Coloured tassels and multihued ropes have been described by Browman (1974: 192) as ‘property markers’: that is, as identification marks. However, they do not serve to identify individual animals in a herd. By referring to their tassels, herders may distinguish herd animals, owned by human beings, from wild animals, which belong to the spirits of the hills and are not marked in such a fashion. Animals cared for by human owners are not allowed to go feral in Isluga. However, during the Isluga marking ceremony, human owners cut property marks in the ears of their animals, as described above. Paradoxically, they do not use these marks to identify their animals because they recognize them as individuals. They never check the property mark cut into the animal’s ear.
Initially, I was puzzled as to why herders should bother to cut an owner’s mark in the ears of llamas and alpacas since they are apparently redundant. Gómez Parra reported that during the marking ceremony in the community of Toconce, in the Upper Loa area of Chile, the male herder cut out small pieces of the animals’ ears and kept them in a small woven bag (Gómez Parra 1975: 349). An earlier account given by Boman of the marking ceremony in Susques, north-west Argentina, also shows that the herder placed the cut pieces of ear in a ch’uspa (a small woven bag) which contained coca leaves. Later, the pieces of ear were offered to the Pachamama, and they were placed in a stone altar called kiuri (Boman 1908: 494–5). During the ceremony observed by Spahni in the community of Santiago de Río Grande, in the Chilean Atacama, marks were cut into the ears of llamas, goats, sheep and donkeys (in that order). The ear fragments were placed in three small woven bags, the first made from vicuña fleece, one of which held the pieces of llama ear, and the other two made from llama fleece, which held the pieces of sheep and goat ear, and the other the pieces of donkey ear. The following day, there was another ritual inside the corral where the marking had taken place, in which the herders formed three small ‘enclosures’ using pieces of yarn, one of sheep wool, and two of llama hair. Inside the space enclosed by the piece of sheep’s yarn they placed the fragments of llama ears, and inside the spaces enclosed by the llama yarn they put the fragments of sheep and goat ears, and the fragments of donkey ears (Spahni 1962: 32). The precise and elaborate nature of these practices seem to contradict Nachtigall’s unsupported assertion that the cutting of earmarks, and hence the name of señalada or marca for the ceremony, derives from the Spanish habit of cutting marks in the ears of sheep which, in post-Hispanic times, was extended to llamas (Nachtigall 1966: 195). He undermined his own argument by commenting that camelids are distinguished by their colouring and do not require supplementary means of identification.
In the Andean marking ceremony, the cutting of notches in the ears of the herd animals is not the only form of marking involved. The term chimpu also means ‘mark’, and the tying of dyed fleece to the backs of the animals is another form of marking, albeit less permanent than making cuts in the ears of llamas and alpacas. If pieces of chimpu cling to bushes or fall to the ground in the course of the year, herders say that they are sprinkled (p”awaña) on the Wirjin Tayka. There is, in any case, a profusion of synonyms listed in Aymara dictionaries for the Spanish marcar or señalar that may be used for the marking ceremony: ch’ikullaña, chimpt’aña, p’ikiña, p’ukucha (Büttner and Condori Cruz 1984; Ayala Loayza 1988). It is true that the use of earmarking is a very widespread phenomenon world- wide. In reference to the herding of reindeer, Tim Ingold suggests that social relations between households may be given formal expression through the use of a socially accepted code of earmarks or brands, which serve to demonstrate which households own which reindeer. He maintains that the existence of a close bond of attachment between a herd animal and its owner renders the need for marking superfluous, while the absence of such close bonding renders it necessary (Ingold 1980: 114). The two ethnographic examples he gives are the Tungus and the Chukchi. The former do not use any property mark and they recognize their reindeer as named individuals. He contrasts them with the Chukchi, who never count their reindeer and who are not able to identify their animals by their looks (ibid.: 114). Earmarking provides evidence of ownership, he comments, but it in no way guarantees the good behaviour of the animals. For Ingold the earmarking of reindeer contained in round-up fences is symptomatic of a ranching economy, and it characterizes the breakdown of pastoralism (ibid.: 122).
