Personal Experience: Shoqma de Cuy
My cuy during analysis (photo by Jack Lazar)
A place is never exactly what a person imagines it to be prior to visiting. This was the same in my case this summer. The farthest I had ever been from Indiana before my trip to Peru was Mexico, so traveling had its fair share of reality checks. Although I had researched and read about the area before I went, living in a place, seeing everything in person, touching, hearing and smelling is completely different. It is what separates knowledge from experiential knowledge.
My encounter with a traditional diagnostic practice called shoqma con cuy, which I have mentioned briefly before, serves as a perfect frame for my overall experience. People all over the Andes use similar procedures to diagnose and treat illness, but in my case I am 9000 feet above sea level in a hamlet called Cajamarquilla in the northern Peruvian Andes. The area does not attract many tourists (as opposed to Cuzco), and the only outsiders are usually academics and adventurists who set out to climb one of the hemisphere’s tallest peaks, Mt. Huascarán.
As my group walks down a dirt path, Doña Flora’s home comes into view. She is probably close to 80 years old, a small, squat woman with long black hair in two braids to her waist, tied with old ribbon. Her high-pitched, almost squeaky voice, paired with the fact that she has only four teeth remaining, makes it even more difficult to understand her Quechua-laced Spanish. She lets us into her home, which is set up in the traditional style—an open courtyard surrounded by three other covered rooms for eating, sleeping, and cooking. Chickens run loose in the dirt-floor courtyard, and guinea pigs and more chickens squeal from built-in cages.
As the group-appointed “patient,” Doña Flora leads a slightly terrified me into a dim side room and shuts the door, telling me to take off my clothes. In her right hand she holds a live guinea pig (cuy) around its neck while it squirms. I am trying to determine who is more afraid—the cuy or me. She then proceeds to rub the guinea pig all over me (and I mean all over me), all the while chanting religious phrases in Spanish. After about five minutes of this—which seems like five hours—she tells me to get dressed again and we go back to the courtyard. In front of all of us, Doña Flora slits the guinea pig’s throat to analyze its dead body in order to determine what is wrong with me. I will admit to thinking about all the children who own guinea pigs as pets at this point and how very different the attitudes are here. After about ten minutes of analysis in which Doña skins the cuy and slices its belly open to examine its organs, she presents me with a full rundown of my health. The highlights of this diagnostic involve me experiencing susto as a child, eating too many sweets, having frequent headaches, having an irritated uterus, and housing a parasite (really hoping that last one is not true). On the upside, she says I have a perfect liver and gallbladder. She concludes the session by telling me that I am young and beautiful and single and should enjoy my life and every experience that comes my way. We thank her for her hospitality and leave her with some potatoes, hiking back up the mountain to our hostel, where I am slightly embarrassed to say I promptly shower (although the cuy did pee on me, so I think it is acceptable).
My encounter with a traditional diagnostic practice called shoqma con cuy, which I have mentioned briefly before, serves as a perfect frame for my overall experience. People all over the Andes use similar procedures to diagnose and treat illness, but in my case I am 9000 feet above sea level in a hamlet called Cajamarquilla in the northern Peruvian Andes. The area does not attract many tourists (as opposed to Cuzco), and the only outsiders are usually academics and adventurists who set out to climb one of the hemisphere’s tallest peaks, Mt. Huascarán.
As my group walks down a dirt path, Doña Flora’s home comes into view. She is probably close to 80 years old, a small, squat woman with long black hair in two braids to her waist, tied with old ribbon. Her high-pitched, almost squeaky voice, paired with the fact that she has only four teeth remaining, makes it even more difficult to understand her Quechua-laced Spanish. She lets us into her home, which is set up in the traditional style—an open courtyard surrounded by three other covered rooms for eating, sleeping, and cooking. Chickens run loose in the dirt-floor courtyard, and guinea pigs and more chickens squeal from built-in cages.
As the group-appointed “patient,” Doña Flora leads a slightly terrified me into a dim side room and shuts the door, telling me to take off my clothes. In her right hand she holds a live guinea pig (cuy) around its neck while it squirms. I am trying to determine who is more afraid—the cuy or me. She then proceeds to rub the guinea pig all over me (and I mean all over me), all the while chanting religious phrases in Spanish. After about five minutes of this—which seems like five hours—she tells me to get dressed again and we go back to the courtyard. In front of all of us, Doña Flora slits the guinea pig’s throat to analyze its dead body in order to determine what is wrong with me. I will admit to thinking about all the children who own guinea pigs as pets at this point and how very different the attitudes are here. After about ten minutes of analysis in which Doña skins the cuy and slices its belly open to examine its organs, she presents me with a full rundown of my health. The highlights of this diagnostic involve me experiencing susto as a child, eating too many sweets, having frequent headaches, having an irritated uterus, and housing a parasite (really hoping that last one is not true). On the upside, she says I have a perfect liver and gallbladder. She concludes the session by telling me that I am young and beautiful and single and should enjoy my life and every experience that comes my way. We thank her for her hospitality and leave her with some potatoes, hiking back up the mountain to our hostel, where I am slightly embarrassed to say I promptly shower (although the cuy did pee on me, so I think it is acceptable).
A Wider Parallel...
Anxious anticipation of my diagnosis (photo by Jack Lazar)
The shoqma de cuy is a good parallel for my entire experience in Peru. I entered a household completely foreign to my own (like going to another country) and made myself completely exposed to a highly unique cultural practice (like being vulnerable in an unfamiliar culture) in order to learn something. Doña Flora leading me into a separate, dark room, away from everyone and everyone I knew was exactly how I felt when my plane touched down. As cliché as it sounds, in order to learn something I had to literally make myself utterly vulnerable. Doña Flora represents Andean culture, with her mud brick home set high in the Andes, guinea pig cages, Quechuan language, and brightly dyed clothing. I truly felt that engaging in such an intimate and ancient practice helped me to understand another culture in its own right. It was not about seeing the sights or learning a language, but actually taking part in a tradition so different from my own culture and putting it into its proper context.
