ARTICLE

Emotivity and excess of spirits in the Andes

Óscar MUÑOZ MORÁN, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España

In the Quechua community of Coipasi (Bolivia) relations between the living and the dead (almas—souls) swing between excess
and containment, remembrance and distancing. The aim of this article is to show that the emotivity of the spirits plays a fun-
damental role in these relations. Like all matters pertaining to the nature of spirits, this emotivity is excessive but also, and most
importantly, it appears to the extent that the souls of the dead feel alienated from family and community social practices. This is
reflected in the local notion of “nonremembrance” (mana yuyacunchu). I therefore suggest that an ethnography of the emotivity
of spirits offers a better understanding of such common concepts in the anthropology of the Andes as commensality, excess, and
the very notion of the soul.

Keywords: Andes, the dead, spirits, excess, emotivity

In the Quechua-speaking communities of the central
Potosí Department, Bolivia, there is an enormous variety
of spirits related to the dead, of such diversity that it is
complicated, if not impossible, to draw up a typology.
Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the Coipasi ayllu1 at least
distinguish between almas2 and those they call bad spirits

or sajra espíritus. In general terms, one might say that
both refer to the states in which humans can find them-
selves after death. In their understanding, and especially
in the relations the living establish with these spirits, the
emotions of both play a fundamental role, as do the prac-
tices and the various experiences of which they are part.

In this text, I shall show the underlying complexity of
the relationship Coipasians establish with their dead and
the role played by the idea of “nonremembrance” (mana
yuyacunchu) as an expression defining the emotional
state inwhich the souls of the deadmight find themselves
upon feeling part or not part of the group’s activities. In
the community, people do not speak of “forgetting” but
of “nonremembrance,” since the dead are not considered
to be completely forgotten. The Quechua term yuyay re-
fers to the ability to use memory to recall something that
is not present at the time.

This emotivity of spirits, as we shall see, pertains to
their condition, but it also becomes effective in the world
of the living because both living and dead are involved in
activities that are somewhat more than social practices
as they are associated with a series of subtle experiences.
The aim of this article is, therefore, to propose a form of
ethnographic approach to emotivity and experience in

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, volume 12, number 1, spring 2022. © 2022 The Society for Ethnographic Theory. All rights reserved. Published by The
University of Chicago Press for the Society for Ethnographic Theory. https://doi.org/10.1086/719236

1. Coipasi is a small Quechua-speaking community in the
center of the Potosí Department. It heads the ayllu of the
same name and its members are farmers and, to a lesser ex-
tent, herders. In Coipasi at least, “ayllu” is understood as the
set of communities forming a historic network of exchanges
of products but, in particular, of the family relations estab-
lished among these communities (“ayllu is family,” they
told me). Elsewhere (Muñoz Morán 2017b: 217), I have in-
dicated how, in Coipasi, the idea of ayllu is constructed in
relation to three elements: space-territory, a common bond,
and shared experiences. I have undertaken research in
Coipasi since 2011, with long stays between 2011 and
2016, and shorter visits between 2014 and 2018. Conversa-
tions with Coipasians were predominantly in Spanish, al-
though there were many others in Quechua which were
subsequently transcribed and translated.

2. Although it is not usual, the Spanish term alma (soul) is
sometimes replaced by that of k’acha espíritus (good spir-
its). In this text I shall use the word soul when referring
to the spirit entity, which I refer to below, and alma for

all manifestations that the soul as a person’s entity acquires
after death.

2022FHAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 12 (1): 63–76



the Andes in which the main focus is on the dead and
spirits. I hope to demonstrate how the relations between
them and the living are defined by states of excess and
how they periodically appear in every sphere, from the
ritual to the sensorial.

Coipasians understand that spirits are able to feel
emotions which, being excessive, can be dangerous, so
they engage in a whole series of ritual practices which,
sustained by cosmology, allow them to relate with the
spirits, and by means of excess as well: commensality,
drunkenness, rituality around death, and the omnipres-
ence of sound or words. Rather more than the normal
amounts of food and drink and a greater number of rit-
ual activities than usual are required. Excess, then, is not
understood as something out of the ordinary. Hence, it is
not surprising that it is simply seen as the proper way to
relate with certain spirits. Excess can be therefore defined
as all the nonroutine and inordinate practices that are
engaged in to facilitate relational fluidity with these spir-
its, because excess is their natural state and, accordingly,
their condition.

Ethnography of these practices in a funeral context
makes it possible to establishwhere the limits of the com-
monplace lie. It will be necessary to go beyond recogni-
tion of human activity and incorporate, as Coipasians do,
spirits and their capacity for emotion. In brief, as we shall
see, this means extending the bounds of the social sphere
to beyond the human (Latour 2005).

Remembering the deceased

To say that after the death of a person inCoipasi days and
even weeks of frenetic rituality begin is, I admit, a truism.
After the death of Doña Silveria on a winter night in
2016, her relatives were already there at daybreak and
had started readying one of the rooms in the house for
the wake. As they worked, they told each other about
what happened during the night. In particular, they re-
marked that, just before Doña Silveria died, her goats
all huddled in a corner of their pen. As her daughter
Benigna explained, “My mother used to chase them to
get them together, so when she died they were like that.
She would have said goodbye to the goats by herding
them together.”