Why should Andean herders, then, cut earmarks in the ears of their animals, at a time of great ceremony? As I indicated in Chapter 3, Isluga herders recognize their camelids as individuals, and their animals learn to obey two verbal com- mands. They train their herds to use pasture grounds, and they do not contain them in round-up fences. From scattered references in the literature dating from the colonial period, and from surviving pre-Hispanic artefacts, it seems that the Andean marking ceremony is of some antiquity. Ecclesiastical investigations into the so-called ‘religious error’ of Andean peoples in the Archdiocese of Lima (the Extirpation of Idolatry) uncovered religious observances dedicated to cults that included rituals for enhancing the well-being of herd animals. Kenneth Mills examined documentation about Juan Chapa and his consort María Ticlla in the province of Yauyos (Mills 1997: 65–6). In his evidence, Juan Chapa maintained that he cut the tops of the ears of the young llamas. Then he cooked the pieces in a fire, to which he added coca leaves and coloured maize. He offered the mixture to the mountain peak called Pata Caca. Both María Ticlla and Juan Chapa performed this ritual twice a year, despite the punishment meted out on them by the ecclesiastical authorities.
In pre-Hispanic times, the napa was an elaborately dressed white llama with golden earrings which preceded the Inka rulers (Sarmiento 1942 [1572]: 40). The Huarochirí oral narratives collected in Quechua at the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth centuries tell of the decoration of llamas with
bells and earrings for the deity Pariacaca (Taylor 1987: 383). There are also iconographic representations of camelids with pierced ears. Rydén (1936: fig. 117a) discusses a Candelaria-style modelled and painted vessel from the Department of La Candelaria in northern Argentina. The zoomorphic form represents a pair of copulating camelids, and of interest is the tassel drawn by means of incised lines hanging beneath the right ear of the male camelid. However, the ears do not have any notches cut into them, and the vessel may have been intended for a camelid mating ceremony, rather than a marking. Classic Tiwanaku 4 pottery vessels with modelled representations of camelid heads often show a rope encircling the head, passing through the base of one ear. Even more remote from the present, and far afield geographically, some Moche ceramics from the north coast of Peru depict modelled camelids with patterns of cut marks round the ears (Donnan 1978). The link with present-day practice seems tenuous.
Nevertheless, I consider that making the ears of domesticated animals bleed was, and is, an indigenous ritual practice, a rite of passage for the llamas and alpacas at the time of their initiation into sexual maturity. As such, it would have paralleled the ear-piercing ceremonies and the ritual investiture of the breechcloth for noble Inka boys, which formed part of the Qapaq Raymi celebrations at the time of the winter solstice. This ceremony was known as the warachikuq, but Christian evangelization has eradicated the Andean practice of making boys’ ears bleed in such ceremonial rites of passage. However, such practices for camelids have continued under the guise of European-style earmarking. A point of interest in the Isluga marking ceremonies I observed is a gender division in the tasks performed: men cut the ears of the llamas and alpacas, while women use a needle to pierce and stitch the earpieces in place.11Both actions produce blood. The Isluga blood-letting ceremonies are a celebration of the social bonding which is maintained by the herders with their animals, and which is transmitted from one generation of animals to the next. They do not indicate a breakdown of such relations, rather a celebration of the social identity of the domesticated animals, especially those born during the previous birth season, whose ears are made to bleed for the first time. The parallel activities conducted by women and men in the ritual investiture of female and male herd animals with gender-specific forms of ‘dress’ is a particularly salient aspect of the marking ceremony.
The celebration of human and animal lineages is an important aspect of the marking ceremony. It is celebrated by a married couple who respectfully ask Mallku and T’alla for permission to proceed with the event. In the interior of the kancha, rites are performed to ensure that the lineages of camelids multiply. But the sponsors of these ceremonies are a couple (chachawarmi) who themselves are progenitors of a lineage. Human and animal procreation would seem to parallel one another, and fertility, whether of human beings or of animals, is dependent on luck (suerte).12 One Isluga woman, who had suffered a series of miscarriages over five years, explained: ‘It’s suerte. The llamas multiply with the marca. Like women, there are some families with many, and some with few.’ In this respect, luck may be a limiting factor controlling human existence or the multiplication of one’s animals, and the uywiri are considered to have power to grant or withhold suerte.