The whole experience also brings to light many other important issues in the broader context, most starkly that of wealth discrepancy. Though the people do not generally consider themselves poor, by Western standards they have dirty and pitiful houses and not many material possessions to their names. I found myself torn about this whole matter. On one hand, the people have what they need to live and are usually healthy. They have access to a couple of different health care systems and eat fresh fruits and vegetables. On the other hand, they have little to no extra money in case of emergency and not as many choices as other people in Peru and elsewhere—where to live, where to go to school, where to work. Their hygiene and food safety would not stand up to Western scrutiny, but is this necessarily a bad thing? I have found myself torn between believing that the Andean people are poor and need help overcoming this poverty and believing that they do well for themselves and any outside help would be detrimental to preserving their culture. In class we have highlighted these issues on development by providing different approaches to “solving” the problems that “underdeveloped” countries face. People do not agree on which way, if any, is best, however, leading to frustration. I must confront these questions and frustrations in multiple classes and everyday life, but I can never settle on a satisfactory answer.
It seems incredible to me that after all that the Andean people have been through since the Spanish arrived, they still preserve centuries-old traditions in a wide-scale way. They have had to adapt, but maintain many of their ancestors’ practices. The shoqma de cuy is just one of dozens of medicinal traditions of the Quechua-speaking world. They also have an incredible knowledge of bone-setting and medicinal plants—even the children know which plants to use for every situation. I want to further explore the mechanism behind this preservation—how is that such practices have lasted here, but in other “conquered” places have died out so quickly?
In writing this entry I was amazed at how well my shoqma de cuy gelled with my overall experience in Peru, as well as how it brought to light many of the most important issues facing the culture. I believe that I truly learned something in a non-individualistic way; the shoqma was a microcosm for my entire time in Peru. By opening myself up to new experiences and trying to come with few preconceived notions, I think that I was able to not only immerse myself in the culture and gain personal knowledge, but also come to better understand the most pressing issues for the people in the northern Peruvian Andes. These issues will stick with me and are not likely to be resolved, but thinking about them in a critical way does add some clarity. Though it seems like a stretch to equate a guinea pig with an entire cultural encounter, both have been terrifying, astonishingly enlightening, and have left me with more questions than answers.
The whole experience also brings to light many other important issues in the broader context, most starkly that of wealth discrepancy. Though the people do not generally consider themselves poor, by Western standards they have dirty and pitiful houses and not many material possessions to their names. I found myself torn about this whole matter. On one hand, the people have what they need to live and are usually healthy. They have access to a couple of different health care systems and eat fresh fruits and vegetables. On the other hand, they have little to no extra money in case of emergency and not as many choices as other people in Peru and elsewhere—where to live, where to go to school, where to work. Their hygiene and food safety would not stand up to Western scrutiny, but is this necessarily a bad thing? I have found myself torn between believing that the Andean people are poor and need help overcoming this poverty and believing that they do well for themselves and any outside help would be detrimental to preserving their culture. In class we have highlighted these issues on development by providing different approaches to “solving” the problems that “underdeveloped” countries face. People do not agree on which way, if any, is best, however, leading to frustration. I must confront these questions and frustrations in multiple classes and everyday life, but I can never settle on a satisfactory answer.
It seems incredible to me that after all that the Andean people have been through since the Spanish arrived, they still preserve centuries-old traditions in a wide-scale way. They have had to adapt, but maintain many of their ancestors’ practices. The shoqma de cuy is just one of dozens of medicinal traditions of the Quechua-speaking world. They also have an incredible knowledge of bone-setting and medicinal plants—even the children know which plants to use for every situation. I want to further explore the mechanism behind this preservation—how is that such practices have lasted here, but in other “conquered” places have died out so quickly?
In writing this entry I was amazed at how well my shoqma de cuy gelled with my overall experience in Peru, as well as how it brought to light many of the most important issues facing the culture. I believe that I truly learned something in a non-individualistic way; the shoqma was a microcosm for my entire time in Peru. By opening myself up to new experiences and trying to come with few preconceived notions, I think that I was able to not only immerse myself in the culture and gain personal knowledge, but also come to better understand the most pressing issues for the people in the northern Peruvian Andes. These issues will stick with me and are not likely to be resolved, but thinking about them in a critical way does add some clarity. Though it seems like a stretch to equate a guinea pig with an entire cultural encounter, both have been terrifying, astonishingly enlightening, and have left me with more questions than answers.
So what's wrong with me?!
Walking back from the shoqma (photo by Jack Lazar)
Here is Doña Flora's complete rundown on my health:
- I am going to live till I'm 82
- I have an intestinal parasite
- I'm suffering from too much "cold" in my body
- I have an irritated uterus (also what Don Pancho told me...)
- I have lots of bug bites (I actually had about 80)
- I have a perfect liver and gall bladder (good news, finally)
- I suffer from headaches often (SO true!)
- I had a fall as a child that really scared me (jumping between beds as a child I slipped and broke my nose...perhaps this is it?)
- I was swept away by a current as a child and suffered susto (once I fell into a pool as an infant...)
- I'm sad about someone right now, but I shouldn't be because I'm young and unmarried
To see an example of a shoqma de cuy, watch this video! Warning: graphic content as guinea pig is dissected.
Click to continue with So What?