Manuel Córdova-Rios
Manuel Córdova-Rios was a vegetalista of the upper Amazon, and the subject of several popular books.
As a teenage mestizo of Iquitos he joined a company's work party to set up camp in the neighboring Amazon forest. They commercially cut rubber trees. He was, however, captured by a native tribe, and apparently lived among them for seven years. The elderly chief taught him in intensive private sessions traditional tribal knowledge: medicinal plants of the jungle, and ways of leadership. The small tribe knew skills for hunting in the jungle, which he learned well, acquiring the name Ino Moxo. The chief also led night-long group sessions under the influence of ayahuasca to sharpen prowess in the hunt. After the chief's death, Córdova was acknowledged as leader of the tribe for some years.
He then returned to local Peruvian life, married and raised a family. Eventually he became well known in the upper Amazon for his success as a curandero, due to his knowledge and use of the chief's herbal teachings. Also he regularly sent medicinal plants to New York.
In the early 1960s he met an American forester, Bruce Lamb, a veteran of many years in the Amazon. Lamb then wrote Córdoba's life story in Wizard of the Upper Amazon, and about his healing arts in Rio Tigre and Beyond. Both books sold well and drew academic interest, acclaim, and some controversy. Later, a Peruvian poet-novelist and an American poet each published literary works focused on Córdova.
Early years
Amazon youth and ''caucho''
Until the age of twelve Manuel Córdova-Ríos attended schools in Iquitos his birthplace. The major Peruvian city on the Amazon, it then had perhaps 40,000 inhabitants. His Uru mother came from Moyobamba, a town west of Iquitos in the Andes foothills between the Río Marañón and Río Huallaga. His father worked in the surrounding forest as a tapper or cutter of wild rubber trees. His origins lay near Arequipa.The thriving Amazon trade in rubber had come upriver to Iquitos circa 1880 from Brazil. Eventually his mother let him go with his elder sister Mariana and her husband Lino Vela into the hinterland to learn the booming rubber business. In the small town of Iberia on the Río Tapiche the couple's trading post served rubber tappers, who would bring in their harvest of latex to sell, as well as to buy gear and supplies. Before long young Manuel went further into the bush, by boat with a company of four others under Roque to a remote, makeshift caucho camp by the Río Juruá near the Peru–Brazil border. From here they could fan out into the unexploited forest in search of wild rubber trees.
Captured by a forest tribe
On a day when it was Manuel's turn to cook and clean camp, he was alone while the others hunted for rubber. Surprised suddenly by the deft appearance of a group of forest natives, Manuel was quickly seized and nearby weapons removed. With hands bound, he was required to run at an accelerated pace along with the silent tribal party, through the forest southward for several days and nights, stopping only briefly. Exhausted and disoriented, he surmised that his fellow caucheros had been killed; he later noticed his captors with their weapons. After about nine days on foot, they reached a small village in a jungle clearing located near the Peruvian headwaters of the Río Purús. It was about 250 km. from the caucho camp. An elderly chief greeted him and expressed kindness toward him. His name was Xumu Nawa. Manuel was naturally apprehensive. Eventually the village came to accept him, and slowly Manuel began to be reconciled to his new situation; ceremonies were held. Village children became casual and friendly, and the chief started to teach him the tribal language.Life in ''Huni Kui'' village
Being young Manuel Córdova-Ríos, after adjustments, quickly took to the tribal ways of the Huni Kui . A readily apparent difference was that the Huni Kui for the most part went naked. Their home was the tropical rainforest, which Córdoba had only known from a Peruvian perspective. He learned their language and their hunting styles, ate the diet of cultivated vegetables, wild fruits and game meat, lived their village life, and went without clothes. He retained inwardly, however, a submerged but unresolved conflict, due to the supposed harm caused by his initial capture. The chief Xumu taught Manuel Córdova-Rios much traditional knowledge of the tribe, which constituted valuable lessons enriching Manuel's entire life. Here Xumu Nawa might be further described as a shaman, or as a curaca, a title for leaders used among tribes of the upper Amazon.Ayahuasca and hunting
A major occupation of the men was hunting, which provided a substantial part of the Huni Kui diet. Xumu the elderly chief would, periodically, lead the hunters in secluded, group sessions calculated to renew and improve their hunting skills. The preparation usually required, e.g., a purge of the bowels, followed by taking only selected foods, and sexual abstinence. In a clearing away from the village a dark-green drink was made mostly from vines of ayahuasca and chacruna leaves, boiled slowly over a low fire. It was poured into small palm-nut cups and given to the hunters, who sat encircling the fire. Accompanied softly by the others, the chief would begin singing his peculiar chants. At his discretion he'd employ the songs to alter the atmosphere of the gathering or modify the pace of the group.The tribal hunters then entered into what may be described as a shared experience of vision. After an initial chaotic flux of organic images and designs, arabesques in blues and greens, a collective fantasy developed in which a 'parade' of birds and animals began to pass into the group's awareness. Following the chief's cue the hunters would shift the chant, enabling them to use the particular song associated with each of the jungle creatures as it passed before them. Evidently the group had evolved this method to coordinate their visions, so that they could then collectively imagine a similar scene of forest life. Accordingly, following their group witness of the wild creatures one after another, each of the tribal members was better able to appreciate the instinctual nature of such an animal or a bird, and the stealth and techniques of their fellow hunters, all of which could be scrutinized and delicately appraised in each mind's eye. Several of such hunting scenes, later reconveyed in elaborated stories told after the session, might then be carefully assimilated. The experience naturally worked to coach each hunter to improve his skills, e.g., shooting arrows that hit their mark, or refashioning his tracking intuition.