Doña Silveria’s body lay on a table by the door. Be-
neath the body and covering it were several blankets,
including a lliqlla.3 No part of it had been left uncov-

ered. Her black hat, an item worn only by the old women
of the village, was over her face. Different objects, “her
favorites,” had been placed around the body. In her case,
there was an old comb and mote.4

While the women closest to the deceased gathered in
the yard to peel potatoes for the copious meals of the
coming days, the visitors arrived.With each arrival there
weremoments of pain and sadness, especially among the
women, who went over to the corpse and lifted the blan-
kets and hat so they could see Doña Silveria’s face. Some
of them caressed it. The most common gesture at this
point, which is repeated until the coffin is laid in the
tomb, is to embrace the body of “the expired” (finada)
with the mourner’s hat. This is always done hat in hand,
the arm at the level of the face but not touching it. They
do this crying or saying a few words.

As soon as possible, in this case within a few hours, a
coffin is found in which to place the body. Once in the
casket, the body keeps the upper blankets that previ-
ously covered it. In addition, flowers are added at chest
level and a Bible at neck level. The hat still covers the
face.

Visitors were constantly coming and going. Refresh-
ments were served,5 the women prepared food, and peo-
ple sat chatting in groups in the yard. Don Juan, the
husband of the deceased, moved in and out of the room,
almost always smiling.

Lunch this first day consisted of rice with meat and
vegetables. After lunch, activity focused on preparing
the six goats (chivos) that were killed that very morning
to provide food for the coming days. The men are in
charge of readying the meat (Figure 1) and the women
take care of everything else. Organizing the food, meat
included, took about three hours. After dinner in the

3. The lliqlla is a smaller blanket of more elaborate weave
and decoration, which is exclusively used by women.

4. Mote is dry corn with which one of the community’s best-
loved dishes, also calledmote, is prepared. The corn is soft-
ened and cleaned with water and ashes to remove the husk
that covers it. It is then cooked and added to soup.

5. The dead woman was evangelical, which means that soft
drinks and not alcohol are offered. The quantity of soft
drinks, also known as “sodas,” consumed over the next three
days was so great that the bottles almost filled one room of
the house. There were certainly many more than those
drunk at other events. In this case, at least half the bottles
were not consumed and, weeks later, they still occupied a
good part of the room. Doña Silveria had converted to Prot-
estantism a fewweeks before her death, and had done so de-
liberately so that no alcoholwould be consumedat her burial.
I knew of at least one other such case in the community.

Óscar MUÑOZ MORÁN 64



evening a large number of people appeared, and this was
when the most emotional moment of the day occured,
in a full room with the most important ceremony led
by the evangelical brethren. Many visitors had to follow
the service from the yard, and even the area surrounding
the house was packed with people. At about 10:30 p.m.
everyone went home, except for members of the nuclear
family.

The burial took place the day after the death. While
the women cooked the day’s hearty meals, from 6 a.m.
onwards, the men dug the grave in the cemetery. Ex-
cept for people who were very close to the deceased,
this activity is reserved for immediate family members.
Alcohol,6 coca, and cigarettes are constantly circulating
as the men take turns digging the grave where the coffin
would be lowered. The atmosphere in the cemetery is jo-
vial. There is chatter, jokes are told, and even relatives
buried there are spoken of cheerfully. There is also a
lot of reminiscing about la finada, with comments about
her tastes, preferences, and a few anecdotes. The good
things are associated with her alma: for example, the
possibility of a good peach harvest as Doña Silveria

was especially fond of peaches. Then again, as her son
mentioned, there was my unquestionably unusual pres-
ence, which was exclusively due to the fact that his
mama’s alma wanted me to be there.

The lunch before going to the cemetery is the most
important meal of these days. All the inhabitants of the
village gather in the house as this is considered their fare-
well to the dead. This meal is the best example of what, in
this text, is referred to as excess, since the house is so full
of people that there was nowhere to put a plate down.
People are standing, eating in the yard, on the walls, in
the animal pens, and outside—anywhere they can find
a place. The food is served, with a first course of noodle
soup, and a second course of meat from the goats slaugh-
tered the previous day accompanied by rice, carrots, on-
ion, tomato, and hot peppers. Both courses are offered at
least twice and all the guests have brought bags to take
away the food they could not eat.

After lunch, the funeral cortege sets out to take the
coffin to the cemetery. The church bells peal nonstop
during the procession. In Coipasi, the nuclear family of
the deceased can opt not to enter the cemetery, as hap-
pened in this case. They make their farewells to their
loved one at the gate, with tremendous expressions of
grief. The community authorities wait with these rela-
tives outside the cemetery. Inside, while the evangelical

Figure 1: Men preparing the slaughtered goats. Photography by the author.

6. Somewhat circumventing the vigilance of the evangelicals,
the relatives decided to drink some alcohol, although the
quantity was so small as to be insignificant.

65 EMOTIVITY AND EXCESS OF SPIRITS IN THE ANDES



brethren “say goodbye to the body” in a ceremony lasting
about thirty minutes, some people make the most of the
occasion to tidy up graves and burn off stubble. The cem-
etery gates are always closed, except for burials and All
Saints’Day, which is why occasions like this are an occa-
sion for tidying up each family’s graves.

Once the burial is completed, everyone leaves the cem-
etery, which is now engulfed in flames and smoke from
the burning stubble (Figure 2). Refreshments are offered
at the gate to all those who are leaving, and outside, in a
line, the relatives, now calm, are waiting to say thank you.
The cemetery is closed after the last person leaves. The
relatives cannot enter, and everyone goes home.

