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To review a book such as Between Myth and History is no easy task. The initial question I could ask is: where do I locate myself—in myth, in history, in an analysis of the individual, in a collective analysis, in the psychology of the normal or in psychopathology? In my view, this very interesting book tries precisely to offer a new alternative, which the authors call ethnohistory.
Ethnohistory, as defined by the authors—a historian, three psychoanalysts and an anthropologist—is a bridge which attempts, by means of the modern sciences, to approach the Andean cultural past in Peru, and through it to reconstruct the human subjective dimension of its actors. It is a search for motivations, for emotional exchanges which occurred then. It is a search, we can say, for the cultural weave. The book has four parts:
1The formation of the Inca empire and the myth of the Ayar brothers.
2The consolidation of the empire with the ascent of Pachacutec and the war against the Chancas.
3The final years of the Tawantisuyo (the Inca cmpire) and the Spanish conquest.
4The Taki Onkoy: 'the sickness of song' which became a resurrection movement.
The material used for the analysis of the first part is the myth of the Ayar brothers. As the authors indicate, it is not clear whether this myth is evidence for a historical event, or whether it is a text created a posteriori to justify the Inca rise and expansion.
In the myth, four brothers and four sisters emerge from the cave of Pacaritanbo, in search of fertile land to settle. The tale says that one of the brothers had exceptional powers to create valleys and open up hills. His brothers, fearful and envious of his powers, got rid of him, leaving him to die in the cave they originally emerged from.
The search continued, until they finally found the Huanacari valley. A second brother turned into stone when, in his eagerness to reach the sun, he was attacked by the remaining brothers. The third brother met the same fate in trying to reach fe