Yakumama in the Andes. The Quechua reception of an Amazonian mythic figure: A semantic-cultural analysis

Abstract

The Andean-Amazonian concepts of Yakumama transform as they move through space and time. Whenever the narrators talk about her, different images of this figure are produced. Yakumama myths obviously originate in the jungle, where she appears as an anthropomorphic and/or divine anaconda, incorporating fears and other human feelings, and as a companion or moral authority, a being who demands respect and symbolizes nature. In the Andes Yakumama appears in very different forms, her image is dispersed in pieces of semantic features that blend with others already existing in this region and even with some European ones. Thus Yakumama can be recognized in the water goddess, in the Andean siren as a seductress of men, in the male snake as a robber of women, in Amaru, the sacred serpent, and in the flying lizard. She also appears as a guardian spirit, as Q’ucha, the devouring lagoon, as the serpentine river, as Illapa, the god of lightning, and she is represented in the stellar constellation Yakumama. The main objective of this essay is a semantic-cultural analysis of the Andean concepts of the figure of Yakumama. The interrelations of these concepts suggest they form a semantic system of Wittgensteinian ‘family resemblances’. An analysis of the myths will provide important insights into Andean-Amazonian cultures, especially of the Quechua culture, which is the source of the original narrations on which this study is based.