Vilcabamba: Sentitive Research

2008-10-19T18:14:00.000-07:00

5/22/08

Tour Falco

Bartoldo—name of truck

sandflies gather around our chemical messages

senan= little old wise man

pluri-nationality—

Beban—foreign vegetation

Africa miniflora

ultraviolet

green

destroy forest --> fire

free enterprise

no original vegetation

displaced, relocated—

original vegetation/introduced vegetation

growing tomatos—“a very painstaking job

of tying knots—“

live fence posts

Orlando Falco, Senan Gardener, Hester Kroeze and Maarten (?)

O: The details of anything tend to change, you know.

S: What is this plant to our right?

O: This is the castor oil bean, castor bean.

S: Ahhhhh.

O: It’s been introduced. It’s poisonous but it is medicinal if you know how to use it. The castor oil. For the liver.

O: Birdwatchers and travelers of the earth consider the Cloud Forest vegetation of the world the coral reefs of the land. Colorful, diverse, and attractive. It’s one of the most panoramic and attractive areas that I can think of as an ecosystem in the world as they would originally have been forested, you know, forested mountains with echoes of birds and animals reverberating everywhere. And a lot, a lot of epiphytes, plants who are attached, not parasites, but epiphytes, which are sitting, using another plant for support. It’s a three dimensional world, the forest in the tropics. So many plants live on top of others. You could say easily a third of the species. In some cases even more, in some cases a bit less. So you can see the surface expression of some earth minor faults, a crack, in this case a, I remember checking on a topographic map of the military once I grabbed, I think I have it at home, and it showed, look at the birds plunging there, it showed this section as a fault that runs right underneath the village and it shows up as a dip in that ridge across the village, where the road goes to Loja. So it is about three, four miles long. And it’s one of hundreds, of course, of these minor faults, running the length of the Andes. Faults become, like everything, more abundant when they’re smallest and least abundant when they’re biggest. But some giant faults maybe hundreds of miles long, if not occasionally up to, perhaps, many hundreds. And these faults are crunching, in the way that the Andes react to the compression effect between South American plate and the Oceanic plate, in this case the Nazca plate off shore, in the Pacific. The Nazca plate is crunching up against South America, this much per year, 3-4 inches per year. And South America is going the opposite direction by less, a lot less, almost an inch a year, on the average. So the conflict of the two plates creates, by plate tectonics, the whole Andes. If it is not against the Nazca, it is against the Pacific plate or against the Cocos plate. The Pacific is the hugest most, the biggest plate on earth.

M: So are the mountains also still moving then? Because of the effect of the plates moving?

O: Yes, the mountains are, in a way, the effect of these motions at the edge, between two major plates, in this case.

H: They’re still growing, right?

O: They are actively growing but at the same time they’re actively decreasing by erosion, by the transport of material to the ocean. So wherever the equilibrium is in the favor of growth, like Himalayas, the mountains on the average, still are on the average gaining by uplift what they lose by downfall and erosion. And the positive therefore is constructive. When forest, when mountains like this have remained relatively stable, with no new volcanoes, no new lavas filling the surface, no new upwelling of magma from below the surface, but erosion takes the upper hand and the mountains get smaller and smaller and smaller, like here. This is an older section of the Andes. These are, therefore, the remains of preexisting loftier, higher mountains, more then two million years ago and before. Somewhere, if you go back 20 to 30 million years, all hell was breaking loose at different times, around here. With active volcanoes and growing part of the Andes. But that growth has picked up pace to the north and to the south of us, Cordillera Blanca, the inter-Andean corridor where Quito and Ambato and Rio Bamba sit on. In other words, from Azuay, the transverse ridge of Azuay, Cuenca, to the north, the Andes are actively growing over and above, like Tungurahua, the deep down grading, except piece meal differences here and there, but from here to the north, all the north Peru low, as it is known, is an elder, 30 to 40 million years, or up to 50 million years, originating Andes. The people even say that the Amazon river, before 60 million years ago, instead of going east to the Atlantic, was going west through here more or less, into the Pacific, and it was that rising of the Andes and the tilting of the whole continent on the inner sea that for 5 or so million years, and still on swampy as it is, made the transition of these motions which created the Andes within the last 80 to 90 million years, all over the place, from the oldest to the newest.

M: Where was the inner sea?

O: In the Amazon. That swampy area, that’s why you have, lots of fish there are evolved from salt water fish, including dolphins, fresh water dolphins, skates and rays.

…

O: It is that gradual transition from sea to fresh water facing, the gradual transformation of that immense basin over the last hundred million years, that developed all of these richness of fauna, many of which originate in Oceanic sources, right?

H: Is it also so that, this is an older part, and here to Riobamba and Banos is a newer part, where the volcanoes are more active?

O: Exactly…

H: But…

O: But not all of it. Not always.

H: These used to be volcanoes as well.

O: Of course, yeah, inactive, downgraded, covered up with metamorphic belts of the Andes. This is another thing: volcanoes are not the only thing that made different kinds of rocks. Compression and heat, in the process, sinking, rising, moving, mulching, melting, which is constantly chemically transforming. Most of the rocks here are transformed by surface action, are near surface action, they are mostly metamorphic rocks, which are metamorphosed from sedimentary or igneous, by the process of compression and heat over time.

H: Which are these?

O: Those, igneous…mostly, because they are sea floor spreading, they are areas of…

H: Is that the same?

O: Yeah, igneous, it’s simply because igneous rocks have been deeper down, heated to molten condition, and they came to the surface first time, they’re virgin rock. That virgin rock degrades, chemically down grades, crunches up, changes, compresses, and turns into sedimentary, what we got here, and metamorphic, the chunks that are part of the sedimentary material that were formed maybe a mile deep or two, or half a mile, in the process of Andean compression between the South American plate and the Pacific plate. The Pacific plate being heavier, ducks under the Continental plate, because it is denser. It comes with igneous rock, denser, heavier then metamorphic and sedimentary. So it has to go down and the other over rides. So it crunches up. And there are lots of lots of faults along the way, including this fault, running north-south more or less, but many faults can be transverse and, but notice, in general the Andes have a main order going north-south, perpendicular to the compression force, and then, the ribs, from the dorsal Andean spine, the ribs transverse east-west like these ridges, at the end of one of them, down there, is Rumi Wilco. That scooped up place there, filled with gullies. Gully 1, gully 2, gully 3, the main one, and gully 4, in front of that shinny tin roof of sorts, but a bit further down. Look at the antenna of my neighbor, down there. And then the cliffs of the approximation trail and the flood plain that develops, where the greenest part of the village really is there. We are lucky to be where people don’t want to be, that’s why I live by the river, I prefer to deal with rivers then people, and so we put our house on stilts, enough to label it the ‘pole house’, and we live on the flood plain. The rivers coming down from the Andes, on the way to the Pacific, leave in the first resting spot, where the angle of water-drop decreases.

H: Where is the north?

O: That’s north. We’re going south. That’s east and that’s west. And so these rivers are going a short distance to the west, but over the top of those mountains, every drop of water that makes it to the Amazon has to travel at least three thousand five hundred kilometers even from here, four thousand to get to the Atlantic ocean. So the Continental divide of America, South America is tucked against the western edge of the continent. And over these mountains civilizations of human beings developed, and now we are getting the better picture of it, over and above archeological, modern western convolutions, people have been around for tens of thousands of years in America, not just the last 11 to 13 thousand years, then came the founding fathers, and the pilgrims and all of that. Finding their ready-made land for them my ass, they took over, with steel, the cross or whatever it was like everybody else.

…

O: So the melting of the ice of Podocarpus, which today there isn’t any, but during the ice age the top of the mountains were covered with ice, glaciers, and these U-shaped valleys are left. The melting of these glaciers created, in cyclic waves, because the seasons have been always there, these intermittent big water washers, mud slides, marais, filling these valleys hundreds of feet, and then the valleys, in the inter-glacial, since they receive a lot less material from the highlands, the erosion wins over deposition, except for garbage. Look at it here. Let’s take a look, this is well worth for you to see, what the modern world’s action, including tourism garbage.

Oh my god.

O: This is a relatively new garbage dump of Vilcabamba, which is now becoming a sham…becoming? Ha! Here the people started living off the garbage, that’s when you know there’s lots of garbage, when people begin to live off the garbage.

Oh my god.

O: Look at the view. I would make in this spot, this very spot, a big nice veranda, with some coffee and marmalades and juice and this and that and tables to enjoy the view, the sun rises from behind you and the sun sometimes gorgeously sets in front of you, and this is the first time that from Vilcabamba you are high enough and behind the Mandango to be able to take a peak to the West and those mountains out there are the Inca Trail, the ancient Inca highway that moved from Cuzco to Cajamarca to Saraguro and on to Cuenca, all the way to Quito and south of Columbia, and men went over those mountains, and here it is not difficult to see, archeologists have been doing research, they know, they proposed it, although remains are hazy…so there is archeological interpretation and geologic and the beauty and there’s lots to interpret or show to people here. Instead, we are in the pitiable condition, including tourism, which never asks “what do they do with my garbage in Vilcabamba,” proper zone of Podocarpus National Park. They just throw it, ends up here. Maybe a 5^th or a 6^th of all garbage these days may be touristic garbage, from people all over the world, who pay no fee to the people who deal, like them, with their garbage. So it is. We’re all in the wrong here, not just Ecuador. I just wanted to let you know that the government is made up of people who are not ecologists or able-minded in understanding long term consequences, they are chosen for a few years, they do their thing mostly indoors or inside the village, out of sight out of mind, they simply ignore these places, and this is a policy of the government, because there is the lowest investment in garbage management, there’s always a shortage of money in governments like this. Then this is the best solution, just find a grove on the mountains, throw it in, and let nature do the rest. And set fire regularly to it, set fire. This is the windward side of Vilcabamba, the Valley of Longevity. Thanks to the health, water, and air. So all the wind, especially in the dry season, is smoldering this, takes the smoke right into the valley, and it pollutes the transparency of the air, which is good for picture taking, but worse, people breath the air, with toxic fumes. It’s an insidious, silent poisoning process. And to make matters worse, we’re in the buffer zone of a national park, and we’re in a recently declared “Earth Biosphere Reserve.” All of this southern Ecuador chunk, limiting Peru, all the way from Saraguro to the border, was this year declared by the UNESCO a “World Biosphere Reserve” and a cultural reserve, it’s all part of it, with the people and everything of Saraguro, I have the, in my house, the declaration and all the details. So, we are the first polluters of waters that people who live down stream from us, we’re a mile high, as the rivers go into the ocean they flow past cities, towns, villages. So here’s Vilcabamba and its tourism poisoning the water of the people downstream, and the air of the very people that…policy of the government. This is one of the major dramas of societies worldwide, the incredible volume of garbage. All of this didn’t exist here, this is a one time use, a hamburger, a little bit of chips, french fries, or water, water containers, food containers, dog food containers, containers and containers and containers, all kinds of things. And the people today simply live like there is no problem, we just worry about our own life. I find it very serious the problem and we are to be blamed. Generations coming up are going to not believe the way we treated the earth.

…

O: Lots of chemicals dilute in that rainwater and they end up polluting the entire length of the rivers, and this is only one village, and there’s another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another. We are now this week, we have the news, that the province of Zamora, which is a visitor site, gold-mining place, famous, has the policy of the municipio to dump their garbage, 2,000 tons a month to the river. Directly to the river. All of this, plus many times more, from big big towns, to the rivers. Policy.

