sucked. They cannot under normal circumstances constitute a meal by themselves, only an accompaniment. All palm

51 An Ethnographic Presentation Table 4. Palm Fruit Consumed at Turiba Creole

Panare

Latin

moriche cucurito seje yagua coroba corozo corozo pijiguao

ankayano osa kaxsey koto kiruwa mopan awanka acema

Mauritia flexuosa Maximiliana regia Jessenia batua Scheelea sp. Scheelea sp. Bac tris sp. Acrocomia sp. Guilielma gasipaes

fruit may be collected by individuals, but collective parties are often organized. In this case, as in the case of the mangoes, men cut the fruit, women fill the baskets, and both sexes carry them. Concerning the predatory activities oriented toward animals, that is, the ataarama category, we shall attempt to list the animals entering into the Panare diet without omitting the two above-mentioned plants that enter into this category. The members of the category are not all equally important. Some of them are reputed to be tasty, but I myself never saw anyone eating these during my entire field work; for this reason they are marked (?). Others are not consumed in the area of Turiba, but I tasted them in the southeastern part of the territory (-). The others have a relatively small (*), medium (**), or extreme (***) importance in terms of quality and quantity: being eagerly sought after, their production is maximized. Finally, some items are not used as foods (N). Table 5 is a list of the plant and animal species utilized by the Panare. Their scientific identification is given whenever known.* The Panare make further distinctions within the ataarama category. It is a rare occurrence when a man leaves the settlement with a precise idea of what he is going to bring back. Unless a target has been spotted earlier, such as honey, he will leave with a certain piece of equipment that determines the range of what he can catch. The weapons used by Panare men are the blowgun, the spear, and the harpoon. Bow and arrows are for all practical purposes nonexistent, except in a miniature form as toys with which young boys have great fun shooting at lizards. Very few Indians *Sources for these tentative identifications are Röhl 1949, Schnee 1960, Steward 1963, and Steward and Faron 1959.

English or Spanish

Panare

Identification

Importance

Comment

VEGETAL curare fish poison

mankawa kayein enerima

Leguminosae Strychnos sp. Derris sp.

*** *

only men 8c collectively only men 8c collectively

ANIMAL WORMS seje grub yagua grub

tamana poyo

Annelidae ? ?

* *

found in Jessenia sp. found in Scheelea sp.

INSECTS Hymenoptera

a flying ant

ciwõ

honey

wunõ

women help in this collection made on the settlement itself obtained from scores of different bees CRUSTACEA

crab crawfish

kikö acim

ρ

?

another crab, onwa, is not eaten

52 An Ethnographic Presentation

Table 5. The Denotata of the "ataarama" Category

FISHES

stingray

pankye

Hypotremata Po tamo trygon hystrix

catfish

?

Nematognathi Peprilus paru

electric eel

karinya

Gymnoti Electrophorus

piranhas

pitnyo

Heterognathi Serasalmus sp. &: Pygocentras sp.

**

moro co to arinton

a fresh-water barracuda pavon bagre

morokoto tansiposumune amada to onsen pihua poom kiripicpwo

Unidentified ? ? ? ? ? Cichla ocellaris? Pseudoplaty stoma faciatus?

*** * ** * * * **

fry

kiripe

? ?

more feared than eaten

* electricus

***

appreciated for their few bones its fat is its attraction; never collectively caught fish hooked in quantity

a flat &: fat fish

*

caught by fish poison only

*

eaten only twice when I was there

AMPHIBIANS small frogs

puxpu

Salientia ?

53 An Ethnographic Presentation

kana

English or Spanish

Panare

Identification

Importance

Comment

REPTILES tortoise turtle

yara arkaya

Chelonia Testudo tabulata Podocnemis sp.

** *

mainly sold to the Creoles no P. expansa

baba

katntan onwe

Crocodilia Caiman sclerops

**

the only one eaten

ankoya yiwana ankoya akoy aroya noray a

Lacertilia Iguana sp. ? ? ? ?

Ν Ν Ν Ν

—

the only lizard eaten all small lizards are used as fish bait

tunko

BIRDS

poncha pon chita

pono soro

Tinaniforms Tinamus sp. Crypturellus sp.

* *

pato real fulvous tree duck

kapano mitt ci

Anseriforms Catrina moschata Dendrocygna bicolor

* *

iguana small lizards

ducks are difficult to approach

54 An Ethnographic Presentation

Table 5 (continued)

quail

kumkwi tankoka poy okoimwö waika kuyi pakopasa

cranes

okara

doves

apaickwa

guan (paujil) another guan curassow {pava)

Galliforms Ortalis rificanda Penelope sp. Pauxipauxi

* * ***

Crax nigra ? Colinus cnstatus

*** ** * none ever consumed despite their abundance

Gruiforms Columbiforms ?

? ? ? ?

kumukwö tuwu kokatoko

?

kamaya

Psittaciforms Ara sp.

perrico

takaka noro kako

Aratinga sp. Amazonia sp. Forpus passerinus

* ** *

toucans

cipoko

Piriforms all Ramphastidae

Ν

parrots

***

often used as a training target for blowguns

mainly in August & July like all the psittacidae

never eaten; only feathers and beaks are used

55 An Ethnographic Presentation

guacharaca

English or Spanish

Panare

Identification

cock-of-the-rock

konom

Passeriforms Rupicola rupicola

Importance

Ν

Comment

only skin used as toucans

MAMMALS

common monkey mono capuchino araguato mono de monte mono titi monkey ? monkey? sloth

***

arkon

Primates

arkon amsile kotta ponkoto makuen kuku kasayamaka

Cebus sp. Cebus sp. Alouatta ursina Aotus trivirgatus ? ? ?

waram

Edenta Bradypus

tridactilus

?

this word is generic for all monkeys and denotes also sloths, squirrels, and porcupines; although only the Cebidae are appreciated as food, the 3 first listed are the more important in diet of the Panare

56 An Ethnographic Presentation

Table 5 (continued)

kaxkam

Dasypus sp.

**

anteater

anca

Myrmecophaga tridactyla Tamandua tetradactyla

**

winki

Rodentia all Sciuridae Coendu prehensilis Dasyprocta rubrata Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris Cuniculus paca

squirrel porcupine agouti {picure) capybara

kadin icka akun ciwire

paca

onkoma

coatí tigre

moricana akirö

tapir

wada

Perissodactyla Tapirus terrestris

deer

wikyi

Artiodactyla Mazama sp.

collared peccary white-lipped peccary

paika pinko

Tayassu tajacu Tayassu peccari

Carnívora Nasua sp. all wild Felidae; mainly Felis onca & F. pardalis

particularly D. novemcintos; mainly hunted in Sept.-Oct.

*

?

* ** **

* Ν

*** *

** *

skin used for bags or sold to the Creoles the most appreciated of all land game too shy to be hunted with great success

57 An Ethnographic Presentation

armadillo

58 An Ethnographic Presentation have shotguns, and the one I had was in constant demand. If a man is going ataarama, he has one and only one of these weapons with him. If needed, almost anything can be turned into a weapon; a Panare is able to cut a pole and sharpen it into a makeshift spear or to improvise a club on the spot. In addition, no man will leave the settlement without a fishing line or without a knife inserted under the back of his belt. It is often the case that the "hunter" encounters nothing that he can catch. If he goes out with a lance, monkeys and birds are out of his range, and he may not get an opportunity at other game. He may then take a chance at fishing. In theory, the different weapons are not interchangeable. A harpoon is used essentially for fish, that is, for aquatic fauna. The blowgun is used for birds and monkeys, that is, for air fauna. The spear is used for almost all other animals, that is, for land fauna. In practice, however, this division is not strictly followed: I have seen a baba crocodile killed in the water with a blowgun. But such an adjustment is in contradiction to the conscious model. This proves that the weapons are used according to their technological possibilities but not as they are conceptualized. The correlation blowgun : air :: harpoon : water :: spear : land, which is clearly stated, is constantly bypassed in actual behavior. When asked what they ataarama with, the Panare will mention these three weapons only and will consistently omit mentioning others, such as hooks, bush knives, and so forth. Moreover, it can be said: waimuxka ("to hunt with [blowgun] darts"); rencitaxka ("to hunt with a spear");petnyaxka ("to hunt with a harpoon"), in which the weapon that a man carries is specified. There is no such verbal form used for any other weapon. Aware of the above-mentioned contradiction, I was led to examine more closely another linguistic paradigm that reflects a further classification of the ataarama activity. Although a man can never predict what is going to be brought back to the settlement, he often expresses his wishes: "otisexpayu (ataarama) kamayaunye." The predicate otisexpa means "I am going away"; yu, " I " ; kamaya, "macaw"; but unye belongs to a new paradigm of predicates, the members of which vary according to the hunted animal. We can rewrite the sentence otisexpayu Xz, in which X represents any denotatum of the paradigm ataarama (see table 5) and ζ the paradigm of the predicates that may follow X in this context. The different constructions are listed in table 6; X is written in columns, ζ in rows; the boxes starred * indicate the

X/z

unye

tapir

wada

monkey

ark on

*

bird

tunko

*

fish

kana

*

tortoise

yara

worms

tamana

honey

wunö

ipumonye

yamanye

tonnye

yannye

monye

taponye

*

*

*

* * *

*

*

59 An Ethnographic Presentation

Table 6. The Paradigms "Xz" in the Context "otisexpayu (aatarama) Xz"

60 An Ethnographic Presentation possible utterances. For instance, after wada, the forms unye and ipumonye are the only ones that can be used. Each member of the paradigm ζ refers to a different ataarama technique that can be specified by the informant. Unye refers to a piercing effect that all three main weapons have. Ipumonye refers to the clubbing by which some animals are finished off; clubbing is not used on those birds shot with a blowgun, which are finished off instead by having their heads smashed against a tree. Yamanye refers to the hooking of fish; the fact that honey is considered as "hooked" is puzzling. It refers in fact to the collecting technique. Once a beehive is opened, a man will make a sort of sponge with leaves to which the honey sticks. The honey is "unhooked" by pressing the sponge over a container into which the honey drips. Tonnye refers to the intoxicating effect of fish poison, which causes the fish to swim madly about as if they were suffocating. Yannye applies to animals that can be captured by hand, such as frogs, crabs, and flying ants. Monye refers to the quasi immobility of worms found in rotten trunks of palm trees from which they can be easily pulled out with a knife. The same word is used for the two plants that are ataarama. Finally, taponye refers to the fact that the tree containing the beehive must be felled. From this linguistic evidence, it can be seen that the technological device employed must be specified in each case. Once more, this categorization does not correspond to the tripartition: hunting, fishing, collecting. While the Panare obviously do not think in our terms, they rank the catch of the different animals in a hierarchy through which prestige is expressed. Ataarama activities are the only ones to bestow prestige, whose acquisition is therefore barred from women. Ataarama is either collective or individual. If it is collective, the prestige will be shared by all the adult male participants, the greater part of it going to the headman. If it is individual, the prestige goes only to the single man. Although it is not possible to quantify the amount of prestige gained, catches are not always identical in value. While a collective success is more valued than an individual one, a big catch is more valued than a small one and a fat catch more than a scrawny one. In these ataarama activities, as opposed to horticulture, the consumption of time and energy is completely unrelated to the quantity of flesh produced. A man may spend hours in running vainly after a monkey or in felling a huge tree for a minute quantity of honey. The anticipation during the pursuit seems to be enjoyed more than the actual catch itself. Many ataarama pur-

61 An Ethnographic Presentation suits are not successful, but it is quite rare to see a man coming back empty handed. He will always manage to bring back something—if only the smallest prey with which children will play until it is discarded because it no longer holds their attention. Game is not abundant in the Guiano-Amazonian tropical forest, and it requires the greatest skill to detect, track, hear, or see it. The Panare have mastered these arts and are admirable at luring animals by imitating their cries or the sounds that attract them, as in the case of fish. While hunting and fishing are not clearly distinguished as activities, each of them obviously depends upon seasonal variations. Both are practiced all year round. Fishing is more strongly emphasized during the dry season. At this time of the year the fish are eagerly biting as they are concentrated in the lower beds of shrunken rivers. Moreover, the smallest caños partially dry out, leaving only ponds and pools in which the fish are trapped. Whether a man sets out to fish with a hook alone or with another member of the residential group, fishing remains individual: a man fishes by and for himself. A large amount of fish may be quickly caught. The catching of electric eels as they float in the shadowy waters close to the bank involves a special procedure, also performed individually. When an eel has been spotted, a large hook is fastened to the end of a pole. The pole is gently passed under the body of the resting eel. The man then gaffs it through the body, pulling it quickly to the land. A favorable reception at the settlement is guaranteed for the man who returns with a few of these fat fish. During the rainy season, fishing becomes much more difficult, because the rivers are swollen and the lowland inundated. The scattered fish bite reluctantly under these conditions. Hunting is therefore more strongly emphasized at that time, when animals are fatter due to the seasonal vegetal abundance. A lean animal is a bad catch and not even brought back to the settlement in times of plenty. One day in February, an anteater was killed with my gun but left to rot at the outskirts of the forest. An anteater is usually an appreciated big catch, but my companion showed me with his knife how skinny the animal was in his opinion, whereas fish were plentiful. Since hunting is not really differentiated from fishing, it becomes redundant to state that a man most often hunts alone, and similarly two men who depart the settlement together rarely remain together during their hunting day. No cooperation is involved in that process, and the catch belongs to the one who kills an animal. Whatever a man's intention, he will

