A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

In the 1970s, in the early days of oil exploration, an interesting collection
of stories appeared, gathered from among the Kichwa communities of
the Ecuadorian Amazon. 147 All of the stories are oral in origin and provide
an account of the forms of life and of the relationship between the
human and the non-human, of the flux between those worlds which in
other cultural contexts are depicted as separate and opposed spheres.
In the narrative universe we are dealing with, animals become human
and vice versa.
The act of becoming dissolves the borders between culture and nature.
Faced with the transculturation of concepts such as sumak kawsay, it
seems fitting to turn the gaze to those stories as a hermeneutic and
epistemological option that seeks to exercise control over the endogenous
senses of those now nomadic concepts, wandering across different
cultural borders. One of the stories is the “Machakuy runa”, the
snake-woman, from the collection referred to above.
The story is an account of a failed amorous relationship. A young hunter
in the middle of the jungle observes “ukuy” ants, a culturally significant
variety, carrying away the feathers of the birds that he had hunted; the
maytus (sheaths) from his first hunting days also disappear. When he is
returning home, a beautiful young girl appears on the way; she asks for
something to eat and declares her love for the young man, saying her
family would look favourably on their setting up a home together. The
young hunter gladly accepts her proposal, takes her home and they start
a family. Every weekend the young girl’s father comes to visit them,
drinks chicha (a maize or cassava liquor) and goes back to the jungle.
One day, before going into the jungle, the young hunter advises his wife
to drink chicha to her father and treat him well, while for her part the
young girl warns him not to harm a snake if he sees one on the way
back from the jungle because it is her father. The father comes to visit
as usual and, in contrast to previous occasions, drinks too much chicha;
147 Juan Santos Ortiz de Villalba. Sacha Pacha. El mundo de la selva.
Quito: CICAME, 1994.
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