Tsantsa en la exposición etnográfica del Museo Nacional Pumapungo, discursos e imaginarios contemporáneos desde la mirada shuar y occidental

Abstract

The present investigation analyzes contemporary speeches about the ancestral custom of the shuar people of reducing heads, addresses the symbolic and iconographic value of a practice that feeds the cultural baggage of the Ecuadorian Amazon. It uses the statements about ideological and discursive identities to examine the levels of interpretation of the character and function of myth in the Shuar community and analyzes the discursive material about the peculiar tradition of bailing human heads.

The Tsantsa study in the ethnographic exhibition of the Pumapungo Museum, contemporary speeches and imaginaries, translates the ethnological reading of the set of mythical constructions into the arena of Morinian complexity, then presents a summary of the paths of power and the instructive nature of the rite; the ethnographic account allows to scrutinize the strategies of the tsankram and its tragic outcome that concludes with the reduction of the head turned into tsantsa that despite becoming a blood ritual, manages to attenuate the revenge of the enemy and teach the members of the community.

These and other elements related to the spiritual universe and the world view are subject to analysis, as is the validity of ancestral shuar thought in today's world. The study allows to know the meanings of the myth of the tsantsa, its objectives, prohibitions and licenses. It closes with the publication of results of clinical laboratory tests, noting the advantages of modern technology in the treatment of the subject.