The Sting of the Ray: Bodies, Agency, and Grammar in Warao Curing

Abstract

This article analyzes an attempt by a Warao curer in the Delta Amacuro of eastern Venezuela to treat his nephew for a painful laceration inflicted by a stingray. Two dimensions prove to be crucial: the social construction of the body and the deployment of practices for creating agency (defined as the capacity to infuse action with subjectivity, meaning, and social power). For curers, these practices revolve around fine details of the grammatical and musical pattering of songs, while patients stress their sensuous impact on the body. This divergence is used as a vantage point from which to explore relations of power between curers and their patients. Commenting on ILvi-Strauss's classic interpretation of a Kuna birth chant, the article also raises questions regarding the way ethnographers tell stories about curing performances. ON JUNE 3, 1987, I wAs living in the home of Santiago Rivera,' the leader of the Native Americans who inhabit the Mariusa region of the Orinoco Delta in eastern Venezuela. Rivera, who died in 1992, was also a leading curer, skilled in a number of techniques for controlling spirits. Early that morning the wife of one of Rivera's nephews came to tell us that her husband, Fernando L6pez, had been stung by a stingray while digging for crabs in the marshlands near the community. At 10:30 a.m. Rivera and several others climbed into my dugout canoe for the short journey upriver to his house. Once we arrived, Rivera conversed for half an hour with his oldest son-inlaw, the owner of the house, the patient, and several others. Rivera learned the basic facts surrounding the encounter with the stingray from the patient's wife. In the course of the discussion with L6pez and his relatives, Rivera elicited detailed information on the setting in which the accident occurred, the nature of the laceration and its effects on the patient, and the way his condition had changed over time. Without further ado, Rivera climbed into a hammock some ten feet away from the patient and began to sing. After singing for ten minutes, Rivera moved over to the patient's hammock. He alternated between blowing, accurately releasing small streams of spittle on the wound, and gently massaging the foot and leg. The location of the sting was