Satisfacción del Usuario

The dead are feared and respected in Apiao. Just like San Antonio, the local miraculous saint, they are perceived to be powerful and revengeful. This chapter describes the beliefs surrounding death and the dead in Apiao. The dead have ambivalent powers: they can be benevolent and vengeful at the same time. They can be placated with proper funeral celebrations, and prayer sessions, called novenas. The novenas must be repeated for the first death anniversary, and every time it is considered necessary. The novenas imply inviting and attending to many people, and spending vast amounts of money to honour the dead. The celebrations that accompany the prayers -ritual consumption of food and alcohol- allow individuals to strengthen their alliances with other individuals, in respect of the strict reciprocity rule that governs interaction in Apiao. Offerings and novenas represent the chance the living have to negotiate with the supernatural realm, to which the dead, called souls (animas) belong, offering prayer rituals in exchange for peace, tranquillity, and protection. These celebrations also enact the fundamental value of actively remembering, a way to perpetuate relations.

The chapter starts with a few episodes concerning people and guilty dogs. The attitude people have towards the death of animals is described, drawing on the cases of killer dogs that had to be executed by their owners to prevent them from doing further damage.

Later on I discuss the reasons why the dead are spoken of as very frightening. A description of the funeral celebrations inserts in the picture the fundamental value of solidarity for the Apiao community.

Death, people and their animals

Apiao households are made out of a building, the land that surrounds it, the people who live in it, and their animals. In Apiao, people and animals are strongly connected: in fact people’s daily routine is regulated by the household animals and their subsistence is very much dependent on their animals: chickens, pigs, sheep, cows, and finally dogs. Chickens and pigs are fed every day by the women, who spend a considerable amount of their time preparing pigs meals. Cows are usually kept in lands away from the household, so a member of the family would go to check and count them once or twice per day, and the same would be done with the sheep. Women are in charge of slaughtering chickens and fish but not other animals, which are always killed by men. The women would be present to help, by holding the animal while it is been slaughtered, but the actual killing would always be performed by a man. Women would cut a fish head while the fish is still alive and jumping, would boil crabs alive, or slaughter a chicken very quickly by cutting its throat, and holding it while the blood gathers in a bowl. The procedure would be similar with the other animals, which are generally stabbed at the heart. I have seen several animal slaughtering (carneos), events that usually involve at least two households, but I never observed any feeling of repugnance, unease or embarrassment for the act of killing. I have described in a previous chapter how Pablo, the newly wed young man, had to perform the killing of his big pig for the first time. On that occasion, his clumsy attempts to stab the animal in the right spot were received with much giggling and loud laughter by his friends. But in that case, it was his opportunity to show his status as an independent adult and he had to prove that he was perfectly able to perform an adult’s task. An adult man is expected to be able to kill an animal – especially a pig, something that is done on a regular basis. Only once I came across a man who could not do it, and I was told by his mother that he was ‘useless at killing animals59

’ (inútil para carnear).

While chickens, pigs, sheep and cows provide meat and their raison d’ être is basically to be consumed, dogs are weighted differently in people’s daily routines. Each household in Apiao has at least one, but usually several dogs. The dogs are guard dogs and are never allowed into the house. They would announce visitors by

59 _{Somebody later pointed out to me that to describe someone as inútil, useless, was a strong statement,} bordering on the insult.

barking and very often would attack a newcomer, unless the host is quick enough to prevent this from happening, calling his dog and urging him to stop. Dogs are considered very faithful and are, in a sense, part of the family. They are always given names and nicknames, and they would be talked about very regularly mentioning them by name. Whenever a member of the family goes somewhere on his own, he will always bring along the dog for company, calling him by his name and urging him to follow. The dog would always wait outside the visited household until his owner comes out, and then they would walk back together. Dogs are always urged to accompany children, and I was always encouraged to take the dog with me to ‘accompany me’.

While the above-mentioned animals are considered exclusively in utilitarian terms (they provide meat), dogs are viewed as in-between creatures: despite belonging undeniably to the animal world, they are somehow viewed as closer to men, and are appreciated and valued for special reasons. In fact, beside offering company, they are the ultimate providers of protection, as they guard and protect the household precincts - Apiao people would feel very vulnerable without their dogs at their house entrances - both during the day and at night.

The episodes that follow are stories of dogs that allowed their beastly nature to overcome the quasi-human aspect of their kind, and as such, became highly anti- social creatures, verging on the monstrous.

