"The viracocha—that is to say, the whites—long ago lived in a lagoon,” ponders Don Juan Tuesta, with eyes closed, in the full of an ayawaskha night. Somebody who is not Don Juan Tuesta, but is Don Juan Tuesta, has occupied his body, overflows it without containment, and comes out through his dreamwalker mouth.

Near the virakocha lived the Campa—in other words the Ashaninka. On a certain day, a Campa heard barking noises coming from the lagoon. "Well, I'll fish that dog,” and to do that he took some bananas with him. But since bananas are food for human beings, the dog was offended and refused to eat them. In turn, all of the virakocha came out of the lagoon and began to pursue, then kill, the Campa. They killed all of the Campa. The lagoon dried out. A single Campa survived, a sorcerer, one of those sorcerers called shirimpiáre: a Campa who used tobacco. Because you should know that not all sorcerers use tobacco, only shirimpiáre do. The other sorcerers have other spaces and a different name; they are called katziboréri. The surviving shirimpiáre invoked Tziho, the buzzard, and said, "Come, help me—the virakocha have killed all my brothers." "Where?" asked Tziho. "Everywhere," the Campa shirimpiáre answered, "but mainly in the Great Pajonal." You should know that the Great Pajonal, Don Juan Tuesta tells me, is the territory of the Campa nation, more than one hundred thousand square kilometers of pure flat jungle, an infinite plateau in the middle of the great forests and rivers that adjoin the High Amazon jungle, in the direction of Cusco. It was there, in the Great Pajonal, that the Campa resisted the Inka conquerors, repelled the Spanish conquerors...

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