62 An Ethnographic Presentation not leave the settlement without his dog or dogs, which detect the land game for him. In addition to this individual hunting and fishing, collective hunting and collective fishing are organized, the former more often during the rainy season, the latter exclusively during the dry season. A collective hunting party requires the cooperation of all the men of the residential group minus one who stays to guard the settlement. This is usually one who is disabled that day for some reason. The men leave together with their spears and their dogs early in the morning. Their aim is to bring back big game, mainly tapirs, but also peccaries and anteaters. Although the primary goal of such a party is to kill one of these animals, a baba crocodile, a deer, or a capybara may still be killed collectively on occasion. Any other animal is caught individually. The hunting technique consists of walking on forest trails until game tracks are detected. When a big animal is heard, sighted, or scented by the dogs, it is run down and speared. Except once for an anteater, I was not able to keep up with the hunters' crosscountry pace. Once dead, the animal is cleaned and butchered. Each participant member is entitled to a share. The Panare say that there is no specific pattern to the attribution of different parts, which is in contradiction to what I observed: the best and biggest parts (hind legs) always go to the older participants, the smallest parts (liver) always go to the younger, regardless of who actually first saw, first hit, or killed the game. Before dark, the party returns to the settlement, each member carrying his share of meat. Often, during the morning, no game is sighted, and individuals may then decide to take their own chance and disassociate themselves from the hunting group. If the group later kills an animal, the individual who has quit the group and followed his own path is not entitled to any share of this game. Conversely, whatever he catches is his own, and nobody else has any claim on it. Collective fishing parties are linked to the technique of barbasco, that is, of fish poisoning. We have seen that there are two different poisons: one is cultivated, the other collected. A collective fishing party involves not only all the men of the group but women and children as well. The fishing place has been discussed and agreed upon by the men several days in advance. If the poison is wild, it has been cut in advance and brought back to the settlement. The collection of plants for the making of poison is modeled on the collective hunting parties and is an entirely male operation. If the poison is not wild, men go to the gardens in the morning, and each cuts barbasco in his own plot. It is car-

63 An Ethnographic Presentation ried then to the fishing spot in each one's tawa. There, the barbasco is crushed with makeshift wood pestles and put back in the tawa, which are soaked in the water. Meanwhile, women and children have arrived directly from the settlement and await the effect of the poison. In running waters, the river may have to be dammed (a technique I observed only once). Men stay upstream and women downstream. Men harpoon some fish, while women catch some in openwork baskets. A man works with his wife or wives, an unmarried young man with his mother or his unmarried sister. Production is collective but not the distribution of the products, as each fish belongs to the couple that catches it. As much as thirty kilos of fish may be produced per individual in a couple of hours with this technique. The catch is carried, mainly by women, back to the settlement, where they alone will clean the fish, boil part of them immediately, and smoke-cure the rest for preservation. In honey collecting, women take no part. When the Panare fell the trees for making their new gardens, they may discover a beehive in one of them. The honey is immediately extracted and is consumed rather informally with great gusto. Although honey is readily available during the dry season, men do not look for it at that time, but only at the very end of the dry season, or more accurately in the interseason, when diluted honey is drunk in great quantity and served as a complete meal. All men will leave the settlement together and will look for honey within earshot of one another, but an individual is entitled to all the honey collected in the tree or trees that he fells with his ax and that he has chosen because they contained more than one beehive. The primary processes of economic production have been sketched above. Further economic transformations, mainly food processing, will be examined in a later chapter, which I shall not anticipate here. At this point, however, we must note that once food is brought back to the settlement, it becomes the responsibility of women. From the above description, the economic production centered around horticulture and predatory activities is essentially a male concern from which women are almost completely excluded. To be sure, women participate in gardening and collective fishing, but in both cases they intervene only after the men have already initiated the process. They pick up products, fill the baskets with them and carry them, but they do not really produce anything themselves. Most male activities can be said to be primary; most female activities, secondary. As a corollary, men tend to work more outside the settlement, while women

64 An Ethnographic Presentation tend to be restricted to the space between the settlement, the garden, and the point where they get water—a task that is exclusively in their charge.

Symbolic Aspects of the Division of Labor As long as we study the reality and the symbolism of daily life, we shall constantly find this contradiction between two opposite tendencies: women are necessary to men and complement them; women are secondary to men and supplement them. Women are necessary economically and sexually. Economically, they are indispensable partners, since men produce only the raw materials of food but not the finished product of food. Sexually, women are the indispensable reproductive and nursing partners without which the survival of the group is doomed. On the other hand, women are secondary to men not only in terms of status but also in terms of their economic role. Except for plant collecting, which is quantitatively as well as qualitatively minimal, no woman can ever produce except from a material originally secured by men: gardens have to be slashed and planted by men before women can pick up the products; fish have to be poisoned by men before women can trap them in their baskets; all that is plant and flesh has to be brought back to the settlement by men before women can turn it into food. Two consequences arise from this situation, one expressed in terms of time, the other in terms of space. In terms of time, female activities are preceded by male activities, an opposition that will be seen again when we examine food consumption. In terms of space, women's mobility is restricted to an inner and smaller perimeter around which men radiate in their predatory activities. That time and space are categories through which social relations are expressed is what will hold our attention in the next chapters. The correlation men : women :: higher status : lower status :: preceding : following :: outside : inside will be met again, transformed at different levels in the structures of space, of time, and of economic consumption. The Panare mode of production reveals still another opposition. There are two processes of work: one individual and the other collective, and the most valued products originate mainly through the latter. The precedence of the group over the individual (or the couple, but in any case the constituent units of the

65 An Ethnographic Presentation group) establishes therefore the superiority of the former over the latter, and we can rewrite this opposition at the end of the previous series so that, as far as the values attached to the economic production are concerned, men : women : : group : individual, an equation that will be supported later on and the importance of which can already be foreseen. At any rate, the group and men on the one hand, the individual and women on the other hand, conceptually occupy two opposite poles in Panare culture, the former having a higher cultural value, the latter a lower cultural value. An opposition characteristic of economic production reveals two other oppositions: sexual between man and woman, social between group and individual. The opposition man/woman in the structure of production is correlated, as we have seen, to two other oppositions expressed in terms of time and in terms of space, and is, as we shall see, fundamental in Panare conceptualizations of their culture. We shall examine the Panare cultural space and ask how, if at all, it is related to their cultural time. The conceptualization of inhabited space is the object of the following chapter.

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Chapter Five Inhabited Space

For the Panare, geographical features seem to be conceptualized in terms of interpersonal relations. They identify their settlements by the names in use among the Creoles. When some doubt arises in the context, the Panare can be more precise: "At the house of headman X," unless they use the Creole name, for example, Turiwapo ("at Turiba"). Some ambiguity may still remain, because several headmen have the same name, and Creole names are not always used with precision. For instance, El Tigre may mean the settlement of this name or, more elliptically, the settlement in the area of El Tigre, "you-know-where-I-mean." Should any doubt remain in the mind of the listener, a Panare could specify more precisely by using the name of a kinsman. Confusing as it may seem, and indeed it was for the investigator, there was seemingly never any difficulty for the Panare themselves. Depending on its context, the word pereka refers to a residential group, its settlement, or each of its buildings; therefore, Markito pereka means either "the group of Marquito," "the churuata of the group of Marquito," or "the workshop-hut of Marquito." Therefore, the question "nexpa pereka iman" means both "where is your group now?" and "where is your house?" which proved to be quite different, as was once my unfortunate discovery. At the peak of the dry season, the Panare hang their hammocks in a cleared area of the nearby forest (see map 2). This space is referred to as icpa patan ("the floor of the forest"). Although there is no permanent construction, that is where the residential group lives; therefore the pereka is there, too. However, some temporary shelters are built by men who fear that an eventual thunderstorm may pour down and ruin some of their goods.

68 Inhabited Space

Map 2. Turiba Viejo: Main Settlement, Campsite, and Gardens This perekankin, or pereka arepwicaman ("small house"), is made of one horizontal stick fastened between two trees. Palm leaves are draped over it with their stems touching the ground. More elaborate shelters are still built on this pattern. Such constructions are storage places used only for the time of camping. In case of strong rain, trembling people may squat beneath it until the rain stops, but it is not designed for housing or for working purposes. In a camp, people perform their activities in the open air. The use of such a shelter is limited to the immediate family of the man who built it. The spatial organization of the camping site reproduces that of the long-house. The clearing is, like the churuata, roughly circular. At its center a pole is erected, about two meters high, which symbolizes the center of the world, as does the central pillar of the churuata. The different families are settled around the periphery of this clearing. Having more space in the open air, the families tend to be more distant from one another than in the churuata, making the social articulations of the residential group clearer.

Camp and Ranchos Let us forget for the moment the composition of the settlement

69 Inhabited Space and focus our attention on its place in relation to the other types of settlements. Perhaps we can then better understand what is the place of the dry season camping site in the logic of inhabited space. A question will orient our investigation. Why do the Panare move from their permanent settlement? The informants answered that the permanent settlement becomes too warm. We have also seen that their water supply may dry up, and they will move to obtain another source of fresh water. These ecological reasons to move are true to a certain extent, but they appear as a rationalization a posteriori. Why? We have seen that the Panare dig wells during the dry season, although they often find a natural source of water around which they establish their camp. In El Muerto, they had dug a well from which they used to take water when in the main settlement. On the other hand, it is a rather dubious assertion to state that the main settlement is warmer than the camping site. The churuata, to the contrary, remains remarkably fresh compared to the stuffy atmosphere of the forest. Even if we admit the native argument so far, it cannot reasonably hold for the groups settled in the Sierra Cerbatana: their water source never dries up nor is there any significant increase of temperature in their main settlement. However, they establish camps like the others. I am not denying the importance of ecological determinations; rather, I ask, why do those residential groups for whom such ecological determinations do not seem to prevail move at the peak of the dry season? It will be impossible to answer this question directly, but raising another one should orient us. Is there any other time of the year when the Panare desert their main settlement? How do they settle then, and why do they move? Strikingly enough, the residential group "explodes" at the peak of the rainy season, and its family units scatter, not in the immediate vicinity of the main settlement but to sites that are a half-hour's or an hour's walking distance from it. The group is no longer concentrated; on the contrary, most married men leave with their families and settle in small rectangular palm-thatched huts, known as ranchos in Spanish and pereka tankicikuman in Panare. In fact, not everyone moves away from the main settlement; two families (out of a total of eight) remained in Turiba for the whole rainy season of 1968. The reasons for this temporary dispersion of the local group are mainly economic. Although starchy food is abundant in the gardens, guaranteeing that the group will not starve, vegetal cultures are considered by the Indians an interesting complement

70 Inhabited Space

to their diet, but essentially not very tasty. They mostly value flesh. At this time of the year, fishing is rather uncertain, as we discussed at the end of the previous chapter. By spreading out, the fishing and hunting territory is extended, and the Panare increase their chances of catching an animal. They do not establish themselves farther than one-hour's walking distance from the settlement, because their ataarama grounds would overlap those of families from other villages, and also because they have to go frequently to their gardens. In addition, they also have to be able to gather together easily in order to undertake collective big-game hunting parties with the other families of their residential group. Once more, we have to question these economic rationalizations of behavior. Were they to remain as a group in the main settlement, the Panare would definitely not starve out. Although we leave for later the question of why they prefer " m e a t y " food, we can already foresee that it must have particular connotations, strong enough to provoke the seasonal dispersal. At this point, however, the structural opposition between the camp and the rancho is of crucial importance. Both settlements are secondary and, as such, are opposed to the main settlement. They are also strongly marked as the endpoints of a temporary move that takes place at the peak of each season. They are opposed to one another in the same way that the seasons are opposed. The nature of the movement involved is opposed, too. The residential unit remains compact as one group moves out to the nearby open-air camp, while in the other case, the same group, "exploded" into its different constituent units (the families), moves into ranchos (i.e., closed spaces), not so much farther away as in different directions. In the former case, there is a mere spatial translocation, a slide out of the main settlement, a glide of the center. In the latter case, there is an explosion that "destroys" the group as such: a dispersion, that is, a spatial expansion from the static center (the churuata, where some units remain). The moment of these movements—these two words deriving from the same Latin word are deliberately used—is the peak of each season, which can be seen as a marked diameter of a spatialized year (see fig. 2). Here is expressed, at a symbolic level, the movement of a duration in which time is converted into space, as we begin to perceive the setting of a logic of periodicity. Through this logic, the Panare react to the natural periodicity of the seasons by the cultural periodicity of their displacements. Through the latter, they give themselves the illusion of controlling the former, as if in

71 Inhabited Space

Fig. 2. The Diameter of Seasoned Migrations manipulating the inhabited, therefore domesticated, space, they could manipulate the excesses of a savage time, either too dry or too wet. We have now the sketch of an answer to the questions previously raised. Although important, the ecological determinations by themselves cannot give account for the temporary displacements of the residential group. The structural properties of the logic of inhabited space provide an explanatory model of better value in that it accounts for all cases.