The third day is the one reserved for the tajsi, the “la-
vation” (lavatorio) or “washing the clothes.” It begins
around 10 a.m. with a light meal after which the women
of the household take all the dead woman’s clothes into
the yard where they are divided into two piles: one for
burning and one for washing. The latter is for things
that are to be saved, the most valued, for whatever rea-
son. Things of lower quality like blouses, shirts, and a

couple of hats, go onto the first pile.7 Fromwhat is saved,
each person chooses what she most likes and makes a
bundle. Once at the river, without any kind of preamble,
those with bundles to wash set about the task (superfi-
cially wetting the clothes), while those bringing clothes
to burn immediately light the fire. As the clothes are dry-
ing and the fire burns down, they relax for a moment,
with jokes and banter (Figure 3). Large quantities of coca,
soft drinks, and tobacco are consumed.

Shortly before 1 p.m. a ceremony begins in which the
heads and hands of everyone present are washed so, as
they say, the water will wash away their sorrows. This
done, they get ready to play palamar.

The game of palamar is played by two teams: in one,
the sons, sons-in-law, and myself and, in the other, the
rest of the family members. The objective is to throw a
stone, trying to get it as close as possible to a small white
stone eight meters away, surrounded by an open space
ringed by larger stones. It is played in pairs and each par-
ticipant has three throws (Figure 4). The first team to
score twelve points (each stone landing closest counts
as one) wins the round, the game being to achieve the
better of two throws. At the end of the game, the partic-
ipants go back to the house where they eat an abundant
meal of dishes similar to those of the previous day.

Theoretically, relatives cannot go to see the grave until
a month after the burial, in what is known as killamisa.
I say “theoretically” because in Doña Silveria’s case, they
go to the grave just a week later because some of her
children who live in the city of Santa Cruz want to visit
it before leaving. The killamisa is brief and consists of an
intimate visit by the nuclear family. After a moment of
emotion and grief on coming to the grave, there is a lon-
ger period of tidying it up, followed by an extended ses-
sion of prayer and small speeches, after which emotional
words by some of those present, especially the men, con-
clude the killamisa. Now it is time to share refreshments
and “ch’allar a lamama” (sprinkle mama). All those pre-
sent say goodbye after having consumed all the drinks,
especially people who are leaving the community. They

Figure 2: The grave of the deceased in the cemetery,
enveloped in smoke. Photography by the author.

7. Seen from the perspective of Philippe Descola’s proposal
(2012: 33) of an animate “continuum,”which some authors
have applied to the Andes (Bugallo 2020), clothing is part of
the body and, therefore, possesses at least some of the attri-
butes of entities with spirits (Allen 2015: 31; Muñoz Morán
2020b). Only thus can we understand why the clothes that
are saved are those which, like blankets and lliqllas, have
never had direct contact with the deceased’s body. All the
rest is burned, including hats.

Óscar MUÑOZ MORÁN 66



approach the head of the grave once again and, weeping,
say a few words, embracing it with their hats.

The next occasion to say farewell to the deceased is
the following All Saints’ Day. I have already described
the ethnography of this occasion in another publication
(Muñoz Morán 2017a) but I believe it is worth recalling
that it follows some of the patterns already outlined for
the wake and the burial: a large number of people, on
someoccasions almost thewhole community, and a great
excess of food and drink. If anything, the excess on All
Saints’Day is even greater since it is a day that all house-
holds observe to a greater or lesser extent, and food and
drinks are always served. There are more meals in many
more homes, with a constant slaughter of animals; drinks
in every house that is visited or at the various graves in the
cemetery; altars, also called tombs,8 are enormous and

overloaded; not only is palamar played but also chunq’a
which involves throwing a large white stone so that it does
not roll, and tocola, a stone divided into two parts by a red
cord, in the upper part of which there is a hole intowhich a
coin is thrown from distance. In brief, during the days of
All Saints’ festivities, one seesmeals, celebrations, and peo-
ple drinking or playing in every corner of the village.

Funerary excess

Studies of what might be called “indigenous excess”
have always been marked by an early colonial categori-
zation and comparison with lean times. Hence, to speak
of something excessive among indigenous people harks
back to colonial thinking which understands it as going
beyond the limits (by classification: what is notWestern
and therefore frowned upon) of the normal (the West-
ern and well considered). After comparing it with their
own ways, chroniclers in America labeled the way of
drinking of indigenous people of the Andes as excessive.
By extension, all festivities and excessive consumption
on such occasions were also considered immoderate so
that those involved, Indians, were judged “irrational, irre-
sponsible, and lacking any sense of profitability” (Saignes
1993a: 6). From its earliest days, the discipline of anthro-
pology was attracted by excess or, more specifically, by

Figure 3: Clothes drying as the fire burns down during the tajsi. Photography by the author.

8. This is an altar with several levels. Each tier is the respon-
sibility of a family member, normally children or godchil-
dren. Hence, the number of levels and the height depend
on howmany relativeswant to be responsible for construct-
ing it. Each tier is covered with a black cloth on which are
placed several pyramids of bread of different types (tauqa)
and colors. There are also other objects including bottles of
alcohol, plates of food, and chieftains’ staffs. A crucifix
crowns the uppermost tier.

67 EMOTIVITY AND EXCESS OF SPIRITS IN THE ANDES



the ways in which “primitive societies” balanced excess.
These studies sought to dissociate themselves from the
classificatory systems used in previous colonial chronicles
and accounts. They shunned “irrationality” and looked
for the “profitability” of excess. Indigenous peoples were
not irrational, as they were excessive for a reason.

