A mysterious being manifests itself usually as a large snake.
The basin of the Guapomó dam or reservoir is located within the Chiquitano Dry Forest of the department of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Its waters flow into the San Ignacio de Velasco dam, which covers an area of 300 square kilometers. Its ecosystem is under the ancestral protection of native indigenous peoples, but research led by the Foundation for the Conservation of the Chiquitano Forest shows a hostile outlook: water bodies throughout the basin have declined from 63.5 hectares in 2018 to 10.2 hectares in 2021.1 The water crisis is seriously affecting this community.
On the banks of the Guapomó dam, in August 2022, during my last trip that year to San Ignacio de Velasco, Santa Cruz, I heard the legend of the Jichi, the water protector of the Chiquitano region. This mysterious being is wary of the paúros or water reservoirs because if they do him any harm, he will punish the community by leaving the place—but he does not leave alone, he takes the water with him, because it is his home. This is what the elderly tell us and what Marcela Purate Barrientos,2 a teacher in San Ignacio, shared with me.
After saying goodbye to Chiquitana, where I made friends and loved doing my job, I brought with me many hugs and good wishes and a phrase in my suitcase: “He who drinks water from Guapomó, comes back or stays”. (This saying would come true for me two years later.) This idea intrigued me, how does the Jichi take the water with him? Where is this being? What form does it take? A particular interest in Jichi woke up in me.
Back in the Andes, in the land of the Illimani and the marraqueta [white bread roll, similar to a crunchy baguette] , I began to question whether that being existed and why it did. I began to dream of this being, in the form of a giant snake, a viborón, and in my dreams I saw how its shiny scales slithered through the waters of the Guapomó, submerging little by little, in search for food.
These ideas kept circling in my head, so I began to investigate and saw Jichi represented in drawings and short audio narrations, just like in my dreams. I did not hesitate and asked a friend from the lowlands, who confirmed my vision. “Yes, it is a boa. In my homeland they say that a young man went fishing at sunset and never came back,” he told me in a mysterious voice. “People say he was an offering for the Jichi,” said Jorge Antelo Zapierre.3
To quench my thirst and learn more about the Jichi, I traveled to San Ignacio de Velasco in July of this year, where Clara Masay Mendez4 told me that the Jichi in her community manifests herself in the shape of a woman, which is why she is known as la señorita [young lady]. But she is not just any woman, she is blonde, white-skinned, tall and beautiful, dressed in a traditional tipoy dress, and she only appears to men when they have had too many drinks to take them to the paúro, where she disappears in the blink of an eye, entering the waters.
I wanted to learn more and I went to Sañonama, on the outskirts of San Ignacio, where Ana Rosa Yopie Egüez,5 general cacique, accompanied by other community members, took me to the old paúro where they used to collect water some 70 years ago. This paúro was the home of “la señorita” or the Jichi, according to the stories of the oldest people there, which in the Chiquitano language is called Sañonama, hence the name of the community. In the old paúro you can see shattered bricks and some that form a square around the mud. They placed the bricks to preserve the water that gushed out, but it seems that the Sañonama did not like this and eventually dried up.
After enjoying a patasca [traditional dish made with pork and hominy], I went to the banks of the Guapomó on my motorcycle and saw a white house in the distance. As I got closer, I found a sign from COOSIV, the San Ignacio de Velasco Cooperative of Public Services of Potable Water and Sanitary Sewage, where I was able to interview the head of this entity, Victor Hugo Aguirre.6 “In 2023 the Guapomó dam reached a black margin; that is, it had barely a capacity of 20 percent to distribute water to the Ignacio population,” he said and added that there must be a balanced distribution of water between people and livestock.
According to the COOSIV report, the capacity of the dam was projected to serve 20,000 inhabitants; however, San Ignacio today has around 60,000 people, and it must also provide drinking water for some 400,000 head of cattle, which demand more water than people. In 2023 Guapomó reached its lowest level, where temperatures can reach up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer.
The next day, I met with a group of young people and asked them what had happened in 2023 in relation to the water shortage. Edwin Vasquez Margaña7 and Alejandra Cesari Soliz8 told me that the water came out with dirt in it, that is, mud came out of the faucet instead of water. As a result, the city began to ration the water and, as it is to be expected, the inhabitants complained about the supply, so the city started to open water wells and also a project to open a wastewater treatment plant.
On my way to the plaza, I visited Armando Landivar,9 a wood sculpture artisan, who told me his version of the story entitled “Jichi likes chicha“. According to Armando, it is said that the Jichi must be given offerings to keep him in Guapomó, that is, to keep him happy and content. But over the years the people who live on the banks of the dam have been forgetting this ritual, so the Jichi is upset and has been taking the water to other lands.
The solution for Jichi and his family to return to Guapomó was to prepare five large jars filled with chicha [macerated cassava] to quench its thirst. And so, when water became scarce, the community began to prepare the chicha, left it near the dam’s shore and waited. A whole day went by and the vases remained intact; however, on the second day, by the light of the full moon, a giant zigzagging tail was seen entering the first vase and, then, went by the second vase, then the third, the fourth, and the last one, Armando said with a mysterious voice.
It rained uncontrollably that night, after that incident, completely filling the Guapomó dam. Since then, year after year, Armando said, the local people offer chicha to this mystical being, the water keeper: the Jichi.