…

O: Possums, they come and they eat here, so in the process they get diseases. Some of those diseases may be virally contagious. In Galapagos the sea-lion pox was introduced. A canker, or avian pox was also a major problem that causes the birds to have twisted beaks and warts all over their faces, or their feet. So the fauna suffers in the process, not just the… but you can say well, it is a small section of the earth, look at all the clean places…some small sections actually spread wide and the sum total of the very crowded earth, that’s an ethnosystem, the entire land scenery is man-made, all of these mountains were covered with the same forest vegetation we’re going to visit later on, same, not exactly the same but a mosaic fashion. Forest changes with altitude, with inclination, with time, with this and that, so different kinds of forest, but forests none the less. So what you see here is the product of fire, many fires, several fires, and then the horses carve, and the cows mostly, carve those terraces. I would do the same if I was a cow, because you don’t want to walk up and down straight on these mountains, but always sideways, everything within reach of their neck, wherever the necks, wherever the cows are able to walk, you can see that they carve lots and lots, they look like Inca terraces.

When did the deforestation really begin? Were the indigenous, Incas and others, doing it? Or was it predominantly when the Europeans got here?

O: It’s a different form of things. I wouldn’t say that the Incas did not do their share of damage but after all, humans fragment the earth and we have to make room for ourselves. It is the systematic way, and the sheer volume of destruction, that makes things different.

…

O: The methodology, the fact that we live in a different kind of society, the Incas were parametal, and parametal societies meant that the authority was properly and dully placed at the very top. Each person that owns a chunk of land, here, a private property, is free to do about its lands, in reality, I don’t mean by law, is free to do what it pleases. Some laws may put restrictions, but many of these laws are idle laws, not active. People don’t enforce them all the time. Some laws are practically sleeping, hibernating permanently.

…

O: It makes those mudnests, with a side entrance, wherever there is one there is a pigeon, wild, and the yellow finches, and then the ani, with the long tail, that bird there. Notice that birds tend to flock together, different species, they like to flock together. It is a natural form of food finding quite frequently seen in far places like Podocarpus park.

…

O: …a few minutes, and then you walk on for half an hour or an hour you don’t even see a single bird.

…

O: … a summary of the state of the earth: and the consensus was that we’re in deep shit.

…

O: …we’re not behaving ourselves. We’re guided and abetted by belief systems that make us perceive reality in, what I consider personally, a distorted way. The scientific way. We live in the mattress of science, and I don’t trust it. Part of a method of inspection of the earth, and its mysteries, which has created it in the first place. The mess we are in is mostly a scientific mess. There are lofty words to justify it, “Saving Lives”, is one of them, “Freedom”, “Creativity,” “Enterprising.” A then they tell you that they’re no better then mosquitoes when it comes to their rights and origins. But like somebody was saying, there’s two things on earth, People and Property. Everything else is Property. But of course we are the same.

…

O: …really are. Like people in the past have recognized it and respected it, for thousands and thousands of years. They never said that we came only from primates, they said that our kingdom is not of this earth. And they respected that, be it the Incas, or the Persians, the Romans, the British, until a couple of hundred years, or three hundred years ago. Maybe five. And now we have to live with this incoming crisis which will force an incredible amount of people into major major suffering. This is for sure. Inevitable.

…

O: Before, when the forest was here, only the places that were most exposed were subject to mudslides. The forest is like a clothing, so it would have slowed down the erosion of the land, but now the land is naked, or nearly so, with only a fine gossamer of greenery, the cow fields. And those touchy trees planted by the military at the top, which don’t even belong to South America, they’re pinus radiate from the Caribbean or eucalyptus from Australia, that they call reforestation, which, obviously, is not. It is a monocultivar of a perennial form of tree. When you put hundreds of thousands of pines, one next to the other, where before was one of the world’s record levels of biodiversity, you can hardly call that reforestation. And yet, that word is the main reason that people donate money to institutions and projects, government or private, of reforestation.

…

O: From the 60’s of last century onward there was an agrarian reform, that gave the land to the people that worked it, instead of landlords, who would decide when and where to burn. Instead, when it was given to lots of people, people started burning. One of the big land owners of the area where we live, Yumburara, was actually the Church. In this case, by agency of the priests or the nuns, they owned haciendas. The Church had their own major tracks of land, with their different denominations…

O: Those families who turned to industrial enterprises in Loja, used to be the landlords of the past. So now there is practically no big haciendas anymore… they were all broken down.

…

O: Vilcabamba was originally know, as you’ve probably heard, originally in the recent decades, as the Valley of Longevity. That drew the attention of the world in the 60’s and the 70’s, to a certain extent, so that scientists, and doctors and people interested in finding out more about longevity, came to see it here, more or less with serious intent and what they found was not convincing to them. They found dubious dates for people’s ages. So, in a way they burst the bubble of longevity, to the serious scientific community. But in the process the fame was started and Vilcabamba switched to a place for visiting, for tourism, and now to living.

How did the word first get out? Wasn’t there a census by the Loja government?

O: Yeah, originally it was startling because somewhere in the early 60’s there was a population roughly in Vilcabamba of 800 people let’s say, around that many, in the area, and they came up with more then 60 people that were 100 or over, out of those 800. You know what that is? That is about 350 times the average of Europe, that on average, I read, clumsily, that in Europe one person every 100,000 is over a 100 or so. That in 800 people more than 60 who claimed to be over 100 is a very large proportion, indeed. So that awakened suspicion and intrigue, the desire for some people to see whether it was true or not, and they found out that most of the ages of the older people were not to be trusted, there were reasons to doubt them, valid reasons, so that eventually, there is no credibility now to the stated ages of these people, scientific credibility. The common people are bound to believe what they hear. If someone says, “I am so old, I am…” say “95”, there is no reason for you to question that, right? But scientists will question that. And indeed they found out that many people are named after their fathers or grandparents with the same name, so that the name may transfer from father to son to son to grandson, and sometimes the confusion may be aroused. Documents that prove your identity were not issued until the 40’s in some cases, people that were born before that had only church baptismal records, and since the records of the past century were burned in a fire, for example, that happened in the church of Vilcabamba around the mid-1800’s, there you have a problem too. So in other words, there is no sure, official way to know whether a person who is over 80 or so, today, is truly so.

…

O: It’s there. Where you see the, there is a sunny place and then there is a mountain with a sharp cliff to the right, that sharp cliff to the right of the low mountain, down there, that’s Mandango, right in front of the Rumi Wilco, that people go up to, there is a cross. So that is 2000 meters above sea level with Mandango, and to the right of it below is the valley of Vilcabamba.

…

O: Other peoples in other civilized societies have their own name-calling for constellations and their meaning that they had. For the Inca’s constellations were seen as the Condor, the Llama, the Toad, the Snake.

S: I was in Cuzco and there was this astrology map there, and they showed how the Incas named the different dark parts of the milkyway.

O: Yes, they named the dark parts. Very much so, they were of the highest importance, perhaps more even so, so much so that constellations were just the decoration of the dark parts in some instances.

…

O: When you walk in these forests of cloud forest, and you see these trees with odd looking shapes, they resemble ghosts, especially if they move with the wind.

...

O: …The Secret of the Incas by William Sullivan.

H: But why is it so different now? What’s the big difference…

O: Very simple, I ask you, what will happen to you after you die?

H: I believe in a God.

O: You do?

H: Yeah.

O: God bless you, because you are one of a kind. I don’t know how truly you believe but most people do not, most people in the West do not. They live Christian worlds. But we’ve lost it, we’ve lost authentic faith in spirituality.

The connection with the cosmos.

O: Yeah but because we want to prove it with scientific, that science that I told you, that is an insidious malaise, has actually done without millennia of people serious connection, or intent of connection, to our origin, which is not of this earth, as Jesus said. Although we’re incarnated in a primate body, people of the past seriously accepted, whether they could see it or not, had faith or belief, or conviction, or intuition, they accepted that something about humans is not the same as our nearest relatives the chimps or the orangutans or gorillas or the whales. That there is something there. That something is what people of the past paid allegiance to, everywhere. Built temples everywhere, cities.

H: Science is now registering that pre-European cultures also had a lot of knowledge from the stars and everything, and we’re rediscovering this.

O: But that knowledge has to come natural to us. We can not force ourselves into faith, into belief-systems that our rationality stands against. When today we trust our science, we trust it because it works, but they trusted their own brand of explanation, because to them it worked too. And it worked a long time.

…

O: The focus was not on physical reality but on an intuitive form of reality that we felt within, rather then without. Within. So there were a lot of ego-trippers, people who went traveling deep inside.

…

O: I may say without shame, cause I quote, the 3 L’s are not a property of physical nature: Life, Light or Enlightenment, and Love.

…

O: Oh my goodness, that’s why today we don’t have that human criteria to put a brake on our greed, on our overpowering dominance of the earth, paradoxically we say we’re the same as everybody else but never before have people so decimated and plundered and taken over as if they owned the place, like we do today…. Flowers, of sorts. Cowlie flowers, flowers on the stem. Cowlie-stem. This is a tropical trait, flowers on stems rather then on the tips of flowering branches. Sometimes flowers develop on tree trunks on trees that are 20 meters tall, and nothing but the tree trunk shows up with fruits and flowers, like the cannon-ball tree in the Amazon. Adapted forms, scientists will tell us and we repeat it and accept it, because these flowers, which are reproductive organs of the plants, cater to animals that crawl, instead of fly to the flowers.

…

O: …show how much connection there was between the living and the dead, because they knew, intuitively of course, nobody knows until you die, that the dead were not dead, they were alive but in another dimension.

…

O: That other dimension is referred to as timeless….

…

O: Mind, an organ of the body human, of the ape, everything that comes from the mind is ape matter, but why is the ape matter capable of coming up with this conversation, between us who have only less then 2% genetic differentiation from our nearest relatives the monkeys, the chimps, less then 1.5% some people would say, of our genetic make-up is different from our nearest relatives.

S: I think it’s less then .1%.

O: There you are. Well have you ever found any scientist that has pin pointed the seat of humanness in that less then 1%, which they ought to know by now. I haven’t heard anything, let me know when you find it.

S: Well there’s very interesting research into the brain.

O: Brains researching brains.

H: But you think that humans are not so relatively relative to the apes as scientists say?

O: Oh yes, the body yes. But I have to take it as an element of faith, what I read from somebody who claims to know this from experience, a luminary, Jesus. Or somebody after or during. Every society may have had its own form of Jesus. For the Incas it was Viracocha, the very luminary that set the stage for the society’s development.

H: What’s a luminary?

Prophet?

O: No, much more then that. A prophet is a being who can tell the future or the past, which is actually physical. If we, for lack of a better word, call a luminary to Jesus, we are saying that that person happens to be consciously awake in two dimensions at the same time, in the physical dimension where all of us live and dwell, plus the spirit dimension, which has no, which is the polar opposite of the physical dimension, and yet the best they can do with it is to speak in terms of analogies, metaphors and parables, because the relationship to it is impossible through the mind. There is no time, there is no…there is a form of space which is not like ours, and there is eternity. There is no effect, there is only cause in that dimension, how can we, it makes no sense, how can, what is it in us that has from that dimension in us? The only thing we speak of is the soul, but in fact the soul is the energy of it, it is the self, the human self, embedded, imbued, permeating our ape body, including our mind that enables us to think in a qualitative way differently than animals, that enables us to create, animals can not create, no animal can create anything. Nothing in the physical world moves by creation, it moves by inertia. It has no cause-making anything, it’s all effect, effect, effect, effect. We are cause of things…our action is spiritual. Otherwise we would be like the monkeys, living inside an ecosystem, changing along with the ecosystem but not being the instigators of that change as we are the instigators…

H: That’s the reason why people can destruct.

O: Of course. Because we have that freedom. Could ever a monkey build that such a thing out in the grass, look at it! That’s only humans. 60 meter tall, for cellular phones, private company. They’re putting thousands of antennas all over the nation in the last 2 or 3 years. As their global cellular phone companies mushroomed like an explosion.

…

O: You will find lots of words of our currant speech, whose Latin origin refers to that nether world, the beyond. Lots of them.

