MOCHE: A PERUVIAN COASTAL COMMUNITY— GILLIN 



119 



are the practitioners themselves. This does not mean, 

 of course, that the practitioner does not endeavor to 

 acquaint himself with all of the objective facts of a 

 case before he undertakes it, e.g., sickness and symp- 

 toms of the patient, his quarrels and other social re- 

 lations, his state of mind and prominent anxieties, 

 etc. Likewise the brujo does not fail to maintain a 

 certain air of mystery and authority about his treat- 

 ments and seances, and to guard his secrets from lay- 

 men. However, within the framework of brujeria, 

 this is, of courso, regarded as no more unethical than 

 the practice of scientific physicians looking into the 

 economic and social circumstance of their patients 

 without directly interrogating the patient himself. 

 Likewise, a certain "window dressing" is employed 

 by the medical profession because it gives the 

 physician a position of dominance and authority in 

 relation to his patients — it helps him to "control" the 

 case, which is regarded as an essential part of the 

 treatment. Even the most enlightened modern patient 

 in North America expects his physician to assume an 

 air of certain seriousness when considering his com- 

 plaints, to wear a white coat or gown when perform- 

 ing surgery if not at other times, to keep his 

 instruments in a compulsively regular although per- 

 haps unnecessary neatness in their cases, and so on. 

 Likewise, the care with which the brujo lays out his 

 mesa, the solemnity with which he conducts the divi- 

 nation, etc., are "ethical" accompaniments of the 

 practice of the profession. And, of course, the brujo, 

 just as the modern physician, comes to convince him- 

 self that such ritual is an essential part of the cure 

 he is trying to effect. No doubt it is. 



I do not wish to appear to defend brujeria against 

 modem medicine, but in many parts of America we 

 must face the facts that brujeria has existed for a 

 long time and is still firmly imbedded in the culture 

 of many of the common people. To persist in this 

 manner, it must be rewarding in certain ways to its 

 clients. It seems plausible that its materia medica 

 does possess real therapeutic value in certain physical 

 conditions, and that its procedures have the efifect of 

 lowering personal anxieties in many cases. If any 

 curing system can relieve pain — either physical or 

 psychological — it is rewarding and will persist. 

 Therefore brujeria cannot be lightly dismissed as a 

 mere body of superstitions which can be legislated out 

 of existence. Modern medicine makes slow headway 

 against brujeria, especially in those conditions in 

 which it takes no account of the cultural factors which 



produce certain punishing "'acquired drives" *^ from 

 which individuals seek relief. In Moche, for example, 

 the complex of patterns and customs involved in be- 

 witchment or magical attack, in sitsto, in ojco (evil . 

 eye), and so on are not purely "imaginary." They 

 exist in the thinking of the people and in the culture 

 of the group and produce ailments which for all prac- 

 tical purposes are quite real. A man's an.xiety does 

 not have to be based on the germ theory of disease in 

 order to make him sick. 



Only in certain areas of therapeutics has modern 

 medicine as practiced in the region shown itself to 

 the Mocheros to be more rewarding than the native 

 procedures, for example, in surgical intervention, in 

 difficult deliveries, and in violent infections such as 

 certain types of pneumonia and malaria. 



THE SEANCE 



A curing brujo operates by means of a seance called 

 the tiiesa de brujeria (table of witchcraft). Actually 

 the mesa or "table" is laid out on a white cloth spread 

 on the ground (pi. 22, upper and lower {lejt) , upper 

 and middle {right). It is a sort of altar where the 

 herbs and simples, patron saints' images, and other 

 magical apparatus of the brujo are laid out before him. 

 I attended one seance, after which my friend the 

 maestro put on another seance for my benefit alone, 

 in which he went through the actions slowly and care- 

 fully with explanations, and on a third occasion he set 

 up the mesa for me in daylight so that I could photo- 

 graph it and note down in detail all the elements com- 

 posing the collection of working materials. These 

 are listed in the following section. 



The general theory of the standard seance is that 

 the operating brujo is carrying out the affair in order 

 to discover who has done magical harm to the patient 

 and how it was done. Once this information, pro- 

 duced by the seance, is obtained by the brujo, he may 

 prescribe remedies for the patient from among the 

 materials on the mesa. However, the theory always 

 is held that the patient is sick because some other in- 

 dividual has caused evil magic to be worked against 

 him. Hence, in the seance the brujo is always thought 

 to be working against a rival, la parte de la contra. 

 The rival brujo or brujos or their familiar spirits, the 

 shapingos, may appear during the seance as shadowy 

 forms with the intent of upsetting the proper course 

 of events, confounding the operating brujo, and con- 

 fusing the cure of the patient. In other words, the 

 rival evil brujo is constantly at work to prevent the 



*^ See Gillin, 1942, for a discussion of these matters. 