Churuata and Huts The dialectic aspect of this logic of a spatiotemporal periodicity is not isolated, as we shall see. It will appear more clearly as we go on eliciting the structure of inhabited space. Carried away in the previous pages by the long periodicity of temporary settlements, we have hardly examined the main settlement. We must now go back to it, where we should be little surprised to encouner the development of a short periodicity. The main settlement consists of one churuata, and, in addition,

72

Inhabited Space

at least one workshop-hut (hereafter referred to as " h u t " ) . At Turiba Viejo, each married man had built one. Most other groups, however, had only two or three of these huts, built by the men shortly after the completion of the churuata. Among the groups without any hut, the men intended to build some but had not yet done so. What was real intention in some cases seemed to be purely wishful thinking in others, since the churuata had been built long ago. Nevertheless, all the informants agreed that each permanent settlement should include at least one such hut. Wherever there are already such huts, a man may wish to gain more space and privacy, and thus he decides to build another one. This is for the use of his immediate family, since the builder retains the main use rights over what he has built. In this respect, the idiosyncrasy of Turiba Viejo was great. There was no hut commonly built, but "private" constructions, as it were, had flourished (see map 3). What is a tendency among other groups had become hyperbolized here. Latent in most cases, patent in one case, the articulation into constructive social units pierces through this spatial organization. From our present viewpoint, we shall be concerned only with the tendency, not with its different actualizations, irrelevant here without prejudging their relevance at another level of analysis. Thus, we are not forcing the facts into a preconceived mold, since we are not concerned in this particular case with their specificity but rather with their greatest common denominator. We do not proceed differently than the phonologist who is concerned with the phonemes rather than with their phonetic actualizations. This point of method is important and touches on the vast problem of reduction, an inherent paradox in any scientific procedure. As soon as a concrete object is named, it is abstracted at the same time, losing its concreteness in the abstracting linguistic symbolization: the meaning is not the object. This problem concerns the metaphysical foundations of human knowledge, the epistemology of epistemology, which escapes our competence. Hence, there are legitimate reductions depending upon the level of relevance of the analysis. It is not the absence of huts there and their proliferation here that is now considered, but rather the fact that huts are built or that it is felt they should be built. This procedure, on the other hand, strictly parallels the one we followed when examining the tendency to dispersion of the residential group at the peak of the rainy season. Indeed, in exactly the same way, what was important then was the tendency to dis-

73 Inhabited Space

to the

Map 3. Settlement of Turiba Viejo

74 Inhabited Space perse, not the variability of its actualizations: some families, as we have noted, stay in the main settlement, and their number varies not only from group to group but also within the same group from year to year. Once granted, this point of procedure leads us to apprehend a first congruence between the huts and the ranchos, loci of a spacing. Both types of construction are identical and are referred to by the same name: pereka tankicikuman. From this viewpoint, they constitute but one category. However, it immediately appears that their opposition is relevant as buildings in the main settlement opposed to buildings outside the main settlement. The different modalities of the opposition will not appear completely before we examine the opposition, within the main settlement, between the hut and the churuata. Indeed, we pointed out that the huts were the locus of a dispersion. But we cannot speak of a dispersion per se, only of a dispersion in relation t o , or in opposition to, the concentration that we find with the churuata, of which the huts are the conceptual obbligati. This churuata is referred to as pereka tumurukuman and more often by the word pereka alone. The churuata is the house par excellence, the core of the main settlement. It typically looks like an inverted boat keel and is generally oval, though some are round, particularly in the southeastern part of the Panare territory. From the outside, the wood frame of the building is completely hidden by the roof, thatched with palm leaves, which extends from top to floor. The single entrance either may be a mere hole in the front or may be elaborated into an access tunnel so narrow that only one person can go in or out at one time. The churuata of Turiba Viejo, representative of the usual dimensions of this building, was about 20m long, 12m wide, and 8 m high (see figs. 3 , 4 , and 5). It will be recalled that in terms of construction, the rancho and the hut are identical. A mere look at the plan (see fig. 6) of the churuata shows that it is nothing but an elaborated transformation of the pereka tankicikuman, unless it is the reverse, that is, unless the latter is a simplified transformation of the former. Doubtless, it is not the same in terms of genesis, but we can only venture a guess in the absence of historical or archaeological evidence. From a structural viewpoint, we are satisfied to note that the transformation is transitive: they are two variations of the same architectural pattern. Indeed, the hut-rancho building in its simplest form is made of a two-sided thatched roof that extends

75 Inhabited Space

Fig. 3. Plan of the Churuata

76 Inhabited Space

Fig. 4. Transversal Section of the Churuata

77 Inhabited Space

Fig. 5. Sagittal Section of the Churuata down to the floor so that there are no real walls. A transverse section of the churuata (see fig. 4) offers a homologous shape, only it is bigger. Often, but not always, the rear of the building is closed, as in the case of the churuata, in the shape of a quarter sphere. Contrary to the churuata building, it is unusual to see the front end closed, and, in any case, there is never any entrance tunnel. In the case of the churuata, the elaboration consists in completely closing the building in the same way for the rear and the front. The addition of an entrance tunnel makes this building even darker inside, as one can imagine. A greater framework is built that requires one supplementary level of horizontal beams. The relations of homology between the churuata and the hutrancho establish, at the same time, their correlation and their opposition. Homology is not identity as the building process itself indicates. Both types of construction (tankicikuman and tumurukuman) are built before the beginning of the rainy season. The thatching operation requires that palm leaves cut in the forest be brought to the construction field and dried in the sun for at least a week. Meanwhile, the framework can be erected. The building of the hut or of the rancho, being small, does not require many hands, and generally one man alone will manage with his unmarried sons. If he has none, he will turn for help not to an affine, but to a consanguine, generally a brother who will eventually turn to him for reciprocation of service. In general, though, he will try to manage by himself in this "private" matter.

78 Inhabited Space

Fig. 6. Transversal and Sagittal Sections of the Hut or Rancho

79 Inhabited Space Being greater, the churuata requires more hands, and all the men of the residential group participate in its construction. Here, too, a quantitative increase involves a qualitative change, as the relevance is established in introducing discontinuities in a continuum: the dimension of the building on the one hand, the number of builders on the other hand. In this "public" matter, by the same act, all the men of the residential group, working together, lay the foundation of their churuata and of their solidarity as members of the same group. This opposes the churuata to the hut and the rancho, without opposing the two latter to each other. The way in which the churuata and the hut are used confronts us with yet another opposition. Everything within the settlement that requires the participation of the whole group happens in the churuata or in its immediate vicinity, while what concerns only the married man and his family (families) of procreation happens in the hut. Hence, communal meals and ceremonies take place in and in front of the churuata. Stating that almost every other activity takes place in the workshop-hut, although true, might be misleading. Apart from the fact that we already knew about this opposition (since it is correlative to the opposition from which we started), it does not allow us to account for the fact that the Panare sleep together in the churuata, despite the fact that individuals often take naps at odd hours in their huts. To consider sleep as togetherness and waking as its opposite may seem absurd; it is, however, what will be established indirectly, since this opposition is the correlative of another one that lies elsewhere. The key fact resides in the cyclic movement from the churuata to the huts and back. Every morning, when day breaks, the Panare move out from the churuata to settle into the hut, from which, at the end of the day, they will move out to settle back in the churuata. And, indeed, it is a true resettlement each time, since not only the persons move but their main belongings (hammocks and glowing embers) are moved as well. The time cycle is quite regular, since at this latitude day and night are of about equal duration. As a result, the churuata is strikingly deserted during daytime: no fire is burning, and only a few hammocks are still hung in which, occasionally, an individual will come and doze for a while. But there is positively no woman there before 6:00 P.M. The Panare do not sleep twelve hours a day, and the coming of the night does not mean the interruption of activities. At

80 Inhabited Space

night, the hearths are relit and work goes on by their glowing light. Conversations are carried on quite late but fade away before 11:00 P.M., when everybody is asleep. The good-night'ssleep concept does not exist among the Panare: babies cry, fires have to be maintained, and dogs fight. When preparing cassava—the bitter manioc flat bread—a woman may get up and begin scraping the tubers as early as 2:00 A.M. In general, by 6:00 A.M. everybody is awakened in his or her hammock, and the settlement comes back t o activity. As day breaks, a party of men and a party of women go out in the nearby bush for excretion purposes and to the caño for a quick wash. Back to the churuata, the Panare will begin to move, one after the other, out to their huts, where daylight activity begins.

Spatial Rhythms Let us stop for a moment at this point. We have just seen that the opposition churuata/hut is correlative of others. Churuata : hut : : night : day : : sleep : wake : : group activity : nongroup activity. This congruence of collectivity with the churuata explains that collective hunting and fishing parties begin with a gathering of male participants in this churuata, while they do not end in the same way. While production is collective, distribution is not. In certain cases, consumption is collective: when there are collective meals, they are taken in the churuata or just in front of it. These meals are taken at dawn and dusk. If it is dark, meals are taken inside; if it is not, meals are taken outside. Correlatively, if people are in the churuata, meals are taken inside; if they are in the huts, meals are taken outside. On the contrary, individual snacks are taken at daytime in the huts. Nutrition, in its physiological process, ends as it had begun: the functions of elimination are performed collectively by going out from the churuata for this purpose at daybreak. During the day, individuals take care of themselves. Dark night frightens the Indians so much that they would rather be sick than go out. The correlation churuata : hut : : night : day : : group : nongroup not only establishes the short periodicity of the main settlement but also solves a difficult problem of polysemy. We have so far translated pereka tankicikuman alternatively, but not indifferently, by the words hut and rancho. Indeed, the hut and the rancho share the same form in two ways. Not only are they

81 Inhabited Space

Fig. 7. The Rhythms of Time and Space referred to by the same name, but also their architecture is identical. They are otherwise opposed. The hut is marked by a short periodicity (daylong) but the rancho by a long periodicity (yearlong). Within the isolated building of the rancho, the alternation of day and night is not marked by a movement of persons or goods. In that respect, the rancho is as the camp. Both are congruent with a yearlong periodicity, which is apparently neutralized in the main settlement. Conversely, the day-short periodicity with which the main settlement is congruent is apparently neutralized in the temporary settlements. In fact, the relation between the two pairs of opposition is dialectic, and the neutralizations alluded to are only apparent. This is derived from the fact that the transformation of time into space is not an identical transformation. The day-short periodicity happens inside the yearlong periodicity, and the alternation of day and night happens within the alternation of the seasons; in other words, both periodicities are simultaneous and mutually inclusive. Contrarily, the alternations of Panare displacements, inside and outside the main settlement, are mutually exclusive, although periodic, too. Not only do the greater displacements to temporary settlements exclude the lesser displacements within the main settlement and vice versa, but also between two of the greater displacements the Panare are back into the main settlement. A diagram (fig. 7) indicates (and only indicates) how time and space differ. Each has been represented by a curve, itself composed of two sine curves. The components are the same for time and space. The sine curve of higher frequency represents the day/night and the hut/churuata oppositions; the sine curve of

