Prompt for this essay, led by Professor Tod Swanson at Arizona State University

"Prompt: Write an essay examining the story of Isicha Puytu in the context of Mountain of the Condor. Compare the understanding of human nature and fault or 'sin" underlying the story of Isichu Puyta to the those of assigned readings from previous modules in this course such as Genesis, Emerson and Thoreau, or Japanese Buddhism. Remember that your essay should have a title in the form of a question and an underlined thesis statement that answers the title question.

Your response should address the question raised in the title of your colleague's essay as well as the answer he or she proposes. How might you have phrased the question differently? How might you have answered it differently and why?"

I don't have much to add to this prompt, honestly. It was interesting to look at how colonialism and Christianity my or may not have affected Indigenous storytelling practices.

How does sin and suffering translate across seas and continents?

Text throughout the readings allude to aspects of colonization, wherein Indigenous people are beholden to the whims of Spaniards and a way of life that is not their own. In some ways, the Christian concept of suffering and punishment for sin has obscured the original traditions of the ayllu of Mt. Kaata, a community which had lived in reciprocity with their mountain home, disturbed from that routine by a government that insisted their assimilation to a more individualist society (Bastien, p.41). Additionally are the stories that are associated with lessons on morals as the foundations of life changed, Isicha Puytu being the figure of that change and the resulting violence of forced assimilation as it spreads from the one assimilated into the community (Arguedas, p.157-162). Most often, when stories surrounding punishment are in play in Indigenous communities, they have a clear overarching moral lesson alongside the story about a spirit or person; care for community, humility, and honesty are what I’ve seen as an overlap between my own Indigenous culture and these lessons from Mt. Kaata.

However obscured a story may become because of colonial influence though, the heart has a habit of remaining. In the lecture on Mountain of the Condor and Shared Body, Professor Swanson speaks with and translates a woman’s story of how she learned to care for the corn and other crops around her in life. I can’t speak for the nuances of Quechua culture, but from my awareness corporal punishment is an uncommon tradition in American Indigenous communities. Rosa Pulupa describes her father as reacting harshly to dropped corn, yet the heart of the lesson is that the corn, like her father, is related to her in some way. It deserves the same respect she pays to her human relatives. This lesson has carried through generations of her family, as a paramount to the reciprocity of her community despite the partial influence of colonization.

In this way, I think that there are more similarities between Indigenous Quechua spirituality and Japanese Buddhism. The cycles of life are respected as time passes, and given space for change to occur as can be seen in the following quote:

“The central fields also follow a cycle every eight years. Extensive tracts of land (qhapanas) produce potatoes, oca, and barley during each rainy season for three years, and then lie fallow for five years. As Kaatans say, the fields are put to sleep. The fields slowly replenish their nutrients by the fertilization of the droppings of grazing sheep. Night frost decreases as the rainy season advances, and tuberous plants are able to grow in the upper region of the mountain’s temperate zone above thirteen thousand five hundred feet. On the lower felds there is less frost, from about eleven to twelve thousand feet, barely grows (Bastien, p. 40-41).”

In opposition to that are the influences of Christianity, which may have taken on some folk aspects in practice, yet have also caused harm by way of how sin and suffering are regarded – suffering is the price paid for sin, and those punishments may not always be reasonable to the actions taken.

Citations

Mountain of the Condor: "The Mountain Metaphor" and "Marriage and the Mountain" Joseph Bastien

Singing Mountaineers: Songs and Tales of the Quechua People: "Isicha Puytu" Jose Maria Arguedas

Video Lectures as Prepared by Professor Tod Swanson