After saying our goodbyes at the ranch yesterday afternoon, we were driven back to Salta with just enough time to clean up a bit before our late night dinner with Katia and Ruben. It had already been a long, full day, and we had to be up very early the following morning.
We met Katia in a roundabout way through MAAM. As we were viewing the mummy exhibits, there was music playing in the background with singing that was supposed to represent a reasonably accurate interpretation from the period during which the mummies were sacrificed. The singing was a little too loud and the music almost a bit jarring in its intonations and rhythms.
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I asked about this unusual music and was told that a woman named Katia who had grown up speaking one of the native Quechuan dialects (there are 46) had recorded it but was no longer with the museum. Our lovely, articulate and low key guide Fernanda then added that Katia held some controversial views about native Andean culture that were not widely shared by the museum's staff and leadership.
When I asked what Katia was doing now, Fernanda said she was running a foundation with her husband Ruben called Los Ecos de la Gran Patria (Echoes of the Grand Family) focused on the continuing study of the links among the ancient Andean civilizations. Western academics do not call ancient Andean cultures a civilization because most of the earliest societies of the region had no written language! Of course I wanted to meet Katia, who would surely disagree with our academic friends, and Fernanda obliged with contact information. Katia was happy to hear from us and agreed to meet Sunday night for dinner.
At minimum, I was curious about how she might have reconstructed the music given that there is no written musical record. There are period instruments that have been recovered and remnants of an oral tradition, but not much more. The fact that there might be a hint of controversy to her work made it even more intriguing.
Nico, Michael and I arrived at the ramshackle old parrilla that Katia had picked for dinner on time at 10 pm, and Katia and Ruben showed up about 10 minutes later. From the moment Katia entered the room, there was an almost electric spark of energy between us. She is short, buxom and attractively ample with long, raven black hair. She was dramatically dressed entirely in black, with a flowing black shawl thrown over her shoulders. Almost before we were all seated, Katia launched into a rapid fire monologue that was so intense it was like standing on the edge of a raging vortex. Everyone at the table was, quite literally, leaning forward in their seats, suddenly tensed and giving full attention.
I managed occasional interruptions and interjections and even objections, but what emerged from this opening monologue was a fully formed world view that was radically different, highly provocative, controversial and illuminating all at the same time. I could easily see how a strong personality such as Katia might cause some heartburn among the typical professional staff members at a prominent museum.
Ruben was the opposite of Katia. With his calm, mild manner and wire rimmed glasses, he could have passed for a CPA, but they were obviously a team. His comments during the evening showed that he was quite knowledgeable. Michael and Nico were as riveted as I was, caught up in the intensity of the moment.
Katia's oration started with a stunning statement that adulthood had disappeared from modern, technologically advanced societies, and this loss of adulthood had the world on the brink of catastrophe. Indeed, the world at this very moment had been turned upside down in the sense that it was the children who were unwittingly carrying the old pre-verbal codes to survival, and even then in only a few places on earth, including the broader Andean region.
From this perspective, we are on the brink because we have lost sight of ancient patterns of life in which the entire society was focused on staying in the proper energetic relationship with the natural universe. Suddenly the mummified niños at MAAM took on a possible new meaning beyond mere sacrificial chattel, but what was she really saying?
My travel companions and I were stunned! Just a few days earlier, we'd had an extended and animated discussion of a book titled "The Sibling Society" by the poet Robert Bly that posits almost exactly the same theories about adulthood. In "The Sibling Society," Bly looks at modern culture through ancient fairy tales, even those we think we know well such as Jack and the Beanstalk. And these fairy tales, including the Beanstalk, take on an entirely different and more profound cast in Bly's exposition.
Bly concludes, as he did in his earlier bestseller "Iron John," that we are living in a self-destructive society in which the ancient rites of passage into adulthood have been lost. In this "sibling society," all sense of vertical hierarchy is gone. Horizontal sameness dominates. Society is filled with squabbling siblings who have grown into middle age and beyond suspended in a permanent state of adolescence. The young go begging as their fierce youthful rebellion is not met early on with an equally fierce response by principled adults trying to guide them into adulthood, a transition upon which the survival of the larger society depends.
Bly's book, like Katia's philosophy, offers a bracing jolt of raw energy, but the book is also incredibly frustrating, never quite managing to weave its stream of provocative theories and ideas into a coherent critique or alternative. Bly, like Katia, offers brilliant and priceless flashes of much needed illumination. It is up to us to continue the inquiry.
But this night belonged to Katia. Even her take on the mummified niños was different and probably controversial. Katia had been part of the original MAAM team that worked on the mummies after they were brought down from the mountain, and she proferred the idea (widely shared among the people of the region) that the niños are still alive, are suspended in a cryogenic state with the original mountain air still in their lungs! She also shared stories about the many people she had met who had, like La Niña del Rayo, been struck by lighting and survived in a heightened state of awareness.
Scientifically, the niños cannot still be alive, but Katia reflected the amazingly widespread belief among people of the region that they never should have been removed from the mountaintop, that we were disturbing forces that were best left undisturbed! We had heard numerous stories indicating that many people in the area attributed the torrential rains and floods that had delayed our trip to the removal of the niños.
Katia and Ruben loved Pan American Dreams, which they saw through the prism of their work. In their cosmology, my white hair became a "snowy peak" that signified "protection" and "wisdom," pretty high octane stuff, especially after a few glasses of vino tinto. In our discussion about why I was doing Pan American Dreams, I mentioned that I did not feel as if I had much choice, emphasizing with a bit of hyperbole that I felt about the same sense of single-minded mission as an ant or a bee. I also said that I wasn't sure why I had this obsession so strongly, wasn't quite sure what was happening to me, and Ruben said, "You are coming down from the head to the heart."
Bang! The snowy cerebral peaks are melting. Global warming? Hell, I don't know anything anymore, except that this project is the right thing to be doing. A re-evaluation, a re-thinking, a re-imagining of the idea of America is so important, is needed so urgently, I believe it is almost fated. This encounter simply reinforced the sense that popular conceptions of America are barely scratching the surface.
We reached an agreement to meet Katia and Ruben after our trip to the Puna in the village of Cachi, which Katia called the "energetic heart of the universe." We are going to film, and then participate in, their performance of a Quechuan language ritual to pachamama (mother earth).
The evening ended with Katia and Ruben tutoring us in a prolonged series of special symbolic embraces and hand clasps on the sidewalk in front of the parrilla and an invitation from Katia to join them for dinner at their home upon our return to Salta.
