AJAPÜJAWA (DREAM SPIRIT) IN THE WAYUU DEATH AND VENGEANCE RITUALS

• Main Author: Fanny Longa Romero
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul 2010-12-01
• Series: Espaço Ameríndio
• Subjects: existente; espírito do sonho; wayuu; rituais.
• Online Access: http://seer.ufrgs.br/EspacoAmerindio/article/view/17108

The wayuu are an Indian people of the Arawak linguistic family which lives in the Guajira Peninsula, in Northeast Colombia, on the Caribbean Sea, and the Western border of Venezuela. This paper studies the relation between existing and expressed ajapüjawa (dream spirit) and other beings (plants, dead people), with intent, that will guide and influence the daily practices of the wayuu. The purpose here is to explore the agency from these existing rituals of death and revenge. I claim that these rituals provide information about the construction of the notion of person by the wayuu people through a symbolic economy of alterity. The wayuu people build, experience, and signify their cultural dynamics through the interference of active spiritual entities that impinge both upon life and death as two continuous, though separate, realms of social life.