“Desire” is one.

H: You find lots of words from Latin?

O: From the Greek, from the ancient world, from the world that still took spirituality seriously.

H: Yeah but, you’re saying that the words we use from the Latin refer to the spiritual world?

O: No, today we have given them a much more practical, down-to-earth meaning. But remember, words were invented, by very few and far between.

H: But the words we use now from the Latin world, back then they referred to the spiritual world.

O: Mingled with the practical, because we are a duality, right? We are a dual being. We’re not only from this earth, and yet we are from this earth. But our true nature, the one that will continue on after we leave behind our body, is of the spirit. In effect, we are like outcasts.

H: Outcasts?

O: Yes. Human beings, not the body, we were outcast by will, they say, luminaries will say to you that human beings are on physical nature because of an act of will, which is the only force that actually does things in spirit, will-power, not wish, not want, desire with a force in it, with a compelling force, the force of creating your own kingdom, because in the spirit, the fantastic thing is that there’s no, no one reality, each individual self has its own kingdom, so there are as many kingdoms as there are entities in the spirit which call themselves human. And they occupy not this planet, but humans have incarnated in an on-going recurrent process in millions amounts of planets in the universe and in each and every one of them there are luminaries, to help them out of their predicament, our predicament.

H: So out in the universe there are planets with people just like we?

O: I will even go more daring, just like the forces of nature are the ones that shape each and every form of these forests…

H: Just like the forces of nature?

O: Forces of nature…physical forces. In the universe they apply, and spiritual forces apply equally throughout the physical universe. So the forces specific that make a human body in physical nature will have made another human body in all of the universe quite similar to us.

H: It’s the same force?

O: Yes. And the same forms, similar forms, so that we could recognize them.

H: So if we go to another planet with life we’ll see…

O: We will see other human beings in other earths. Sounds crazy, you’re going to have to erase that.

…

O: Luminaries are truly people who come here to give us a hand. To ease our return, which is known by the Mantric people as “Back to Godhead.”

H: So people are from another dimension but here on earth they are stuck in science so they can hardly return?

O: No, they do all return, whether you’re stuck in science or not, you can not lose your self, whether you believe in it or not. Your beliefs will not effect in nothing the reality of the universe, absolutely. At least the beliefs that you harbor in your mental body.

H: But people just don’t know that they’re from another dimension?

O: Apparently some people, for example, what makes me say these things? I don’t know. I trust it. I think it is that way, not think, something makes it think.

S: Faith?

O: A form of it, but little, not much.

H: It’s like the religion is actually a religion in the other dimension? The God and the heaven is the other dimension?

O: Yes but watch out with the word religion. Religion may have been degraded ad nausea by people who congregate. Here’s a crucial thing that a luminary like Jesus said, and I think that if we paid attention to that phrase probably we would disassemble congregations in mass. Jesus said, “There where two or at most three of you are gathered in my name, I will be there.” Two or three. Not 10, 100, or 100,000. Check on that one. Very important. You can go alone, so it is your own inner quest, or at most, with two, a husband and wife couple, great, or three. To interchange inner impressions of what you searching, he’s searching and the other’s searching can come together to boost each others quest. The moment you are more then three, or more then two, you are forced to believe conventional congregation dogmas, and then you are virtually hypnotized.

H: I don’t understand…religion is…

O: Is sometimes an opium of the masses, like somebody said it, you know? If you are in need of help, seek like minded people, in groups of no more then two or three. Very simple rule.

...

O: that relates to the capacity to heal, the gift of healing, is not rare in human nature, and yet it is not found everywhere, but some people have it in the form of subtle energy which they can move, mobilize, between the personality of their patient and the personality of the shaman, it’s independent of the urine or whatever other treatment, the egg or the herbs or whatever, it is the person himself…

...

O: The wishes…the new train of people that used to pass by here, they could never pass by without making a wish around this place, and including throwing coins, so there may be coins buried in the mud at the bottom. Half jokingly and half true, I used to ask them, what kind of wishes did you have, “Oh, much of the time I wished that the weather would hold good while we walked through here.” They say that 40-50 years ago there was a lot more humidity, moisture, it was more miserable to walk through here.

…

O: Walking on the surface tension, is even creating waves. Those insects, those insects there. Without getting wet, like Saint Peter, they walk on the waves.

S: We call them pound skaters.

O: The genius of them that I remember reading from Galapagos times, I was surprised by that, is Halobates. There are a few dozen species of water conquering insects, that have actually invaded and used as a habitat the surface of the sea, the surface of lakes, and ponds. And amazingly because insects, in the world of animals, are the most abundant. We know at least a million, and maybe as many as 3 or 4 or 5 million insect species. But only 40-60 species in the world are the ones that live exclusively on liquid surfaces, fresh or salt, so it is a very difficult habitat, even for insects, and yet they manage to make it. Below water, if you see anything moving it would be the larva of a dragon fly, because there is supposed to be no fish here. And right there, you can see where shamans perform some from of ritual of sorts. For example, you see the fruits there? Those are a, what do you call them? Not oranges. It’s like an orange but bigger.

S: Oh, grapefruit.

O: Grapefruit! And I found, if you want to know things that may relate to the kind of purposes of these shamanic treatments, I found underwear, women’s bra and panties and male underwear lying around and on the water. I even actually once found one that was in good shape and I washed it and I used it for months on end. Honestly. Yeah, it’s a form of recycling, very much so. After all, they just left them here because it’s part of the ritual. And that, I was told by somebody that, it’s very funny that ritual, having to do with perhaps with sex matters. A man told me once that if somebody wants badly the favors of a woman and she doesn’t pay attention, that he may have recourse to a shaman who will, if, again by stealing some underwear from the woman that he loves, or wants to love, and making use of it in this ritual, he can in a way modify events, so that she will be more receptive. Believe it or not, sometimes people go away with such a self assurance after the treatment that, it may be that rather then the treatment, but they nail, they end up successfully…

2008-10-19T18:03:00.000-07:00

5/21/08

rooster crow nose bleed. Dreams of being a secret agent on the run from the military. Don’t remember details except bungee-ing up a cliff face and climbing into a school window—taking off my top layer of cloths and walking into class—but a young blonde crew cut soldier in civilian dress follows me. There were many other short little episodes like this, all night long. Remember hiding and asking mom for help. always being chased.

Pioneer growth

little black dog— black

dirty poodle-- tits

with little baby hanging

replicas low

bungling along sagging

in & out of her legs dry

bouncing off each other wrinkled

bound to Mother’s milk heat

natural love

just like a woman I saw

her pup clasped tight to her belly—

two of diamonds—going to

make a friend today

Yesterday visited Alicia Falco in their shop in town. Vilcabamba T-shirts, organic coffee, panella,…a little tacky souvenir style but she is very kind and alert. I asked her if she had some time to talk and she said yes, right now. I explained my project, she immediately told me about Jorge Mendieta—“He has a lot of knowledge.” Jorge works as a gardener & in construction at the new Hacienda San Jauquin—Jorge is now making good money and has a car—things in Vilcabamba sure are changing—prices are going up—we have lawn mowers when we used to just tie the horses up and let them graze till the grass was perfect, or grab a machete, now there are washing machines—I used to be the only person in Vilcabamba with one—it was customary in Europe.

Everywhere was more plants, more green, everywhere huge trees—all cut down to make wider roads for cars—I’ve seen it change in the last 18 years—they pave the roads for cars, “improving” they say—but there is no room for people—they forgot about the people—leaving only these narrow pedestrian paths—so people still walk in the road, but with the cars! Cut so many trees.

People used to ride their pigs in the street—dirt & mud roads—maybe disgusting but picturesque. And the three new antennas! We tried to explain that they destroy our view—to explain about the visual impact the towers make. But most people wanted them built. Pacifitel, Porta, Movistar. cell phones sold so quickly. You see people with donkeys and cellular. You understand, is to laugh. The phone provoke loss of time. You look at the phone and not thinking—my sons are saying “mommy why don’t we have a phone, our friends have a phone, we want a phone”—But I say, we are not like everybody else—we are different. It works against the personality of a boy.

I read an article about how dating has changed. It used to be that if a boy liked a girl—first maybe he’d be nervous, give her a gift or something, then maybe he would say something to her—and eventually he’d tell her he loved her. Now it is all by phone—there’s no more person to person—its all messages typing messages, phone interrupts conversations, no respect for the person you are talking with—One time a taxi driver stop and pullover to answer phone—he respected his passangers—It was a nice surprise. And they expect you to have internet at home & check it everyday.

But there are some good things that come from the gringos—they pay for the land—and the land that was deforested for cows is reforested—

The gringos help reforestation and using native trees—they build big houses and want nice trees around. The gringos come and buy large tracts of land—then sell different pieces to other gringos making lot of work for locals. Locals are well paid—new jobs like gardener, carpenter—help building construction—these jobs never existed before—

Alicia tells me

Martha has a video

—nice—very nice

To see the old people alive

And walking the streets of

Vilcabamba—

Rotting fruit, horse dung, fresh

Breeze—green mountains

Mandango—male—yang

Waranga—female—yin

Met the priest—Wednesday to Saturday—he’s in town. Agreeable to my project but told me to study my Spanish—When I said “vida interior” he repeated me—in shock—He wrote some information about a person to speak with at the college about genealogies—I saw he was busy looking at a pickup truck magazine. He was a young thick muscular guy—priest. Funny how friendly people say my Spanish is good & people with bad attitudes tell me to go work on my Spanish.

lenguas de fuego

aparecieron sobre

ellos; y se llenaron

todos del Espiritu

Santo

woman cutting long

blades of grass—

a pile on the side

of the road—middle

of nowhere—why did

she choose that spot?

I approach after a moment

hesitation—explain myself—

I said “otro tiempo quieres hablar?”

“Ya- otro dia, otro tiempo”

A sour look on her face—

Grace & Don didn’t’ meet

Her when they celebrated

Vilcabamba’s positive spirit

She resumed her

Work. Red dress with white

Poka dots & glasses

encountered a beautiful girl who runs the office at the base of Mandango. I asked her if she knew myths about Mandango & she said no but the owner would (owner of the mountain?) – she had a little boy trailing and crying after her—her son? She said the owner works at the school & would return around 2:30 everyday. I wrote out a note in Spanish about my “tema” or theme or subject—“Psicogeografia” I asked her if she understood & she nodded.

climbing Mandango

In the distance snare

drums pop rattle, trumpets

declare the day—school

must be practicing.

practicing in irregular

bursts—polycacophonas

blaring trumpets & snares

repeating the same

phrase over & over—

playfully—must be

children—listening as I climb

sacred—tree valley

irregular like fireworks—

or “just hitched” tin cans

jangle

now heavy bass drum—

punctuated by silence—

of chainsaws & tourbus

groans—all seems

to be the annunciation

heralding my climb—

divine work it is to

climb a mountain

overgrown grass licks

my (inner) knees

& calves

neon orange

butter(fly) wings (with black tips & lemon yellow dots)

flies buzz

circle round me—

(circle round me thrice) tiny

white butter flies—

dried up dung mounds—

lemon yellow butterfly—

nabokov heaven.

wire (wilco?) trees with

white fungus blotches

little hairy blue flowers

and the two white crosses

call from the peaks—

sudden—a brown

bull is behind me

Ay! I’ve got a red

backpack perfect

target I move on

mock calm & quick—

I come to a grove—

large mud puddles of bull shit

phantasies of being

gored—there is

a giant Black Bull

over on one end

of the grove feeding—

tail flapping pleasantly

I move on

I am the boy that can enjoy

Invisibility

Dip under Barbed wire

fence— ultraviolet green

stalks

fine white hairs

--new wooden cross

top of Mandango!

hard climb— near

death

just a skull in the

landscape—

Butterflies flies flying

insects of all hues

frolic about the peak

of Mandango

covered in sweat &

seeds, bugs baby

wasps cling

nature tries to incorporate

me—this is what

vitality is—resistance

so that the outside

can’t completely penetrate

& integrate the inside—

but a little transgression

is necessary too from

time to time—what

is sex?

purple blue, lavender

flowers

orange fungus

on the rocks

covered in beggar’s ticks

Hi Cris

I’m in Rome and it was fun to get yr email from another world. Seems to me like your doing real well. You’ve got something to bite on, something concrete and unfolding (ie real “fieldwork”, the love of discovery, putting things together, with yourself very much part of the puzzle too). What’s your living situation like? Do a lot of tourists swing by? I like your idea of disenchantment and reenchantment very much. Make sure you work on a basic political economy as well as all the other stuff—what are the different sort of jobs, what’s the class structure like, town and country, a rough census with espec focus of the spread of ages and male/female. The Notary will probably have the figures. You need to be “in” with a few nice of helpful people who live there who can serve as your guides.

mick

I spoke with Teresa— she & Gabriel were singing Dakota songs last night. When I asked her how they learned them—she said that 7 years ago she changed her life—she became a shaman. Yesterday her and Gabriel took San Pedro and they hiked around the trails singing and doing “work”, as she put it—I was stuck by this and stood in the kitchen looking out over the Rumi Wilco grounds & mountains—feeling & repressing impulses to ask her if I could take San Pedro with her—Remembering my fear of sickness, my dying dream but yet strong sense that if things were a little different I could become a healer. Finally I turned and asked her if she knew how to heal with her hands, “si papi” she said pausing from wiping the stove top. Wanting to say so much but all that came out was “can I interview you?” “si papi, of course.”

