mishqui-yacu, sweet water - IFAD

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Much of the traditional medicine centres on concepts concerning
loss and gain of energy. Curative powers are invoked from Pacha
Mama (Mother Earth) in the form of herbs and from Mama Killa
(Mother Moon) and Taita Inte (Father Sun) in the form of healing
rays. Healing is practised through massages, immersion in herbal
baths, showering, 14 passing guinea pigs over afflicted areas, exposure
to sun or moon, and the drinking of various herbal decoctions.
Healing sessions are often carried out in the house of the yachak,
but also in the few, prestigious houses of healing, jambi wasi.
The headquarters of the Unión Provincial de Comunas y
Cooperativas del Cañar (UPCCC), the most influential indigenous
organization in Cañar, called Nucanchic Huasi, houses a recently
constructed jambi wasi. A woman healer, Mercedes Chuma, attends
patients on a daily basis. Besides serving as a centre for traditional
medicine, UPCCC’s jambi wasi also functions as a place where serious
diseases can be identified and patients passed on to modern
health care. 15
Any development project intent on interacting with Cañari culture
should be inscribed within the Cañari landscape. To a large extent,
the surrounding landscape conditions thinking and acting within
traditional Cañari culture.
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The yachak sprinkles agua ardiente (strong alcohol made from sugarcane), through
his/her lips over the patient.
Interview with Mercedes Chuma.
Mummies were not buried in the ground, but placed in natural cavities. The cult of the
dead had an enormous importance in Andean societies. Corpses, mallquí in Quichua,
were considered to be intermediaries between huacas and the living. Huaca is anything
endowed with spirtual force, like gods and spirits, but also mountains, lagoons and
other powerful places and phenomena. As they were connected with huacas, it was
natural to place the mallquís within the spiritual realm of the mountains (Bernand
(1996), pp. 74-79).
Landivar (1997), pp. 34-54.
A Cañari author, Luis Bolivar Zaruma, seeks the roots for the Cañari tendency to individualize
nature and natural phenomena in Quichua, the language spoken by Cañaris.
“In this language, and others spoken on the American continent, the content, the meaning
and what is indicated can only be described by using things in the real world.
Occidental theology and philosophy were not assimilated by Cañaris because Quichua
is a concrete language consisting of concrete symbols describing the world and
things; there does not exist a capacity for abstraction” (Bolivar Zaruma (1980), p. 25).