The pioneering work in this regard wasMarcelMauss’s
essay The gift, which inquired into exchange and reci-
procity asmechanisms of social control but, above all, into
how, beyond the material, there existed symbolic and
cosmological reasons for human relationships with ob-
jects (for example, what he understood as the hau, the
“spirit of things,” amongMaori) ([1925] 2002).9 Decades

later, Eric Wolf proposed that among the peasantry of
Mesoamerica and Java social equilibrium was achieved
by the so-called “economy of prestige” and, more specif-
ically, management of productive surplus and the accu-
mulation of a “ceremonial fund.”Wolf argued that, once
minimum demands had been met, “peasants” put into
circulation this accumulation of goods and their exces-
sive spending.However, this practice was also complicated
by limited access to land and resources (Wolf 1957).
The idea of a principle of indigenous scarcity was ex-
panded byGeorge Foster a few years later.With his con-
cept of “the image of limited good,” Foster referred not
only to the means of production but also to the fact that,

9. “Even pure destruction of wealth does not signify that com-
plete detachment that one might believe to be found in it.
Even these acts of greatness are not without egoism. The
purely sumptuary form of consumption (which is almost
always exaggerated and often purely destructive), in which
considerable amounts of goods that have taken a long time
to amass are suddenly given away or even destroyed, partic-
ularly in the case of the potlatch, give such institutions the
appearance of representing purely lavish expenditure and
childish prodigality. In effect, and in reality, not only are
useful things given away and rich foods consumed to excess,
but one even destroys for the pleasure of destroying. For ex-

Figure 4: Playing palamar. Photography by the author.

ample, the Tsimshian, Tlingit, andHaïda chiefs throw these
copper objects and money into the water. The Kwakiutl
chiefs smash them, as do those of the tribes allied to them.
But the reason for these gifts and frenetic acts of wealth con-
sumption is in no way disinterested, particularly in societies
that practise the potlatch. Between chiefs and their vassals,
between vassals and their tenants, through such gifts a hier-
archy is established. To give is to show one’s superiority, to
be more, to be higher in rank, magister. To accept without
giving in return, or without giving more back, is to become
client and servant, to become small, to fall lower (minister)”
(Mauss 2002: 95).

Óscar MUÑOZ MORÁN 68



for him, the Purépecha people of Tzintzuntzan (Micho-
acán,Mexico) had limited access to “land, wealth, health,
friendship and love, manliness and honor, respect and
status, power and influence, security and safety” (1965:
296). Anthropologists thereby understood indigenous ex-
cess as either for ceremonial and symbolic exchange or
for economic and social equilibrium. Behind this anthro-
pological interest in excess—the colonial classificatory or
the comparative ethnological system—there is undoubt-
edly a comparisonwithWestern economies and societies.

In this article, I do not start out from a system of clas-
sification to understand the characteristics of excess but
avoid categorizing this term.Neither do I use another cat-
egory, scarcity, as its counterpart since, as AndrewAbbott
has noted, “the notion that excess of one thing is scarcity
of another arises in a simple intuition” (2014: 8).

In the Andes, interest in “indigenous excess” has fo-
cused on commensality (Allen 2002; Salas 2019), drunk-
enness (Saignes 1993b;Molinié 2005), ritual excess around
the deceased (Harris 1983; van den Berg 1989; Fernández
Juárez 2001; Albó 2007), or during certain festivities like
carnival (Gérard 2010). These studies speak of excess aim-
ing at the satisfaction of other beings, the need to socialize,
reproduce, or relax power structures, and the opportunity
to be a community. In other words, they are about thewhy
of excess, once again countering “irrationality” and “prof-
itability.” But little or nothing is said about what excess is.

With regard to excessive commensality, Catherine J.
Allen says that, in Sonqo, “house-hold rituals include
eating, drinking, chewing coca, and making music to ex-
cess in order to bring different aspects of the animated
cosmos into contact with one another and thus maintain
the flow of life” (2002: 128), but also that it is through rit-
ual (“drink, dance and yell together”) that community
is created (2002: 148). Guillermo Salas takes up these
ideas by highlighting the importance of commensality in
kinship relations in the Peruvian Andes. He says that
it is through cohabitation but mainly through food ex-
changes that, beyond consanguinity, other beings are
incorporated into kinship networks (2019).

However, the approach to excess that interests me
here is that indicated by Francisco Pazzarelli (2020),
which refers more to a condition than to a category.10

Pazzarelli states that among shepherds of Huachicho-
cana, Puna Jujeña (Argentina), relations among beings,
especially among humans and animals, are thought
about on the basis of excess, in such a way that animals,
whatever they are, are all wild and, more specifically,
are prone to excess and to taking their behavior beyond
the limits of what is socially permitted. Humans, there-
fore, constantly aim to control and domesticate such
excess. To my mind, what is most interesting about
Pazzarelli’s theory is that it states that something sim-
ilar happens with a person’s ánimu: it is always tending
to break the social norm, to go beyond the limits of what
is admissible and hence to excess, so men are constantly
trying to rein it in and to control these excesses of their
main soul.

In a large part of the Andes, at least among Quechua
speakers (the runas),11 ánimu is the word used for refer-
ring to their main soul. In Coipasi, people understand
that the runa consists of the body, the ánimu as the most
important soul, and, some people say, also the espírito or
espíritu (spirit). The ánimu is common to all living be-
ings and the espírito is exclusive to the runas, since this
is what makes them able to speak, to communicate and
thus to be social. When it becomes ill, the ánimu tends
to leave the body and, with death, to separate definitively
and become alma which is, as I have mentioned, the ge-
neric form also used in the Andes to refer to the entities
the dead turn into.12

To return to Pazzarelli’s concepts, after a person from
Coipasi dies, the ánimu, once detached from the body to
become alma, sets off on an irreversible path to the world
of excesses that is not human. Excessive postmortem rit-
uality would then be at once recognition of and a con-
cession by humans towards this world but, above all, of
the state in which the alma finds itself (Muñoz Morán
2016). In other words, it is an acknowledgment by humans
that relations with the deceased must proceed on other
terms, namely terms that are, bynature, unbounded, partly
exceeding norms and the known social order. As I have
indicated, it has been noted that, in Andean rituality,

10. Along these lines, as we shall see below, we can situate the
earlier work of Alejandro Ortíz Rescaniere (1993) about
how excess is typical of Andean spirits and his suggestion
that this is why, as happens with animals or close kin, it is
appealing to have amorous relations with them.