F.U.C.K.= Fornification Under the Consent of the King

polyamory

Why do I always feel like I’m waiting for something and some moments I see from above like in a novel time stands still and the moment bleeds into eternity?

1) Psychogeography—bond between self & nature, myths, mountains, rivers

2) Inner Experience—memory, story, dream, phantasy, desire

3) Spectacle—image of Vilcabamba vs. contradictions (garbage dump, deforestation.

2008-10-19T17:43:00.000-07:00

5/20 Dreams of vampires, friends as vampires “in deviltown.” Breaking poolsticks to make stakes, blood smeared round their mouths.

woke up slow—Room pitch black, met two Isreali tourists last night Roy and (?) his girlfriend, they played cards, I brought the wine, she told me the walls of Rumi Wilco were a sort that bred parasites. They told me about their trip north from Argentina—one of their favorites—very “developed”—almost like Europe many German (Nazis) came over after WWII because it reminded them of Germany. So many stories circulate around—they’d had enough of traveling by bus—packed with peasants for 20 or 32 hours—“They smell!” They couldn’t take it anymore. Like when the bus would stop and vendors would flood aboard one time a woman came on with raw meat and was hacking up pieces—on the bus—the sound of cracking bones and the stench!

I lay in the hammock outside my room—Donkey bray in distance—bird twitter and river drone.

Budding face

the body becomes all time

the beloved all space

Everything breaths again

I have dark premonitions of a tragic young death—staining the family psyche—so much promise—wasted. I fear the day that mom accepts the fact that it isn’t just nerves. So I feel like my days are numbered—but I also feel more and more keenly—a sense of mission. I must realize my destiny (the image of the beloved). Who else knows, really knows in their guts, the reality of Joyce, Bruno, Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Blake—their interconnected concerns—Hunger and Opposition.

Met James Chiemenem (from South Africa) and a group of nuns by the river washing blankets. The nuns were young and pleasant in their garb. James interrogated my beliefs—Do you believe in God—yes—Do you believe that Jesus is the son of God—I believe we are all the son of God—the nun smiled. My answer threw James off. I continued— “What about the Mother? I’ve heard of the father, the son & the holy ghost—but what about the Mother? The earth Mother. I believe God is everywhere, God is nature. God is nature. Violent loving hot & cold. The coincidence of contraries.”

You’re not a Christian.—Do you believe Christ died for our sins? I thought for a second—yes—Do you go to Church? No. You’re an atheist—No I believe in God—and pointed to the mountains.

Municipio de Loja:

Higiene

Theadoro Abarca. 64 years old:

T: I work for the municipal 31 years, and I’ve lived in this valley all my life and I’ve never left. I’ve worked for the public, also in agriculture, care-taker of animals, and with cattle. Vilcabamba, thirty years ago nobody knew about it, it was without tourists, without anything, but tranquil, more little old people then. My grandfather lived until 120 years, and all my family lived more then 100 years with good vision and strength, it was normal. As the history of Vilcabamba goes, there are two mountains, Mandango and on the other side Waranga. The ancient ones told that the two mountains fought, Mandango throwing silver, and the other throwing gold, the Vilcabambanos put the crosses up to calm them because they were volcanoes. The rivers were beautiful, the one coming down from San Pedro, called the Uchima, all the way to Capamaco, were rivers of crystal. Now, the river from San Pedro is contaminated. We try to maintain intact the wild, and reforest more. But there was the bear, danta, monkey, tiger and 600 species of birds, its like this still in Podocarpus National Park because they can’t destroy there, but for the mountains and rivers in the area around Vilcabamba, all that is over. All has been cleared and burned. The rivers were so beautiful, and still are…Now they don’t eat anything that isn’t fumigated, now all is fumigated, the kidney bean, the tomato, before my time they grew without burning the plants with insecticides, none of that! Now the animals are contaminated, the cows every three months get a prick in the neck. Yes. Now things are different, now life is a problem, now we live a more complicated life. Then tourism came to Vilcabamba, I remember, we wanted the gringos to come. There was a man that came to Yamburara and bought a little plot of land, where the lagoons are. He was always writing, writing, to come to know the beauty of Vilcabamba. When he arrived he couldn’t walk, but when he left, he left walking. He was cured with only the sempre, as we call it. He passed all his days bathing in the sempre, and we have another plant that is absolutely marvelous, it has tremendous power, the molle. With a union of these two plants, his bones grew strong again with a tremendous force. After, the man was like young again and he left walking. Something mysterious! We have these waters of iron, iron water, there is a lot up near San Pedro. Here you can’t see it but what we have there! They put it in their hair and it’s like a shampoo. It’s marvelous! It is so beautiful! Near the river by San Pedro I have a big farm up there. At this farm, I have, how do I describe its appearance? Works made by… who were they? How do you say, the first inhabitants of here, before the Incas. There is, 4 meters high, of pure stone, they made a terrace, they carved steps so you can climb up and watch the great waters fall and come to a rest, forming the lagoons in the rocks, and trace them all the way from the lagoons until the river. It is marvelous! Also on my farm there was a stone eight meters across, that had a roof three meters high so you could sleep, in the middle of the mountains they had a palace, an immense house of stone, but with a roof you could sleep tranquil, 30 to 40 people could fit there.

Where is this?

T: Near San Pedro, follow the river and that’s where it is, by the park in front of San Pedro. I work here, but near this park is where I live. It’s a marvel.

T: There isn’t work here. Here, each person lives by cultivating sugar cane, coffee, corn, they have their cow, they sell a little milk, not work like in other cities with businesses, companies, here exists none of this, every inhabitant lives by his own property. Cultivating, growing. He has his chickens, his little pigs, to sell. It’s not like in other parts, where there are big companies, here there is nothing of that. It’s tremendous. This is the problem. Before the whole world came here…because all the world is here: French, English, there are Chinese, there are Japanese, and all buy land for high prices and built on it. And they buy their land from the people of Vilcabamba. But we don’t need to sell. Some want to sell the water from this mountain. But we don’t have to. We need to conserve. I have another story of a marvel… of caves in the rocks by the side of the river, there are many high caves in the rocks, there live the bears. There they stop… and leave through a crevice. In the night I hear their loud bellows. I have a house in front, I hear with such clarity what they are searching for.

Sitting by the silenced fountain in the center of town, where I sat two years back.
Strange feelings. Recorded two people today and spoke with many more. Grey white skies. It’s almost like I’m always tripping here. Watching people walk by, “buenas.” Many pretty young girls, mostly too young for me.

Ernest Carpio— A lone old man with large cowboy hat and even larger spectacles- his eyes loomed large, his hands purple- 97 he said he was- we talked, I squatted next to him- he in his chair holding a carved wooden cane- with dragon head and a marble in its mouth and a plastic bottle top stuck on the tip to protect the wood. He told me of the health of the valley in the past, only eating healthy food & drinking clean water- now chemicals. His children have moved away and his woman and siblings are dead. Talking about the past brought tears to his eyes—or it seemed that way to me. At some point he said I wasn’t understanding him.

(the tapping of his cane punctuated his voice):

E: In the life before, the ancient life, we ate ancient things, but now we don’t eat these foods, ya? We eat fumigated food. Ya, my father was 130 years strong and we ate only healthy food. He worked in agriculture and we ate papaya, platano, camote, yucca, sevada, trigo. The earth was healthy with nothing of fumigation. The waters were clean. And we were also! Because we ate these foods.

He worked in Zumba to the southeast, traveling by donkey because there wasn’t a road. We learned to work the same as them. They’re all dead now, there’s only me left. We were eight, the children of Miguel Carpio. We were eight and now there is no more then one. No more then just me. Also my woman died. I’m alone.

You have children?

E: Eight, they work far away, one in the United States, her name is Erea Carpio, married to an American. Others live in Loja and Zumba towards the east, Zamora, they work there. Some are professors, others are chauffeurs driving cars, also police. They’ve left to work.

You’ve lived here all your life?

E: All my life I lived here, I was born here, and I’ll die here.

Do you know myths of Mandango or Guaranga, of the mountains or rivers?

E: Guaranga is the mountain there, and Mandango is here. These are the riches of Vilcabamba. Strangers came and climbed up Mandango to find the treasures but they couldn’t…

E: Life is very expensive here. Before things were sold here cheap. But that does not pass anymore. Now the silver runs. We get little money in exchange. Now strangers come with other money, to work here.

Would you like to share some memories, good or bad, or your life here?

…(no answer)

E: Ten siblings, all have died, in my earth I have nobody.

Ten? I’m an only child.

E: The only…

Wiping his eyes cry tear

Sitting there—brothers

Sisters—wife—all dead

Children moved away—

I dredged up the past and

It was painful.

Showed him a picture of his father

from Grace Halsell’s book.

The sweet pain—

A joyful sorrow—a sorrowful joy

Chirimoya—fruit white black seeds

enrique delgado—63

nube- cloud

Boy did Alicia Falco give me information! Leads to follow.

Mandolin looks at mountains intoxication of dream potentia and the green mountains look back. The musician doesn’t want me to record him—pero puedes escuchar. Motor bikes squak squak birds. Music helps the dream. Waranga female pole, Mandango masculine pole. One way of explaining Vilcabamba’s secret. Alicia told me Vilca comes from Wilco—sacred trees of the sacred valley. 5000 years the Inca used Wilco—They carried the hallucinogenic seeds around and spread them where they went—The priests! mind you—not the plebian workers. Incan priests sowed Wilco seeds as they conquered the continent. But people do not use Wilco anymore in Vilcabamba.

