In last month’s blog, I explored the concept of hucha miqkhuy through my personal transcripts of private conversations with don Juan Nuñez del Prado or notes taken at his training courses. This month, I am diving back into those records to review what the situation in the Andes looked like in the early to mid 1990s, when it was much more difficult to learn the tradition. Because of the dedication of academics such as don Juan, Theo Parades, and Oscar Miro-Quesada—who not only studied the tradition but practiced it—the opportunities for study, although scant, were possible. Over the past several decades, there has been a revival of the tradition. We are fortunate today that dozens of Andean paqos directly share their knowledge and practices with people across the world. But back in the early 1990s, the young people were not very interested in learning the tradition and becoming paqos. While they no doubt respected their elders and their cultural heritage, the majority wanted to live in Cuzco, get educated, and integrate as Peruvian citizens into the “modern” world.

The heart of this material comes from conversations I had with don Juan in 1996 in Arizona when two Q’ero paqos met with a half dozen Hopi Elders. I was fortunate to be there alongside don Juan and a small group of others, and I had time alone with him to discuss the challenges of learning the tradition when there were so few paqos available to teach us. Our impromptu discussion shares one perspective of the situation, drawn from our experience. Of course, there are others.

I have included context and explanations pertinent to our discussion in square brackets.

Joan: I want to follow up on the women paqos. Back in Urubamba don Julian [Pauqar Flores] said that spirit beings—the apus, Pachamama—listen more to women than to men. But women are said to work more on the left side, with practices such as healing, and not the right side of the path. If the spirit beings have a better dialogue with women, wouldn’t that mean they are just as skilled on the right side, the side of perception and mystical communication?

Don Juan: Yes, the natural capacity of women is the left side. That is the practical, nurturing, and healing principle. If we use Jungian psychology as a guide, men have a natural capacity for logos and women for eros. Logos is the natural capacity to interpret and challenge and so on; eros is the impulse for life, to establish relationships, for nurturing and healing. For men the eros is in their unconscious, for women the logos is in their unconscious. So, each must work to develop the complementary capacity. Because men naturally have the right side, they must develop the left; because women have the left, they must develop the right. And it is difficult to do that. So, the most difficult thing for women is to develop the right-side skills. But if they do the work, then it is said they become more powerful than the men.

But remember what some of the other paqos said when you asked them why there are so few, women paqos? They said the women don’t want to do it, to study. They said they are too lazy! They do not want to do the work to become paqos. Some of the men teach their wives a little, like don Mariano with doña Augustina. She just helps him a little, as a kind of assistant.

But don Juan Paquar Espinosa is training his daughter to be an alto mesayoq. She is very smart. I think one day the daughter of don Juan will be one of the most important female paqos in Q’ero. [As far as we know, tragically, when don Juan died unexpectedly several years later, his daughter’s training ended and she is not working as a paqo.]

Joan: Ok, shifting gears. . . You were with me that night when I purchased the set of mulla khuyas in Cuzco. I am grateful I have them, but it also feels odd, because it means some paqo died and there was no one to pass them on to. Or there was some other situation in which they went unclaimed by a paqo. The chunpi knowledge appears to be dying or even lost, as none of the Q’ero we have talked to know about the mullu khuyas or practice as a chunpi paqo. These are some of the most well-trained and experienced paqos. What’s going on? [Mullu khuyas are a set of five stones used to perform the Ñawi K’ichay and Chunpi Away karpay to weave the chunpis, or mystical “belts.”]

Don Juan: I have not found anyone who does the karpay. The thing is there is so much resistance. The indigenous people like the Q’ero became Peruvian citizens only twenty-five years ago, and everyone was looking to become a real citizen. As a result, a lot of paqos were abandoning the ancient knowledge. That’s why you can sometimes buy these mulla khuyas in the city, because paqos are giving them up. Not the paqos really, but the descendants of the paqos. They don’t know what to do with these khuyas.

Joan: Is there anyone in Q’ero who knows the chunpi practice as don Andreas taught it? [Don Andreas Espinosa was a Q’ero chunpi paqo and the primary teacher of this practice.]

Don Juan: No.

Joan: The tradition is being lost. . .

Don Juan: Yes! You know, I will give you an image, a picture. Don Jesús, a paqo from another village, one outside of Pisac, when I met him, he was totally isolated. Nobody believed in his techniques. He performed ceremonies only for himself. Everybody laughed about his ceremony and techniques. This is not the situation in Q’ero, but in a community near Pisac. But in Q’ero, there are evangelical groups. Two of the sons of the top paqo belong to this group, and for them these techniques belong to the devil!

Don Andreas Espinosa was the Q’ero chunpi master. Don Manuel Q’espi is his son-in-law. Don Manuel does not want to remember this, but don Manuel had a misunderstanding with don Andreas, a big disagreement about the left-side work. These things belong to the left side. He was looking for this teaching, and I don’t know what happened, what the disagreement was about, but don Andreas denied the teaching to him. Don Manuel, on the other hand, is a very special person because he is kamasqa: he received the teachings directly in a vision from Christ.

Joan: You have told me and others how special don Andreas was and don Manuel is. But this is an example of how the knowledge did not get passed on. At least not to any of the Q’ero we have worked with and learned from.

Don Juan: Absolutely, don Andreas was a master, and he was the teacher of don Manuel and others, including me. I met him in August 1979. The next year he taught me the chunpi knowledge. I spent only thirty days with him. I was to go back in 1981 to receive the karpay for the munaynioq [owner of munay] but I got involved in some business in Cuszo and so did not return.

Joan: I am thinking of how things work elsewhere, or at least of how we think things work. Many of us think of a mystical or shamanic system as being a body of knowledge, and that body of knowledge—maybe not in total, but in least in part—gets passed on over and over from teacher to student in a systematized way.