82

Inhabited Space

lower frequency represents the dry season/rainy season and the camp/rancho oppositions. The diagram (fig. 7) shows that, in the case of time, we deal with a logical multiplication, while in the case of space, with a logical addition. Although different, both curves are of course related, and space is indeed almost the decomposition of time. We had seen in the temporary settlements a first transformation of a time opposition (rainy season/dry season) into a space opposition (rancho/camp). Likewise, we see again in the main settlement now the transformation of a time opposition (day/ night) into a space opposition (hut/churuata). Thus, not only can we write the "primitive" relations as (1) rainy season : dry season :: rancho : camp, and (2) day : night :: hut : churuata, but, since the two relations are homologous, we can also write the "derivative" sets of relations as (3) rainy season : dry season :: hut : churuata, and (4) day : night :: rancho : camp. Therefore, the hut is implicitly congruent with the rainy season, the churuata with the dry season. Likewise, the rancho is implicitly congruent with day and the camp with night. It would be tempting to assert that thus a natural time is transformed into a cultural space, but we shall resist that temptation. While space is conceived of as cultural, time, as we are going t o see, is conceived of as both natural and supernatural. Indeed, we mentioned above that ceremonies take place in the churuata and none ever take place in the hut. Correlatively, some of these ceremonies that happen in the churuata also take place in the camp, but none ever happens in the rancho. Nor is it merely chance that rituals begin at dusk outside the churuata and continue inside or that they are terminated outside when performed beyond the break of dawn. Collective night is correlative with a sacred time within the day-short periodicity. In the same way, the collective dry season is correlative with a sacred time within the yearlong periodicity. Hence, night : day :: dry season : rainy season : : sacred : profane, and all the ceremonies are performed only during the dry season and at night. The equivalence of these two uneven but homologous periods can be represented as in concordance of phase at the moment of maximum amplitude on the curve of time (fig. 7). At this point, what takes place is the ceremony, that is, the controlled access to the supernatural order. And so, the paradoxical characteristic of Panare time is unveiled. We have just seen that there are two types of time, one profane, one sacred. Both are perceived, or rather their alternations are perceived; what is apprehended is their natural manifes-

83 Inhabited Space Table 7. Inhabited Space

Camp Rancho Hut Churuata

1 Settlement

2 Periodicity

3 Residential Group

4 Order

main/ second

day/year short/long

concentrated/ scattered

sacred/ profane

+

+

+

+

+ +

+ +

tation. Thus, in the transformation of time into space, it is a natural time that is transformed into a cultural space. But also, time is governed by the supernatural, and it is Manataci who is responsible for its alternations. Therefore, time in its entirety participates in the supernatural: there is no time outside of time. As profane as they may be, daytime and the rainy season are still within time, and their alternations are governed by Manataci. The paradox is expressed in the language in a similar and reverse way: kanokampe means "a year" and also "a rainy season"; kwoitnye means "a day" (the 24 hours) and also "a night," while kamawö means only "a dry season" and wewa only "a daylight time·" Consequently the time of ritual is twice sacred, but what gives access to the supernatural is the transformation of time (supernatural in essence but natural in its manifestations) into a cultural space. In its mediation, culture does nothing other than proceed from the consequences to the cause and, in a logic that is the reverse of our own, pretends to control the latter by manipulating the former. As this mediation takes place within the structure of inhabited space, let us sum up in a table (table 7) the correlations and oppositions that we have encountered so far. The camp is a secondary settlement like the rancho but is in opposition to the churuata and to the hut. In the same way, like the rancho, its occupation is governed by a yearlong periodicity and is also in opposition to the hut and to the churuata. These two relations are identical. Now, in the camp, the residential group is concentrated as in the churuata and is in opposition to the scattering in the ranchos and in the huts. In the same way,

84 Inhabited Space the occupation of the camp is of a sacred order, like the churuata, and is in opposition to the rancho and the hut. These two relations are identical. However, the two latter are opposed to the two former relations. By integration of the homologous relations (i.e., columns 1 and 2, columns 3 and 4 of table 7), it is therefore established: (a) that only the togetherness of the group gives access to the supernatural order—the group is the cultural nec plus ultra that allows culture to transcend itself in and from its totality into supernature; and (b) that the natural periodicity can be controlled by a cultural periodicity at the price of a transformation of time into space. In other words, the problem for Panare culture is to take over control of the natural periodicity of time—control of which, no matter what the conceptualizing efforts of the Panare are, ultimately remains with the supernatural Manataci. It is difficult to mark more clearly Panare distrust and defiance, not only of orders (nature and supernature) that are not theirs, but distrust and defiance of the totalization of a cumulative time as well. By means of movements in space, they attempt to offer some guarantee against that supernatural trick that is history itself. The return of the day and the return of the rainy season guarantee that time is cyclic, and the Panare very much fear that these recurring events may not take place. They give the same reason both for a delay in the fall of the first rains and for a solar eclipse: arepwipe tacimane ("a bad dance"). Both events have catastrophic results. The delay of rains delays the planting of crops; the solar eclipse is believed to bring epidemics. In the former case, nothing can be done but wait. In the latter case, the ritual mistake is "corrected" by a common flagellation that lasts as long as the eclipse.

Luminosity and Humidity However, the Panare make a distinction between "night," of which they are afraid, and "obscurity,"* of which they are not afraid. We shall discover this distinction in looking for the relations that may exist between the rancho and the churuata on one *Although obscure is commonly used in English in its figurative sense of unclear, unexplained, doubtful, etc., I use it here in its original and proper sense of dark, a word that I have to avoid here, since I have used it earlier in another context.

85 Inhabited Space hand, and the hut and the camp on the other, in an effort to exhaust the correlations and oppositions of the structure of inhabited space. The interior of a churuata is extremely obscure, and, after coming in from the daylight, it takes quite awhile before one is able to distinguish anything within. Generally the thatching is well kept, and rain cannot pour in. On the other hand, while the hut has the advantage of being well lit, it becomes very wet when it rains, and water enters from everywhere. Of this opposition obscure-dry/well lit-wet, the Panare are well aware. Most striking to me was the statement of Ramón Gallardo, a Panare from Turiba who had just moved from his hut to his rancho. As I visited him, he told me how dry his rancho was. He had left a new hut, but his open and badly thatched rancho let water enter profusely. I thought that in speaking by antiphrase he was pulling my leg. But it recurred in other conversations with other informants, from whom I found out that the same building was considered not only dry but also even obscure when it was a rancho, while wet and well lit when it was a hut. From there it was not too difficult to ascertain that the camp was considered both well lit and wet. Hence, obscure and dry are thought of together as homologous, in opposition to well lit and wet, in the same way that night is associated with the dry season, in opposition to daytime associated with the rainy season. However, the two series of relations are opposed: two congruent time periodicities (one short ranged, the other long ranged), phenomena controlled by supernature, are opposed to two congruent sensible categories (luminosity, either well lit or obscure in one case, and humidity, either dry or wet in the other). This can be summed up in a table (table 8), which can be linked up with table 7. The relations are not identical in the column of sensible categories and in the column of time categories. To be sure, night is obscure. Night and obscurity are similar, but they are not identical. Night is supernatural, obscurity is merely natural. Analogous remarks can be made about the other relations: the dry season is dry, the day is "well lit," the rainy season is wet. In each proposition, the first term includes the second, but the reverse is not true. Moreover, the diagram can be read two ways. Indeed, the camp reveals: (a) that the night is "well lit" and (b) the wet aspect of the dry season. As a matter of fact, it is difficult to do better than the Panare in expressing in the structure: (a) the location of their camp in a clearing of the forest, which is the supernatural domain of the spirits, congruent to night, and (b)

86 Inhabited Space Table 8. Inhabited Space, Time, and Sensible Categories

Camp Rancho Hut Churuata

1 Sensible Categories

2 Time Categories

obscure-dry/ well lit-wet

night-dry season/ day-rainy season

+

+

+

+

the climatological hazards of an open-air life. But if both readings are legitimate, then one is primitive, the other one derivative; the congruence of the camp with the dry season is its mark, while its congruence with night is a redundant feature. On the contrary, the rancho is in a way obscure in the day, but, above all, it is dry during the rainy season: it is a shelter against the rain where dispersed and isolated families will have to manage by themselves. On the other hand, the hut is mainly well lit in the day and, in a way, wet in the rainy season: it is, above all, a working place where one can see what he or she is doing, but also a poor shelter. Finally, the two readings can be taken in their fullest sense within the churuata, obscure in the night and dry in the dry season, representing the perfect harmony between sensible categories and time. It is also the perfect cultural mediator of nature and supernature, since it is within it that the two orders combine their qualities. The difference that appears between the two columns of table 8 reflects the opposition between a natural order (apprehended through sensible categories) and a supernatural order (apprehended through the cosmological rhythm of time). Participating in both natural and supernatural orders, the cultural order (manifested in the paradigm of inhabited space) shares qualities of the other two orders that it mediates by a different integration at the four poles of its inhabited space. Now that we have exhausted the correlations and oppositions set up in the structure of the inhabited space, we see that it defines itself as organized space caught between and mediating nature and supernature, in an effort to "enculture" the two, that

87 Inhabited Space is to say, to incorporate by neutralization these two alien orders into Panare order. The inhabited space is the locus of the mediation that cuts spatial discontinuities in the continuum of sensible categories and in the continuum of time in order to make them meaningful, that is, to order them. Hence, the inhabited space is not only a cultural space, but also par excellence the space of culture.

The Ranking of Space But the point of closure of the structure escapes us at the very moment when we believed we had reached it. This itself is what lays the foundations of its dynamics. The structurality of the structure, as close as it can be to perfection, never quite reaches it, and the process reappears where it is least expected. The inhabited space is ranked, and the camp and the hut together share what is left between the churuata as nec plus ultra of culture and the rancho as nec minus infra of culture. Also, within the cultural boundaries, the churuata is the closest to supernature, in which it participates, while the rancho is the closest to nature, in which it participates. The former is almost supernatural, the latter almost natural. But what is more important is that a ranking, an orientation, is involved in which nature is infracultural and supernature supracultural. Some linguistic evidence serves to confirm this ranking. The concept of can is an important concept in Panare culture. It connotes the idea of return, of reciprocity with an idea of positive value. The verb utey means "to go," "to go out," "to go away." A Panare leaving the churuata will say "utey," and coming back will say "utey can." From this viewpoint, the occurrence of can is opposed to its absence. But to translate can by back is poor, because the idea of progression is left out. When a Panare leaves the camp just to go and pick up a few tobacco leaves in the churuata, intending to return soon to the camp, he still says "utey can," but leaving the churuata to go back to the camp he will say "utey." Even more interestingly, when Panare dance, they may say "utey can manataciya," literally, "to go to Manataci;" dance is movement toward supernature. When an individual stops dancing and goes back to his hammock, he may say "utey." The logic of the progression appears clearly as soon as we organize the uses of can in a table (table 9), which at the

88 Inhabited Space Table 9. The Use of Particle "can" Nature Nature Rancho Hut Camp Churuata Supernature

_ 0 0 0 0

Rancho

Hut

Camp

Churuata

Supernature

can — 0 0 0

can can — 0 0

can can can — 0 0

can can can can — 0

can can —

same time reveals the orientation of the buildings of the inhabited space. To the four members of the paradigm of inhabited space, we have added one entry for noninhabited space, that of adjacent nature (of which the inner oppositions seen in chap. 2 are neutralized in this context), and one for dance, that is, the movement toward supernature. The six void cases are due to the fact that dancing happens only at the camp or in the churuata.The points of departure are written in the left column, the points of arrival are written in the upper rows. The regularity of the progression shows clearly that can cannot be translated by back, which would imply a regression, while the contrary happens when we go from nature to supernature. At the end of the analysis, we understand the complexity of the structure of the inhabited space, which reveals its antinomy. Culture, paradoxical in its very being, mediates and im-mediates nature and supernature. Culture is conceptualized as both static and dynamic. In its first static aspect, culture (as revealed in inhabited space) integrates the natural data of experience and supernatural time through a transformation that is in both cases spatializing. At the same time, asserting the superiority of togetherness over isolation, the structure of inhabited space expresses a cultural plus (close to supernature) and a cultural minus (close to nature). And, finally, in its dynamic aspect, culture is itself the medium that provides a one-way passage that crosses from nature, through culture, to supernature. In the synthesis of these structural transformations, the Panare define themselves, that is, their culture, as coextensive to the category of space. That is what was indicated at the very beginning of this analysis when we noted that the Panare call their buildings and them-

89 Inhabited Space selves as a group by the same name (pereka). Although in the Western tradition we think of ourselves as coextensive to time and base our being on our historicity, we are not totally unable to think of ourselves in terms similar to those of the Panare. Do we not speak of Charles V as being "of the house" of the Hapsburgs? Is not a fellow foreigner sometimes called pays in French and often paisano in Spanish? And is it not equally possible to find an American called colloquially "Tex" or "Tennessee"? At this point of our work, the analysis of the structure of the inhabited space will orient our investigation. We now find ourselves with two equally open ways before us. Starting from the time categories that we have neglected so far (either partially, like the yearly cycle of activity, or totally, like the cycle of life itself), we shall have to examine how, if at all, we are led back to the space of culture. Starting from the sensible categories of experience, we shall have to examine how, through the Panare theory of perception, both time categories and sensible categories lead us back to the space of culture.

