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Barbasco Achuar Story

Barbasco  Achuar Story
In the Achuar version of this story there are two hunters rather than one and the hunters are named Timiu, Lonchocarpus species, and Masu, Clibadium surinamense (Descola 1994:280-81). Although the Achuar version does not mention the sound of the frog, in a Shuar version both brothers joke together about the frog’s erotic call expressed in Shuar as “kaka kaká kaká (Pellizzaro 1979:115). When the woman appeared the older brother (Timiu in the Achuar version) resisted, sticking to the task of hunting while the younger brother Masu succumbed to the seduction of the atan woman. It was his penis that was stretched out and thrown into the rivers to become anacondas. In Quichua such joking is called quilla-chi-na: (flirting, seducing, literally: “making someone to be quilla”). A shinzhi aicha yaya (strong hunter) would have resisted the temptation to make sexual jokes about the forest. The idle sexual joking had consequences which spiraled into the sexual encounter and finally into transformation. The two brothers became the plants Masu, a weak fish poison that can only kill minnows in relatively still shallow water; and Timiu, a potent poison that can kill larger fish. While both could now be seen as aicha yaya (a complementary term for great hunters and fishermen) plants useful in the male task of fishing, Masu is a weaker fisherman because as a human lover he was more of a quilla, while Timiu is a stronger fisherman because as a human man he was more able to control his sexuality.

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