In Andean communities, the status of “human being” is acquired.2 One accumulates the characteristics that transform criaturas (babies and small children) into runakuna. Most people concurred that babies are not born with souls. With the exception of the “very Evangelicals”—as opposed to the chawa (halfway) Evangelicals—villagers explained that babies acquire their souls when they are about two years old. It is because their souls are not “well stuck” to their bodies that babies are very susceptible to susto (soul loss due to fright). In this stage, babies and toddlers are considered sonsos (senseless).3
Another characteristic criaturas acquire is the uso de razón—the use of reason, a supremely important faculty. In addition to making us more fully human, this concept is fundamental to the assessment of accountability. The term cuts across social fields: in the religious sense, it is the age at which a child can commit sin; in the political sense, it is related to accountability as a member of the community; in a legal sense, it refers to the capacity to discern right from wrong. Children are said to acquire the uso de razón around the age of six or seven; this is also the age at which children are said to remember things.
Just as the uso de razón makes criaturas more fully human, so does the accumulation of memory. When parents spoke about their children, they differentiated between the younger and older children by using yuyaniyuq for the older ones. Yuyay is Quechua for “remember,” and the older children are described as the remembering ones, in contrast to little children who are sonsos. People with mucha memoria are considered better people, more intelligent, and they have more conciencia.
The question of conscience and culpability figures into legal standards as well. In the Diccionario para Juristas, uso de razón is defined as “possession of natural discernment that is acquired passing through early childhood; the time during which discernment is discovered or begins to be recognized in the acts of the child or individual.”4 Discernimiento refers to the capacity to judge, to choose, to distinguish. Thus uso de razón implies volition, memory, and the capacity to judge right from wrong. This is a central phase in becoming a moral person and entering communal life as an accountable member of the collective.
Just as one acquires humanizing qualities, so may they be lost. The mutability of identity is a central psychocultural theme. In Quechua, uriway refers to the transference of the essence of one life form to another. For instance, El Piki runs a cuy (guinea pig) over his patients as a diagnostic tool. After several passes, he cuts open the cuy and can read the illness there; the signs have transferred from the internal organs of his patient to the animal. Many Andean stories concern human beings who can transform themselves into animals, springs, trees—and convert themselves back into human form.5 Recall the people who explained why it had taken the security forces so long to capture Abimael Guzmán: “He could change himself into a rock, a bird, a river—and the police only thought to look for a man.” Thus the capacity to transform oneself is imbued with ambivalence: it can be dehumanizing or a form of power. This transference can also occur through no volition of one’s own, with devastating results. It is how villagers explained what had happened to wawa Gloria.
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Wawa Gloria (baby Gloria) was a round toddler who had caught my eye many times, her ponytail bobbing on top of her head as she half-walked, half-crawled around Carhuahurán. Yolanda, Edith, and Gloria’s sister Marina would sometimes carry her over with them, bouncing her on their backs in a shawl. At other times she came on her own, pulling herself fully to her feet and peeking around the door.
One day I told the girls “I’m next in line” to give wawa Gloria some hugs. They passed her over, and I took her in my arms, resting my head lightly on hers. We sat in the sun, visitors coming and going as I felt the warmth of her baby breath against my chest. The women who came by began joking that I looked like I wanted to keep her. They weren’t too far off.
I finally felt her stirring, her top-knot rubbing against my chin. Marina told me she would take her home since it was time to begin late afternoon water-fetching and fire-starting chores. As I passed her to Marina, I realized there were a few spots of toddler poop on my sleeve. Although babies were usually wrapped in cloth, toddlers didn’t wear diapers. The moms would just lift their clothes, let them relieve themselves on the spot, and then wipe them down with a cloth.
Before going to bed that night, I threw the clothes I’d been wearing that day into a bag: sun permitting, I would wash clothes the next day. Sun did not permit, so the bag sat in the humid corner for a few days until the clouds cleared and the thought of frigid water was bearable.
I gathered up my Bolivar soap, scrub brush, and bag of clothes and walked down the hill to the river. I found my favorite small pool and rock, and went to pull my clothes out of the bag. When I opened the bag, something seemed to be moving. I recoiled: mice in my room were a constant, but I never grew accustomed to them. I kicked the bag upside down with my foot, but no furry creature emerged. Keeping my distance was part of the plan, so a stick replaced my foot. I turned the clothes over, trying to figure out what was moving. I finally narrowed the movement down to my long-sleeved green shirt, the one I had worn when cuddling wawa Gloria. It was moving. A few more pokes revealed why: the left sleeve—the one that I’d cradled under Gloria’s little bottom—was alive with worms. They rolled over one another, squirming in the sun. That round baby belly was full of parasites.
After I washed my clothes, I headed to the health post to let them know wawa Gloria had a bad case of parasites. Manlio, the nurse, nodded: “Almost all of the children have them. They drink unboiled water, they eat dirt—there isn’t much we can do.”
“But wawa Gloria is so chubby. She’s so big for her age,” I commented, a bit perplexed.
“Kimberly, how old do you think she is?”
“A little over a year, no?”
Manlio went behind his desk and pulled out his files. Searching a bit, he found Gloria’s. “Gloria is three-and-a-half years old. She’s had malnutrition her whole life. She seems to have some kidney problem, which is why she is chubby. But she’s terribly delayed.” I was stunned. She could barely walk, didn’t speak a word. Manlio winced as he saw the look on my face. “Don’t waste your time on that one. It’s too late to do anything.”
The next day I watched her and felt awful. I was writing about it in my journal when Víctor came by. He was about eleven, shy and skinny. He frequently visited, and just as frequently sat quietly in my room, watching the endless activity of the other children.
“Víctor, what’s the matter with wawa Gloria? What do you think she has?”
He knew. “It’s uriwasqa [uriway]. Gloria must have been playing with a frog when she was littler. The frog grabbed hold of her and took her body.”
“But Víctor, how do we know it was a frog?”
“It had to be a frog. Look how small she is, and she doesn’t speak. It was a frog. If it had been a parrot, she would talk a lot. If it had been a cow, she’d have a huge tongue that reached up to her nose. No, it was definitely a frog that grabbed her,” Víctor patiently explained. Evidently that frog never let her go.
Uriway was common and influenced how people think of life forms and human status. There were many transformations during the violence, and identities were in flux. There were the massive conversions to Evangelical Christianity that characterized the highlands of