The focus is on animal fertility during the marking ceremony, but the contrast between human and animal lineages constitutes the cultural matrix in which the events unfold. When I attended the wayñu and ch’allta ceremonies during February 1987, the impression I formed was that the events centred on activities intended to promote the lineages of herd animals. Since then, Isluga people have inserted a ritual intended to remember the souls of human beings into the marking ceremony. While the llama was being sacrificed and its internal organs cooked for human consumption in the ch’allta I attended in 1997, the hosts took an enamel cup filled with alcohol and set it alight with a match. Don Apolinario, Doña Luisa, their eldest son Alex, and his new bride Vilma took it in turns to burn coca leaves in memory of their ancestors. They, and other human participants present, then recited in low voices a Christian prayer for the souls of the dead, at the end of which they crossed themselves. The ritual of burning coca leaves (a coca kintu) is one that used to be restricted to other occasions, such as the observance of All Souls Day.
With this emphasis on the importance of lineage, the meanings of two significant terms can be explained in a greater historical depth. The name of the divinity on to whom the cult of Santo Tomás was grafted, Tunupa, derives from the root tunu, meaning ‘ancestor, main root’, or ‘stock’ of a tree (cepa in Spanish) (Ayala Loayza 1988: 178). It is Santo Tomás who is remembered as the progenitor of Isluga people in present times. The word wiña, the hollow which is filled with red blood and green coca leaves in the kancha, is another term that shares a linguistic root with concepts of lineage. Wiñaya is the Aymara and wiñay the Quechua word for ‘always, eternal, for ever’. This word appears in similar contexts in both languages in early seventeenth-century dictionaries:
Viñay. A century which is one generation from father to son, grandson, great- grandson etc or the half of a lifetime, to middle age.
Viñamaci. Those of the same age, or those who are brought up together . . . Viñay. The generations and descent.
(González Holguín 1952 [1608]: 352) Viñaya; Always.
Viñaya viñayapa. Saecula saeculorum.
Viñaya; Placed after proper nouns, it means of the same age.
(Bertonio 1984 [1612] Bk II: 388) Bertonio’s translation of the Aymara wiñaya wiñayapa into the Latin ‘generations of generations’ is interesting, since saeculum means ‘the period of one human generation’ – that is, about thirty-three and one-third years – but the plural saecula means ‘successive generations [of people or of animals]’ (Simpson 1973: 529). Therefore, the filling of the wiña with blood may be regarded as a means of enhancing vitality, which is regenerated in camelids through the ritual perfor- mance of the wayñu ceremony. The procreation of new life is important, especially because the lifespan of camelids is much shorter than that of human beings. Llamas
and alpacas are said to be able to live for up to twenty years, but many are slaughtered at the age of about seven. Hence herders have to make sure that there are sufficient adult llamas in the herd to guide the younger members and to ensure the maintenance of good discipline.
Richard Tapper (1988) has argued that animals provide an ideal model for human beings to conceptualize their own humanity. In his argument, the herds are replicas of society, yet they are matrilineal and uxorilocal (the female is the stable core of the herd), whereas human beings in pastoralist societies organize themselves in patrilineal, virilocal terms (the men are the stable core of the community). He states that human beings and animals are identified on one level but differentiated on another. He regards what he sees as the prevalence among pastoralists as ‘patriliny and patriarchy’ as the necessary way for human society to organize itself so as to provide ‘an otherwise absent distinction of humanity from animality’ (ibid.: 55).13
This generalization does not really apply to Isluga, nor to the ‘carnivorous pastoralism’ defined by Ingold as the type of reindeer herding practised in arctic and subarctic Eurasia. Ingold lists a series of traits, including ‘diverging devolu- tion of property’ and ‘bilateral systems of kinship reckoning’ as characteristic of carnivorous pastoralism, in contrast with ‘milch pastoralism’ in East Africa, which he associates with ‘unilineal devolution of property’ and ‘agnatic systems of kinship reckoning’ (Ingold 1980: 25). It is these latter traits that have contributed to traditional views of pastoral societies as being both patrilineal and patriarchal. Despite the fact that there may be a tendency towards virilocal residence after marriage in Isluga, this is not always the case, and kinship reckoning is cognatic. Parents devolve property, especially animate property in the form of animals, to both female and male children. Hence, pastoralism in the Andes seems to have something in common with carnivorous pastoralism of subarctic Eurasia. Where it differs from Ingold’s notion of carnivorous pastoralism is in the relationship between herding leaders and their assistants (ibid.: 165–9). Assistantship is not a common practice in Isluga.
