Environment

Bolivia has perhaps the greatest biodiversity and beauty of any country in the Americas. It is a gem of the world, noted for its beauty and wealth. From the top of the Andes to the Amazon basin, Bolivia has climatic and ecological zones that are equivalent to those from Alaska to Panama. From La Paz, one can travel up to a 17,000‑foot pass with its near arctic conditions and then down to tropical forests housing parrots, monkeys, and snakes. Bolivia has more species of birds than any other country in the world, and it is still possible to visit areas where the animals are unaccustomed to humans, such as the Noel Kempf Preserve, a 2‑million‑square‑mile preserve accessible only by helicopter.

Bolivia’s natural resources have been among the most exploited in the world. Its gold, silver, tin, and antimony mines have made others rich. Its eastern Andean slopes have been stripped of large, elegantly flowered chinchona trees in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to provide quinine bark to treat malaria throughout the world. In the twentieth century, the United States has virtually destroyed Bolivia’s coca crop and other vegetation in its effort to win the cocaine war at home. Amazonian forests have lost trees slashed for rubber, Tajibo trees stripped for bark to fight cancer, and palms bled for their resin to treat AIDS. Centuries‑old mahoganies are cut down in a day and transported across roads that erode forest floors to urban centers of the world to build desks. Vinchucas and T. cruzi are also part of the equation.

In The Coming Plague, Laurie Garret (1994:619) sounded a warning call: “Human beings stomp about with swagger, elbowing their way without concern into one ecosphere after another. The human race seems equally complacent about blazing a path into a rain forest with bulldozers and arson or using an antibiotic “scorched earth” policy to chase unwanted microbes across the duodenum… Time is short.”

Ecosystem disruption and subsequent loss of species have profound implications for human health (see Grifo and Rosenthal 1997). Damage to the ecosystem has caused changes in the equilibria between hosts, vectors, and parasites in their natural environments; for example, T. cruzi has switched from animals to humans as its primary host. In addition to global warming, acid rain, and pollution, Chagas’ disease warns us of a potential huge epidemic.

Chagas’ disease has increased as biocultural diversity has decreased in Bolivia. It may be part of the environment’s barometer indicating rising pressure upon the forests. Bolivian natives recognize this, and they attribute many sicknesses to ecological abuses of animals and plants. Andeans have an environmental wisdom that sees humans, plants, animals, and land as ideally in balance. Andean Indians have rituals to feed the earth, the mother. Traditionally, they refer to alpacas and llamas on the same plane of existence as humans, the only difference being that humans now speak and herd them, whereas formerly it was the other way around. A major deity of Andeans is Pariya Qaqa (Igneous Rock), a god who became a rock, the mountain upon which they live. To native Bolivians, then, the earth is sacred; it is to be fed with ritual foods and worked in such a way that it continues to produce. They have developed elaborate systems of rotating fields and crops for three years and then letting them lie fallow as herd grounds so they will be fertilized. This has been practiced for over 1,000 years. Highland Andeans and lowland Indian tribes remain guardians of the mountains, valleys, and forests of Bolivia.

Huarochiri legends were recorded in 1608 by Father Francisco de Avila, and they reveal prehispanic religious traditions. These legends unfold a landscape alive with diverse sacred beings, mountain deities, and prophetic animals. They express the sacredness of animals, plants, and land. The following myth relates how overpopulation caused hunger in ancient times. The brocket deer reproduced until food became scarce. The conditions of their life became a problem.

Now, in ancient times, brocket deer used to eat human beings.

Later on, when brocket deer were very numerous, they danced, ritually chanting, “How shall we eat people?”

Then one of their fawns made a mistake and said, “How shall people eat us?”

When the brocket deer heard this they scattered. From then on brocket deer became food for humans (Huarochiri ms., Chapter 5, 71, ed. and trans. Salomon and Urioste 1991).

This myth illustrates the closeness of Andeans to animals. At first deer ate humans; but, after a fawn made a linguistic mistake, humans ate deer.

The following myth discusses a time when this world wanted to come to an end, but Andeans and animals were saved by the prescience of llamas:

In ancient times, this world wanted to come to an end.

A llama buck, aware that the ocean was about to overflow, was behaving like somebody who’s deep in sadness. Even though its owner let it rest in a patch of excellent pasture, it cried out and said, “In, in,” and wouldn’t eat.

The llama’s owner got really angry, and he threw the cob from some maize he had just eaten at the llama.

“Eat, dog! This is some fine grass I’m letting you rest in!” he said.

Then that llama began speaking like a human being.

“You simpleton, whatever could you be thinking about? Soon, in five days, the ocean will overflow. It’s a certainty. And the whole world will come to an end,” it said.

The man got good and scared. “What’s going to happen to us? Where can we go to save ourselves?” he said.

The llama replied, “Let’s go to Villca Coto mountain. There we’ll be saved. Take along five days food for yourself.”

So the man went out from there in a great hurry, and himself carried both the llama buck and its load.

When they arrived at Villca Coto mountain, all sorts of animals had already filled it up: pumas, foxes, guanacos, condors, all kinds of animals in great numbers.

They stayed there huddling tightly together.

The waters covered all those mountains and it was only Villca Coto mountain, or rather its very peak, that was not covered by the water.

Water soaked the fox’s tail.

That’s how it turned black.

Five days later, the waters descended and began to dry up.

The drying waters caused the ocean to retreat all the way down again and exterminate all the people.

Afterward, that man began to multiply once more.

That’s the reason there are people until today.

Regarding this story, we Christians believe it refers to the time of the Flood.

But they believe it was Villca Coto mountain that saved them (Huarochiri ms., Chapter 3, 29‑34, ed. and trans. Salomon and Urioste 1991).

Villca Coto Mountain was the most beautiful huaca (earth shrine) at the Inca court in Cuzco. A huaca is any material thing that manifests the superhuman: a mountain peak, a spring, a union of streams, a rock outcrop, an ancient ruin, a twinned cob of maize, a tree split by lightning (Salomon and Urioste 1991:17). The world imagined by Andeans is not made of two kinds of stuffmatter and spiritlike that of Christians. Huacas are energized matter. This myth gives the earth dynamic shape by mapping onto it huacas that symbolize idealized environments and relations between animals and humans. Humanity, the superhuman, society, and earth forms relate to each other in a structure of correspondence.

Andean legends offer us a map to reorder things. Brocket deer serve to warn about overpopulation and overconsumption; a llama predicts impending destruction of the earth and is carried on the herder’s back to Villca Cota, where they are saved.

A modern sequel to brocket deer and llama is vinchuca. Vinchuca brings humans Trypanosoma cruzi to remind them that they are in a state of eternal competition. Humans have beaten out virtually every other species to the point that humans now talk about protecting their former predators (Joshua Lederberg 1994). Vinchucas warn humans that they are not alone on top of the mountain. Trypanosoma cruzi and scores of other microbe predators are adapting, changing, evolving, and warning humans that any more rapid change might come at the cost of human devastation. Humans have been neglectful of the microbes, among other things, and that is coming back to haunt us. The world really is just one village. Vinchucas warn us to return to huaca Villca Cota.

Appendices