Episode of Toby the dog

Early one morning, while I was still in bed, I heard someone whistling outside my bedroom window, at the back of the house. Such is the way to announce oneself in Apiao, so I got up to call up my hosts, who were obviously sound asleep and did not notice that someone was calling. It was don Daniel, a neighbour and relative very close my family. It was 7.30 am. He was allowed in the kitchen, and while the head of the family hastened to make the fire, his wife organised mate and sliced bread to offer the guest. ‘I came to offer meat’ he said, ‘porque me tocó la mala’, ‘because I was struck by evil fate’. People do not generally go visiting so early in the morning, unless there is a serious reason, involving a life-threatening accident – either of a human being, or of a valuable animal. The night before, don Daniel and his wife had heard

dogs barking and they thought it was Toby, their dog, playing with their neighbours’ dogs; but they decided to get up and double-check; and at the light of the full moon they saw a carnage: about four of their sheep had been killed, two more were severely wounded and one of them, pregnant, had already given birth to a premature lamb who was not going to survive. Apparently Felicia, don Daniel’s wife, spotted Toby, their dog, the moment they arrived at the massacre place. It was night-time, they had no torchlight, and yet she was sure that she saw her dog, feasting on their own sheep. The middle-aged couple spent the rest of the night butchering the carcasses of the dead animals, in order to be able to eat the meat; and Felicia tried to feed a little lamb that was left motherless. Early in the morning, don Daniel had come to the household of my hosts, his closer relatives and friends, to offer some meat and to ask for help. He told us the story in detail, while drinking mate, and we all waited for the heavy rain to stop, before joining him at his household. Once we all got there, the two men removed the fleece of the animals and started cutting and dividing the meat. The intestines and the entrails were kept aside, in a basket, to get rid of them later on. ‘A dead animal, it’s not good to eat the insides’ they explained (Un animal muertecino, no sirve comer las partes interiores).

Such accidents happen quite often. Cows can fall out of the ravine and injure their legs; more commonly sheep are attacked by dogs at night and they are bitten so badly that they lose too much blood and they just die. If the animal is still alive, the owner slaughters it at once, and the meat could be sold to fellow islanders, in the same way as when an animal is being slaughtered with the purpose of selling the meat. If an animal has recently died and it is still warm, they would still butcher it, but this meat would be kept for the family circle, and never sold, since it is considered very bad to offer for sale the meat of a dead animal. I accompanied don Daniel to get rid of the contents of his basket at a nearby piece of land, in a hole in the ground. After throwing it in the hole, he pushed it further down with a long stick. ‘Now it’s fine’. We then returned to his household land, where the other people were tending to the wounds of the sheep. I kept following don Daniel, when I noticed that he had planted several fruit trees on a little plot of land beside his household, and I enquired about those trees. He had re-planted them after having taking them away from a previous location, he said; so, to sustain them, he had organised a system of poles to which he had tied each one of the trees with pieces of cloth. While he was patiently explaining

something that was incredibly obvious to him, I noticed that he was tying a rope in a noose. His gestures were slow, his attitude very calm, he was taking his time, measuring his actions. All this, as if to put some temporal distance between himself and what he felt he had to do. Toby the dog was right there, by the fruit trees, and he started to play with the rope. The dog’s destiny was signed: engaging in a play far too dangerous, he had killed the sheep of his owners, and he was now considered untrustworthy. When dogs kill once, they just keep doing it, people say: once they taste blood, they enjoy it and want more. And, as the man told me, ‘If it’s your sheep to be killed, it’s just loss; but sheep that belong to others, you must pay them back’. No-one can really afford that, so to avoid such a scary prospect, the culprit dogs are always killed. Toby the dog was a particularly nice dog: still young, he was very playful, very loyal, and accompanied the couple in their everyday duties. I tried and asked don Daniel if he could possibly spare Toby’s life, with a trick: I suggested he could keep him tied at night (when such sheep killings usually happen), so that he could still act as the household’s guard dog, and accompany them during the day. But don Daniel did not seem to agree; he thought that it would have been too troublesome; and there was little point in avoiding or postponing the right thing to do: kill him. If he had spared the dog’s life and he would have killed again, he would be doubly responsible for allowing a killer dog to live.