Don Juan: Yes, and in the past that was the way it was in Q’ero.

Joan: But Christianity and the pressures of social development have changed that?

Don Juan: No, it was not Christianity so much. In fact, the Christians have finally made an agreement for understanding the indigenous beliefs. It was more the pressure of development, of progress, of becoming citizens.

Joan: So it was cultural.

Don Juan: Yes. Everyone was beginning to be educated, to go to school. And another thing—it was terrible in Peru—was the influence of the Marxists. The Marxists were like the Evangelicals.

Almost all the school teachers in Peru at that time took a Marxist position, for the last twenty years or more. They saw this knowledge as foolish things that belonged to the ancestors and said they are lies and deceptions. Some people in don Jesús’s community laugh at him, because the teachers tell them that his knowledge is foolish knowledge, superstitions.

Joan: Except for the chunpi work, there seems to be a somewhat robust tradition in Q’ero.

Don Juan: This is the place where it is the strongest.

Joan: Still, when I asked the Q’ero paqos about so many of the things you have taught me and that the old masters taught you, they don’t know most of them. This situation is so unfortunate. And the prophecies, such as the prophecy of the Three Children of God and the rise of the Runakay Mosoq [the New Humanity]—it was told to you by don Andreas, and also I think by don Benito. . . Don Andreas was a master Q’ero paqo, most people studied with him. Yet the Q’ero paqos we have talked to don’t know that prophecy.  

Don Juan: Well, don Mariano Apaza Marchaqa talked about the three eras.  

Joan: Yes, but only in the most rudimentary way. And in Christian terms, in Biblical terms. How did you gather this prophecy, from whom? Don Andreas, don Benito, and don Manuel Q’espi?

Don Juan: Don Andreas had a very complete version. Don Benito, too. Don Andreas talked about the three eras as those of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He had some very nice thoughts about the Taripay Pacha.

[The three children of God, which can be thought of as the rise of three civilizations, also can be equated with three World Ages. They are the Dios Yaya Pacha, the Age of God the Father; Dios Churi Pacha, the Age of God the Son; and Dios Espíritu Santo Pacha, the Age of God the Holy Spirit. They correlate to the older Andean version of the three World Ages; the Purun Runa Pacha, the Age of the Wild Men; Wari Runa Pacha, the Age of the Solar Men; and Wiraqocha Runa Pacha, the Age of the Metaphysical Men. The Taripay Pacha is part of the third World Age, which we are currently in, during which we have an opportunity to individually and collectively evolve spiritually.]

Joan: And don Manuel?

 Don Juan: No, he had only pieces.

Joan: Well, I am still stuck in this stubborn loop of incredulity about what appears to have been forgotten or lost. I can’t help but think that if the prophetic tradition is strong in the Andes, most of the paqos, or at least the alto mesayoqs, would know this prophecy. How else can it live? It must be sustained if it is considered essential, as this prophecy seems to be.

Don Juan: I think that in the last generation you could find almost all the paqos of Q’ero carried the prophecy or parts of it. But almost all those people have died. The next generation are for the most part focused on other things, not on preserving the knowledge, techniques, or prophecy.

You know the way we must work! I am an anthropologist, and you are like one. We take all the information we have the opportunity to gather, and we organize the information to view the whole of the different pieces. It’s an amazing thing that usually people who participate in a tradition don’t know the big picture.

When we meet with the paqos, we ask them to give us the big panorama, with a lot of details. In some ways they give us a lot of details. Remember their talk [during the interviews for my book] about death: the trip after death, the life in the volcano, the people there, the role of the priest, the angel helping people to go to the other side? We are always asking for more. I think with the material you have, if you integrate it harmoniously, you have an incredible story to share. Try to handle to material you have now.

Joan: Yes, that’s what I am trying to do. Despite the interviews for the book and all we learned, I am fairly new to the tradition. And so, of course, my knowledge is so much less than yours that it’s a challenge for me to integrate it. You can make interpretative leaps that I cannot. I worry about the very big likelihood that I will misunderstand.

Don Juan: Let me tell you something. One day I went with don Manuel [Q’espi] to Moray. In Moray, there was a group of workers of the National Institute of Culture. They were fixing the ruins of Moray. I asked don Manuel what he thought about the work of these men. He told me, “They are fixing this place for the return of the Inka.” These are Inka houses, and they were working to restore them so the Inka could return. That is what he thought, and that is the way you find new information. The thing that is very interesting is that the workers don’t have any interpretation about this. They are simply doing their jobs because they receive pay. But for this alto mesayoq, for don Manuel, they were preparing the way for the Inka. Don Manuel is coming from a totally different perspective.

With only this piece of information, we have the right to affirm the prophecy of the Return of the Inka. This is real for this man! The Inka is alive and going to return. You know, in your records from your interviews in Urubamba [for the book], you have a part that says something direct, like “The Inka is alive and living in Paytiti.” They say, “We are his grandchildren” or something like that. That’s what they say. They never say, “We have a messianic prophecy that says the Inka is going to return. We are his descendants and we are waiting for his return. The Inka is alive and we will restore his houses so he can come. . .” In only a few cases will we get that type of information. We need to infer and interpret from the short, direct information.

Joan: Okay, Maestro. I will continue to do my best. And there is always the challenge of the Quechua translations. Remember the guinea pig mess with don Juan [Paquar Espinosa], when I was asking about his misha [personal sacred bundle] and the khuyas [sacred stones and other objects] in it? And he said there were no khuyas in his misha. And I asked again, and he said the same thing. And then we realized that instead of using the word “khuya,” the Quechua translator had been using “quwi!” Poor don Juan thought I was insisting there must be guinea pigs in his misha! This is not easy work, Maestro. It’s a good thing we can laugh!