The path of clouds

A new interpretation of the most famous cult in Piura opens up two theories.

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

AYABACA, Peru – Is the Señor Cautivo festivity a massive act of Catholic faith, or is it a reminiscence of ancient cults, what eradicated by the Spanish Conquest during the extirpation of idolatries, transformed in a completely new manifestation? Anthropologist Raúl Zevallos Ortiz published an essay suggesting the modern Señor Cautivo pilgrimage could have a remote origin in time.

 

According to Zevallos, during the Pre-Inca time, the people of Piura Department lowlands, mostly a desert, began to research where their existence source came from – water. Piura Coast is irrigated by two rivers: Piura and Chira.

 

The first one starts at actual Huancabamba Province southern sierra and is irregular flow, what means full in rainy months and almost dry during the lowwater. The second one has two sources: the most northern is in Loja, Ecuador, and the southern ones spread along the eastern portion of Ayabaca Province bordering to Ecuador.

 

Unlike the Piura, the Chira is regular flow, what means a constant stream around the year. Then, Zevallos suggests that, when people at lowlands followed up the rivers course uphill, arrived to Ayabaca Andes where they left diverse gifts as a thanksgiving. The archaeological evidence of such explorations are many pottery pieces from coastal people, what can be seen in Museo de Ayavaca.

 

Wet dreams… or dry nightmares?

The space’s promotor and curator Mario tabra Guerrero believes such pilgrimages could reach until the same moment of populating the zone, that he estimates in 11,000 years old. The best archaeological vestiges are the megalithic dolmens oofEl Toldo Mount, at the northeast of Ayabaca City, that seem to venerate an erect phallus. According to Tabra, this may consider as a concern of ancient locals to conserve the soil fertility.

 

By its edaphological configuration, the soil aroun Ayabaca City seems to be clay loam, what would guarantee that fertility to grow food. But it would be impossible if there wouldn’t be water. Up to today, it continues being a concern for local rural people.

 

Along the way to Ayabaca, it can see corn plantations, a crop lasting four months to grow and to be harvested, but that is only cropped if there is enough water. And what remains in the zone are large irrigation works, like there is it at the lowlans, indeed. The inexistence of rains is a grudge for local farmers because they leave without food and funds. And the zone around Ayabaca is one of the poorest in Piura.

 

Catholic Pantheism?

Whether it rain sor not, the water is one of the most main concerns of local people, as much as it turned so in a faith matter. Every Holy Week, it’s possible to see how they carry gifts –seeds and even water—to Señor Cauttivo intended to praise its constant supply, as Manuel Vegas Castillo Pedagogical College’s Principal Efraín Ríos Castillo notes at this town.

 

The teacher sustains this habit could be a reminiscence of the pago (gift) to mamapacha (Mother Earth) ancient ritual, only that is performed today by the Señor Cautivo icon. And this wouldn’t be the only example. Along the conquered lands, the Spaniards made a big effort to take away the mostly pantheistic aborigin cults, unsuccessfully. Then, they tried to take elements of these cults and combined them to Catholic values. Such process is known as synchretism.

 

One of the most popular and successful, from the Hispanic point of view, is Guadalupe Virgin in Mexico City, which sanctuary, according to local authorities, overcomes 20 million visitors every year. The Ríos’ theory would strengthen if the local agricultural calendar of the last five centuries is determined, the fact of the Holy Week gifts that coincides to the end of rainy season in the zone, and, probably, the success of a harvest campaigns, the corn for example, that was one of the most extended in Peruvian Andes since Pre-Inca times, and that requires a regular dose of water along its vegetative life.

 

The icon of an ancient people

There are not oficial tolls of how many people attend to Señor Cautivo pilgrimages, but what was it synchretized on this sculpture?Raúl Zevallos suggests the icon could be inspired on diverse Ayawaka Icons, a tribe that lived, in principle, in what is actual Ayabaca District territory, before 16^th century A.D.

 

The new entry of the Quechuan name is sacred place of our ancestors, what for Zevallos seems to be consistent with the destination of pilgrimages. One of the most important religious convergence centers is Aypaté Mount, that is named like a mythical character, Aypatiq, that seems to mean the good mighty.

 

The legend says he was impetuos, that deserved the respect of the local cooraca or indigenous leader when he got carrying a deer by peaceful means in exchange of an engagement with his daughter. Mario Tabra stresses the deer was a worshipped animal by the ancient people because of its agility, apparent innocence, and majesty, so it was considered as the perfect symbol of harmony with Nature.

