The Conquistadors of the Jungle: Images of the Spanish Soldier in Piaroa Cosmology

Abstract

The most powerful image of white people in the imagery of the Piaroa, jungle dwellers of the Venezuelan Amazon Territory, is a giant conquistador ogre who is their Master of the Jungle. The paper places the figure of this monstrous spirit being within the context of the Piaroa discourse upon alterity in general, and notes that the stress is most saliently upon the potency, rather than the inferiority, of the stranger. The indigenous concern is with the human predicament itself, and upon the absurdities and danger as well as the positive strength of human power. Also, in unfolding the Piaroa view of white people as exotic beings, the paper contrasts the Native American ethnocentrisms with that of European discourse upon alterity, especially of the Americas as it developed during the period of the Conquest. The argument is that the European images of otherness must be set within the context of political hierarchy and social asymmetry, while the Amazonian case is one of political egalitarianism and social symmetry. The Piaroa would not judge external others, even if cannibal monsters, as inferior beings who were therefore rightfully subject to Piaroa domination. In the Piaroa highly egalitarian ontology of existence, predators are the prey of their own prey, and thus the boundary between self and other is not so clear cut as the Eurocentric discourse which is highly exclusive in its view of humanity.