While he calmly put the rope around the dog’s neck, I asked him if he had done this before, and he firmly said ‘never’. It was the very first time for him. And then, keeping his pensive attitude he asked me to please go for his wife, and ask her to confirm that he had to kill the dog. I rushed into the kitchen, where the women were busy peeling potatoes. Felicia told me that she left the decision to him: ‘Of course I love my dog, but I don’t want to be responsible if something happens!’ I rushed back to the man, who was still in his thoughtful mind, and in the same position I had left him, with the rope in his hands. ‘Excuse me, be patient, and go and ask her to come here, it’s better if she comes…’. Loud laughter welcomed me when I entered the kitchen again, and Felicia, who wasn’t laughing at all, stared at me desolate and impotent, and she came out with me. ‘Tell me Felicia are you sure you have seen the dog last night?’ ‘Yes, of course’ ‘Should I kill him, then?’ ‘Yes, I don’t feel sorry at all (no me da lastima na’), it’s dangerous, he can do it again’. ‘Fine’, he said, and she

ran back to the house60

. I ran as well, but in the opposite direction, towards the neighbours’ household, and stopped for a bit of crying. I was very fond of the dog, and I was a bit confused by this announced death. The neighbours saw me going towards their house, and asked me from a distance if don Daniel was actually killing the dog. The screams of the dying dog replied to their question, and they commented that it was such a lovely dog.

A few minutes later, I joined my host family and we headed towards home, passing by the tree with poor Toby hanging from it. The children stared at it speechless; my landlord, a sack full of meat in his shoulder, asked don Daniel how much they owed him for the meat. ‘Nothing, he said, ‘just take it’. ‘Fine, thank you then, uncle’. That was one of the few occasions where I heard a kinship term being uttered. It was an extra sign of respect, marking the gratitude for the great amount of meat received. Having been struck by evil fate, as the man had put it early that morning, he had shared the meat of his dead animals with his close family.

On the topic of dead animals, it is as if people get accustomed to the idea of having to separate from their animals at some point. Once the old dog of my household disappeared for a couple of days, and nobody knew what had happened to him. My family simply thought that he was dead, and spoke about it without any grief or nostalgia. When he eventually reappeared, he was jokingly called finaito61_{, the ‘little}

late’ for a while. I could observe an interesting attitude towards a dog’s death once more later, when my landlord had to get rid of one of the dogs of the house, a bitch called Mueve-mueve. The name of the dog itself caused much laughter, as she was given the suggestive nickname of a local woman, who tended to sway her hips while walking.

That time, once again in the middle of the night, my landlords heard dogs barking, and thought that it could have well been that their sheep were being attacked. So they went out to have a look, and indeed they found what they later described as ‘the tragedy’. Two lambs and a sheep were torn in pieces, and once again, the house dog

60 _{The woman pretended she was not affected by the prospect of losing her dog to facilitate her} husband’s duty. She was, in fact, very fond of the dog, and she kept remembering him way after his death.

was spotted on the scene. This time though the bitch was killed immediately. ‘We should have killed her a good while ago, because we had already seen her’ my landlady told me. ‘This time there was no excuse: I took her and hanged her at once’, my landlord said. ‘She knew she was guilty: she didn’t object (esa no chilló); she was dead before I hanged her’. This attribution of the sense of guilt to the bitch is very interesting. While the dead lambs were pitied and referred to as ‘innocent, guiltless creatures’, the bitch was responsible for the tragedy and deserved to die immediately. The accident happened at night, thus in the morning all the family received the news from my landlord and his wife. They were very upset for the loss, and for having had to spend the night slaughtering at least one sheep, in order to recover the meat.

The children, two boys of 9 and 11 years, and I went to have a look at Mueve-mueve. There she was, completely stiff, under a tree, with a rope tied around her neck. The children poked her with a stick, turned her round, observed her breasts and commented on her muzzle, dirty with the blood of the lambs, and soiled with the food that she had been fed the previous night. They laughed, and made fun of the bitch, calling her ‘the late’ (finaita), and making fun of the way she looked. Then they mounted her on a pole through her fastened legs, as if she was a hunting trophy, and carried on the pole towards a hole that their father had dug. ‘Should I throw her in?’ (la largo?) asked one of them, and the other said ‘No! Wait for me!’ and they did it together. They adjusted the dead dog in the hole and their father added the dead lambs, and finally covered the hole with some earth.

Later that day I was told many stories of dogs that kill huge numbers of sheep, and very often the owners refuse to admit their responsibility, and do not kill the guilty dogs. ‘It’s a shame to kill an animal’ (da pena), but with guilt…..then, no. The bitch knew she was guilty! And the owner does not give her orders’ (el dueño no la