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iii. The Machiguengas
Machiguenga community is another society mentioned in the story. This community is depicted more thoroughly than the others in the story since it covers
big part of the conflict. Machiguenga is one of indigenous community dwelling in Peruvian
jungle. They are also considered as Indians. The Machiguengas live mostly in the jungle of Quillabamba.
This description can be seen from the narrator‘s contemplation when he was curious about how his friend, Saúl Zuratas, could earn
knowledge about certain beliefs and customs of a tribe. The narrator finally found out that it was Saúl‘s encountering with the Machiguenga that enabled him to
describe about many traditions of this community. I now know that those Indians, whose language he had begun to learn with
the help of native pupils in the Dominican mission of Quillabamba−he once sang me a sad, repetitive, incomprehensible song, shaking a seed-
filled gourd to mark the rhytm−were the Machiguengas Llosa, 1989: 19. Machiguengas, as well as the other indigenous communities dwelling in
Peruvian jungle, rely on their beliefs on magical things and on the clash between good and bad things. They believe that their existence can last because they see
the rule of good and bad signs happening among their communities. Besides, it is seen also from their polytheism for they have many gods and goddesses, such as
Tasurinchi, the god of good, and Kientibakori, the god of evil Llosa, 1989: 14- 15.
Related to their beliefs on magical things, Machiguengas have their own ways to manifest their spirituality. The manifestation is seen from their costumes
and their attributes. The Machiguengas draw secret writing instead of decorative
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pictures on their special costumes called cushmas and their tools. They apply that also to paint tattoos on their bodies and faces. The aim for choosing the secret
writing instead of pictures was their beliefs that evils will not be able to read it. This is seen in the story when Saúl was asked to give further beliefs and customs
he learned from Machiguengas. The designs on their utensils and their cushmas, the tattoos on their faces
and bodies, were neither fanciful nor decorative, pal. They were a coded writing that contained the secret names of people and magic formulas to
protect things from damage and their owners from evil spell laid on them through such objects. The patterns were set by noisy bearded deity,
Morenanchiite, the lord of thunder, who in the middle of a storm passed on the key to a tiger from the heights of a mountain peak. The tiger passed it
on to a medicine man, or shaman, in the course of a trance brought on by ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic plant, which boiled into a brew, was drunk
at all Indian ceremonies Llosa, 1989: 15.
From that quotation, it is described why secret writing is chosen instead of pictures. Besides, it reveals how their beliefs become the guidance for them to
hold rituals. Their beliefs are sort of philosophical reason for them. In terms of spiritual life, Machiguengas and other Peruvian indigenous
communities are depicted in almost the same ways. They believe in magical power and contemplate that in their daily life and rituals. In terms of how they
survive, although it is not depicted thoroughly, the Machiguengas are similar to other natives for they are also hunters and gatherers. It is described in the story
when a couple of linguistics, Mr. and Ms. Schneils, did a research on their language and had to experience wildlife with Machiguengas. They accompanied
the Machiguengas when they hunted and gathered food. From then on, the Schneils had spent brief periods−either one of them at a
time or the two of them together−with that family of Machiguengas or others living along Alto Urubamba and its tributaries. They had
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accompanied groups of them when they went fishing or hunting in the dry season, and had made recordings that they played for us Llosa, 1989: 84-
85.
In one or two ways, the Machiguengas are similar to other Peruvian natives for they undergo wildlife and strictly hold traditions. However, it is
depicted in the story that the Machiguengas are different from other Peruvian natives since this community is divided into two groups. The groups are
Machiguengas that can easily mingle with outsiders and those that live separately and isolated. It is depicted when the narrator had a long conversation with the
Schneils about this tribe. A geographical accident, the narrow gorge between mountains where the
Urubamba becomes a raging torrent, filled with foam, whirlpools, and deafening tumult, separated the Machiguengas above, who were in contact
with the white and mestizo world and had begun the process of acculturation, from the others, scattered through the forests of the plain,
living in near-total isolation and preserving their traditional way of life more or less unchanged Llosa, 1989: 79-80.
It is depicted in that quotation how the Machiguengas split in two. Apparently, the geographical condition signifies the boundary between two
groups of Machiguengas. The abyss of Urubamba River becomes sources of the different cultures: Machiguengas that undergo acculturation with whites and
mestizos and those drawn in their isolation.
B. Main Conflicts in The Storyteller
Conflicts takes an important part in a story it is source of problem development that creates the story can reach the end from the beginning.
According to Roberts and Jacobs, this can happen because conflicts are the results of human motivations 1987: 98-99.
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Considering conflicts as the results of human motivations, the writer analyzes conflicts in The Storyteller as results of human motivations from two
main characters, the no-name narrator and Saúl Zuratas, his best friend. The conflicts are about their different arguments related to influences of development
in Peru to the existence and culture of natives, the Indians. Both the narrator and Saúl had their own opinions related to this case. Thus, the analysis of main
conflicts is based on the experiences of these two characters encountering with the Indians and how the experiences drove the conflicts. The writer also divides the
conflicts resulted from the experiences into two: the narrator‘s conflicts with Saúl Zuratas and the narrator‘s conflicts with himself.