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Chapter Six Time and Astrosexuality

Expressing Time and Naming Celestial Bodies In the previous chapter, we emphasized that the structure of inhabited space is not inert but actively oriented between two poles equally located outside it: nature and supernature. The examination of the daily cycle of activity revealed its two poles: day and night. The variety of activities within the day cycle prevents our finding a recurrent pattern for them beyond that polarity, although we have also pointed out in this cycle the two remarkable moments of the movements from one pole to the other: dusk and dawn. The repetition and succession of these diurnal cycles make up the yearly cycle that we have considered from a particular viewpoint. As a matter of fact, we have examined only the polarity of the alternation of the seasons. We have thus far focused on the peak of the dry season and the peak of the rainy season, that is, on a metonymy of the seasons. The pattern of daily activities can be clarified only by turning to the yearly cycle of activities in its full extension. Such is the object of the present chapter. By definition, a yearly cycle of activities is a process. Our concern will be with the structure of this process and with its dynamic, since we know already that it is not inert. The dynamic is implied in the "object" to be analyzed. The inhabited space is submitted to an oriented oscillation between nature and supernature, but this oscillation is asymptotic so to speak. Is the cycle of the year likewise? Is there an oriented progression manifested in this cycle through the alternation of the dry and the rainy seasons? The way in which the Panare express time will give us a starting point. Keeping track of time is of little use for the Indians,

92 Time and Astrosexuality and their estimate of it is rather imprecise. In a twenty-fourhour interval, a duration will be indicated by the relative position of the sun. It is very unusual for them to have to indicate a precise time during the night, but when asked to do so they used the moon, or, in its absence, Orion's Belt during the dry season and Antares in the rainy season. Distances are estimated in terms of walking time, and the Panare are quite accurate when they know where they are going. They have, however, an unfortunate tendency to be precise about that which can only be imprecise, such as the distance they are going to walk while hunting. The time is then indicated by extending an arm toward the future position of the sun. The linguistic expression of time is much less accurate than the gestural one. The word aminkön ("now") and its superlative form aminkönsaptu ("right now") must be understood in a rather loose way. I once waited for more than three hours for somebody to cross the river, which he was supposed to do "right now." In fact, aminkön means that it will happen "today," while komampe will be said for "in the late afternoon, early evening" and tsipawö for "tonight after dark." The "next morning" and "tomorrow" are both expressed by the same word, anawon, but if one wants to indicate that the sun will already be high, he will say wyewa. The sun is called by two names, either wye, which refers to the source of light, or ecexkun, which refers to the celestial body. The word konyan means "yesterday." Beyond this span of time, future or past cannot be directly described. The expression konyan konyan means either "the day before yesterday" or "the day after tomorrow." To obtain the same meaning, a Panare more often says "asa kwoitnye" or "asa ukutipom," "two nights" or "two baths." If needed, he goes on specifying up to twenty days, past or future. Actually, the Panare can theoretically count up to over a hundred; practically, though, they count up to twenty only. Besides, their numerical system is based on the roots two and five. They will count regularly up to ten, then often skip to fifteen, then again to twenty. A lapse of time extending over twenty days will be approximately "a moon." The word wönö refers to both the planet "moon" and the "lunar month." In using the month as a time reference, a Panare will indicate the number of lunar months elapsing within the same season; and beyond, he will indicate the change of season. For instance, if it is January, March will be "in two months," but August will be "in the rainy season," and not "in seven months." Likewise, but even more imprecise, is the record of years. Unless a Panare refers to the immediately preced-

93 Time and Astrosexuality ing or following year, he will say "kulye ikica" ("few"), if he means between two and five to ten years, and "kulye" beyond that span of time. In this respect, it is noteworthy that boys are initiated at about ten and that the same long-house is used for about eight to ten years. It has been established at length in the previous chapter that day : night : : rainy season : dry season. Since, within the day cycle, we find that dusk and dawn are marked as two peculiar moments, we can expect the change of season to be marked one way or the other. But there is no special word to denote the dawn or the waning of the seasons, and no linguistic evidence can be brought forth. The beginning of the rainy season and the beginning of the year are to be equated, since, as we stated earlier, they are called by the same name. The rainy season begins as the Pleiades (yoroö) disappear at dusk below the western horizon; then the year begins, and the first heavy rains are due. When, at dusk, too, the Pleiades rise on the eastern horizon, then the dry season begins. Here is, according to an astronomical code, the axis of the year that we were looking for. The significance of the Pleiades lies in their being much more than a mere dry season constellation, and indeed the Panare view it in this way. The Pleiades are perceived as a year constellation, present during the dry season, absent during the rainy season. The Pleiades are not the stars of a season but the stars of the inversion of the seasons. This should not surprise us, since a similar logic was involved with the rainy season, which, although profane, is embedded in the sacredness that presides over the alternation of the seasons. In other words, that the Pleiades are visible in one season and invisible in the other one is not the point for the Panare. What is relevant is their appearance and their disappearance and that these movements are correlative with the inversions of the seasons. We must now enter into the mythic being of astronomical bodies for a full understanding of astronomical events and patterns. However, no informant has ever told me a complete myth, a frustrating experience indeed. It is only incidentally through questions and conversations that mythical fragments have been gathered together. These fragments are of great use, nonetheless, since they have been cross-checked several times. With these precautions in mind, we may proceed with the examination of these fragments. The word tyakun means "star." The stars result from the incestuous union of two siblings: ecexkun, the sun, who is male,

94 Time and Astrosexuality and wönö, his sister, the moon. We can recognize in this very fragment a mythological theme that is exploited in the entire American continent (see Lévi-Strauss 1966, p. 302; 1967, p. 172; 1968, pp. 73, 321; 1971, pp. 189, 192). The informants were not clear about the number of stars thus generated; it was either "star" or "all the stars" in general that were involved. The sex of tyakun could not be clarified by the informants. Only some of the visible stars are named. Among the stars that do receive a name, a group of them is characteristic of the dry season: Orion's Belt is called pecka, and the Panare also say that it is kamawö tyakun ("the star(s) of the dry season"). Characteristic of the rainy season is Antares (alpha of the Scorpio), tosenpitomunö, also referred to as kanokampe tyakun ("the star of the rainy season"). As such, Orion's Belt and Antares form an axis in which their presence is relevant but not their movement, as was the case for the Pleiades. The former are opposed between themselves not only as stars of the opposite seasons but also as "lonely" star to "accompanied" star(s). In the sky of the dry season, the Pleiades are followed by Orion's Belt. In addition, the Pleiades are a galaxy, and different societies recognize in it a different but precise number of stars. The Panare see six stars, which are reputed to be siblings, five men and one woman. One of the men has a daughter: Aldebaran (alpha of the Taurus), yoröinkin, that is, literally, "the child of yoroö." The only shePleiades is married to the man pecka. They have a son: Sirius (alpha of Canis Major), peckankin, that is, literally, "the child of pecka." It is noteworthy that an informant of Los Arepitos (a village north of Turiba) denied the existence of peckankin, saying that pecka had no child and that Sirius was nothing but a plain tyakun. This discrepancy in the information will not affect the point of our argument. Indeed, whether Sirius is named or not, several stars are named in the sky of the dry season, and a whole social life is revealed here under an astronomical code. On the contrary, the Panare are explicit about the star of the rainy season: "Antares is lonely." This solitude of the only named star of the rainy season is opposed to the cluster of named stars of the dry season: the latter are close together (in terms of location, in other words, in terms of residence) and linked together (in terms of kinship). This opposition supports the correlation dry season : togetherness : : rainy season : isolation now revealed in an astronomical code. Moreover, Orion's Belt is made up of three aligned stars. In the architecture of the churuata, the main horizontal beam is

95 Time and Astrosexuality also called pecka. This beam is perpendicular to the central pillar that it crosses. We do not find any similar association of star names with any other part of the churuata. Here, then, is reinforced the correlation of the churuata with both the night and the dry season. But a difficulty emerges that will have struck the reader. The Pleiades and Orion's Belt are not far from each other. That is not to say that they are on the same celestial meridian, and the latter's rise takes place somewhat later than the appearance of the former. Consequently, although the "star of the rainy season" has disappeared, when the Pleiades appear, the "star(s) of the dry season" have not yet appeared. As a corollary, a reverse alteration happens at the other end of the year. When the Pleiades disappear, Antares is not yet in the eastern horizon, while Orion's Belt is still in the western one; Antares will appear after the disappearance of Sirius, the last named star in the sky of the dry season, a fortiori after the disappearance of Orion's Belt. In fact, the opposition between Orion's Belt and Sirius is neutralized. The latter appears as a weakened combinatory variant of the former, since the informants disagree on the mythical status of Sirius but agree to emphasize the role of Orion's Belt. When Sirius is named, it is included in the category of "stars of the dry season." It is opposed to Orion's Belt as appearance is opposed to disappearance. In effect, the appearance of Sirius goes unnoticed at the beginning of the dry season; it is the appearance of Orion's Belt that is noticed. At the beginning of the rainy season, it is the disappearance of Sirius that is noticed (and of Orion's Belt for the informant who did not name Sirius). As we can see, the opposition Sirius/Orion's Belt is redundant with the opposition appearance-of-dry-season-star/disappearance-of-dryseason-star, and the former opposition can be suppressed without affecting the structure. In other words, Orion's Belt and Sirius, as signs, have not the same form (they are not the same stars), but they have the same meaning and are merged in the category of "stars of the dry season." The matter is entirely different with the Pleiades, which are not thought of as "stars of a season" but as "stars of a year." We are therefore confronted with a contradiction. The Pleiades in their movement mark the change of season, but there is a brief overlap in each season of the stars conceived of as belonging to the opposite season. The contradiction results from the noncoincidence of two axes, represented as diameters of a yearly cycle in figure 8. The appearance and disappearance of the

96 Time and Astrosexuality

Fig. 8. Remarkable Star Movements in the Yearly Cycle Pleiades determines a diameter in the circumference of a yearly cycle; the appearance of the stars of, respectively, the dry and rainy seasons determines another diameter of the same circumference. The diameter of the Pleiades is by construction perpendicular to the diameter drawn in figure 2 of chapter 5, since it marks the change of the seasons. The smallest arcs determined on the circumference mark the two interseasons from rainy to dry season and from dry to rainy season. Here is set the astronomical frame within which the structural oppositions and correlations of the yearly cycle will be organized. A simple examination of this frame reveals formally a major opposition, revealed structurally in the previous chapter between dry season and rainy season. From a strictly formal viewpoint, there are two ways to interpret the length of the seasons: (1) the dry season proper extends from the appearance of Orion's Belt up to the disappearance of the Pleiades, while the rainy season proper extends from the appearance of Antares up to the appearance of the Pleiades; or (2) the dry season extends from the appearance of the Pleiades up to the appearance of Antares, while the rainy season extends from the disappearance of the Pleiades up to the appearance of Orion's Belt. In the first case, both seasons do not give account for a whole year; in the second case, both seasons overlap. At this point, there is no way to decide in favor of one rather than the other reading. It is, however, certain that the Panare, in using two axes, conceptualize the change of season as a moment that lasts, that is, as the duration of the interseasons, which are themselves opposed to the seasons proper. While the seasons proper are congruent to the presence of stars,

97 Time and Astrosexuality the interseasons are delimited by four movements of stars. From the rainy season to the dry season, yoroö, then pecka, appear; from the dry season to the rainy season, yoroö, then pecka, or peckankin, disappear. The movement oftosenpitomurunöitself is not used to conceptualize the interseasons; only its presence, not its movements, is relevant during the rainy season. We are therefore confronted with a major series of congruent oppositions, and seasons : interseasons :: star presence : star passage :: duration : moment. Further, each term of the first major opposition may be decomposed in turn into a pair of minor oppositions. We have previously established the opposition between dry season and rainy season. The interseasons are similarly opposed, and from-dry-season-to-rainy-season : from-rainy-seasonto-dry-season :: star disappearance : star appearance. As we turn toward the examination of astronomical sexuality, we shall soon discover its social implications as well as a further development in the preceding oppositions. If we are to understand the logic of this sexuality, we have to begin with the shortest time cycle, the twenty-four-hour period, since it involves only two elements. Despite its apparent simplicity, this will retain our attention for a while.