Real Estate

Wilcopampa

It offers you the best property

options

You can discuss the price directly with the

owners

You do not have to pay any commission

We offer the services of architects and

engineers

for any job

competitive prices

Over the slanted bridge

Gabriel & Teresa sing in the night. Sounds like a cross between Native American & Gregorian chants. I walked back to Rumi Wilco with my tiny blue circle guiding me— a truck was blaring radio & intermixed with selling goods over a loud speaker. I turned down the path to Rumi Wilco. Caught sight of moon over distant hills—always a luminous mysterious greenblue shroud on the rim of the mountains. I hear an intense cricket buzz high pitched alongside the more normal chirp—I reach for my recorder and discover it has been on in my backpack since I left Jorge Mendieta’s house— rewind and listen to my footsteps—a girl passes by suddenly—long stony path alongside the river—seeing her I see myself—the moon phosphorescent fireflies flash beep…beep—in an instant I travel thousands of years to lovers known & lost— the enchantment of the night flares up phantasms with simply one passing female figure through the shadows. Desire longs in me, longing till the furthest star. I wonder if I can be a man for a woman…or have I blown my chance and now only a lame dog. Desire seems the truth of life.

The nights are difficult. Sitting alone, lonely—There is reading & writing & drinking wine. Oh well.

Jorge Mendieta. 53 yrs.

J: Hello my friend. What is your name?

Cristobal.

J: My friend Cristobal. We are talking this moment of the man Jose Maria Roa, in relevance to Vilcabamba. But in reality, he was not born in Vilcabamba, he was born poor and it was very pleasant to know him and know his name. We called him Mas Sana Maka. Therefore, to know him, from this person I learned when I was 6 or 7 years old for 5 or 6 years when he was in this area. He had 90 years and lived more then 100 years. And how was the life of them? When there no existed a road, when there was no light, when two cars arrived a day in Vilcabamba, two cars a day. Now, there are cars. Therefore, you have to practically walk to Vilcabamba, I don’t know what the others think but I think the change is like everywhere. But, there isn’t the same change, all is fulfilled, all is a sigh, all is good. But in Vilcabamba there is a different change then in other places. Here there are people of the all the world. Now. Until twenty years ago it was not like this. Not like this. It was, there came much tourism.

Do you believe it is bad?

J: Bad no. Bad no. If they bring a good concept. Such as to conserve. They can’t come to make business of land. They can’t come to buy all the land and leave the natives that remain without nothing. The concept that has to bring foreigners is, if I go to Vilcabamba, if I want to remain there, to buy a little piece of land in order to live, no more. But if I want to buy up everything in order to sell, make business and leave the natives without land. Now, what one foreigner pays, no native can give to buy back, there is not money for this. Therefore, if they were to be reborn, certainly, that they would not like it. It would not agree with them. I don’t know what you think, Cristobal….The people of this age, those that lived in Vilcabamba more then 100 years, ya, they died. They died and are being born right now. And to find Vilcabamba, how is it? Certainly, they would not like it. Therefore, good, as in all parts…

Change.

J: Change, and in all parts, there is good and there is bad, half of the foreigners are good, we consider them good, like this, superficially, but if we go to the words of God, there is no good in the world, hah, there is no good, there is no taste, no? Therefore, we are good and we look for good people, and neither I am good nor the other good, for God there isn’t taste. All aspire for this. We have good and we have bad, both people, a little good and a little bad. Sometimes we can live, who knows how many years good, and repent for living one day bad, to think bad, to act bad, where, where for God it is sufficient to say you never were good. There, that is life. Therefore, to know in this time, there was a very different life then what they have here now, there were no walls, no limits, there were not limits in Vilcabamba. All was one only. Only sell through references by word of mouth, there was a reference. For where the hill of earth, the mountain, over there, from here to where the hill of the mountain makes a river was of one person, on the other side there was another person, but there wasn’t wall, there wasn’t wire or metal, nothing, but beautiful earth, when they lived. Therefore, after, ya, in order to grow a chakra, they made only a site where they were to grow, only a site. Therefore, the place where they were to harvest they left alone, only made a little fence of wood, no more. Was not of metal, only wood, you understand? They put it only around their crops, such as cane, coffee, corn…they made walls but only around what they were growing, it was more open…. In this time there wasn’t a hospital, there weren’t doctors, no. Each person knew the curative properties of each plant. Therefore, all the world, if one was sick and they could not bring the medicines, the neighbor would bring them because they also knew the properties of the plants. They prepared the medications and cured. A person would only go to a doctor in Cuenca or Quito when it was necessary to operate. Only for this would they go to a hospital, for the rest….

Was there shamanism here?

J: No, no shamans, it was natural, it was a natural life, a traditional medicine.

Yes but were there men or women who knew…

J: In this time almost all knew. It was shared between neighbors.

There wasn’t special knowledge?

J: There were some people that knew more, but all the people knew. Therefore, for a pain in the stomach, they would prepare water of manzanilla. A tea of manzanilla. For someone that was nervous, half-crazy, a tea of toronjil, if cut they would wash it with matico, put sangre del drago,or café molido, if they broke a bone they’d put leche de sande, leche de pinga, they took a juice of valeriana with naranja agria, and after there wasn’t a problem with the broken bone. These are things very beautiful to remember but also very extensive, it’s a very large conversation. Good, these customs, now ya no. They don’t exist. The synthetic medicine and the people are more accustomed, they find it easier to go to the pharmacy, to buy a cough medicine for a cough, and after the cough medicine doesn’t make them good, after the cough medicine they get an injection, and the injection, ya, has a drug, has maybe cocaine, caffeine, good. Therefore, many months sick, the medicine stops the sickness, but the sickness still exists. They’re good for two or three days, but not they’re not exactly good, because, because they’re not. It doesn’t hurt but the body is not good. In these days, that the body is sleeping, the synthetic medicine attacks the blood. Therefore, the blood becomes weak, and, on one side they appear good and on the other side they appear damaged. While they don’t appear bad, its better to only use the medicine that nature has given. The plants. There is a history, that I have in a book here, of the cascarilla, of the cinchona. Do you know?

Cinchona?

J: It is a medicinal plant that counters the malaria.

Yes I read of this.

J: Counters the malaria. Therefore, the history says that the King of Peru had his wife with malaria, and he found that in Malacatos, in the village there, existed a doctor that cured malaria. Like a shaman. He was not a medical student that had graduated, he was a doctor because he knew the plants, nothing more. Therefore, the wife, I am not sure, the wife she was called with the last name Cinchona. Or the site where she lived was Cinchona. The King invited the doctor to cure his wife. Therefore, the medicinal plant that naturally counters the malaria is called the cascarilla, but this Cinchona put an other name…

Quinine.

J: Quinine. Ya, quinine is the property, the curative property of the plant is quinine. But the natural name is cascarilla, the name they put on is cinchona, because it cured the lady. And they made the plant know to all the world, the whole world knows it because it is in the books, in Lonely Planet, but I’ve never left Vilcabamba. Always I’ve lived here. Ya, therefore, there arrived the knowledge of the doctors, or scientists of England, they came to Ecuador. They took the medicine, they brought it to England, they removed the properties and now they make it synthetic, and they put the patent so that the medicine is of England.

Yes, I understand.

J: Therefore, I don’t know what more to say, but the nature was here, the medicine was born, existed, born, created, existed the medicine that counters the malaria originated in Vilcabamba especially. Especially Vilacbamba because it is a plant you can not find in less then 1500 meters and above 2000 meters. Is a special area where it exits. It is a cord, where you are going to find this plant, it is equal to the podocarpus. Podocarpus will not be found wherever you want to find it. Only in the botanical garden of Loja, is the podocarpus. I have a plant here, in an orchard I have it. It is small. But there it is.

Podocarpus?

J: Podocarpus. These things existed and passed and will never return. There came a group of scientists that visited with this book, I don’t know when they wrote it.

76?

J: Yes, around then, yes. They came to know here, one of these birth parties, and an aunt of mine was in one of these birth parties. She is here, Dolores Mendieta. She was the sister of my grandfather, of my little grandfather. She was a great aunt to me. Yes, she lived by, her work was making bread. And, making candles, candles for the church. This was the work of my aunt. Here are a few of the old people. This picture is of Don Miguel Carpio Mendieta, also lived here.

I met Ernesto Carpio today.

J: I believe he is his nephew.

He said he is his father.

J: His father, yes, yes. Yes he is his papa. Also there existed one who was older but the scientists didn’t come during his time, they called him Jose Toledo. He was older, was before and lived 141 years. Miguel Carpio Mendieta had 128 years.

And now, people don’t live as long?

J: Now, 90, 96. Until 100, yes they arrive at 100, but rare.

Thing change.

J: Yes there is an old man up in the mountains, an old man that I think has more then 100 years. He is very very good.

I would like to walk…

J: Yes, he no, he no… he lives away from here. But not far, like 40 minutes walking. We can go to visit, I would like to introduce you to him. He is a very original person. And I know, he worked in agriculture, counting cane, taking corn, hard work and his family live very happy. They call him, Jose…Jose…and before, the names were Jose, Jose, Jose…all were Jose. Or Juan or Pedro. They were very catholic.

Alicia told me of a woman that lives with the iron water.

J: That is Micaela. She lives right up here. Yes but she isn’t very old. She has 80 or 85 years.

Are there many people living up in the mountains?

J: No, no. There were many people living up there, but afterwards they came down. We, until the age of 20, we worked much the land and we lived outside the city. After, I don’t know what happened. All the world left their lands. Before, in Vilcabamba, more then 50% were empty houses. People didn’t live here, because the owners of the houses lived on their farms, outside. After, they left their farms and came to live in Vilcabamba. After, when tourism came, all the world wanted to work in tourism, and what was this tourism? Young people like you, came to Vilcabamba for a short time, their parents gave them money, or they had their own proper money, and they came to Ecuador to exchange for sucres. Therefore, win one dollar, they ate one day and slept in the night, with one dollar. Therefore, if they remained in their country, they would spend much money, on their vacations. All the child, after their studies, they come to spend their vacations in Ecuador, because it was economic.

...

J: This tourism makes much publicity of los viejos. Foreigners come to Vilcabamba, buy land, and build their house, therefore, tourism transforms into construction. This moment, 40% of the people work in construction. And people that are not from Vilcabamba, come from Loja, come from other towns to work in Vilcabamba because there is much work in construction. Good.

It is very famous.

J: Yes. Therefore, I, personally, I am always, I am a person who conserves the traditions.

…

J: I have more strength then a man of 20 years. My health is better then a 20 year old. I work more then a 20 year old. I work at this San Juaquin for a stranger of the United States. Building houses, building walls, I’ll bring you one day in my car, in one hour we can go and come back and you’ll know everything. This would interest you much because it is an evolution. Where there are more then 50 foreigners building houses. This is new, for all the world, this is new. In Vilcabamba, more then 50 foreigners like a sickness, building houses, and houses of 300, 400, 500, 600 thousand dollars.

…

J: I’m going to tell of my life. I was born here in Vilcabamba, in the sector of the river Papamaco. I was born outside the village, two hours in that direction. After I was born, my mom had another baby so she brought me to the mother of my mother, my grandmother. And she worked in, at this time I had two years and a little more, before three years. My grandmother worked as a midwife, helping the women deliver babies. Take the baby, cut the cord, wash them. Therefore, when I was a little bigger, I helped her collect the medicines. I learned the medicines without believing, I didn’t know that they were good. I didn’t know I was learning. My father, he worked making houses of wood, but there wasn’t much work here and in this time the people emigrated, they went to the east, to Zumba, to the Amazon, to buy large lands to work. Then one day my father returned, to spend some time with his children. And it was decided that I would go and work with my father, to learn what he did. I believe that I didn’t like sleeping at home after 17 years. I went. And I arrived in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, before Santo Domingo de los Colorados. It is a city close to the capital, close to Quito. It is more hot then here, the climate. And there there were a quantity of shamans. And I had the luck to arrive and live for 3 years with the most famous shaman, of the Sachin Indians. They called him Albramca la Sacon. And Albramca la Sacon has a son they called Nicalora la Sacon. And Nicalora was of my age, he had the same years as I, therefore, we were very good friends and we went to collect the medicines of the jungle. Like ayahuasca, namohuasca, sangre de drago, all these things. And there I learned a little more then I learned with my grandmother, I learned more. Therefore, at that time, the most important thing, and I like very much to say it, was Nature. Much, much, much, much…

Did you learn shaman songs?

