Kuarara
kuarara (var. karuara) ; gens-de-l'eau du Premier Soleil
Among the Kukama-Kukamiria of the Peruvian Amazon, the *kuarara* are the people who dwell beneath the earth and under the water, in the First Sun (*Wepe Kuarachi*), the lowest of the world’s five realms. They are known by their striped caps and their round, broad feet. Their role is not decorative: they are the ones who hold the world together. In the lagoon lives an immense boa, the *Muiwatsu*, a punished sorcerer’s spirit, forever trying to escape—and if it breaks free, it unleashes great whirlpools, the *muyunas*. The *kuarara* then command their creatures, the jaguar and the *taricaya mama*, to hold it back by the tail. The *kuarara* is not a deity to be prayed to nor a mythic ornament: it is an unseen laborer of the world’s stability, on whom depends whether the earth does not drift away.
Los seres kuarara le dicen a su cría, el tigre, que lo agarre al Muiwatsu del rabo para que no salga de la cocha; entonces el tigre corre a sujetarlo.
The Kukama world rests on five tiers through which the Sun passes in turn—five soles. At the very bottom, beneath the earth and beneath the water, lies the First Sun, Wepe Kuarachi: this is where the kuarara dwell. The storyteller Witurio Yuyarima Chota, who inherited this knowledge from his grandparents, describes them with the precision of an observer—“they cover themselves with their striped caps, with their round, broad feet”: wearing striped bonnets, their feet wide and circular, they inhabit two houses made of pure earth.
They are not wandering spirits. The kuarara have a duty. In the depths of the lagoons lives the Muiwatsu, an immense boa, the “mother” of the lagoons—but a boa that was once the soul of a murderous sorcerer, whom the Kukama god Kémari refused to receive and banished beneath the water to atone for his sins. This punished serpent has but one desire: to escape. “When it butts its head, it makes all the water tremble.” And if it breaks free, it stirs the great whirlpools, the muyunas, which swallow everything.
This is where the kuarara’s role unfolds. They do not fight themselves; they command. They order the jaguar, their creature, to seize the Muiwatsu by the tail so it cannot leave the lagoon, and the jaguar runs to hold it back. The boa strains, struggles to flee; then the kuarara summon their other creature, the taricaya mama, the mother of the river turtles: “Go, help the jaguar, with your weight press down on that Muiwatsu so it cannot escape the cocha.” For this restrained boa, they explain, is the one who always helps us hold the earth in place. The stability of the world above—where the Kukama build their houses, fish, hunt—rests on this unending tug-of-war waged in the dark of the water by beings no one sees.
The kuarara give a name to this idea: that the habitable world is held, at every moment, by invisible labor taking place elsewhere. The Kukama gaze does not place power in the sky alone; it also locates it deep below, among the unassuming water-dwellers on whom it depends that the earth does not drift away. Like the “mothers” and “masters” of the living world that populate the more-than-human world, the kuarara are not symbols: they are actors, with an address, creatures, and a task.
Nor is the kuarara to be confused with the creator god. Kémari, risen to the highest realm, transformed into an angel, watches his children be born and die from the Fifth Sun; he judges and orders the world above. The kuarara, however, neither creates nor judges—they hold fast. The celestial master governs the world’s meaning; the kuarara upholds its framework.