1. The Conflicts Related to Saúl’s Experience Encountering Indian
Community
The conflicts are preceded with a moment in Firenze that brought back the narrator‘s memory to tell flashback story from when he was entering college life
in 1950s. He recalled the years he spent for bachelor degree at San Marcos University, Lima, Peru. There he met Saúl Zuratas, a figure that really impressed
him for he had good personality as explained below Llosa, 1989: 3-8. However, this good personality seems to be the sources of conflicts when
one day the narrator found out that Saúl had no longer been interested in subjects he studied at San Marcos. In contrast to what they learned from college, Saúl
precisely put his fascination to things related to Peruvian natives, the Indians. He even made several trips to Amazonian jungles to seek knowledge from the tribes.
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‗In 1956 he was studying ethnology as well as law and had made several trips into the jungle,‘ Llosa, 1989: 12.
Saúl‘s fascination with the lives in rural areas somehow affected his wisdom. One day when he was humiliated by certain guys in a bar, he was not
provoked. In the other hand, it provoked the narrator losing his temper and punched the guys who insulted his best friend. Saúl precisely advised the narrator
not to be provoked and told him wisdoms from beliefs and traditions of a tribe called Machiguenga that he visited when holiday came Llosa, 1989: 14-15.
Saúl‘s response and his knowledge about the beliefs of certain tribe made the narrator curious. He asked him to explain more about the tribe. ‗He had me
hanging on his words for an entire afternoon at his house in Breña as he talked to me of the beliefs and customs of a tribe scattered through the jungles of Cusco and
Madre de Dios,‘ Llosa, 1989: 15. The narrator told Saúl‘s story in this way. Mascarita had gotten on well with the Indians
—most of them pretty Westernized
—and they had taken him with them on their expeditions and welcomed him in their camps up and down the vast region irrigated by the
Alto Urubamba and the Alto Madre de Dios and their respective tributaries. He spent an entire night enthusiastically telling me what it was
like to ride a raft hurtling through the Pongo de Mainique, where the Urubamba, squeezed between two foothills of the Cordillera, became a
labyrinth of rapids and whirlpools Llosa, 1989: 17.
Saúl who was also called Mascarita was so enthusiastic when he was asked to describe how the tribe could survive in the jungle with their traditional
ways, a prehistory-like. The amount of knowledge he got from the tribe had astonished the narrator and even made him believe that Saúl did experience an
‗enlightment‘ during his visit. ‗With hindsight, knowing what happened to him
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later−I have thought about this a lot−I can say that Saúl experienced a conversion. In a cultural sense and perhaps in a religious one also Llosa, 1989: 19.
Saúl had astonished the narrator not only in a way he ‗mastered‘ knowledge of Machiguenga but also in a way he put big concern to the lives of
overall Indians. It is showed when he started to deliver his confrontation to development brought by the whites and mestizos which often grabbed the lives of
the natives. Saúl argued that things such as clearing forests, fishing, and even education are part of development which endangered the dynamic lives in
Peruvian jungle. One of his efforts to manifest his fascination and respect to the natives‘ lives was by creating posters addressed to the whites and mestizos in a
hope that those people would care how fishing with dynamite could endanger Peruvian natives‘ lives Llosa, 1989: 19.
a. The Narrator’s Conflicts with Himself Related to Saúl’s Experience
The justification of preserving Indians culture and refusing development showed by Saúl apparently made the narrator felt challenged and haunted by his
best friend‘s figure. He wondered that even for illogical and immoral things, Saúl still had his heart for the Indians. This situation made the narrator felt curious to
have a discussion with Saúl every time he got knowledge about news related to natives. He felt haunted of Sa
úl‘s opinion. That fellow feeling, that solidarity, that spell, or whatever it may have
been, had by then reached a climax and assumed a different nature. In the eyes of the ethnologists
—about whom the least that could be said was that, however shortsighted they might be, they were perfectly aware of the need
to understand the jungle Indians‘ way of seeing in their own terms—what was it that Mascarita was defending? Was it something as chimerical as
the recognition of their inalienable right to their lands, whereupon the rest
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of Peru would agree to place the jungle under quarantine? Must no one, ever, have the right to enter it, so as to keep those cultures from being
contaminated by the miasmas of our own degenerated one? Had Saúl‘s purism concerning the Amazon reached such extremes? Llosa, 1989: 33-
34.
Somehow it drove the narrator to suspect many things related to Saúl‘s extreme altruism. Saúl‘s transformation had given him lots of question that made
him haunted and curious. These were the narrator‘s conflicts with himself. He had many questions related to Saúl but none of these had been answered yet.
b. The Narrator’s Conflicts with Saúl Zuratas Related to Saúl’s Experience
While the narrator kept on asking to himself about Saúl‘s altruism to the natives, he had also some conflicts with Saúl. The conflicts were recognized when
they had a debate. Saúl‘s response which is inclined to be altruistic to the natives
was, at first, understood by the narrator. However, the narrator began feeling that Saúl was somehow exaggerating in his altruism. His concerns to the lives of the
natives made him find it difficult to accept whatsoever called ‗development.‘ He did not even feel interested to discuss any other subjects than the Indians
including politics or things he learned as law faculty student in San Marcos. He strongly argued that development in Peru was destruction in this way.
No, pal. As a matter of fact, I‘m understanding. I swear. What‘s being done in the Amazon is a crime. There‘s no justification for it, whatever
way you look at it. Believe me, man, it‘s no laughing matter. Put yourself in their place, if only for a second. Where do they have left to go? They‘ve
been driven out of their lands for centuries, pushed farther into the interior each time, farther and farther. The extraordinary thing is that, despite so
many disasters, they haven‘t disappeared. They‘re still there, surviving Llosa, 1989: 20.