According to León Campbell, throughout the colonial era in all of Latin America, the male head of the family received reinforcement from both Church and State in determining the status of his offspring (Campbell 1985: 164). The present-day system in Isluga may be skewed towards patriliny, but Isluga society is not entirely characterized as ‘patrilineal and patriarchic’. In the past, the Inka system of kinship reckoning interpreted by Lounsbury suggests a system of bilateral filiation, which was matrilineal and patrilineal at the same time, because men considered themselves to be descended in the agnatic line and women in the uterine line (Lounsbury 1978: 1,000).14In her detailed study of ayllu Qaqachaka in Bolivia, Denise Arnold has demonstrated the complexities that are ‘generated by matrilineal descent-constructs and descent-ordered rules’ in matrilineal forms of social, political and kinship organization in a contemporary patrilineal setting (Arnold 1988: 3, original emphasis). Commenting that anthropologists have fre- quently assigned unequivocal political control to men in the Andes, she explores the contexts in which women’s political authority has important symbolic
functions that may be greater than that of their husbands.15In any case, the traditional annual elections to a one-year term of office in Isluga, as in other parts of the Andes, conferred prestige on the office bearers without necessarily con- centrating control in the hands of a few leaders. The dispersed, pastoral way of life in Isluga runs counter to the consolidation of power by a central authority. Yet, within the household, the father’s role as patriarch – traditionally thought to be characteristic of pastoral societies – cannot be taken for granted. Arnold investigates the matrilineal and patrilineal systems of descent that occur within Qaqachaka society in order to demonstrate that representations of kinship are ‘located not just in the kinship domain, but in the rituals, practices and metaphors of everyday life, and in both reproductive and productive spheres of activity’ (ibid.: 38). My appraisal of the marking ceremony in Isluga likewise emphasizes the processes of gendering that occur among lineages of both human and herd animal participants.
My rejection of the universality of Tapper’s argument concerning pastoralist societies should not be taken to imply that Isluga people do not differentiate between humanity and animality. The mythical origins of human beings and animals are associated with different features of the landscape (herd animals with juturi and human beings with t”aqsu). In addition, the Aymara language itself makes clear distinctions between human and animal.
The taming of camelids is not something which happened once and for all several millennia ago. It is a process by which herded animals are brought into a particular form of animal life. Moreover, it is a process that must be constantly renewed. During the wayñu ceremony in Isluga, the coming into sexual maturity of the young animals is recognized. This ceremony focuses on a perceived need to promote the regenerative, procreative vitality among camelids and sheep. It is undoubtedly an elaborate undertaking, although it is but one event in the process involving the maintenance of the social bonds of taming. It is an important part of the bonding between human beings and herded animals, the process of taming experienced by all camelids and sheep in Isluga. Llamas and alpacas are trained to behave in certain ways, and their human owners have certain expectations of them.
As Chapter 3 made clear, these social relations do not take place in a meaning- less environment. To a great extent, people understand their landscape through the herding of their camelids. Llamas and alpacas are closely associated with water, wet places and, metaphorically, with birds. In fact, bird feathers are seen as the counterpart of locks of fleece. However, llamas and alpacas receive the ritual name of ‘flower’ in the wayñu ceremony, thus symbolizing their potential for procreative fertility.
Such is the complexity of the marking ceremony as observed today in Isluga, it