J: No, no.

But all the plants.

J: The plants, yes. Shamanism, I don’t like a little. When you play music and invoke spirits, this I don’t like. I don’t like… I don’t have fear, but, I don’t much like to interpret people. Because one time I spoke with a shaman, he had a ball of crystal, and the work desired was like this, burn a little for the saviors, a white rock, to the person. I’m going to burn a little of the side of the crystal here. Therefore, if they had lost an animal, a horse, a cow, something. He would say, it is in this part. And after, I asked Albramca la Sacon, my friend, “How do you know where to find the animals? How do you know?” And he said, “Ohhhh I don’t know nothing, but the person pays me when I say this.” “Ahhhhh.” Therefore, many times a shaman is not certain, is not the truth. But the plants do not lie. There was another problem. There was shaman that had a table with a microphone hidden underneath. He would be somewhere else listening, and in comes a lady, very beautiful, very elegant, very good. She came in sick and entered through here, “I hurt here”, there is a someone to question her, “where are you from?” “I’m from here”, “What is your name?” “My name is this” “How old are you?” “And what happened?” “This is what happened to me, I came so that the curer would cure me” “But right now he is not here, he left, ya he’s coming”. Therefore, he is listening to all this, and afterwards he comes. Coming down the path and enters through here, “Are there any patients?” “Yes, here is one, there is another, he arrived first, he after, and there is the other that arrived” and therefore he would know, “you are single, you have this problem, the sickness is this” “How do you know! You weren’t here when I was telling” and he gave medicine and they left. And many times he cured, he knew the medicine. They say, “What a good doctor! What a good shaman!” HAHAHA!!! This is shamanism, often shamanism is like this. Therefore, the San Pedro, you know the San Pedro? is a hallucinogenic plant the shamans use for their work. And here in Vilcabamba, people don’t know that the properties contained in the bark of the Wilco is very superior to the San Pedro! This people don’t know.

Do people here take San Pedro?

J: Here, no, no. It is more the foreigners that come who take it. From here, no, no they don’t consume it much. There are some who will take it casually. Or more, there are people who prepare it to sell to foreigners, especially. It is better they don’t know the properties of the Wilco because they would cut them. The San Pedro is a little endangered because they cut it.

…

J: Why do we exist? Why do we live? And more, the important thing is to conserve. Until this hour I can not find anybody or a group or a foundation or something, that are interested in conservation, but all the world is sleeping, when I see them burning the mountain, I say Ahhhhh, afterwards comes the winter, the rain, and there it goes. They burn how many thousands of hectors, they have destroyed? Therefore, I have to find some group that is interested, but interested, not interested in money, but interested in conservation. I remember, before, when there were not limits, there was much much live stock, cows, in the countryside, where the owner almost didn’t know how many cows he had, and they never put an injection.

Never.

J: Never. nothing. Why? Because the animals are so intelligent, they know the medicines that exist in nature. Therefore, one has a pain of the stomach, it eats the plant good for the stomach and cures itself. This was one way to find the medicines in nature, but after came the chemical. The chemical appeared to be a thing very good but in reality, no.

What type of chemical?

J: The chemical arrived with people saying, who wants to have a pasture of pure weeds? Therefore, take the chemical and fumigate all that has the round leaf. For certain, they said, it’ll kill the bad weeds. But in reality, they didn’t know they were killing good herbs.

Jorge Mendieta

I’m a pest, guy just got

home from work,

in the bathroom—clearing his

throat—

says he’ll meet with me

sabados o domingos—

mas sana maca 53 yrs

santa clause face on wall

little daughter in princess

dress—problem with

remote—can’t find

volume—neither can

Jorge—they give it to the

gringo—she shows

me her Snow White coloring

book—she’s

colored the evil queen

I say I like her colors

the queen’s purple face

and all psychedelic

color scheme—I ask

what she’s watching on

tv—“peliculas”

2008-10-19T17:37:00.000-07:00

Lunes 5/19/08 8:38am showered and settled at Rumi Wilco. Met Alicia Falco—kind and bright. I started to explain my mission…(anti-mission/sebald phantasy anthropology) she almost frowned but when I said I was an anthropologist she said, “good.”

Had a momentary scare when the narrow paths of Rumi Wilco were over run with horses grazing—fearful image of being kicked—the horses sensed my fear and were a little spooked themselves, stumbling as I passed by whispering “It’s ok.” Hoping the sound of my voice would convey that I wasn’t a threat. I passed them once on the way down to the reception hut and once on the way back. Freezing cold shower felt good with shocking exhale sharp inhale—couldn’t figure out how to get the electric heater spout working and didn’t dare touch it remembering my first days in Quito…electrocuting showers! Keeping my eyes peeled for spiders, one scurried under the light switch to my room, and a gigantic green and yellow dots perches in its web above my door. “It’s ok” I tell myself. noticing a swarming mass about the size of my heel…spider nest…no. getting a closer look— wasps. Black flies, mosquitoes & birds abound. Remember not to flush toilet paper—you’re back in Ecuador—shit paper goes in the bucket beautifying the atmosphere for all.

Mr. Falco is a serious mountain man. I hope to speak to and gain his respect. Seems kind enough. Same room as last time # 6. Cricket clings to the peach shower curtain door to the bathroom. Remember the madness of
cooking San Pedro Lentil Soup.

The smell of moist rot, jungle smell, rich decay recalls this place. So I’m here, now what? Off to the village to meet the priest? What is the purpose of this project? Like Taussig used to say—think about the writing before the fieldwork. So I know what order of ethnography attracts me—inner life phantasm memory surreal diary mystery image crafted weird

To craft a rare, strange beauty. Bring people’s life stories, my story & the Sacred Valley together. So get on the move!

Can I separate the Spectacle of Vilcabamba from the Real Sacred Valley? Or if separation already dominates, can I connect myself and others to the Real Sacred Valley?

El Punto—fruit green tea yogurt. See a dog go in the church. I introduce myself to the waitress and she nods smiles and walks away. Laugh to myself—but a panic is building…how do I get started? It is scary speaking to strangers, and to who?

I think the big white guy with cut off sleeves, cowboy hat & tattoos on biceps is the owner—El Punto blasts bad music into the town square—suddenly it shuts off: I hear birds, children and the buzzing of a motor blade. Lots of building around, men working construction, American music (Third Eye Blind) starts polluting again: “I want something else to get me through this semi-toned kind of life.”

Waitress comes back, semi-interested, Se llama Patricia—as of right now I’m little more then an open target—everyone wants to know where I’m staying—I slurr my Spanish, they smile. Patricia and an older woman stand in the doorway watching the activity of the square.

Euro-American whites stroll around the plaza. A man in white fancy shirt & purple striped ‘ecua-pants’ with drawstring and cargo pockets— common South American gringo fashion— sits a few tables over smoking. He’s got an Indian woven bag too— with little llamas— fully decked out in South American style dumping the sugar into his cup.

An old woman in white dress with yellow, red, green, dot pattern, a sky blue open sweater, brimmed straw hat and cane inches slowly by—How am I supposed to approach? Even if my Spanish was good—can she hear me—I would just confuse her—dreams? memories? I’m just an American stranger prying into other people’s business.

--sky and mountains turn white—rain falls.

about to talk to the gardener in orange jump suit and plastic clear rain tarp over him—then Maggie taps me on the shoulder—“want to go up in the mountains with me and take ayahuasca with a shaman?”—I’m of mixed feelings— Spectacle? or for Real? But it might be a good ‘in’ for further occult Vilcabamba contact. She was scared about going up alone.

Maggie the fire twirler- paid $150 a show. Born in Poland, lived in Greece, Canada, Spain, Puerto Rico. She went dancing salsa and she was the tallest person—“which isn’t saying much cause I’m not that tall”—she feels bad for short people, imagine trying to make your way through a crowd. Wanted to get a Masters- write a thesis on “how travel affects the mind”—Loved Bolivia— Wants to open a charity organization—to educate & help the poor—to change poor people’s mentalities, when back in Canada.

I realized I should not take ayahuasca con Maggi, but maybe I’ll go and meet the

shaman. Where does the shaman live—“arriba en las montanas” conocerle meet him

I was wandering around emptyheaded or panicking full headed about to burst. Spleen. I made my way up to the cemetery some workers from Loja were building a new mausoleum—otherwise overgrown graves—little fences around each plot—pieces of graves strewn about, incredible green shades, blackened areas.

On the road horseshit mounds and white tour trucks fly by—with deadly speed—open back pickups filled with tourists—“cooperativa de transporte mixto Vilcabamba express”

Town drunk passed out on a bench, now stumbling around, now asking for “plata” at the internet shop.

Hija de la Caridad de San Vincente de Paul

but the monja is new and doesn’t know anybody. Wednesday the priest comes. But she sent me over to the tourist office where I had a shock— someone had recently written a book on the viejos: “Los Ancianos Cuentan: Entrevistas del Colegio Nacional mixto ‘Vilcabamba’ ”—luckily the viejos are run through very blunt (place of birth, to what are you dedicated, number of children, a short story)—Not exactly the psychic depth I’ve been imagining—psychogeography—relationship between land & psyche:

Los Ancianos Cuentan: Entrevistas del Colegio Nacional mixto ‘Vilcabamba’

Universidad Nacional De Loja

Colegio Nacional Mixto “Vilcabamba”

2007

Christina Lemomi Chaya

Autora y Coordinadora de la Obra

Del infinito tiempo, el presente es vital.

El presente libro pretende difundir la imagen de un Vilcabamba profundo, mediante microbiografias de adultos mayores (60-100 anos), que transmiten con derroche de sinceridad, lo que fue y es actualmente para ellos, el Valle Sagrado o Fuente de la Eterna Juventud, como es conocido mundialmente el pueblo de Vilcabamba, parroquia situada al Sur-oriente de la cuidad de Loja, a 40 Km. de distancia. Los datos biograficos, tradiciones, creencias y pensamientos de los longevos fueron expuestos abiertamente a estudiantes voluntariosos para hacer obra social, que se forman en el Colegio Nacional Mixto “Vilcabamba”, quienes son familiares o conocidos de los entrevistados. El libro aspira a reviver y conserver las tradiciones antiguas como base de identidad y solidaridad nacionales; acortar la brecha generacional entre ecuatorianos; y, expresar el cambio que ellos han sentido, beneficioso a veces y contrapuesto tambien, del cada vez mas abundante flujo turistico hacia este lugar que, como pocos en el mundo, es privilegiado por la bondad del clima, tranquilidad, biodiversidad y espiritu hospitalario de su gente.

El producto de su diffusion sera revertido totalmente a las personas mas necesitadas de la Tercera Edad, con implementos de apoyo a las mingas, a traves de los centros de atencion a adultos mayores de Vilcabamba.

JOSE MIGUEL ANDRADE MEDINA 70anos

Lugar de nacimiento: Selva Alegre, Saraguro

Localidad: Mollepamba

?De que se dedica usted? Agricultura

Numero de hijos: 1 ?Con quien vive? Padres e hijos

?De que se siente usted orgulloso(a)?

Trabajando tranquilamente en el barrio, cultivando maiz, porotos, yucca, limpiando huertas en su propiedad y de jornalero y en ganaderia y empleado porque de dinero en las necesidades.

?Como ha ayudado usted, al progreso de su pueblo?

Done una parte del lote para la construccion de la escuela en Mollepamba y tambien como Presidente y Vicepresidente en su barrio, trabaje en mingas con sus companeros en la construccion de la escuela.

