Inhabitants of the eastern Bolivian community of Baures, like residents of other nearby communities, present a post-colonial melange of ethnic origins. The Baure place great importance on religious festivals, pageantry, and mystery—in the sense of symbolic acts and rites—especially at the time of Mardi Gras (Carnival) just prior to the fasting and repentance of Lent.
Franziska Riedel’s ethnographic account begins, like a detective story, with the disappearance of a young man of the Baure, young José, while he was riding his bicycle from his village to Baures to attend the Carnival Queen’s crowning. When his body turned up the next day, he seemed to have drowned, but no physical signs of drowning were apparent. His way had led him by night through the San Juan woodland, a place known for strange happenings, although searchers found him at water’s edge somewhat farther on. He had missed the ferry that would have taken him to Baures.
Healers reported that José at that point was actually still alive in a disembodied form, searching for his parents. The boy’s brother, who had left for Baures somewhat earlier, and had taken the last ferry, reported feeling a strange weight, the weight of a man, on the back of his bike, where a passenger would have been sitting. An invisible voice had threatened the brother, but ceased when the ferry came (7-15).
In the Baure culture there are quite a few spirit beings other than the dead. Animal spirits such as the caiman and the anaconda are among them. These animal spirits are also visible and identifiable as physical beings, crossing boundaries between worlds with ease. Dead spirits who commit soul theft seem to value power or their own purposes over any ethics, kinship loyalties, or moral standards they may have adhered to during their lifetimes. Spirit beings other than the dead are reported to have methods and procedures equally devoid of human ethical considerations or boundaries.
Dead souls, for example, do not disappear from human spheres of existence, but instead show themselves to the living, interact with the living, and sometimes claim living people as their own and make away with them, causing their biological death sooner or later in the process (159). Thus dead people are not only active in the everyday lives of the living, but they are also capable of causing harm or even death; living people expect this behavior from them.
Riedel’s book, written in German, provides many extended interviews verbatim in Spanish, making the book immediately accessible in a number of vital areas to Spanish-speaking scholars. These verbatim interviews include long narratives quoting Baure people in full. This book’s most enduring contribution to ethnography may be its substantial collection of interviews presented in full, with context. Riedel presents the informants’ words with little commentary.
Narrative scholars will be particularly interested in chapter 9, “Die Encantos,” which includes instructions for defending oneself against evil spirits, including the dead. Useful tactics include some based on traditional Catholicism, such as the use of holy water, with helpful substitutions: “If you must, you can bless your home with alcohol or spirits.” The blessing is, of course, in great part to prevent dead family members from whisking away living relatives and overshadowing their souls to the point of death.
Dead souls among the Baure become greedy and malevolent, no matter how virtuous, kind, or protective of others they might have been as living people. For this reason the Baure have compiled a huge compendium of procedures to prevent a witch, spirit, or dead person from committing soul theft. Methods for stealing a soul and for prevention of soul theft, detailed on pages 238-335, include burning the recently dead person’s house and all his possessions, things that might draw him back into the world of the living. Families may move to a different house to confuse the spirit of the grandfather, who might seize a favorite grandchild and take her with him.
It is easy to see how kinship becomes dangerous under these circumstances. Dead relatives have no compunction, feel no mercy, and are to be fended off so that family members can survive. As soon as grandmother draws her last breath the family must defend itself from her as if she were a ravening demon, because she will become one as soon as she fumblingly finds her way back to her former home. There is no fault or blame accruing to anyone in this situation; dead people cannot avoid becoming monsters (161).
Like the spirits of deceased relatives, the caiman is defined as a human being in some Baure communities (220). “We climbed down into the water (of the lagoon of Baures). There on the shore was the caiman. He was watching us. He was human. They are human beings. They have been human beings. That’s why they listen to us.”
This quote makes it clear that the caiman is much more than an animal spirit; he is an encanto, an enchanted being, a being who had not always lived in the lagoon, but belongs to the spirit world as well. The Baure say a group of Guarayo, a much-disliked non-Baure ethnic group, had placed him in their home waters (220).
Folklorists and anthropologists will find this book a useful introduction to the rich conceptual world of the Baure people. I recommend it highly.
--------
[Review length: 889 words • Review posted on February 1, 2017]