11. Runa is the Quechua term for referring to persons or, more
concretely, people. In principle, they, Quechua speakers,
are the runas but, in fact, it is inclusive and can embrace
all beings that have the same ontological characteristics.

12. In earlier texts I have described in detail the composition
of the Coipasian person and his or her relationship with
spirit entities (Muñoz Morán 2014, 2017b, 2020a).

69 EMOTIVITY AND EXCESS OF SPIRITS IN THE ANDES



including funeral rites, people eat and drink more than
usual since this is a way of satiating the appetite of the
deceased and of being closer to them.13 Since I agree with
this, I believe it is worth trying to be a little more precise.

What is properly human is the social part of the ritual,
which is to say the excess of gathering and concentration,
and the emphasis given to kinship, family, and commu-
nity relations: in short, the excess in social relations which
resonate and are emphasized during these days. The dead
are bidden farewell in society and, rather than in the in-
timacy of the family, in that of community excess. This
is related to what Salas defines as excessive commensal-
ity, “a powerful bodily experience” in which members of
the group “mutually feed and care for each other” (2019:
89). What Salas is suggesting, along the lines of the work
byMarisol de la Cadena (2015), is that this caring for each
other includes other beings, beyond the human social
group. Inclusion of these beings is achieved in the part of
the ritual that is not human: excess of food, drink, songs
or prayers, laughter, and tolling of bells.14 This uncom-
mon excess is how the dead are feted. Their departure
is thus prepared so that the alma can recognize what it
is leaving behind. I understand, then, that the excessive
ritual has the aim of honoring the dead. Almost in the
manner of a funeral trousseau, the alma takes an excess
of sociability with it but already adjusted to terms of the
world to which it now belongs.

Now, what is the purpose of the feasting?Why do peo-
ple want the dead to have this social excess? The aim is to
mitigate, as much as possible, the affliction of the alma. It
is here where it is possible to understand the Coipasian
notion of “nonremembrance.”

Nonremembrance of almas

On several occasions, I heard fromCoipasians thatmany
almas hurt people because “they don’t remember any-
more” (mana yuyacunchu). Since they are not remem-
bered, the almas become upset and resentful, which is
why they can hurt people.

Well, of course. That’s why I don’t remember mymama
anymore. She can punish me too . . . Of course. Yes,
sometimes too when work isn’t good. Or I go wherever
and don’t earn anything. You see? Nothing. So, that’s
why you always have to remember, they say. You have
to say prayers or, if not, have mass said. (Francisco
Potosí)

But it is not only a question of ritual forgetting but
also, and especially, of keeping the dead in mind, of re-
membering them, and their names. “Of course, we don’t
remember the names they had. Now I’m forgetting that
too. This is what takes us up, then.” By “take up,” Don
Francisco is referring to the harm these hurt almas can
do.

With the frenetic rituality of burials, or at the killa-
misa, or at the time of All Saints the aim is precisely to
avoid, or to control as much as possible, the overwhelm-
ing emotivity of the almas, their grief and malaise.15

Grief is probably the best way of describing the state
these hurting almas are in. It is one that is related to the
pain of loss which, as Martha Nussbaum says, “has this
double aspect: it alludes to the value of the person who
has left or died, but it alludes as well to that person’s re-
lation to the perspective of the mourner” (2003: 31).

In Coipasi, the almas have emotions as the living do,
but this is common among other Amerindian groups.
Nussbaum affirms this for deities, and one might think
in similar terms regarding the Andean spirits.

Whether we believe that bodiless substances exist or
nor, the reason it makes sense to imagine a bodiless sub-
stance having genuine emotions is that it makes sense to
imagine that a thinking being, whether realized in mat-
ter or nor, could care deeply about something in the
world, and have the thoughts and intentions associated

13. Andrew Canessa mentions that in the Wila Kjarka Ay-
mara community, the people eat in excess only at the time
of All Saints, “because All Saints marks the beginning of
the season of hunger and death (death rates are higher
in the rainy season), but also because commensality and
the act of sharing cooked food highlights the community
identity” although, besides eating for themselves, they are
also eating for the dead (2020: 360).

14. Excess of sound is also characteristic of these death ritu-
als. In communities accustomed to silence, prayers, bells,
laments, and weeping resound on these days as do, of
course, conversations and words. As Pitarch has indicated
in the case of Tzeltal spirits of Chiapas, Mexico: “The
world of spirits and souls is a dark landscape and an in-
cessant noise, while the solar world inhabited by humans
is ideally a bright and quiet domain” (2018: 86).

15. In the Diccionario de Quechua cochabambino, it is men-
tioned that the term yuyariku refers to “ritual that is fo-
cused on recalling thememory of someone who has died.”
In fact, it seems applicable to any ritual held after some-
one’s death (Herrero and Sánchez de Lozada: 1305–
1306), as is the case of the killamisa in Coipasi.

Óscar MUÑOZ MORÁN 70



with such attachments. And that’s all we really require
for emotion. (Nussbaum 2003: 60).

