The Nervous System - Department of English and Comparative ...

Fhe Nervous System
The Legacy of Conquest
rugged and timeless than the stones of memory themselves, but completely
dwarfed bv them.
"Yes, when I was healing with yape," the old Indian man from the
Putumayo was saying, "I saw it all before, all these cliffs, all these stones."
I was taken aback. Yage is the most important medicine in the Putumayo.
It comes from a vine in the forest and with its visions, the healer, as much
as the sick person who also drinks it, can obtain insight into the cause of
serious misfortune and power to overcome it. Such power, however, does
not necessarily come from seeing the causes of misfortune but instead can
come from having a particular image, a pinta or painting as it is referred to
commonly, and one of the ways of becoming a healer is to buy such pintas.
Thus when the old healer said that he had seen Machu Picchu in his yageinduced
visioning, you have to understand that this means something more
than merely seeing something, because it is potentially an empowering and
even a curing image.
o o
How wonderful, 1 thought, in the very remoteness of his lowland forests
the old man able to see this incredible place by means of mystical insights
given to the guardians of ancient American shamanic lore. It made me
curious. I wanted to better ascertain his connection to this Machu Picchu
place high in the sun and the cold wind, so ponderously still in the muteness
of its massive stones. Like a flash it occurred to me. "Look at the size of
those stones," I said. "How was it ever possible to build like that?" I was
echoing the newspaper, evoking national discursive formations much bigger
than my own limited imaginings.
"That's easy to explain," he replied without so much as a blink. "The
Spanish built all this." And he waved his arm in a peremptory gesture
encompassing the great vista.
"What do you mean?" I feebly responded. I felt cheated.
"It was with whips," he said in a distinctly disinterested tone. "The
Spanish threatened the Indians with the whip and that's how they carried
those stones and set them in place."
As far as he was concerned this was a thoroughly unremarkable event,
just as Machu Picchu itself was unremarkable. "That's exactly what the
Spanish did to my father-in-law," he added. "An Indian went and told them
that he was a sorcerer and so they punished him by making him carry stones
to build their church. They said they'd whip him if he didn't do what they
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