NATURAL ENGAGEMENTS AND ECOLOGICAL AESTHETICS ...

other food in return for permission to hold celebrations where there would be cane alcohol and
dancing (see Oberem 1980: 113):
They accompany the procession singing refrains (un recitado), to the rhythm of a
small drum, in which they would say to the priest in these or similar terms (for
these depend on the imagination of those that improvise them): Take our goods
that we bring you, the fruits of our labor and our sweat, gorge on them you sly bas-
tard (hártate pícaro) and thief etc., etc. The person that comes up with these
insults is regarded as the most able singer (Jiménez de la Espada 1928: 359-360).
The clever deception of the nephews captures this attitude of resistance well.
Tribute and repartos, however unfair, were a necessary evil; the Runa were dependent on
this system for a variety of manufactured items. However unjust –indeed, prices of items under
the latter system were as much as fourteen times cost (Muratorio 1987: 91)— exchange con-
formed to a comprehensible and norm-governed system. Similarly, today in Ávila, various trib-
ute-like payments are necessary for proper exchange to be possible with the beings of the forest.
For example, when a tapir is killed a tip of the ear is cut off and from the hoof a bit of the hide is
also taken. A stick is inserted in the ground near the house of the person that killed the animal
and the strips of hide and flesh are place in a perpendicular fashion in a slit at the top of the stick,
making a cross. Alternatively, a payment of corn or some necklace beads can be left. These are
thought of as payments (pagrana) offered to the game master in exchange for allowing the Runa
to kill such a large animal. The game master will use the flesh and hide to make a new tapir and
the beads to make its intestines. 99
Failure to make this payment can even result in the game master coming to kill the hunter.
However, a more likely punishment is that, in the absence of the other offerings, the “game mas-
ter will take” (amu apan) the meat of the killed animal in order to make other tapirs. If this hap-
pens, the supplies of meat will “rot (it will literally decompose into foam) and become flavorless”
(“putsucalla upa tucun”). Weighing as much as two-hundred-and-fifty kilos, tapirs are the
largest forest mammals. As such, the efficient processing of their meat virtually requires their
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