The Souls of the Dead Within the daily periodicity, the alternation of day and night is congruent with the alternation of two celestial bodies, respectively the sun and the moon. It has been mentioned above that the sun is male and the moon female, which may seem surprising at first sight. If day : night : : sun : moon : : male : female, it is in flagrant contradiction with what has been established earlier. In effect, we wrote that, on the one hand, men : women : : group : individual (see the end of chap. 4), and, on the other hand, night : day : : group activity : nongroup activity (see the beginning of the discussion on spatial rhythms in chap. 5). Following the logic of these equations, we can therefore write that men : women :: night : day. Such a relation is evidently reversed by the sexes of the sun and the moon. It will not be difficult to understand why. The moon and the sun are an incestuous pair of siblings. In other words, through an intemperate sexual behavior, they have reversed their kin status into an affinal role. Such an antisocial

98 Time and Astrosexuality behavior provoked their astralization. By behaving like animals, that is, by mating naturally and not culturally, they became supernatural beings. Here is another way to establish that the cultural order—that is, in the present case as expressed by the normally expected behavior—mediates nature and supernature, while its natural transgression leads to a supernatural effect. In order to understand the involved conceptual logic, it will be necessary to make a detour through the Panare theory of incest. The mere idea of incest provokes a strongly emotional reaction among the Panare. They say "arkon monkay usotnö" ("to have sex like monkeys"), therefore meaning that incest is essentially natural, not cultural. In addition, one informant with whom I was checking the expression had a very revealing lapsus linguae, saying "arkonya usotnõ" ("to have sex with monkeys"), which would be equally distant from a cultural behavior. Such a slip of the tongue tends to indicate that, in the subconscious of its author, incest as hyperbolic endogamy and bestiality as hyperbolic exogamy were similarly conceived of as equally deviant from the cultural norm. We would need more than this simple example to conclude on bestiality. The Panare, as far as is known, do not indulge in bestiality at all, and little emotional response is involved in its discussion, which may only serve to provoke laughter. Although the Panare have, of course, a rule for the prohibition of incest, there is a radically different reaction to the discussion of incest, since its eventuality is not ruled out. The Panare are horrified by the very idea of incest. I have neither observed nor been told about a precise case of incest and therefore could not check on whether or not the sanction reserved for those who commit it was ever enforced. But everybody agreed that the guilty couple would be beaten to death, and the informants emphasized that the punishment was absolutely mandatory, were the case to occur within the range of a nuclear family. The corpses of the victims would then be buried as are the corpses of people who die "normally." The informants, however, failed to remember a precise occurrence of this event and with a slightly outraged tone of voice indicated that no incest case had ever afflicted the past of their pereka. Whether enforced or not, the penalty is strongly stated. Whatever be the case, two incestuous individuals are cultural mishaps who behave too naturally. The threatened cultural order reacts violently to reassert itself. To be killed is in fact the only way through which those who have erred into the natural order can

99 Time and Astrosexuality be brought back into the cultural one (as we shall see below), and this is for two reasons: (1) were the incestuous couple to escape before being put to death, they would wander like animals in the forest, die, and be transformed into dangerous spirits, that is, they would reach the supernatural order and escape completely the competence of culture to deal with them; and (2) on the other hand, by being killed through cultural channels, those who have committed incest are recovered by the cultural order, and their corpses are further processed culturally, that is, buried. Such a cultural burial leads to the separation of the body, which rots in the tomb, and the soul, which then glows in the Milky Way. To sum up at this point, a too-natural behavior (incest) has one of two consequences. The incestuous couple, without any active participation of culture, either escapes into nature (forest) and gets incorporated into supernature (spirits), or, due to the intervention of culture (clubbing and burial), they rot naturally in the tomb while their souls glow supernaturally in the Milky Way. The first case is unfortunate because culture has been unable to mediate nature and supernature, while it has succeeded in doing so in the second case. When the mediation takes place, it is good, because everything happens according to "our" order: the corpses are manipulated according to cultural norms; nature and supernature remain separated and under control. On the contrary, the absence of mediation results in the collusion of nature with supernature, which has serious consequences: spirits are to be feared. Incest is by definition anticultural, and it has natural as well as supernatural consequences for its authors, whether they are killed or manage to escape. We are confronted then with a new problem. It is understandable that incest as a too-natural behavior might have either a natural end-result or a supernatural one. But why both? Isn't it that incest is not only too natural but at the same time too supernatural? Marking in this way a maximum severance and separation from culture, incest would therefore necessitate natural as well as supernatural consequences, that is, consequences equally distant from culture. It is precisely such a collusion of nature with supernature that the cultural order attempts to prevent, as can be shown from the Panare conceptualization of the solar eclipse. The word towömuku, which means both "eclipse" and "incest," is revealing in this respect. From this mere linguistic evidence, it can be seen that to commit incest is to participate in the supernatural order to which the sun and the moon belong. Indeed, solar eclipse is

100 Time and Astrosexuality linguistically expressed as renewed sexual intercourse of these two celestial bodies: the recurrence of the natural behavior of supernatural beings threatens the cultural order by provoking epidemics, as we have seen in the previous chapter at the end of the discussion on spatial rhythms. While these epidemics have a supernatural cause, they have the most terrible of natural consequences: the death of many individuals. The Panare do not conceive of diseases in general (a fortiori of epidemics) as a natural process but as a supernatural one, although they well recognize the natural effects of such supernatural causes. As indicated linguistically, a solar eclipse is the incestuous behavior of celestial bodies, which does not mean that the latter is the cause of the former. In fact, as indicated in the previous chapter, solar eclipses result from "a bad dance." "A bad dance" is a cultural mishap, a cultural failure of the group. It is a manipulation of the supernatural in which supernature has not been adequately controlled so that celestial incest may happen again. In a similar but opposed way, in human incest, two individuals fail to behave according to the cultural patterns and succeed too well in behaving according to nature. In the same incestuous movement, but secondarily, the celestial pair participates in natural behavior (like monkeys); the human pair in supernatural behavior (like the sun and the moon). In both cases, what should have remained disjuncted (day and night, brother and sister) has been conjuncted. As we have seen, the same is true for nature and supernature. In examining the structure of inhabited space, we have established at length the correlation day : night : : nature : supernature (chap. 5, passim). Since we have established also that men : women : : night : day, we can now write that day : night : : female sibling : male sibling :: nature : supernature. But, again, it follows that therefore the moon, star of the night, should be a male, and the sun, star of the day, should be a female. To think in these terms would be to overlook the fact that the norm has been reversed in the incest case and in the solar eclipse. As night appears in daytime, as two consanguines mate, as, finally, nature and supernature get associated in both cases, we can understand that other reversals take place. Among the sexualized celestial bodies, the moon and the sun are the only "misfits," so to speak: their sexuality is out of place. The correlation can be written sister : brother :: sun : moon, since they have inverted the norm. It follows that within supernature the moon is "very" supernatural while the sun is "rather" natural. This should not surprise us:

101 Time and Astrosexuality (1) a parallel ranking was observed in the structure of the inhabited space, that is, in the domain of culture; and (2) ceremonies are performed at night, not before sunset, not after sunrise. Solar eclipses and human incest both result from a cultural fault, the former through a defective manipulation of supernature (bad dance), the latter through an excessive manipulation of nature (violation of incest taboo). Both have deadly consequences: a solar eclipse leads to the outbreak of epidemics in the group; a human incest provokes the killing of the guilty pair by the group. In both cases, the group is confronted with an accident, a contingency, that it thought to have prevented by "good dance" and by "incest taboo"—that is, by preventions aimed respectively toward supernature and away from nature. Inadvertently confronted with these "bad" events, the group will actively "re-medy" (medicate and mediate again) the intemperate anticultural collusion of nature and supernature, that is, bring about their "im-mediation." Incest and eclipses are both perceived as death threats for and by the group. Incest announces social death, since, without its prohibition, no society can last as such (as established at length in Lévi-Strauss 1969). In provoking epidemics, eclipses announce the physical death of the group. In both cases, therefore, the cultural order has been subverted, and the group in self-defense will culturally disjunct what in the first place should never have been conjuncted. In order to accomplish this, culture will resort to a homeopathic treatment of death. In both cases, the group uses a metonymy of death as a prophylactic, although not the same one for human incest as for solar eclipse. To prevent the outbreak of epidemics, the group inflicts flagellation on itself, that is, self-inflicts a short-term, common, painful mistreatment. This external mithridatization, although cultural, uses a natural means toward a supernatural end: a natural means, since animals are freely tortured in Panare culture, while physical violence toward human beings is generally avoided, and a supernatural end, since, again, epidemics come from supernature. Through a symbolic killing of the animality, the Panare are "reencultured" by flagellation, in the same way that the killing of a natural animal transforms it into a cultural food supply. On the other hand, this ritual is, by definition, aimed at supernature. It is efficient only inasmuch as the cultural order has been able to operate the mediation between nature and supernature that it had missed. Flagellation culturally "remediates" nature and supernature.

102 Time and Astrosexuality On the other hand, the incestuous human couple is supposed to be clubbed to death. A technique similar to flagellation is employed, and the Panare say "ötnyepa ipumowon" ("to club the Panare"), in which the root ipumo ("club") can be recognized (see chap. 5, fig. 7) for both cases. This argues that they do not conceptualize both events differently, and indeed both rituals have the same function. But the incestuous pair is eventually killed; in other words, a metonymy of the group is killed for real, while the flagellation is a metaphor of death, self-inflicted by the group. Now, the individuals are in turn "reencultured," which is obvious, since (1) they have twice severed themselves from culture in committing incest and need to be relinked (in a religious way, ritually) to culture, and (2) they are culturally buried and have therefore recovered their culturality. The killing is again in this case a treatment for natural being and is ritual, that is, oriented toward supernature. The cultural order in this case, as well, has been able to reestablish its balance in mediating nature and supernature, which had been "im-mediated." If the couple escape, nothing is done at all, which is understandable, since they are no more under the competence of the cultural order and are out of reach. By their violent death, the killed individuals are brought back into the culturad bosom and can be buried, while the fugitives, of course, will not be. This burial is what leads us back to the sky, whence we started the present analysis. How? Because in the burial process, what culture performs is the mediation as well as the disjunction of nature and supernature. The fugitive pair will live in the forest (naturally) and be transformed into spirits (supernaturally), which is the fate reserved to nonburied people. The buried ones, on the contrary, rot (bodies) in their tombs (naturally) and burn (souls) in the Milky Way (supernaturally). In other words, nature and supernature are disjuncted through the cultural mediation of the burial process. It is time to recall that the Milky Way is itself made up of stars. Each star of the sky is called tyakun whether it is in or out of the Milky Way. However, we are confronted with a double origin of the stars: on the one hand, all the stars, including the stars of the Milky Way, result from the incestuous union of the sun and the moon; on the other hand, the stars—of the Milky Way exclusively —are the burning souls of the dead. It is clear that no contradiction is involved here. In effect, we have already established the congruence that exists between human or celestial incest and death. In addition, incest is a sexual union, the opposite of a

103 Time and Astrosexuality procreation. The incestuous human couple not only fail to beget offspring as a result of their embrace, but also they receive death from the group. The incestuous celestial bodies are hardly more fecund, giving birth to asexual tyakun (as mentioned earlier in this chap.), that is, to sterile beings that consequently are social deadends. What could be a better expression of the fact that social life, without incest prohibition, cannot last for long? Incest, in reversing the sexual norms, leads directly to asexuality: the spirits, the souls, and the tyakun have no sex. The Panare believe in an afterlife that is not very different from the earthly one, except that it is quite dull: there is no sex after death. At the end of this detour through incest and death, we can see that the sexuality of the moon and the sun has been displaced due to their incestuous behavior. It is a male celestial body that appears in the daytime and a female one that appears at night. The latter is accompanied by asexual offspring that are themselves the by-products of an inversion: either normal death as opposite to the continuation of physical life, or incest as opposite to the perpetuation of social life. In the same way that there was a cultural ranking (see last paragraph of chap. 5), there is a supernatural ranking: ultimately, the future of the individuals is to reach, as souls, the status of supernatural beings. But at the same time that dead human beings accede to the supernatural order as asexual offspring of an incestuous union, they accede only to a supernatural minus. In effect, there is a ranking from superior male to inferior female (see end of chap. 4). This ranking continues, since sexuality is superior to asexuality. It will be established later that asexuality is congruent with early childhood. Consequently, during the short periodicity of the day, the relevant celestial bodies that originate from a reversal have either a reversed or suppressed sexuality. The latter case is evidently a modality of the former. At the same time, being reversed, they are "abnormal," so to speak, inasmuch as incest and death are not "normal." But they are supernatural. Therefore, the fact that the sun appears during the daytime while the moon and the Milky Way appear at night conforms perfectly to a dialectical logic: all are ambiguous celestial bodies. The sun is a superior male but is reversed as incestuous; "he" appears in the female daytime and therefore "supernaturalizes" the daytime in the same way as the daytime "desacralizes" him. The moon is an inferior female, but reversed as incestuous; "she" appears in the male night and therefore enhances and weakens in the same way the sacredness of the night. But it is under the

