Ajutap
awajún (tronc jívaro) ; Alto Marañón, Amazonie péruvienne
Among the Awajún of the Marañón River, the *ajutap* is an ancestor-being that grants the power to live. It has no fixed form: it appears as a land jaguar (*ikamñawa*), eagle, boa, or floating head (*bukea*), always in a violent wind, and speaks “like a human.” What it imparts is a *discurso*—a discourse that reveals to the one who receives it how their life will unfold. It is only obtained after a long ritual fast—*toé*, tobacco, and ayahuasca taken near a waterfall—for that is where the *ajutap* come to drink. The *ajutap* is neither a god to be prayed to nor the soul of the dead: it is an ancestral force that speaks and grants long life to those who know how to receive it.
Aparte de ellos, también existen Pagki, la boa y Wagkaanim, el tigre de agua. Ellos son muy importantes, son considerados ajutap porque antiguamente daban el poder a los seres humanos.
The word comes up whenever an Awajún speaks of what makes one live long. Ajutap: an ancestor-being who bestows power. César Tii Ikam, born on the Cenepa River, recounts that the boa Pagki and the water tiger Wagkaanim are considered ajutap because in ancient times they gave power to human beings—they are held as ajutap because long ago they granted power to humans. Power is not an abstract force: it is the ability to endure, evade enemies, find game, have many children.
What sets the ajutap apart is that it has no fixed face. It appears now as a land tiger (ikamñawa), now as an eagle (ukukui), a firebrand (payag), or a head floating in the air (bukea). Each manifestation bears the same sign: a gust of wind, the crash of a falling rock. And each time, the same thing happens—the being speaks like a human. What the ajutap brings is not an image or ecstasy, but a word. These beings, says the narrator, delivered a “discourse,” speaking like humans, revealing to people how their lives would unfold: they uttered a speech, announcing to individuals what their lives would be like.
One does not encounter an ajutap by chance. An Awajún child began “dieting” early: no sugar, no fragrant fruits, no contact with women, and every week the three plants—toé, tobacco, and ayahuasca. The young man would drink the “vegetal” far from home, near a waterfall, and bathe at dawn beneath the cascade. Why the waterfall? Because that is where the ajutap live or come to drink—because it is where the ajutap dwell or approach to quench their thirst. The place of power is a place of shared thirst: man and ancestor come to the same watering hole.
The ajutap must be kept distinct from two related notions. It is not a deity to be worshipped: one does not pray to it, but makes oneself available for its arrival through fasting, and it is the ajutap that chooses to speak. Nor is it a departed soul. The dead inhabit nayaim, the upper realm, and an ordinary person may seek power from them through ayahuasca; but the ajutap is an older, ancestral force, one that already bestowed power “in ancient times” and is not the fleeting life of any individual. Where Tsungki, master of water beings, rules over a domain, the ajutap is not a lord of place: it is the voice that, in the wind, tells a living person their life to come. And where the Kandozi soul becomes a tiger—their soul is tiger—the person themselves changes in substance; the ajutap, by contrast, remains the other who comes, the one whose discourse confers power without merging with the one who receives it.