This ayahuasca experience, which was from time to time repeated for the tribe's hunters, fascinated and enchanted the young initiate, Manuel Córdoba. By this process, the Huni Kui men worked together to sharpen and refresh the tribe's hunting skills. Afterwards, hunters divided into small groups and put to the test their newly enhanced ability to find and bag the forest's wild game, and so to increase each family's ability to survive. In one of these hunts, Nixi and Txaxo told Manuel how to pursue feral pigs and, after tracking a large band, shot arrows bringing down a few quick targets. Nixi and Txaxo further described roving habits of the forest pigs.
The hunters also maintained a tradition of reciting to each other well-known tribal legends of the hunt, as well as personal stories. Córdova often heard such stories told in gatherings, e.g., inside a thatched house by the fire during a cold, rainy night, or in the village clearing on balmy nights during the dry season. Each seemed to have several favorites. The Peruvian youth listened wide-eyed as various jungle hunters spun their tales: Awawa Xuko spoke about a brief fight between jaguar and anteater; Natakoa told of a harpy eagle's catch of a howler monkey; and chief Xumu Nawa related a story about how, as a youth in company with the former chief Awawa Toto, they tracked a special band of howler monkeys.
''Huni Kui'' traditions
In addition to the hunting stories, Córdova heard about legendary scenes and mythic figures, and talk about social ceremonies which he later he witnessed. Learned were the tribal origins of the Huni Kui during a time when humans could talk with animals, and about how people did not die as they do now, but instead "Old men changed into boys, old women into girls". This was before the tribal loss of immortality. One narrative described the first war, started by wife-stealing; chief Xumu associated this with the tribe's recent misfortunes stemming from the invasion of commercial "rubber cutters". Another story told of the negative behavior suffered by a man named Macari, who had made improper use of ayahuasca.The teenager Nawatoto, the son of Natakoa and his wife Yawanini, had become a good hunter and was deemed ready to marry by his parents, which was later affirmed by the elder chief Shumu and a group of older men and women. From a different segment of the Huni Kui a girl named Irikina was selected and the two families agreed. A brief marriage ceremony was later held, followed by a large tribal celebration involving a great feast, dancing, and drinking. After birth of the first child, the husband obtained his own hunting territory and the wife her own plot in the village garden.
Ayahuasca lore and ''icaros''
By private instruction, the elder chief Xumu trained Manuel Córdova using "a series of incredible sessions with the extract of the vision vine, nixi honi xuma". The idiom Huni Kui is a dialect of Amahuaca which is part of the Panoan languages. The word ayahuasca is Quechua: aya meaning "spirit", "ancestor", or "dead person"; and huasca signifying "vine". Xumu transmitted to Córdova the vital skills and customs of the tribe, regarding the use of ayahuasca, in addition to the chief's extraordinary knowledge of the plants of the jungle. During this introductory period, a private teaching session began in the morning and ended the next morning. They held outside the village once every eight days for a 'month', followed by a month off. Again Manuel was required to follow a strict dietary regime during the sessions. As the training lasted many months, Manuel at times became "nervous, high strung, and afraid of going insane" but the chief and his small group of elder women assuaged his fears. These sessions were held in a secluded place in the forest, especially selected and provisioned.The chief closely supervised the preparation of the brew of ayahuasca vines and the important admixture of chacruna leaves. A particular type of chacruna used by chief Xumu, Psychotria viridis, was later favored by Córdova. Primarily ayahuasca, but either of these two plants, or their comibination, are also called yagé, among other names. Córdova learned the great care that must be taken in order to respectfully collect the ayahuasca vine and chacruna plants, then mash, mix, and cook these ingredients properly. Early on Xumu had assigned the tribe's expert, Nixi Xuma Waki, to instruct him how. Medical studies of these drugs have since demonstrated that the visionary effects of the ayahuasca and chacruna brew are produced mainly by the latter, with the former here enabling and enhancing the imaginative clarity. Hence the extraordinary experience produced was "the result of a synergetic mechanism of the chemicals present in two different plants, an example of the sophisticated pharma knowledge of the Amerindian shamans."
While secluded in a jungle clearing, united "through some telepathic code of ancient man" Córdova felt Xumu transmitting tribal knowledge. He received "accumulated wisdom of many generations of ancestral forest dwellers, tapping biological wisdom from some source unknown". The older chief coached the young Manuel in the use of his imagination, steering it so as to refine his perception, and guiding him so he'd intuit its utility. Plants were shown and identified, then visualized. Their particular health benefits and especially their healing properties were discussed; various plants were related to specific diseases and their symptoms, imparting the ability to make an herbal diagnosis. To the plants the chief sang his chants, and taught many to Córdova, along with their meaning and healing effects. Later Córdova in his work as a curandero primarily relied on the icaros taught him by Xumu. Córdova also learned how to listen to the plants, especially to ayahuasca.
"In the case of mestizo Peruvian shamans, the ayahuasca plant, like other visionary plants, is itself the teacher of the aspiring shaman who, among other things, learns supernatural melodies or icaros from the plant." The special functional uses of different icaros are "as varied as the needs of the shaman". The key ayahuasca chants and songs "sway the sequence and content of the internal vision", remarked Córdova, who stated also, "This power once exerted, though perhaps subtle in its effect, does not easily disappear." "The icaros constitute the quintessence of shamanic power."