But perhaps, as Pedro Pitarch suggests for the Tzeltal,
there are cosmological reasons behind this emotivity of
the spirits. He says that the very condition of spirits is
precisely that of constantly showing excessive emotivity
(Pitarch 2015, 2018). That is to say, Tzeltal spirits do
not present a sentiment because they are remembered
or not, but because this is their “natural condition of ex-
istence.” This is the opposite of the state of humans who
try to control and even suppress their emotions so as not
to run the risk of becoming a spirit (Pitarch 2018: 85).

This excessive condition of spirits was already noted
by Ortiz Rescaniere when he emphasized that a good
part of what he called “extraordinary loves” in the Andes
are based on the attraction people feel for this excess.
This is how incestuous relations with animals or spirits
are understood. In his view, this emotional excess is built
on surfeit: “loving another too different fromoneself (an-
imals and monsters); and loving another too much like
oneself (incest, because homosexuality is not seen as a
dangerous aberration)” (Ortiz Rescaniere 1993: 140). The
important thing, he goes on to point out, is seeking nor-
mality, “the basic social relationship—the couple (and,
by extension, the whole social relationship),” in the middle
ground, “not too far, and not too close” (1993: 143).

I understand that there is no attraction for excess in
Coipasi because, as I shall go on to argue, there is no rec-
ognition of spirits, almas, or the dead being excluded from
this social relationality. Accordingly, excess is not desired
but incorporated into normality (ritual). This iswhy, apart
from the “natural condition” ofwhich Pitarch speaks, the
almas in Coipasi are resentful because they do not feel
part of the social group. Remembering their names, but
also what they used to like, or the people they were fond
of, is also part of remembering. So, remembering is not
only the ritual excess that seems quite temporary, but it
is also thinking about them and, especially, thinking of
them as part of society, the family, the community, and
the ayllu. This is why remembrance of the almas is espe-
cially centered on activities pertaining to the social group,
with experiences like going to the chacra (smallholding),
taking the animals to graze, a good harvest, or behavior of
the animals. For example, in the days afterDoña Silveria’s
death, Don Juan, her husband, dreamed that his wife was
going with him to the chacra. It is also why her son, Don
Bernabé, while looking at his peaches, told me that his
mother loved a mojochinchi (dried peach) and therefore
they were sure to have a good crop that year.

This means that the almas remain present in the form
of experiences while the living remember them. And
these experiences are always related to social activities be-
cause the almas have no manifestations beyond dreams.
They are a good thought or a good deed, among other
things.

Not remembering them, not recalling their names or
social status, results in a farewell to the soul. Salas has re-
cently pointed out that “old corpses” are forgotten be-
cause “they are not cared for by their relatives.” Hence,
contrary to what is usually said in the regional literature
(see, for example, Rivet and Tomasi 2016), these corpses,
unlike the recently deceased, are not dangerous (Salas
2019: 104). In Coipasi, however, neglect of the grave
and of the deceased person does not necessarily imply ei-
ther forgetting or the nonpresence of the alma. But if the
dead feel that they are not remembered, this does make
them dangerous.

When, after a long time, the almas are no longer pres-
ent, they go somewhere that is not clear in local concep-
tion. In general terms, it is said that they go to heaven, but
it is also mentioned that they could be “in a ravine or on
the hill, or sort of like this, let’s say like this little village,
like this one. Without an owner” (Marcial Sequeli).

As we have seen, an alma that is not remembered and
hurt by this can “take up” its relatives. But, in fact, it is not
expected that it would domajor damage. Great harm, in-
cluding illness and death, can be caused by the sajra es-
píritus. In principle it would seem that this transfor-
mation into bad spirits would only affect those almas
belonging to people who behaved badly during their
lives, since they are forced to suffer forever an interme-
diate state between the here and now and final rest.16

The sajra espíritus, unlike the almas, do manifest
themselves. They can be winds (wayras), but also ani-
mals or strange beings. They are anything but human.

Evil spirits, that’swhat they are then.An evil spirit can turn
you . . . an evil spirit can turn you into two things: it can

16. There is a large body of literature on lost souls in the
Andes, especially with regard to the condemned (los
condenados). These are the dead who can leave their
graves after being buried to wander in torment around
the local area (normally the ayllus where their relatives
live). In reality, they are lost souls that have been pun-
ished for infringing some kind of local norm (see, for
example, Robin Azevedo 2008: 144–46; Allen 2011;
Rojas Zolezzi 2013).

71 EMOTIVITY AND EXCESS OF SPIRITS IN THE ANDES



turn you into a whirlwind; it can turn you into a person; it
can turn you into an animal; it can . . . it can, it can, this . . .
well, many things. And thenmen believe it and that’s why
they go crazy. And then and now, the evil spirit and then,
well it turns into everything. They’re spirits, not humans
like us. They’re spirits.17 (Guillermo Huaranca)

Nussbaum mentions that, by contrast with humans,
in nonhuman beings thoughts and emotions do not need
materialization in order to take shape (2003: 60). In Coi-
pasi at least, the sajra espíritus and their grief do take
material forms and appear as human sensations. It is
usual to hear Coipasians speaking about themany sensa-
tions they have when they come across these spirits.
However, they are not described in the formof emotions,
for example, being terrified, feeling afraid and weak.
They are described by their repercussions in the body:
hair standing on end, loss of sphincter control, the body
feeling swollen, or weepy eyes. In fact, these sensations
are what help to perceive in subjective terms what is be-
ing confronted (any type of sajra espíritu) and thus to
face the situation with “courage” (coraje) and, in the last
instance, to survive, even if falling ill.

