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In some myths the yacumama or great anaconda was the guardian of the gate to heaven. It could suck things up from a distance of a hundred meters. It possessed great strength and shot strong jets of water that knocked down trees. It is a gigantic snake that lives in the water, and can reach a length of about fifty meters. In myths, the great anaconda is the mother of water, its protector and even the origin of life. The anaconda receives many names in Amazonian myths: yacumama (from yacu, yaku, water, and mama, mother), sachamama (from sacha monte). The myth of the Great Anaconda or Yacumama In each clan of this patrilineal and exogamous group, open to the world, the children of the first ancestors of the great anaconda are organized according to a structure in which, at the head of the anaconda are the chiefs, in the middle the shamans and at the tail, the people. The long body of this gigantic anaconda represents the place of residence, the dwelling or maloca and the way in which the different groups are integrated and act, defining their identity, that is, their name, their history and their language. Upon reaching the Ipanore waterfall, formed by the flow of the Jirijirimo River, which in the indigenous language means the bed of the anaconda, the ancestors divided the land into what would become their particular territories. One of these myths related to the great serpent, origin of the universe, giver of life, guardian of the waters, is a legend of the Desano, an Amazonian ethnic group that lives in the upper basin of the Vaupés River, in the border zone between Colombia and Brazil, specifically in the Colombian department of Vaupés and the Brazilian state of Amazonas.Ī great ancestral anaconda penetrated the universe/house, through the water gate and ascended the Negro and Vaupé rivers carrying within its body the ancestors of all mankind.Īlong their journey the remote ancestors transformed into humans. The cosmogonic myth of the anaconda: origin of the universe. The Amazonian societies, according to the observation of the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega, in 1609, worshipped the great snakes for their monstrosity and fierceness, in correspondence with the belief that they were related to the animals. These characters acquire enormous dimensions in their legends. In their cosmogony there is a close interrelation with nature, and water, plants, animals, the Sun, the Moon, in their animistic conception become brothers. This is the case with many Amazonian peoples.

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