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11 Face-to-Face Interactions Cemís, Idols, and the Native Political Elite When a cacique had to make strategic decisions about policies that affected governance , he usually convened a council meeting in the privacy of the caney attended by a retinue of his closest advisers, probably those of nitaíno status and, on important occasions, by subordinated or allied caciques. He then initiated the cohoba ceremony, invoking the appropriate cemí, or contingent of cemís, in order to consult and divine what they had in store for the future should this or that policy be implemented (Figure 15). Bishop Las Casas narrated one such council gathering conducted behind closed doors, in the caney of the cacique. Las Casas does not tell us when such an event took place (perhaps 1502–1520s). He spoke from personal experience but also as a recollection elicited much later when he was back in Spain. However, his experience is a generalization I am willing to accept as applicable to Hispaniola and Puerto Rico: They had the custom of convening cabildos [council meetings] to determine arduous things, such as mobilizing for war or other things that they thought important for performing their cohoba ceremony. I saw them sometimes celebrate their cohoba . . . the first to start was the Señor [cacique], and while he was doing it the rest remained quiet. Having done his cohoba (which is inhaling through the nostrils those powders [Figure 7], as it was said before, and were absorbed while seated on low and well-carved benches they called duhos . . . [Figures 15, 18]) he remained for a while with his head turned sideward and with his arms resting on the knees. Then he raised his face to the sky, speaking his truthful words, which must have been their prayers to the true God, or the one they had for god. All responded almost like when we say “amen,” and this they did with great pomp of voices or sound.Then they thanked him, and said flatteries to captivate his benevolence, and begged him to tell them what he had seen [while in his trance]. He would give an account of his vision, telling them that the Cemí spoke to him and certified the good or adverse times [to come], or that they would have children or that they would die, or that they would have conflict or war with their neighbors [Las Casas 1929 (3):546; my translation]. Such hallucinatory encounters entailed praying to (in the Latin sense of prex precis: “to obtain by entreaty”), perhaps also negotiating with, the cemí so as to extract 84 Chapter 11 a favorable outcome and to divine what the future had in store and therefore find out if or when it would be wise to implement a proposed action or policy. The cacique would then tell the nitaíno advisers of his visions and interaction with the cemí, and then, I assume, it would be roundly discussed and debated by the council members. The agenda set for this kind of cohoba ceremony, as gleaned from Las Casas’s quote, is to deal with matters that concern the polity’s welfare and security rather than any one individual’s needs. The order of access is very clear: the cacique (not the behique, which is not mentioned) has the prerogative to communicate directly with the cemí; the rest of the assembled have to wait for the results of the exchange. In this instance, the cemí invoked may be in fact the idol or set of idols (Figures 11, 15, 16) present in the cohoba ceremony—which minimally included the duhos (Figure 18) on which the cacique and elite sat, the “canopied” wooden idol holding the tray or platter with the hallucinogen (see Figures 11: a, c; 15: a), and the decorated bifurcated tubes for snuffing the drug (Figure 7)—and who articulated with a central idol, as Columbus noted (Colón 1985:203). These may also be the potent idols that in concert summoned the numinous presence of an unsubstantiated cemí force, apprehended by the cacique through an altered state of consciousness induced by the cohoba drug. For instance, Oviedo (1994 [1]:229–231) explicitly tells us how the cacique seated in a duho is not alone, but rather that it is he and his cemí “adversario” (opponent), which Oviedo equated with the devil of Christianity.This may not be a prejudiced misconception by Oviedo.The cemí of the duho could in fact be the cacique’s...

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