Elsewhere, I have described how this principle of the
relationship between “nonremembrance” and the sajra
espíritus is especially significant with the chullpas, the
remains of an extinct humanity from a long time ago
(Muñoz Morán 2020a). I want to draw attention to this
relationship in particular since, as Don Marcial Sequeli
says, it is very important for understanding “nonremem-
brance.” “Of course, sajra alma are [the chullpas]. They
don’t remember anymore . . . nobody.Who’s going to re-
member this anymore? . . . So much time, they wouldn’t
have been family and they’re not alive anymore.”

In these words of Don Marcial, one senses the im-
portance of the community and the family for remem-
brance. The formula that combines family nonremem-
brance with a huge distance in time, by contrast with
Salas’s views,mentioned above, is ideal for understanding
why the chullpas become seriously ill in the community.18

ÓSCAR: And why? Why will they get sick?
MARCIAL SEQUELI: Well, of course, they don’t remem-

ber anymore. So, it’ll be that.
ÓSCAR: They don’t remember what?
MARCIAL SEQUELI: Their relatives, they don’t come any-

more. Then, anything . . . what will it mean too,
right?

Experiences with almas

The sajra espíritus are unremembered almas of the past,
belonging to people who were not good when they were
alive. They are therefore constantly in torment, and pre-
sent themselves to the Coipasians inmany forms, among
them bones of the ancients, winds, ants, dogs, diffuse
shadows, and dark figures. Unlike the case of almas, these
are not social experiences but real manifestations. Never-
theless, the appearance of these entities is related to ex-
periences, in this case, chastisement for bad behavior.
Accordingly, one might come across sajra espíritus in
very different forms when walking alone at night, when
drunk, or coming home from a party, stealing, commit-
ting adultery, sleeping in places where one should not
be, and when, in the case of children, playing with things
they are not supposed to touch. In other words, in this
case, and unlike that of the almas, the experiences are
not associated with the entity, but the entity, the sajra
espíritu, becomes present through the experience. And,
moreover, by contrast with experiences pertaining to
almas, those associated with the sajra espíritus refer to
what is socially penalized.

Sometimes, there is even a tense encounter between
the two. This is barely perceptible, at least for the ethnog-
rapher, as it can be a bad wind that makes the animals
sick, or a hailstorm that destroys the crops. Something
like this happened during the days that followed Doña
Silveria’s burial. Recall that, at the time, her son, Don
Bernabé mentioned that they were sure to have a good
crop of peaches that year as his mama liked them very
much. A few days later, while Don Bernabé and I were
preparing to clean the irrigation ditches in his peach or-
chard, he informed me that two trees had been attacked
and destroyed by a type of ant known as chakas. These
ants are of a specific, very harmful kind (of the Attini
family and can be of two types, the Atta—leaf cutters—
or Acromyrmex—pruners) as they devour many of the

17. “Of course. This is what attacks you then. This one isn’t
going to present itself to you in person, no. Air, don’t you
see? Because they don’t remember anymore, no . . . be-
fore your grandparents. How long will it be?” (Francisco
Potosí).

18. I have written elsewhere about how, in Coipasi, the chull-
pas are not considered to be the remains of ancestors be-

cause there is no common genealogy recognized as being
shared with them. There is only concern for a shared hu-
manity (Muñoz Morán 2020c).

Óscar MUÑOZ MORÁN 72



local crops. It is said that they live in large anthills and are
especially dangerous as they are considered to be sajra
espíritus. One cannot urinate near them or get angry in
their environs. Wayras (winds) rise out of these anthills
and cause serious illness.19

In Coipasi, then, distinguishing between spirits and
their characteristics is determined by their emotivity.
And this emotivity, which is to say, whether they are
happy or afflicted, is due, as I have shown, to two factors.
The first is that which seems to be the very condition of
the spirits, a condition in which excess becomes present
and includes affective excess; the second, however, is the
activation and presence of this excessive emotivity of
spirits when they feel they are not remembered by the liv-
ing.Having thempresent in social activities, being part of
collective experiences, is to remember them. Not having
their name present or slowly limiting their presence in
these practices is “not remembering them.” When they
are not remembered, some of these almas act on the liv-
ing, always doing so by means of behavior that is well
outside the social norms.

Perhaps, as Nussbaum suggests, emotions are closely
linkedwith experiences, inasmuch as the amount of time
spent with someone establishes “habits and memories
involving that person.” The sense of emotions is marked
by the interpretation and evaluation of these experiences
(Nussbaum 2003: 84).

In Coipasi, I have never heard talk of forgetting the
dead or forgetting the almas. This situation, forgetting
almas, is simply inconceivable. Spirits (good and bad)
cannot be forgotten because, first, they are always pres-
ent in their many forms or experiences and second, be-
cause the stories of practically all of them are known.
Hence, this is not a question of forgetting but of
“nonremembrance.”

It might be easier to understand if we turn to the Que-
chua expression mana yuyacunchu. Yuyay is a term as-
sociated, in its many meanings, with reason and virtue,
but also ability to summon a memory after losing it.20

It is also used when one wants to indicate that one sud-

denly remembers something, something that seemed to
be forgotten, but that in fact was not: yuyariy (Herrero
and Sánchez de Lozada 1983: 1306) or yuyariq (Acade-
mia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua 2005: 771). Hence,
speaking about mana yuyacunchu, or of “nonremem-
brance” refers not so much to forgetting as a definitive,
irreversible act but to the problems in being able to re-
member something that is there. Like something lost,
when one knows it exists but cannot find it.21 As Nuss-
baum also says, thoughts associated with the dead are al-
ways present even if they change form (2003: 81). In
Coipasi, it is not a matter of ceasing to think about the
almas or literally forgetting about their presence and
the practices associated with them. The important thing
is to make them participants in these practices. To put it
in ethnographic terms, what will actually cause Doña
Silveria’s alma not to be remembered, and thus her spirit
form to become present, is that she, as alma, stops feeling
evoked every time the peaches are harvested because her
children have, in fact, stopped thinking of her constantly
(although they can sometimes) when engaging in this
activity.