104 Time and Astrosexuality conditions of being asexual souls that human beings can accede, almost furtively, to the supernatural, humbly glowing in a weakened night. However, there is one remaining difficulty that must be examined before we exhaust the structure of daily periodicity The reader may remember that the Milky Way is more often visible during the dry season (see end of chap. 2). If such is the case, the Milky Way is not only marked in the short periodicity of the day but also in the long periodicity of the year. However, doubtless, the short mark is primitive, the long one derivative, since (1) the Milky Way is made up of the offspring of the sun and the moon, and (2) it does not appear exclusively only more often, in the dry season. The Milky Way glows at night but also more often during the dry season. We have seen a similar logical movement earlier (in the discussion of spatial rhythms in chap. 5). Since there is a correlation between night and the dry season, the supernatural aspect of the Milky Way is reinforced, and, indeed, it provides the ultimate access of culture to supernature. At the same time, the frailty of this cultural access is emphasized by the asexuality of the souls. An Ill-Tempered Astronomy What is opposed, if anything, to the Milky Way? What would appear during the daytime and mainly during the rainy season? It is obviously the rainbow, that is, Manataci. While the souls burn in the sky, Manataci appears only associated with the rain. Consequently, the most supernatural of all beings appears at the least supernatural moment. Besides, it reveals itself only irregularly, while the Milky Way is present (actually or potentially) every night. The most supernatural is therefore opposed to the least supernatural in every respect, since Manataci manifests its supernatural strength (and its distance from culture, of course, at the same time) in appearing at the most profane time. This leads us to wonder about the sexuality of the rainbow. In this respect the rainbow is similar to the Milky Way in that it has none, although rather by excess than by defect. Indeed, I first thought that my inquiries had not been understood, since the questions "Is it a male? Is it a female?" were both answered by "yes." The answers obtained about the sex of the celestial bodies are presented in table 10. It was asked whether the sex of the moon, the sun, the rainbow, the Milky Way, and the stars in general (the latter two separately) were apo ("male") or

105 Time and Astrosexuality Table 10. Sex of Celestial Bodies

Sun Moon Star(s) Milky Way Rainbow

Male

Female

aye cika cika cika aye

cika aye cika cika aye

wunki ("female"). The answers were either aye ("yes") or cika ("no"). Although a number of informants answered tinea pwi yu ("I don't know"), none contradicted the data presented in table 10. From table 10, it can be seen that there is a major opposition between the sun and the moon on one hand, the Milky Way and the rainbow on the other hand. Moreover, the rainbow and the Milky Way are themselves opposed, just as the moon and the sun are opposed. The correlation rainbow : Milky Way : : sun : moon is fairly obvious, since the rainbow and the sun both appear during the day and have a "strong" sexuality (quantitatively for the rainbow, qualitatively for the sun), while the Milky Way and the moon both appear at night and have a "weak" sexuality (quantitatively for the Milky Way, qualitatively for the moon). In addition, while the sun and the moon are at the same supernatural level (they have to meet if they are to mate), the Milky Way is above, the nec plus ultra of supernature, and the rainbow is below, the nec minus infra of supernature. These four celestial bodies, apart from being supernatural, share their "abnormality," since they occupy marked positions, either ambiguous (the sun and the moon) or extreme (the rainbow and the Milky Way). For one reason or another, each of these four celestial bodies is displaced: the sex of the moon and of the sun has been reversed in the daily periodicity, and the less supernatural Milky Way appears in the most sacred time (night and dry season), while the more supernatural rainbow appears in the most profane time (day and rainy season). Thus, we can write the correlation day : night : : rainy season : dry season : : sun : moon :: rainbow : Milky Way. This is important, since we have just established the logical transition between the conceptualization of the short periodicity of the day and the long peri-

106 Time and Astrosexuality odicity of the year, which we abandoned earlier in this chapter and to which it is now time to return. The stars characteristic of the yearlong periodicity are also sexualized. But their sexuality is, so to speak, "straight," in opposition to both the reversed sexuality of the stars of the dayshort periodicity and the ambiguous sexuality of the Milky Way and of the rainbow. The moon and the sun represent a reversed transformation of social life. In a similar but opposite way, the Milky Way and the rainbow represent a reversed transformation of biological life. Both aspects are further linked, since we have established the congruency between incest and death as opposed to socially acceptable sexuality and biological life, as well as to the rainbow, that is, the demiurge Manataci. Manataci does not represent socially acceptable sexuality or human life. Doubtless, Manataci is a principle of life, but it represents life's excess, its hyperbole, and this is why "it" is sexually displaced. In effect, Manataci is a bisexual being who is also fecund, since "it" is at the origin of (the present shape of) everything and everyone. An androgynous being who is also selfimpregnated, Manataci is therefore located less outside of than beyond the scope of the social order—that is, of culture. In addition, while Manataci represents the excess of life, the asexual stars represent its defect: death. Following thus a sexual code, when we pass from the rainbow to the Milky Way, we observe a reversed transformation in terms of sexuality: by excess for the former, by defect for the latter, both equally depart from human sexuality. Still, following the same sexual code, when we pass from the sun to the moon, we observe a reversed transformation, this time in terms of sex: as an incestuous being, the sun is, as it were, a faux-frère, a "false brother" who behaved as an affine, that is, the reverse of a brother; in the same way and for the very same reason, the moon is a "false sister." For having exchanged sex (socially), which they should not have done, the sun and the moon have also exchanged their sexual attributes (biologically). According to the sexual code that is presently being examined, the sun and the moon have been socially excessive and remain so only when there are eclipses, once their transformation into celestial bodies has occurred. In this respect they are like Manataci, who is biologically excessive. Manataci in turn is "themselves," so to speak, opposed to the Milky Way, "which" is biologically defective. Let us recall that Manataci is not excessive socially (indeed, Manataci is quite isolated socially) and that the Milky Way is not defective socially (except for sex, the souls of

107 Time and Astrosexuality the dead follow the same "life" as the earthly Panare). In this respect, the structure remains unlocked, since, in order to close it, we should find at least one celestial body whose sexuality is socially defective. The present analysis will therefore be consolidated when we can find this predictable missing element. For the moment, we have to account for a final transformation of the major opposition between the sun and the moon on the one hand and of the rainbow and the Milky Way on the other hand. In so doing, we shall be able to get rid of a rather obvious difficulty. In previous discussion, it was observed that the moon and the sun were at the same "altitude," that the rainbow was located above and the Milky Way below. This "vertical" conceptualization is in contradiction with the empirical observation that the moon passes in front of the Milky Way. In fact, the conception exactly reverses perception; the rainbow is an atmospheric phenomenon, the sun and the moon are, with the earth, parts of the solar system, and, finally, the stars of the sky are even more distant. The inversion of perception and conception can be perfectly understood, once granted that the four elements of this astronomical conceptual system sexually reverse the Panare cultural norm, either biologically or socially, either by excess or by defect. In this process, the rainbow and the Milky Way have respectively exchanged their positions, and the median pair (moon and sun) has remained in place. Indeed, the Panare know that during an eclipse (seen, of course, from the earth), it is the moon that passes below the sun and not the reverse. Both are therefore "straight" in their copulation when we compare it to the favorite Panare technique for sexual intercourse, in which the man stands above the woman. The woman lies on her back in her (rather than his) hammock. The man stands up, the hammock passing between his legs. The legs of the woman pass over the arms of the man so that elbow and knee can clinch together. The woman lies horizontally and is below the man, who stands vertically and is above the woman. Yet, it should be remembered that, while the Milky Way is spatially more distant than the rainbow, the Panare have conceptually inverted this relationship such that the Milky Way is conceived as closer than the rainbow. The rainbow and the Milky Way have been inverted along a vertical axis. Insofar as the moon and the sun belong on the same vertical axis, it logically follows that the position of the moon and the sun should also be inverted—and the moon should pass behind the sun! Of course, it does not. This expected transformation (reversal

108 Time and Astrosexuality

Fig. 9. The Structure of the 1ll-Tempered Astronomy of positions) along this vertical axis is actually neutralized, because the transformation has already taken place along a horizontal axis. In effect, the moon and the sun, stars of the diurnal periodicity, are a pair of siblings who copulate—that is, they are contemporaneous. Their spatial conjunction (in the course of incest) has caused their spatial disjunction, which is expressed in terms of time as they mark the alternation of days and nights. This transformation of spacial separation into time alternation is correlative of a sexual transformation: as we have noted earlier, the sexual attributes of the sun and of the moon have been reversed. Accordingly, the sun and the moon can be represented along a horizontal axis (as in any kinship diagram) along which they have been transformed. Once this horizontal transformation takes place, any further vertical transformation is neutralized. Figure 9a shows clearly that when the vertical poles commute, the horizontal poles remain unaffected and vice versa. This vertical neutralization of the sun and the moon has, in fact, already been implied when we established, on the one hand, that the moon is very supernatural and the sun rather natural, and, on

109 Time and Astrosexuality the other hand, that the moon is an inferior female and the sun a superior male. At that point, and despite the vertical ordering of the sun and the moon as a pair lying between the rainbow and the Milky Way, every effort was made by Panare thought to put the sun and the moon in the same conceptual bag. But a further examination of the kinship relations manifested in this astronomical system is necessary. We recall that Manataci is the "parents" par excellence (see chap. 2), and therefore is the "parents" of the moon and the sun, among others. In addition, the sun and the moon are the parents of the stars (see the beginning of this chap.), and, therefore, of the stars of the Milky Way, among others. In figure 96, which complements figure 9a, the transformations are indicated by double arrows. While the horizontal axis represents alliance and collaterality on the same genealogical level, the vertical axis represents filiation in succession of genealogical levels. The vertical axis is therefore oriented. Several points are now established. While the transformation of the sun and the moon is reciprocal, the transformation of the rainbow and the Milky Way is oriented and dynamic, following the flow of time. The sun and the moon are used to express, through the periodicity of their alternations, a mechanistic conception of time. On the other hand, the rainbow and the Milky Way are used to express a dialectic conception of time. Repetitive time and cumulative time coexist and mediate one another. In an astronomical code, the Panare, excellent philosophers ready to reconcile Zeno and Heraclitus, express the paradox of time. There are consequently two ways of investigation open to us: one, which we are presently following, deals with a closed repetitive, or cyclic, time—in other words, with rhythms; the other one deals with open, or cumulative, time—in other words, with melodies. And the analysis of the diurnal and seasonal periodicities still leaves out the analysis of the oriented time of life itself, which it would be particularly inappropriate in this context to call "cycle" of life. In this structure of an ill-tempered astronomy, we find the beginning of an answer to a question that was previously raised (see last paragraph of chap. 5). In effect, there seems to be a striking parallel between the way in which the Panare think about their culture and their supernature. All the relations of time are expressed in terms of space: separation of the moon and the sun, who have been too close to each other and who are responsible for the diurnal periodicity; and reversal of location from percept to concept for the rainbow and the Milky Way, "who" are re-

110 Time and Astrosexuality sponsible for the flow of time. Therefore, starting from time categories, we are sent back to space categories in supernature as well as in culture, and the analysis of chapter 5 is consolidated a posteriori. But, on the other hand, the structure under consideration is not only concerned with astronomy but also with sexuality. What does it mean? According to the rather complex form of a sexual code, the meaning of the message is, in fact, disturbingly simple: not only does incest generate death mythically and really, but also sexual frenzy, passing through incest, leads to death, which itself leads evidently nowhere. In other words, a sexual departure from the cultural norm leads to death. All sexual excesses lead to death, since it is the final point in the dynamic of the structure: the sexual frenzy of the rainbow and its subsequent hyperfecundity, the incest of the moon and the sun and the subsequent sterility of their offspring, the asexuality of the unnamed stars of the Milky Way and their subsequent sterilityall are essentially anticultural. Therefore, here we establish what has already been established in another way. Only the cultural way is compatible with the perpetuation of life, and androgyny and asexuality are biologically excluded as much as incest is socially excluded. Sexual excesses are conceptually "restraightened" through the reversed transformations that we have just studied, and in the same logical way two processes are guaranteed: the regularity of the alternation of day and night and the proper progression from birth to death, as the conjunction of the sun and the moon provokes the catastrophic eclipse and as the Milky Way above the rainbow provokes the precedence of death over life. In both cases, life would be reversed into death.