Cuenteme una vivencia o historia de Vilcabamba:

Yo era un muchacho, no tenia lo suficiente, era pobre, me vine en 1969 a Vilcabamba, entre a trabajar en la hacienda de un rico, trabaje 21 anos sin descanso, sin vacaciones, alli hice dinero y compre un terreno en Mollepamba y no vendo mi terreno y alli me nombraron Presidente, como jefe y tambien hablo dos idiomas, quichua saraguro y espanol.

Entrevistado por Cesar Estevan Macas Andrade

I met Gabriel & Teresa sitting drinking coffee & smoking outside “Valle Sagrado”. I invited them to take ayahuasca with Maggie and I—my own mixed feelings came through and Gabriel helped me realize them. They said they were not interested in joining our group.

(Spain) Gabriel & Teresa (Chile)— “you must be very clear with yourself, you must trust yourself and the people you do it with—it is not for play. You may open doors you can not close.”

Teresaà “everybody has a shaman inside, feel” she said and pointed to her heart. “You too are a shaman. You can realize. You can always choose. You’re in shaman country” really? (I think) This isn’t the jungle.

Clear faces & Gabriel had clear large eyes—hazel—necklace of red black shaman power seeds and a large black round center with white spiral.

Teresa called me papi and kissed me goodbye

The imaginary is that which tends to become real—

Life, for which we are responsible, encounters, at the same time as great motives for discouragement, innumerable more or less vulgar diversions and compensations. A year doesn’t go by when people we love haven’t succumbed, for lack of having clearly grasped the present possibilities, to some glaring capitulation. But the enemy camp objectively condemns people to imbecility and already numbers millions of imbeciles; the addition of a few more makes no difference. The first moral deficiency remains indulgence, in all its forms. – Guy Debord

The shaman is a jeweler named Santiago. His little son is always in a batman costume. I’ll meet him at 11am tomorrow. Maggie and I met at 6 in the plaza, she was hemming over whether to buy a sweater—she’s had to borrow money three times—a self professed shop-o-holic—“I can’t help it, everything is so cheap.” She invited me to a $1.50 dinner but I took one look at the pasta & potato soup and decided I’d had enough starch. She also told me the shamans cost was 50$ and there needed to be at least 4 people—that’s when I opted out, with Gabriel’s advice replaying in my head. I’m thankful I met him & Teresa.

Walking back to Rumi Wilco, my first night—the moon comes out in green & blue phosphorescence over the mountains. I buy lentils, some vegetables and fruit for breakfast and stop to buy some wine “gato negro”—damn it has a zip wonder if it’s rancid? Find my way back with flashlight. Oh yeah—the lady I bought the wine from after I introduced myself and told her my project, said her father was in his 80’s and would probably like to contribute. “manana” she said—I hope it happens!

Overgrown graves

Feel like I’m going to burst

Negation of life becomes

-visible-

Autonomous movement of non-life-

It is the sector where all consciousness converges—the unity it imposes is merely the official language of generalized separation.

Mandango startled by a rooster

Cooperativa de transporte mixto Vilcabamba express

The imaginary is that which tends to become real.

Full moon three days long in Ecuador because of equator?

real estate signs in English

building—everywhere construction

group of old white men (and one old black man)

frightening each other with thieve tales. “No don’t

hide it in your ass, then they’ll cut you”

little dog limping one leg up

2008-10-19T17:36:00.000-07:00

Plane Poem

I am the emergency exit man

wet rectangles ripple, irrigated plots

turn molten & luminous mercury with

the breaking sun

premature claps, silenced by the roar of brakes

“One must be receptive, receptive to the image at the moment it appears”

“The poetic image is a sudden salience on the surface of the psyche”- Gaston Bachelard, xi

Over Heated eyes and thick air. Guayaquil mall / bus station.

busy bustle bewildered activity. flies buzz around me. cauldo

de pollo. One pink rose petal, trampled under foot.

“Sound of Silence” Andean style

One look, “Vas a Vilcabamba?”

“Como sabes?”

“Todas las personas de Estados Unidos va a Vilcabamba.”

-Pablo Penaherrera. civil engineer. Recommended I stay at the hosteria ‘las lagunas’ and eat tilapia.

Turn off that valve at once and open the spiritual-heroic refrigerating apparatus.

Myth-Buiding: Vilcabamba

2008-10-19T17:34:00.000-07:00

Myth-Building: Vilcabamba

Los Viejos: Secrets of Long Life From the People of the Sacred Valley— Grace Halsell

(1976)

MEN AND WOMEN OF VILCABAMBA:

HEALTHY, ROBUST, ACTIVE,

AND 100+ YEARS OLD.

Micaela Quezada, 104, a virgin and proud of it. But the villagers say she might still get married some day.

Manuel Ramon, 110, doesn’t know the meaning of the word “retirement.” He works in the field every day of the week except Sunday.

Miguel Carpio, 127, lives in a bare little house and behaves with the courtesy and grace of a philosopher-king.

Gabriel Erazo, a lusty 132 years old, keeps alive the dream of a great love in years to come—and propositioned the author unabashedly.

(inside cover)

The viejos had fit bodies, but their main concern had been the human heart. Their society seemed to be oriented toward the mystical, the religious, the romantic. p5 GH

The viejos all kept romantic illusions, amor gave spirit to their lives. Gabriel Erazo composed poetry, and when we would take a walk at sunset he would quote his verses to me, leaving me feeling soft and vulnerable. “I am 132,” he told me, and at the same moment he said he still had desires, ganas, to make love to a woman, that he felt this desire as strongly as he did when he was twenty. p6 GH

What might be different or special about the village? The minerals in the soil? The diet? The viejos’ attachment to the land, which they work with their hands until beckoned by death? Could it be the genetic factor? The Vilcabamba enclave of centenarians pose a fascinating puzzle for science: How is it that a tiny group of men and women have managed to survive far longer than most people in our society?

Doctors who have visited there have given us only intriguing hints that there must be “something special” about the valley. Most likely, it is not a single, distinctive, identifiable factor that contributes toward longevity and good health, but a complex combination of many factors.

A United States doctor, Eugene H. Payne, wrote a 1954 Reader’s Digest article in which he stated he had found little or no evidence of cardiac or circulatory diseases in the area. Another visitor, Albert B. Kramer, writing in a 1959 issue of Prevention, reported he suffered a cardiac condition but after a short visit to the province, he stated, “I felt better than I could ever remember.” He rhapsodized over the lush forest growth at altitudes where one would normally expect barren slopes. “Can you imagine,” he asked, “strawberries growing next to banana plants, coffee thriving in the shade of apple trees, barley and sugar cane growing side by side?” He was quite willing to accept that “something special” distinguished the province. “Perhaps that ‘something’ that is so good for the heart is the same ‘something’ that so strangely favors plant life”, he wrote. p6-7 GH

Dr. Miguel Salvador, a Quito cardiologist with an expansive personality…In 1969, Dr. Salvador, with a team of Ecuadorian doctors, made a survey of 340 persons of all ages selected at random from Vilcabamba’s total population. They found the general standard of fitness amoung the old “amazing,” an unprofessional but plainly apt description. Almost all were free of serious illness. The valley, the doctors concluded, was indeed a natural island of immunity to the physical and perhaps psychological problems that shorten lives elsewhere…“We had to believe their ages because of their accounts, reports and narrations, as well as the ages of their children and grandchildren. I was impressed, however, not because people were living to be more than 100, but because they were so active, with minds and bodies you’d expect in men and women who were 60 or 70.” p8 GH

A 1971 census identified nine centenarians in a total population of 819 people. Dr. Alexander Leaf, chief of medical services, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, observed that, “While extrapolation on the basis of this small village is not justifiable, the figures do represent a rate of 1,100 per 100,000 population, obviously an exceptional situation when compared with the U.S. rate of only three centenarians per 100,000 population.” p8 GH

Province officials in Loja, with no real regard for the welfare of the viejos, have been promoting the Sacred Valley as a tourist resort, much in the same way one might publicize recreational delights of a Disneyland or Coney Island. p10 GH

I felt blessed by the typical Vilcabamba weather, bright, temperate, dry. They sky and air were all promise. The day being so special made me feel a special person, my spirit became expansive as the world was wide. I saw beauty all around me. p50 GH

My approach to the Sacred Valley had elements of fantasy in it. I saw it in my mind’s eye where one might live in a pure, guileless, childlike way, free from the primitive emotions of fear and hate, cleansed of environment impurities, close to some heavenly ideal of faith and peace.

But it was an illusion. You and I can never return to that Perfect Place, if indeed it ever existed outside our dreams. We may dream of simplicity, of brotherhood and goodness, of eternal candlelight and togetherness, like Dorothy’s Land of Oz. But we cannot return to our origins, as we idealize them. Nor do any of us really desire to “go back”—to live in a mud hut with dirt floors, no running water or inside plumbing.

Still, the viejos, living close to nature and still naturally wise and unacquisitive, have much to teach us.

They live certain “truths.” The first is the “truth” that health is not a commodity that you can buy at a corner drugstore or get from a high-priced doctor. p131 GH

The most important part of biological aging may well be simply how one feels about himself. p125 GH

My living among the viejos convinced me of one cardinal rule that all of us can remember: Living a long life is, in essence, a do-it-yourself proposition. p24 GH

“The meaning of life is death”—Senor Ramon p136 GH

In a profound sense, aging implies a renewal of self, the ceaseless quest for self-identity. To a viejo such as the 110 year old Manuel Ramon, living in the remote simplicity of Vilcabamba, unassailed by the distractions of the teeming world outside, it was natural to view life as a whole, and realized that the big events were not written in politics or wars or money matters but in the human heart. p122-123 GH

Why some people grow old in agony and bitterness, others with fortitude and beauty p12 GH

1974- Road built from Loja “I wonder how long will it take ‘civilization’ to get to Vilcabamba—and to spoil it forever?” –Dr. Salvador. p10 GH

The Centenarians of the Andes- David Davies (1975)

To the people of Loja, who were Catholics, Vilcabamba with its healthy centenarians was seen as a place of miracles. p31 DD

On inquiry at some of the market shops, I found that a kind of cattle truck went to Vilcabamba about once a week.

Next morning I arrived at the bus station at 10am, to find the section of the bus for cattle, behind the benches, completely full with pigs, chickens and a couple of bullocks. The benches, too, seemed packed. I took my seat, and for two hours had the ordeal of people wanting to see to their animals. Then the bus was ready to depart. One of the bullocks, my nearest companion, started to snuffle in my pockets through the loose barrier between the human and animal sections.

The track to Vilcabamba lay for the most part along the sides of the mountain. Sometimes we descended to the floor of the valley to cross the river that lay there like a silver snake. To get over to the other side there was a rough hewn bridge, with a canopy over it, as with all the bridges in the area, though what purpose this served I could never discover. We passed several villages, all with a fine population of babies, fighting cocks and curly-haired sway-backed pigs.

Along the whole length of the ravine that we traveled for most of the thirty-five or so miles to Vilcabamba there was much evidence of old Inca tracks and ways, and here and there the ruins of some ancient building, with its crumbling field walls. Several times the passengers had to leave the bus to remake the road, which had either slipped or been washed away during the previous night, for there was more or less perpetual rain. After this there was always a ‘Tally Ho’ on the horn to bring back those passengers who were busy ‘seeing to the back tyre’. Other stops were to allow cattle to cross, baby donkeys to seek their mothers, and for Muscovy ducks, which stood in front of the bus and hissed.

We soon arrived at a village called San Pedro de la Vilcabamba. The girl beside me said, ‘It won’t be long now.’ Over the next rise we saw a valley below us; the whole bus gave a sigh, a universal cry went up- ‘Vilcabamba’- and there below us was Vilcabamba. In the centre of the broad valley lay a large village and above the village- something like a halo! It was certainly the first large piece of blue sky I’d seen since arriving in Loja.

Down the street came a figure on horseback, complete with dog; it could have been a scene straight from a western.

