0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Don Patricio’s Dream
with an emphasis on the word kjoaxíntokon, referring to a kind of
hideous malevolence often concealed behind the mask of friendship.
Kjoaxíntokon can be literally translated and resolved into its compo-
nent meanings as “[nominalizer] emoting apart [from others],” a term
bilingual Mazatecs spontaneously translate as envidia, or “envy,” in
the natural discourse of unmarked code-switching from their native
tongue to Spanish.
Envidia, however, is for them a concept with a range of connota-
tions that includes but surpasses the meaning of what our English word
suggests, and so kjoaxíntokon is something not easily interpreted in
terms of rationalist social science models of cognitive orientation along
the lines of, for example, the “Image of Limited Good.”^2 Rather, this
species of envy is emically understood to be directed against another
person’s possession and enjoyment of whatever quality or object, or—
and this is the peculiarly paranoid genius of Mazatec social thought—
to emerge suddenly and unprovoked as a spontaneous response to no
particular quality or object at all. Kjoaxíntokon is, ultimately and in
essence, a conscious indigenous theory of the irrational, albeit never
applied to oneself, who is always the actual or the potential innocent
victim of the acts of sorcery this foul emotion might inspire others to
commit. Indeed, this negative force of asociality is feared especially as
the pervasively immanent, dreadfully imminent motivation that will
lead others to hire a mercenary shaman to perform destructive ritu-
als against one’s person, family, and/or property.
Although sorcery attack can be the straightforward consequence
of a mutually acknowledged quarrel between the parties involved, in
many of the cases that I was able to observe or to reconstruct in any
detail, the effects of sorcery were traced back through shamanic div-
inations to their alleged instigation by someone who circumstantial
evidence would strongly suggest was the elusive object of the victim’s
unrequited (and unacknowledged) desire for a more active, positive
relationship. But, however interpreted, the predatory reach of envy
was most often revealed as straining against the grain of relations of
spiritual kinship, the elective affinity of compadrazgo ritually con-
tracted to establish an enduring bond of obligatory reciprocity in the
provision of social and psychological security and support, aid and