A Reversed Sexuality The elicitation of the structure of astronomical temporality is not terminated however. Before proceeding further, it becomes necessary to open a parenthesis that is less a detour than a consolidation of our argument, since it will bring us back to the missing element announced above and to the "straight" sexuality of stars of the seasonal periodicity that we abandoned as soon as it was mentioned. Let us then come down from supernature to culture and rethink the androgyny of Manataci and the asexuality of the Milky Way. The transformation of supernature into

111 Time and Astrosexuality culture is not simple. Trivial as it may be, infants are born with one sex, either/or, but neither without nor with two. Castration is ignored among the Panare, who are not cattle breeders, and it does not even occur under the attenuated form of circumcision or excision. We remain on the wrong track if we consider the problem from a biological viewpoint. There is no straight transformation from supernature to culture in this case. The transformation, as we shall see, takes place from a supernaturally biological code to a culturally social code, which will bring us back to the theory of incest and exogamy from which we have never greatly departed in the present chapter. Indeed, as previously noted, incest could be considered as a hyperbolic endogamy while bestiality could be considered as a hyperbolic exogamy. At the same time, both behaviors are evidently unacceptable, but the former provokes strong emotional reactions while the latter provokes but bemused smiles. On the other hand, incest belongs to a group of transformations that includes the moon as well as the sun and from which Manataci and the Milky Way are excluded, the latter two being concerned with the progression of time, not with its repetition. Finally, it has been established that the sun, the moon, the rainbow, and the Milky Way all belong to the same group of transformation through which a theory of reversed sexuality is expressed. Such a reversed sexuality is manifested at a biological level by a pair of oppositions: Manataci is sexually frenetic, and the Milky Way is sexually deprived. It becomes legitimate, then, to wonder whether, within Panare culture, we can find what expresses, if expressed at all, sexual frenzy on the one hand, sexual deprivation on the other hand. It is noteworthy to underline the importance of this analytical step, since we are dealing with the conceptual hinge between two groups of transformations: the subsystem of reversed sexuality congruent with extreme temporalities (the shortest diurnal periodicity and the flow of a nonperiodic time), and the subsystem of "straight" sexuality congruent with a medium temporality (seasonal periodicity). The transformation of biological sexuality into social sexuality is congruent with the transformation of supernatural celestial bodies into cultural human beings. Or the reverse—but from our viewpoint it is the same, since the positions of the elements of the system are defined only by their respective relations, and since the point of departure of the analysis is necessarily arbitrary: the star sexuality leads back to the human one and vice versa. In dealing with sexual reversals,

112 Time and Astrosexuality we deal exclusively with the reversals that are relevant in Panare culture and defined through correlations and oppositions. It is clear that our analysis is not formal, but structural. To turn now toward the examination of masturbation may seem odd at first. But this is necessary, since we are now looking for the cultural transformation of Manataci's supernatural androgyny. And from a strictly formal viewpoint, masturbation is susceptible of being represented as a social transformation of biological androgyny because, socially, to masturbate is to make love to oneself, which is explicitly what Manataci can do biologically. At the same time, the supernatural androgyny of Manataci is fecund, as we have noted, in opposition to human masturbation, which is, of course, sterile. Still from a formal viewpoint, masturbation is equally susceptible of transforming incest, which is also sterile and also a social excess. But the sexual excesses manifested in incest on the one hand, in masturbation and in androgyny, on the other hand, are opposite. Incest is hyperendogamous and as such represents the metonymy of an excessive endogamy, while masturbation and androgyny are metaphors of an excessive endogamy and can be said to be metaendogamous. Incest is socially as impossible as is androgyny biologically, while masturbation is unavoidable. Finally, if we are allowed to anticipate by calling structural what is at this point merely formal, we are confronted with a triangular structure of pathological endogamy, the oppositions and correlations of which are summarized in table 11. The structural validation of such a formal analysis can come Table 11. Structure of Pathological Endogamy Sexual Excess

Androgyny (Manustupration) Masturbation Incest

biological/ social

metaphoric/ metonymic

impossible/ conditional

+

+

+

+ +

113 Time and Astrosexuality only from the discovery that masturbation is marked one way or the other in Panare culture. This does not appear immediately. I have never seen parents teasing the genitals of their small offspring, a pacifying technique for many a culture. The investigation of masturbation in the field proved to be a touchy matter. Even children who often gave me tips on local affairs turned out to be poor informants in this domain, not to speak of women who, confronted with my foreign status, completely ruled out such discussions. Adult males were hardly less reluctant to talk on this topic. Only from older men did I learn about younger people going to the gardens for enyeya iwokanye ("having an erection with the hand"), an expression that was applied to both males and females. But the same informants denied that married individuals indulged in this activity, which was also glossed as kon cikun yömwöxka, literally, "to cook one's own (sexual) juice." All this is quite trivial, and we would be on the wrong track, were there not another type of masturbation that will retain our attention. During the dry season, when the Panare have "gone to Manataci" and already drunk a lot of manioc beer, late at night, the feast takes on a frankly sexual aspect. While married men copulate with their wives, young men have been active at seducing marriageable partners. These available women are very few owing to the practice of sororal polygyny, which tends to delay the marriage of young men. At any rate, premarital sex takes place in the churuata, while in everyday life this is carried on in the gardens during daytime. There are, however, many more young unmarried men than available young women. Under these conditions, the former quite openly masturbate in their own hammocks. There are therefore two cases of premarital sex as in the case of masturbation, one that is hidden and "profane" (in the gardens, during daytime), the other one that is exhibited and "sacred" (not only during the feast, but in the churuata and at night). However, while copulating, the successful young men behave as married men, that is, conform themselves to the social norm of sexuality. The solitary young men, on the contrary, go further out of the social norm of sexuality in "having an erection with the hand." Indeed, like the married men, the fortunate young men go to the hammocks of the seduced girls, at the periphery of the churuata. The unfortunate ones stay in their own hammocks around the centred pillar of the churuata. What decidedly marks masturbation is that

114 Time and Astrosexuality finally it has, in addition, a homosexual aspect. Manustupration* performed by a younger male occurs only during the ceremonies. In the specific context of these feasts, a young man often, but by no means always, is manustuprated by a much younger boy who is always one of his uninitiated brothers. Since the younger boy is not initiated, he lives at the periphery of the churuata with his family of orientation, and for his performance he moves to his older brother's hammock (around the central pillar). The young boy thus anticipates the movement that he will make when, initiated, he will hang his hammock around the central pillar of the churuata.** Masturbation is highly metaphoric of endogamy: in the simple case, the young man copulates with himself; in the case of manustupration, he is handled by a young boy (thus of the same sex) who is also not only a consanguine but another self (owing to the rule of equivalence of siblings of the same sex). In both cases, homosexuality is the weak variant and masturbation is the strong one. To sum up, ritual masturbation (simple masturbation or manustupration performed by a younger brother) appears as the cultural transformation of the biologically supernatural androgyny of Manataci, and as such what we have called the structure of pathological endogamy is closed. But we had to distinguish two types of masturbation, one "profane," which concerned both sexes, the other one "ritual," which concerned only young male adults. And, indeed, the three elements of this structure are for different reasons pushed toward the supernatural. Manataci is supernatural by definition. We have seen above that incest had a supernatural aspect (being the repetition of the behavior of the sun and the moon). Finally, masturbation, in becoming manustupration, is no longer a solitary pleasure. It is socially performed during a sacred time, in a sacred space, in common (with the other young adults), and in association (with a younger consanguine). By opposition to the "ordinary" masturbation, homosexual manustupration is sacral. It is striking that the opposition between masturbation and *I use the word manustupration to differentiate this sexual behaviorfromselferotic masturbation, and in this way I follow Krafft-Ebing (1965, p. 87), who writes: "The annals of legal medicine distinguish as such, exhibition of the genitals, lustful handling of the genitals of children, inducing them to perform manustupration on the seducer, and performing masturbation orflagellationon the victim." **For a more detailed study of the spatial organization of the churuata and its relation to the cycle of life, see Dumont 1974b.

115 Time and Astrosexuality homosexuality turns an individual concern into a social one. Since, in the same logical movement, manustupration is sacral, the congruence of sacredness and togetherness is once more asserted. Their congruence with males is also reasserted, since it is not from ordinary masturbation, which is of concern to both sexes, but from manustupration, that females are completely left out. We can immediately understand not only that masturbation is an excessive sexual behavior but also that it results from a defective sexual status. Were they married, the young men would not have to masturbate or be manustuprated. Such is not the case, and the bachelors, against their will, have to rely upon this technique for sexual gratification. Bachelorhood is not only normal but also strictly compulsory: one is born a bachelor and has to have this status prior to his or her first marriage. The reader has already understood why, once more, we are insisting upon a triviality. In effect, we are trying to find out if bachelorhood could be, under its marked form, not only the sexual opposite of masturbation along a homogeneous transformation (from social to social), but also the sexual correspondent of the sexlessness of the Milky Way along a heterogeneous transformation (from biological to social). In other words, are we arriving at the point of closure of a whole group of transformations? In order to reach this point of closure, our first step is to find the marked form of bachelorhood. This, we believe, can be identified with the prolonged unmarried state in which spinsters maintain themselves. Again, if we pick up spinsterhood, it is not by chance but because the informants were referring to it. Female virginity, which would have satisfied us as well from a formal viewpoint, remains unmarked and totally unimportant for the Panare. While everybody is at the beginning of his or her life a bachelor, the prolongation of such a state is common among men due to sororal polygyny, which concentrates more wives in the hands of fewer and older men. By opposition, spinsterhood is a rarity, and the Panare say of a woman in this state that she has a tyakixseptu ari, that is, a "very ripe vagina." Women are usually married very early, and it is rare to see an unmarried woman over sixteen. Were a woman to divorce, she would remarry within a few weeks. Were her husband to die, she would remarry the next dry season, even if she were by that time already on the verge of decrepitude. So much emphasis is put on this spinsterhood that it would have been difficult to find anyone at all who could have qualified during my stay; while going from settlement to settle-

116 Time and Astrosexuality ment, I was often asked by young men if there were any unmarried women in settlements in which I had made a census and to which they had not travelled themselves. What constitutes the mark of prolonged female bachelorhood (spinsterhood) is therefore its rare occurrence and the emphasis of the informants on the necessity to avoid it. It can be seen that bachelorhood parallels, in its duality, masturbation, and that both are not only related, but also that all their "sexemes," if we may dare to generate yet another barbarism, are reversed one after the other. Under its "ordinary" or "normal" form, bachelorhood is of concern to both sexes. By marrying, the bachelors conform to the cultural order. The spinster, on the contrary, persists in her status, and she aggravates her case. She escapes the social norm, that is, refuses to socialize and therefore is "naturalized," since we saw that isolation is congruent with nature (see discussion on spatial rhythms in chap. 5). We would even be able to show that premarital heterosexuality, the intermediary form between ordinary masturbation and homosexual manustupration, has a reversed equivalent here, since copulation is not allowed during menses, thus compelling married people of both sexes t o behave as if they were bachelors. We can see that bachelorhood is the weak variant and spinsterhood the strong one, since the mateless bachelor will eventually marry while the spinster refuses to do so. Moreover, the opposition between bachelorhood and spinsterhood also turns an individual problem into a social problem. Finally, we can see that spinsterhood is a sexual defect (negative excess) that rejects exogamy to the infinite. Before developing this last point, let us sum up the correlations and oppositions between masturbation and bachelorhood in a diagram (table 12). A final remark must be made. Masturbation and bachelorhood under their ordinary forms have neither a positive nor a negative connotation. Such is not the case with their marked forms. Spinsterhood is emphasized as bad, because it deprives the group of a woman who is too abstinent. Manustupration is emphasized as good, the proof being that the parents do not discourage their young sons from "cooking the j u i c e " of their older brothers. Manustupration is thus encouraged while spinsterhood is discouraged. Masturbation is on the side of "our p a r e n t " Manataci, the life principle, while spinsterhood, as we are going to see, is on the side of death. In identifying spinsterhood as the opposite of manustupration, like the strong variant of a weaker opposition between masturba-

excess/ defect

male/ female

unmarked/ marked

effect/ cause

endogamic/ exogamic

supernaturalized/ naturalized

Ordinary Masturbation

+

+

+

+

+

+

Homosexual Manustupration

+

+

-

+

+

+

Ordinary Bachelorhood

+

+

-

-

-

Spinsterhood

_

_

_

«.

„

117 Time and Astrosexuality

Table 12. Correlations and Oppositions