It was lovely to get out into the late afternoon sunshine and feel the gentle cooling breeze from the mountain. Gold seemed to be the keynote of the scene. The square was dominated by a golden-coloured church, and the whole of the plaza was a blaze of marigolds, and they in turn reflected the gleaming sunshine p32-33 DD

While gazing on the pleasant little plaza and the view all around, I could not help noticing a small mountain that rose up from the last of the gardens of the village. In fact it looked an ideal vantage point from which to survey the area and to take photographs of a panorama of the village. Perched on the top of this was a perfect little ranch-house complete with verandah.

I made my way up the broad streets, past the grazing donkeys and Indian ponies, and the friendly little dogs and long wavy-haired pigs. All the people I met in the fifteen minutes I spent on that journey were most polite in their greetings. The road then became just a path, narrowed, meandered and steepened. I now met little children, also extremely friendly, and not at all afraid. I reached the verandah, and the site was perfect. In a few moments I was approached by several lean dogs, who romped and turned over on their backs around me p33 DD

The valley of Vilcabamba has many peculiarities. It is interesting to speculate on whether the early inhabitants of the valley found its mysteries even more inexplicable than do its present ones. Certainly it has many extraordinary qualities—the plant life, the climate, the range of trees and crops growing there, its minerals, its dramatic mountains, and the remarkably regular 19 C midday temperature, which seems more or less steady at all times of the year p34 DD

Even the name of the valley is intriguing. It has been suggested that the name means ‘Sacred Valley’, derived from the language of the Quechua Indians: ‘Vilca’—sacred, and ‘Bamba’—valley. There is another possible root for its name. An interesting tree, much written about, grows (though less and less these days) in the vicinity of Vilcabamba. There are many indications—stumps, etc. –to show that it was more prolific there in the past. This is the Vilco or Wilco tree. Some say (mainly those of Spanish origin) that the valley gets its name from this tree. Plenty are found higher up the slopes of Mandango and Warango, the mountains that overlook Vilcabamba. There seems to be no reason why Vilcabamba should be picked out for its special home. This tree is found—under such names as Tamarindo, Yoke and Yacoana—all over the central and northern part of South America, so the latter explanation does not seem particularly likely.

The tree is interesting. It is very attractive with fern-like leaves, decorative branches and pretty red fruit. It has many uses among which is the extraction from it of a hallucinatory drug. The Incas also made a snuff from it. (See Genus Anadenanther in Amerindian Cultures by Siri von Reis Altschul.) p34-35 DD

The towering peak of Mandango (meaning the Devil in the Quechua language), 2,000 metres above Vilcabamba, looks at a distance like some cathedral carved by nature out of the rock—or a Noah’s Ark stuck on Mount Ararat. But when one climbs up to its base, a climb of several hours, one finds that the impression of a pillared wall that one had from the valley floor is only an illusion; for it is made up of water-worn pebbles and boulders, intermixed with a natural mortar. The mixture would be far more at home on the banks or the floor of some mighty and ancient river than up there. How did the debris get up to those heights? p35 DD

To the east of Yamburara, and five hours by pack mule from the road, there is a marvelous area of ground called pajonal with masses of vegetation and grasses of many colours. Contrasting with this verdant pasture are fourteen lakes, all with very clear water. But people rarely go there—they prefer to stay in the inhabited regions. They say that this place is full of strange noises, but to me it appeared only to be the wind.

The largest of these lakes is called Margarita, from which runs the river Masanamaca. It is believed that the sand that forms a large part of the subsoil, at least in the Vilcabamba valley, was caused by many big rivers and glaciers bringing deposits into the plain, where the village now stands. This was at one time a lake bottom. The course of the rivers can be seen in the hanging valleys that have been carved out to form the five arms of a star, Vilcabamba occupying the centre. They brought in great quantities of sand, gravel and silt, and with it calcium which is found also as a deposit, mingled to create this very fertile region. The surface of the land looks very similar to that of Loja. There occurred, at the end of tertiary times, a raising of the land due to tectonic movement, and the lake disappeared; but the sub-geology remained more or less the same, with its wealth of mineral deposits.

Climbing up above the hacienda belonging to the ‘lady’ of the village, Senora Rio Frio, about two miles distant, one reached a region that had a peculiar pinkish soil. Here bubbled up the first of the small sacred springs where the village obtained its water at one time, and on certain days the people of the village make a pilgrimage for water there, although it has been much muddied by the feet of cattle. Farther up towards the ridge of Warango, about another two miles on, is yet another spring. This is supposed to be the most sacred spring of all, and remains untouched by cattle. As a result, when I scraped away the dead leaves it lay in a little flower-strewn dell, with water that was crystal clear. There were indications that the people had visited it for centuries, by the marks and signs on the surrounding rocks. Sixty meters above this was the top of the mountain that formed a kind of ridgeback. There were signs of early habitation. Stone hut circles could be seen, possibly from Inca times. If one looked down towards where Vilcabamba lay, far down in the valley floor, a hill could be seen that obstructed most of the village from view, and where the woods did not hide the view there were many signs of early habitation. Stone hut circles could be seen, probably Inca or even pre-Inca. If we turned to the other side there was a most interesting view- the tips of some mines showing yellowish-white in the background, the river Piscobamba meandering in the foreground. A strong sense of the mystery and beauty of this historic area is engendered here p37 DD

In Vilcabamba, they were cutting down trees as fast as they could for their fires, and cutting the hedgerows and small coppices, burning them to make way for the almighty sugar cane that seems to dominate everything. In fact, in this fertile land, with its temperate climate, everything can be grown— from the violet to the fig. But this does not mean that it is always grown. More complex agricultural development is often neglected because of an inordinate affection for the sugar cane p38 DD

Local legend says that the valley was the true Paradise from which Adam and Eve were expelled. It still retains from that Paradise the purity of the atmosphere, brilliant sunshine and crystal clear sky. It is an area frequented by people who believe it has special qualities, indefinable by normal expectations; thus an ‘international sage’, Dr. Lovewisdom, who lived for a period in a cell on the mountain nearby, referred to ‘magnetic sunstorms which can eliminate the toxins that cause death- the cell being immortal if it has the means of detoxifying itself’. These enigmatic statements are a measure of the air of mystery with which people invest the area. Such ideas have been given as the reasons for the longevity of the inhabitants p40 DD

San Pedro de la Bendita, not to be outdone, also has its sacred place dedicated to the Virgin, the Virgin of El Cisne, or the Swan (in Spanish). It is a dry open space high up on the mountains above San Pedro. People who go there see in the distance a swan, but in order to get to it they have to pass round a headland, and by the time the swan has always disappeared. But why should the swan haunt such an unsuitable place for a water bird? (In their daily life the villagers take not the slightest interest in birds. Their philosophy is that God gave them all the animals, including the birds, to eat.) p42 DD

Interestingly, because of the altitude, and thus the cold, of these places, Vilcabamba, Nampacola, etc., there are no harmful reptiles there, and although there may be a few snakes, neither we nor anyone we met has ever seen any. Nor are there giant harmful insects, spiders, centipedes or dangerous mosquitoes, or harmful animals.

All this adds to the legend that the area is a paradise, with special and sacred sites. The sacredness of these sites goes back to pre-Colombian times- that is the time of the Incas, and, who knows, perhaps even before. There are no written histories. All around these villages are signs of prehistoric activities, old village sites, the stones of hut circles and marks on the mountain sides of cultivated fields from days gone by, which are much less rarely found near villages in other areas of southern Ecuador. It is as if, even in those far off days, these places were set apart and special. Despite the fact that the terrain has been much altered, trees cut down, the plant growth altered, some plants destroyed, and in general rapid and often ignorant changes made, this area still retains its quality of being special, mysterious. It is commented on by visitors and locals alike- there is an extraordinary atmosphere which pervades the region.

We must hope that the discovery of the old people with their remarkable health, and the increase in communications with the towns and cities, does not lead to the exploitation and destruction of these marvelous qualities which make the area such a unique one. There are some signs already that this danger exists- it would be a tragedy if it were allowed to spread. p42-43 DD

2008-10-19T17:33:00.000-07:00

go visit the priest and the ministers of the protestant churches and rope them into yr project. Don’t lend money to anyone. tell people you are interested in history and would like to get life histories of occupations and families, marriages, and births and deaths. build up genealogical tables. Study the local market, the agricyuklture, the use of chemicals and fertilizers, and visit the cemetery a lot, as well as the local hospital. Check pout what people watch on tv.

good luck,

mick

“Sensitive Research”— a designation of the Institutional Review Board

Letterist International—“Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviors of individuals”—Guy-Ernest Debord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography”

Your HSBC

relationship manager

can help you relocate

to any latitude.

Reading on the plane about Los Viejos and their active, loving, satisfied long lives. About the “Mixing of Generations and a Respect for Elderly”—makes me think of Mama Anna being put away and dying in the nursing home. Mistaking her granddaughter for her daughter, her daughter for her sister. Our culture has little use for the old. Would I put my parents away? No. I hope not, I hope I can care for them and make their last years livable. If we still lived communally then the burden would not fall just on me. Would I serve them breakfast, bath them, bring mom flowers and watch movies with dad? Well they definitely wouldn’t live together—so I would have to travel back & forth. I could take a break from school & teaching, spend my time writing, and care for them. Will I?

2008-10-19T17:27:00.001-07:00

I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.

-Zarathustra

12. The size of a bond. In all things there is a divine force, that is, love, the father himself, the source, the Amphitrite of bonds. Thus, Orpheus and Mercury were not wrong when they called this the great demon, for this bond is indeed the entire substance, constitution, and (if I may say so) the hypostasis of things. We come to know this greatest and most important bond when we turn our eyes to the order of the universe. By this bond, higher things take care of lower ones, lower things are turned toward higher ones, equal things associate with each other and lastly, the perfection of the universe is revealed in the knowledge of its form.

- Giordano Bruno

My true vocation is preparation for death.

-Harry Smith

I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason-

-John Keats

by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent nature's incorrupted benefaction.

-James Joyce

2008-10-19T17:21:00.000-07:00

The manuscript which I shall henceforth present to you lingers somewhere in those remote regions between ethnography and delusion. This need not be a cause for alarm. Samuel Clemens once wrote: “It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” This being said, certain facts are clear enough: in May 2008 a young anthropology student or as he would come to call himself, the anthropolyjest, arrived in Vilcabamba, Ecuador with the goal of recording the oral histories of the town’s famous centenarians and investigate the “extraordinary natural qualities” of the area. As he wrote in his application essay for the ILAS: “It’s time for an anthropological study to record what the scientists missed: the inner fabric of the native peoples’ lives.” We know he boarded at the Rumi Wilco ecolodge and began asking questions. From that point onward he became engulfed in, as he puts it, “the town’s sinister mystery.”

Then, at some uncertain point, he suddenly disappeared into the mountains. All that was found was his waterlogged folder of distorted and bleeding ink, tied together with a shoestring. Scrawled across its face in red and blue magic marker were the words:

Sensitive Research

Left to us is a seemingly mad assemblage of documents: letters, journals, photographs, transcribed conversations, newspaper clippings, guidebook entries, ethnographies, environmental laws, ecological studies, poetry and esoteric literature. Upon closer examination it is clear that he worked over the material obsessively. His objective seems to have been to recreate, for the reader, his own estranged experience of fieldwork, what Malinowski famously phrased, “the imponderabilia of everyday life.” There is at once, a frightening promiscuity to the investigator’s scope and yet a singular paranoia fixated on the sense of an all-inclusive lie, a “public secret”, the limits of which he is uncertain. It is for you to judge whether he fell prey to a romantic fever, a quixotic striving after the authentic ideal, or if he correctly diagnosed the symptoms of the pervasive modern disease.