of wart-like excrescences, mainly on the face but often covering 

 much of the body. Pizarro's men, it will be remembered, suffered 

 a severe case of the disease while exploring the flanks of the 

 sierra east of Tumbes: 



"They thought at first that these were warts, because at the 

 beginning they looked like warts. But as time passed, they grew 

 larger and began to ripen like figs, of which they had both the size 

 and shape: they hung and swung from a stem, secreted blood and 

 body fluids, and nothing was more frightful to see or more 

 painful, because they were very sensitive to touch. The wretched 

 men afflicted with this disease were horrible to look at, as they 

 were covered with these purple-blue fruits hanging from their 

 foreheads, their eyebrows, their nostrils, their beards and even 

 from their ears; nor did they know how to treat them. Indeed 

 some died of then while others survived. Then it suddenly 

 disappeared the way it had come, as do bad attacks of the grippe " 

 (de la Vega 1961: 375) 



Perhaps coincidentally, two weeks after leaving Huancabamba, 

 I suffered a dermatological disorder that covered my entire face 

 and neck with blemishes; undiagnosed the attack disappeared 

 after a fortnight. 



This folk legend recounted by Pancho Guarnizo contains a 

 number of symbolic elements typical of traditional South 

 American shamanism, including: 1) the belief in spirit guardians; 

 2) the notion of particular geographical localities animistically 

 endowed with supernatural power— the image of the serpent; 3) 

 the concept of physical combat against disease demons or 

 spirits; 4) the close association of certain magical plants with 

 spiritual power and the idea that different individual popula- 

 tions of the same botanical species may be endowed with greater 

 or lesser amounts of power; and finally 5) the belief in spiritual 

 or supernatural forces as the causal agents of illness. The legend, 

 in fact, exemplifies a fundamental feature of the contemporary 

 San Pedro heaHng cult. Despite the overlay of Catholic 

 symbolism, the aboriginal roots of the cult are readily apparent 

 in every phase of divinatory and curative ritual. 



On the night of February 15, I98I, I participated in a San 

 Pedro healing ceremony under the guidance of don Pancho 

 Guarnizo. A long brown muddy track wove past agaves swollen 

 in flower and arrived at an open veranda contiguous with a 



371 