This association in anthropology between spirits and
experiences is not unusual (Sax 2019, for theAndes).God-
frey Lienhardt said that among the Dinka of what is now
South Sudan, the experience appeared as an image of di-
vinity (Power). Dinka spirits exist inasmuch as they are
experienced (Lienhardt 2003), and experience does not
appear as “a problem demanding a philosophical expla-
nation but a fact immanent to being” (Schmidt 2017).
Although Lienhardt raised, in a very novel way at the
time, the principle of continuity between humans and
spirits, the former are, in any case, the ones that guide
experimentation.

Present-day anthropology has alerted us to the need
not to limit the social (Viveiros de Castro 2003; Latour
2005) or the human (Descola 2009) exclusively to men.
These ethnographies “have confirmed that, in these so-
cieties, humanity is not a category but a condition. A

19. DonMacario Mamani told me that his blindness is the re-
sult of witchcraft performed by his uncle on his entire fam-
ily. The sorcerer allied himself with the chakas (in this case,
DonMacario speaks of chakas asmanifestations adopted by
the “devil”) and, one day when DonMacario urinated near
them a wayra began to blow and slowly blinded him. Ali-
son Spedding identified this chaka malady (Spedding 1992).

20. For example, in his vocabulary of the Quechua language of
1608, González Holguín, spoke of yuyay cumuni as “pass-

21. On one occasion, a woman from Qaqachaka told Denise
Arnold and Juan de Dios Yapita that she did not manage
to remember some songs. The Aymara expression she
used is chuyma ch’aqa, which the authors translate as “lost
heart” (1999: 176).

ing through memory” (2007: 400). In modern Quechua
dictionaries yuyay appears as always related with loss of
memory which is transitory and remediable (Herrero
and Sánchez de Lozada 1983: 1307–1038; AcademiaMayor
de la Lengua Quechua 2005: 771–72).

73 EMOTIVITY AND EXCESS OF SPIRITS IN THE ANDES



condition shared by different beings” (Ventura, Mateo,
andClua 2018: 19). If spirits can have a social life (Espirito
Santo and Blanes 2014), spirits and the dead can feel, be-
come emotional, grieve, and suffer. In short, emotions are
not limited to humans (Hardman 2000; Pitarch 2015).

Conclusions

The importance of the sensorial and feelings in the an-
thropology of experiences has already been noted by
Turner and Bruner (1986), but always restricted to the
activities of humans. My proposal here is to rethink this
relationship between practice and emotion. This leads us,
first of all, to take up Lienhardt’s ideas of incorporating
experiences of spirits or the dead (the Andean almas)
but incorporating does not simply mean seeing them
as representations or images of human origin, but as
worlds in themselves and social actors (Latour 2005) that
are capable of acting as humans do.22

Coipasi’s almas or evil spirits are locally defined by
their emotions. Some, the former, have good feelings
on most occasions as they are still part of the experience
of the living. Moreover, they themselves are experiences
and not manifestations. They are remembered, are pres-
ent, and are a nice thought or good company. But, as
time goes by, their presence is increasingly residual until
there comes a point when, without being forgotten, they
feel they are unremembered. It is when the living no lon-
ger have them present in the practices and they cease to
be in and to be experiences.

It is then that the sajra espíritus appear on the scene,
the ones “they don’t remember,my friend,” asDon Fran-
cisco says. Then, care must be taken with them because
they can have serious effects on the living. It is not resent-
ment, because in Coipasi it is understood that that there
is no annoyance or anger among the spirits. We might
think about such anger if we limited the relationshipwith
them to ritual oblivion. Ina Rösing called this “offering
debt,” in the sense of nonreciprocity by humans (1994).

But “nonremembrance” refers more to pain and grief
felt by these spirits on being slowly removed from the

practice of social life but also emotionally. The conse-
quence is also illness, as happens among the Lohorung
of Tibet (Hardman 2000), although not as reprisal in
this case. What prevails among the Coipasians is con-
trol of emotional excess. The living must control their
own emotions, as the Tzeltal do, in order not to become
equal to spirits (Pitarch 2015: 86), but they must also
control the effectiveness of the emotional excess of the
spirits. Ritual excess during funerals or at the time of
All Saints is, as I have shown, related with this emotional
excess. During these days, the living allow their emo-
tions to get out of control because this is the only way
they can approach the natural state of spirits, namely
emotional excess. But this emotional overflowmust come
with a context that is equally abundant in practice, and
this is why people eat, drink, play, and talk in excess. In
this way we can better understand the relations that the
living and the dead (the almas) of the Andes establish
among themselves, relations swinging between excess
and containment, between remembrance and distancing.

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Óscar MUÑOZ MORÁN is currently professor of anthropology of the Americas at Complutense University of Madrid,
Spain. He received his PhD from Salamanca University. His books include Permanencia en el tiempo: Antropología
de la historia en una comunidad purépecha (El Colegio de Michoacán, 2009), Tiempo, espacio y entidades titulares:
Etnografías del pasado en América (Abya-Yala, 2014), and Andes: Ensayos de etnografía teórica (NOLA Editores,
2020). He is the chief editor of the Revista Española de Antropología Americana and the collection EntreGiros of
NOLA Editores. He is also co-director of the research group “Antropología de América” at Complutense University
of Madrid and National Museum of Anthropology.

Óscar Muñoz Morán
oscarmun@ucm.es

Óscar MUÑOZ MORÁN 76