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Peru: The Upper Amazon Basin, August 4, 1976

They knew, being Chayacuros, that the waking world, the world we think we see, is nothing but illusion. The real world, the true bonds between causes and their effects, is revealed only through the ritual drinking of ayahuasca. This they both had done under the ceremonial ministrations of old Chaya. The bitter brew had first purged and purified them, and then the Other World beings had come to guide them.

“They have killed all the plants in their own land, these white people,” the bird-headed spirit-helper had told them through the shaman’s mouth. “Now they come to destroy ours. And then the government will come and burn our village. It is up to you to see that this does not happen. ”

They had agreed to undertake the task. For the last three hours, silent and unseen, they had been observing the three white men who had made camp not far from the village the night before and were now stirring. But in the true world, as in the false, there were separate realities; there was room for differences of opinion.

“I say kill them now. ” Matsiguenga, the younger of the two, spoke in sibilant whispers, but he smote his naked, hairless chest with his fist for emphasis. “We have wasted enough time. ”

The older man, Jabuti-toro, took his time replying, as befitted someone wiser. “No. They may not be from the government. They may be blameless. ”

“So what? They are strangers; they have no relatives.

They did not look at each other as they talked, for among the Chayacuro, for one man to look openly into another’s eyes is a deadly insult. They lay, propped on their elbows, peering narrow-eyed through giant, insect-eaten banana leaves and gnarled liana vines at the three men, who sat on the ground in a tiny clearing, their backs against a fallen tree trunk, breakfasting on manioc pancakes and cold coffee. Fifty feet further out, in a rough semicircle, lay another six Indians – younger men and boys, less skilled at hiding, and trailing, and killing, proud to be in the company of the two leaders and eager to learn from them. The youngest, and perhaps the most eager of all, Matsiguenga’s nephew Shako, was not yet twelve.

In La Cosa Nostra, the two leaders, Matsiguenga and Jabuti-toro, would have been known as “made men,” men who had murdered – “made their bones” – to prove their worth as members of the Family. In the equally elliptical language of the Chayacuro, they were kakaram, “powerful ones. ” Their power derived from their success at assassination. Both had killed enemies. Both had taken heads.

They were dressed almost identically. Of anything that we would describe as clothing, they had only woven kilts of dyed cotton. But they did not think of themselves as naked. Heavy necklaces of jaguar teeth, boar tusks, nuts, and shells hung in layered profusion around their necks. Their faces were dyed orange-red with achiote, their chests painted in ancient designs with white clay. Sharpened quills of blue and green macaw feathers pierced their nasal septums, and thin bamboo tubes and more feathers ran through their earlobes. Their glossy, black hair had been carefully trimmed into neat bangs and tightly bound with headbands.