THE MEHINAKU: THE COEXISTENCE
OF PHALLIC AGGRESSION AND LOVE
Gang rape among the Mehinaku of women who violate the men's house has not happened for perhaps 50 years. But it has occurred far more recently among other culturally similar tribes in the Upper Xingu region, and it remains a constant threat in the Mehinaku village today. Rape is part of a larger
Coexisting with this pattern of misogyny is genuine attachment between many spouses and between male and female kin. The most dramatic cultural manifestations of affection and love between men and women are found in mourning practices, which require a full year in seclusion for the bereaved spouse, and an extraordinary pattern of extramarital sexual relationships that proliferate lifelong, as well as casual, liaisons between the men and women of the community (see Gregor 1985). More subtle are a host of indications that husbands and wives really care about each other, including anxiety during prolonged separation and overt expressions of concern and affection. To a greater extent than is true among many cultures with men's institutions in Amazonia and Melanesia, Mehinaku gender relationships are truly bimodal. Men and women are joined by common interest, mutual affection, and kinship at the same time they are separated by antagonism and fear. Perhaps it is for this reason that the Mehinaku possess a well-elaborated myth, the only one of which we are aware in the literature, that directly challenges the public culture of the men's cult.
The Myth of Pahikyawalu
"Pahikyawalu" means, literally, "she who is covered with feces." The narrator of the myth, the Mehinaku chief, explains the title:
This is a myth of a woman of Ancient Times. Hers is not a pretty name, it is not a name by which we greet people. It is a name from ancient times, because this woman was covered with feces, because she ate feces. Pahikyawalu committed a great crime. Decorating herself as a man ["She made a penis from a stick and wore it under her belt"], she slipped into the men's house at night and played the flutes. The men were amazed to hear her.
"Who is that person playing?" asked all the men in their hammocks. "Ah, what a beautiful song that is. Is it the Song Master? No, he is asleep in his hammock." And they asked the others [the next day]: "Was it you?"
"No, I was sleeping. Was it you?"
"No, I stopped earlier."
"Then who was that person?"
Pahikyawalu's husband discovered the impersonation: "Oh," he said to her, "you are like garbage; it is men who [play the flutes], not women."
The husband went to the plaza and denounced his wife to the village. But the men were too angry to rape her.
They didn't want to have sex with her. They wanted to see her die in the grave. They wanted to bury her. They wanted her to suffer. "Yes, let her die, let her be buried," said the husband. Her real husband said that!
― 325 ―Together the husband and the men of the village dug a hole for Pahikyawalu in the center of the village. One of the men, her lover, participated, but he did not want her to die, yet he knew that the other men would be angry if he did not participate. The miserable, worthless husband spoke in front of the men's house: "So much the better, so much the better, good, great, it is good that she is dead!" For ten days Pahikyawalu lived in her hole in the ground, covered with her own feces.
At last her lover came to dig her up, because he was really her lover. She was dear to him, and that is why he wanted to help. He dug down into the earth until he came to her. Oh, it was so smelly, so disgusting. She was smeared with feces all over her body, but he was not disgusted by her. She was his lover. In the middle of the night he carried her in his arms to the stream. He washed her with soap. He rinsed her with water.
He took Pahikyawalu to another tribe, where she prospered and became beautiful. Her husband, now alone and without a wife, came to long for her. That husband, the one who had buried her, he went to get her!
Pahikyawalu went with her husband to return to the Mehinaku, but on the way through the forest he asked to have sex. First, she insisted, he must cut down a honey tree and reach inside to get the hive:
"Go inside, crawl in, get in, put your head in so that we can get all of the honeyjuice," she said. He went inside the log, the fool.
"It is further in, further in. Go deeper, go further, go all the way in. Go in all the way!"
She took her husband's feet and pushed him all the way into the log. The honey got into his mouth and eyes! There was so much honey. He breathed in the honey: "Aka, aka, aka! …" He drowned in the honey, he died in the log! Here were his feet. … Here was his head. … He died in there.
"So much the better, so much the better," she said. I have revenged myself, I have gotten you back! You buried me in the ground and therefore I have gotten you back. It is good that you have died, oh it is good to pay you back!" And then she lectured her dead husband's ghost: "Don't you haunt us, don't you come back to us. You are not a spirit. When rain falls in the future [and the honey drips from the tree] say, ‘Uru … uru … uru.’ Everyone will [know you are there] and say, ‘Alas, sadness and pity for you!’"
At one level Pahikyawalu is the woman that every man must be vigilant against. She assumes the most important of all male prerogatives—playing the sacred flutes—and does it better than all of the village men: "Ah, what a beautiful song that is. Is it the Song Master?" The narrator adds that it was "frightening and mysterious to hear her play." Her violation of the men's house raises the question as to whether the differences between men and women are flimsy cultural creations, as the myth of matriarchy also suggests. Women can assume male roles as easily as they can slip into their clothes. That the men were "too angry" with Pahikyawalu to rape her suggests that her breach of gender boundaries sexually incapacitated them, in effect, rendered them impotent. With the symbolic efficiency that is myth's forte, the episode condenses the idea—not unique to the Mehinaku—that
These considerations explain why Pahikyawalu provoked rage and sadism: "the men wanted her to suffer." But standing against this anger are the primary relationships that bind men and women together. The husband, who leads the others against Pahikyawalu, is described as "miserable and worthless" and is killed. The narrator exults with her in delight over his demise. The lover, who rescues her from her living burial, is rewarded with a beautiful wife. Pahikyawalu, despite her confrontation with the men and her degradation, is idealized as "very beautiful, with broad strong thighs and her hair down her back."
The story of Pahikyawalu is a resolution of the fundamental dilemma of the cult. The rules of the men's cult are uncompromising and cruel, and they demand conformity, so much so that in the myth the lover was afraid to oppose the men's rage: "He did not want her to die, but he knew that the other men would be angry." The myth thereby pits a cruel law against the passion of lovers, the inherent mutual dependence of the genders, and the common humanity of men and women. We know that the dilemma is a real one, for despite the pressure to enforce the tradition of gang rape there are Mehinaku men today who are like the lover of Pahikyawalu. One of them directly confronts the tradition of assaulting women who see the flutes:
No! I don't think this is good. Only in the past was this good. It was those headless, faceless idiots of long ago, of mythic times, that did this. It was the sex fiends of ancient times. I feel sympathy for a woman who has seen the flutes. A man who is a good man does not participate in raping her. If he is a good man he says to her, "I am sorry that it happened; alas for you!" A man who does not feel pity is a sex fiend, an unbathed, headless fool.