Edward AbseDon Nicolás’s confrontation with him, during which the elder sha-
man engaged in more subtle gestures of hostility and social avoidance
toward both of us. This ultimately resulted in a situation of two-fold
irony, given Don Nicolás’s claims and intentions. Subsequent unusual
events, Don Patricio’s dreams, the untimely death of his mother, and
the development of certain physical symptoms of my own were inter-
preted as indicating that it was Don Nicolás who was himself prac-
ticing sorcery—and against us! Furthermore, as a result, Don Patricio
was led to reveal to me two especially secret healing rituals as part of
his effort to cure and shield us from the effects of these attacks.
To compound the irony even more, before Don Nicolás challenged
Don Patricio and so sparked suspicions of the threat of sorcery, my
working relationship with him was not going so smoothly as the older
shaman might have imagined. Up until that point, Don Patricio has
been somewhat reluctant to answer the questions I put to him and
was instead more interested in interviewing me, not only about the
nature of my work, but especially with regard to what the other sha-
mans I had worked with in other communities had shown and told
me. Perhaps he was in part testing me, to see whether I might be ca-
pable of such betrayal.
Later, after we had established an easier rapport, he told me a dream.
This event marked a new level of trust in our relationship, one that
sustained us throughout the drama of sorcery and counter-sorcery
that ensued. This was the dream:
He is cutting firewood, down in the forest on the hillside below
his home. Suddenly he is working on something else: he is harvest-
ing coffee beans. “Then the owner/master of the land arrived and
said to me, ‘Don’t cut this coffee, because this coffee is mine.’ And
I answered him, ‘How can it be yours? The land is yours, yes, but
I planted these coffee trees.’ And the owner/master said, ‘No. But
don’t you cut them.’ Then he, the owner/master, disappeared again.”
Then Don Patricio finds himself walking on a road, and he notices
that the road is filled with mud. He arrives near the top of the road,
where the muddy stretch comes to an end. “And after that I saw
Eduardo up ahead. I don’t know what he was doing, but the point