The Yacuruna: The Upside-Down People Beneath the Amazon
Anyone who has traveled the blackwater rivers of the upper Amazon knows the sight that founds this legend: on a still afternoon the river becomes a mirror so perfect that the world doubles — forest below forest, sky below hull, and the canoe hangs between two identical creations, one of them upside down. The ribereño peoples of the Peruvian Amazon, and the shamanic traditions that run through them, have always known what the mirror shows: not a reflection — a neighborhood . Beneath the rivers and the great lakes live the yacuruna — Quechua for "water people" — a complete nation under the water: cities of them, with streets and plazas and houses whose roofs are the shimmer we see from above — and their world is inverted : the yacuruna live upside down, their dwellings hanging into the depth as ours rise into the air, their day our night, their dry our wet, everything in their kingdom the mirror-twin of ours, reversed. They ride caimans as we ride horses; giant anacondas are ...