Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman: Ideophony, Dialogue, and Perspective

5. On Tenaciously Persisting

i 5 i On Tenaciously Persisting Luisa often chooses the Quichua verb awantana ‘to persist, endure’ to describe how she has managed to survive some of her most difficult experiences. For this reason I have used the theme of persisting as the title of this last chapter. For Luisa, persistence is a key virtue, referring not only to stubbornly defending oneself against any kind of assault and never giving up no matter how hard and long the battle but also to mustering the presence of mind to exercise one’s intellect to the utmost in the middle of an attack. The two full narratives presented here concern situations where persistence was heroically manifested by her own grandmother, and also by Luisa herself. The first narrative recounts an experience endured by her paternal grandmother, Andrea Dahua, a woman who has achieved a kind of official status as a symbol of Andoan womanhood. I discovered her grandmother’s legendary status in a book about the Andoans that had been put together by ONAPE and published in 2005 by an official government office, the Subdireccion Provincial de Cultura de Pastaza. Within this book is an entire chapter devoted to her grandmother Andrea. When I read sections of this book to Luisa, she dismissed some of the minor details about her life, such as her actual place of birth, but the essence of her character was, according to Luisa, correct. Luisa also con- firmed the correctness of a drawing depicting her with a jaguar hide around her shoulders, and carrying her preferred weapon for fighting—a stick. Also correct is the written description of her as someone who fought with jaguars. Luisa had actually told me one of these stories eighteen years earlier, and it is this story that I present in translation below. According to Luisa, her grandmother Andrea was attacked by a jaguar as she was trekking through the forest. She behaved, during this attack, in a way that was extraordinarily intelligent, valiant, and tenacious. She was said by Luisa to have successfully survived the attack in part because she 126 lessons from a quechua strongwoman was able to interpret and predict the jaguar’s intentions by watching its movements. What Luisa has learned from her grandmother’s experience in this situation is that the direction in which the jaguar is about to leap at one can be predicted by the way in which it positions its body while squeezing and clawing the earth with its front paws. It will claw at the earth off to the side of its opponent just before it intends to leap toward that opponent. By repeatedly reading the jaguar’s movements and intentions and leaping out of the way, right at the moment it was about to catch her, she bought herself some time. She noticed at one moment a huge buttress vine protruding out of a tree that she had squeezed behind for protection. While in the thick of the battle, she also managed to scream at the jaguar, trying to scare it away from her. Although the screams did not scare it away, they were heard very faintly by her brotherin -law, who translated this barely perceptible auditory image into the sound of a little dove, until he got closer and realized who it really was. This narrative was generated during a series of interviews that involved my reading a list of Quichua verbs to Luisa and asking her to freeassociate about the kinds of activities, specific examples of activities, and personal experiences of activities referred to by the verb in question. I catalogued these interviews as a series of verb portraits. We were talking about the verb kishpichina, which means ‘to free or to save someone from something,’ which immediately reminded her of this story. Jaguar Attack I. Introducion N: Now let’s talk about kishpichina ‘to free, to save.’ L:‘‘AsshewascallingoutsosadlyIwenttosaveher,’’onemighttell. 1. So sadly she was shouting Ayyy! 2. As she was calling out ‘‘chui chui chui chui,’’ I went— 3. Well, it was a jaguar that was attacking a Runa woman, ah hah! 4. That’s what it did to my grandmother. 5. To my own grandmother. II. My grandmother Andrea 1. My grandmother was such a trekker, going everywhere, like a man would. 2. Just like a man, she would go hunting alone, and even sleep in the forest. Tenaciously Persisting 127...