 

However, Aypatiq was indomitable so he used to be tied in hands for staying under control. Inclusive, graves found at Aypate Mount base show corpses with tied hands at the same style like Señor Cautivo. Zevallos says all those icons were transferred to the crown potencies and the tied hands that the wood statue has.

 

Also, the Christ’s face has shiny blood drops. The detail, for Zevallos, seems not to be randomized. Near El Toldo Mount are Samanga Petroglyphs, drawings carved on the rock, studied by the Italian anthropologist Mario Polia Meconi, and that seem to synthetize the cosmovision of Pre-Inca people. In the middle of them, there is a being with big drops meaning between heaven and land like praising the element liquid not to lack.

 

Although for Polia, the petroglyph seems to mark the transit of Sun through the sky, and this star is key for the plants growth, and even the water generation. The rest of the puzzle could be completed by the pilgrimage, that in the Zevallos reasoning, could remember the ancient expeditions to look for and to praise for the fluid.

 

Hispanic heritage

Although he doesn’t want to discard it completely, efraín Ríos disagrees this theory because the water pilgrimages could be eliminated as a pagan cult after the Spanish arrival in 1532 A.D. The actual pilgrimages come since 1948.

 

If such displacements are a cultist synchretism, why weren’t they perform or promote during 400 years?Ríos thinks rather the pilgrimage is a Spanish heritage because it was one of its most important faith habits in Spain, like the famous pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Galicia.

 

Hydrotheism?

Where Zevallos, Ríos, and Tabra seem to coincide is there could be actually a Pre-Inca cult to water as life granter. In fact, the actual Ayabaca City is almost at the summit of Calvario or Campanario Mount, that belongs to cloud forest ecosystem, one of the two water generators in Piura, next to jalca (also called páramo).

 

The cloud forest takes the humidity from the clouds, carry it into the soil, and makes it to break out as pooqios or springs, like the ones that can be seen across Ayabaca City. But if you want to see the Nature in action, you can go five minutes away the urban zone, in Yacupampa (water flat in English) Village, protected by Yantuma (diadem in English) Mount, the last Ayawaka bastion, that resisted to be conquered by the Incas.

 

Between this mount and the near Chacas (bridge in English), it’s possible to see the dance of clouds every afternoon, the humidity masses from the Pacific and the Amazon colliding, that is captured by the vegetation of both hulks, and that give birth to Macará and Quiroz Rivers downhill.

 

 

Yantuma is considered as an apu or mountain’s protector god up to actual time, with Chacas and Calvario. In front of them, at the other side of the valley, you can look at Balcón, Aypaté, and Granadillo. At the base of the first one was the Old Ayabaca City or Ayavaca Viejo, closer to the apu that seemed to give the water.

 

Apparently purposed to extirpate an idolatry, the Spaniards could have sculpt the image of Pilar Virgin, aand force the migration of the people to the actual location. The same technique was used near Ayabaca, in Chocán, where the used images were Saint Francis and Very Pure Virgin.

 

The common issue of all is a source of water generation, people who worshipped it, and jealous Catholics to take the paganism away the Americas. In every case, a legend on the flesh image that turns stone was created, demanding to build a temple, and settling a town in consequence.

 

In Ayabaca case, Pilar Virgin seemed not to get such goal successfully, so in mid-18^th century, Father García Guerrero ordered to sculpt the Señor Cautivo, according to Zevallos, by using smooth Ayawaka iconographic reminiscenses. But Ríos observes the same statue can be seen in Jaén, Peru, as the Lord of Huamantanga, and the Ayawaka tribe seems to be extended, in the best scenario, to the Piura western piedmont.

 

The undeniable fact is the Señor Cautivo pilgrimage is one of the most crowded of Peruvian Northern, with worshippers who come from so far as Tacna, Peru/Chile Border, or Ecuador and even Colombia, plus every corner of Piura.

 

And for the ones with much faith, the energy and the piety inside the Cautivo’s temple are also undeniable, and that unexplainable power that spreads that statue’s too penetrating eyes for someones, wwhich attribute many miracles to it, and what, in some way, even the clouds seem to go for meeting Him.

 

© 2013 Sirius Audiovisuales y Multimedia. The photographs featured on this entry are Marco Mejía, Franco Alburqueque, and Nelson Peñaherrera.