Abstract :

Sal/Manteca/Panela: Ethnoveterinary Practice in Highland Ecuador

Author : Lynn Hirschkind

The concept and practice of feeding balls of salt, lard and raw sugar to cattle reveal a unified ethnomedical system encompassing people and animals. Conceptually, feeding salt balls to cattle integrates them into the world of reason and order, permitting control for highland Ecuadorian peasants. Concretely, it is an element of ethnoveterinary practice intended to insure animal health.

Sal/Manteca/Panela: Ethnoveterinary Practice in Highland Ecuador

In highland Ecuadorian peasant communities some farmers feed their cattle fist-sized balls containing a mixture of rock salt, vegetable lard ( manteca ), and raw sugar ( panela ). These ingredients are ground and kneaded together into a homogeneous mass before being shaped into individual balls. Between one and three balls are fed, depending on the size, health status and activities of the animal. Feeding is done on a regular basis, preferably once a week on Sundays. Most cattle develop a taste for these balls since they are fed them by force if necessary from the time they are calves, and take them willingly when offered. If an animal refuses a ball, the owner will grasp its head, raise its mouth upward, and place the ball at the back of the tongue, from where it must be swallowed. Farmers explain that these balls give their cattle glossy coats and help to maintain optimal health and production, by providing necessary salt as well as nutrients required to combat environmental and productive stresses. Also, they are useful in adjusting the hot/cold balance of bovine humors according to specific weather and health conditions.

I will argue that this practice offers a prism through which to view the highland peasant farming system, particularly its animal husbandry. It allows us to see how farmers make decisions, based on explicit values and understandings, which cumulatively create a local farming system. At the same time, certain implicit values and meanings may be ascertained, based on observed behavior. Implicit meanings are associated with the knowledge and values which define categories and orient decisions. I want to show that the feeding of salt, lard and raw sugar balls, hereafter referred to as salt balls, is a multiply determined phenomenon, with a complex web of reasons and causes. It is embedded in a system of animal husbandry practices which in turn is part of a subsistence and commercial farming system. It simultaneously pertains to a world of cultural categories and meanings from which sense and order are imposed on farm work and decision-making.

Explicit Senses

Setting . This presentation is based on observations made over 14 years during which I have lived in Rivera parish, in eastern Cañar province. Rivera, locally known as Shoray, is home to one large agricultural cooperative the members of which are Indians, the remnants of several formerly immense haciendas, and a majority of small and medium peasant holders. The 1964 agrarian reform resulted in the expulsion of many resident hacienda peons, the breakup of large haciendas, and the proliferation of independent small and medium sized holdings. All these farmers practice mixed subsistence and commercial agriculture. They cultivate maize principally for home consumption, though surpluses are sold at the local market. Potatoes and other tubers, fava beans, regular beans, wheat and barley are also grown mainly for home use. Peas are planted as a commercial crop. Crop diversity is mirrored in animal husbandry in that various species of animals are raised for commercial and subsistence purposes. Most families have at least a few head of cattle and sheep, a horse, some pigs, chickens and guinea pigs. Between the field crops and the livestock, Shoray farmers meet their subsistence needs and produce a surplus which allows them to purchase market commodities. Neither extremely prosperous nor impoverished, the local economy provides a decent standard of living for most families.

Among the livestock, cattle are by far the most valuable. A good milk cow is presently worth about five hundred dollars, or about four months total income for an typical family. An average cow is worth 350 to 400 dollars, and a large bull 500 to 600 dollars. Cows are valuable for their milk, the calves they produce, their meat and as capital investments. Milk is made into fresh cheese and sold at the weekly market in Shoray. It is the mainstay of most families weekly economies, for it provides the cash with which to buy non-local foodstuffs and dry goods. Bulls also contribute to the family economy: they pull the plows to prepare fields for planting, they haul firewood from the forest to the home, and bring the posts and poles needed in house construction, fencing, bridge building and so on. Thus cattle hold an important position in the farming system, providing labor, and both short and long term cash returns.

Most Shoray farmers do not regularly feed salt balls to their cattle. The practice is either considered too expensive, or not worth the trouble. Most Indians dont because of economic considerations. Larger landowners with larger herds of cattle add mineral powders, if anything, to the rock salt. Those who feed salt balls are yeoman peasants, neither at the top nor the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. They can afford the cost of the ingredients, but lack both the means and the information to provide more expensive, modern inputs (such as concentrated feeds, veterinary care, vaccinations, and anti-parasite medications) for their cattle. They consider themselves more enlightened and dedicated farmers than their benighted, poorer neighbors, and more practical and self-sufficient than the profligate rich.

Despite the restriction of salt ball feeding to a certain sector of the farming population, it is widely recognized as a beneficial practice. This widespread approval is demonstrated in the sporadic feeding of salt balls under certain circumstances. Before a sale cattle may be primed with salt balls. During plowing season, working bulls may be given balls with reduced salt portions. When cattle are thin, debilitated or lacking forage, they may be sustained with salt balls.

Basic needs . Why are salt balls fed? Farmers know that most animals need supplemental salt in their diets, just as humans do. In this light the salt in the balls provides for this need in a systematic way, in measured amounts and according to a regular schedule. The sugar and lard are not widely considered fundamental to cattles diets in the sense that salt is, but are thought to promote good health, disease resistance and increased productivity. Thus salt ball feeding is part of a cattle management system aimed at providing basic nutritional requirements and an additional supplement. In conception it may be similar to human use of multiple vitamin pills: we believe these pills contain essences necessary to our health and that they may insure our well-being beyond the capacity of our daily diet.

The most common reason given for salt ball feeding is to fatten cattle. Farmers who cannot afford to serve salt balls every week will provide them to satiation to animals in preparation for sale, or for plowing season. Generous portions of lard are used in these balls, to accelerate the rate of fattening. The term to fatten ( engordar ), as used in this context, means to increase body weight and condition, not literally to put on fat. Cattle buyers dont want to buy fat animals so much as meaty animals with an outer layer of fat. And working bulls need more muscle and less fat in order to work. While some fat is deemed desirable, overly fat animals are considered susceptible to other health problems, and thus fattening in this sense is not a goal.

Health . Farmers also know that cattle, like all people and animals, need to maintain a balance between hot and cold body humors. Animals are considered to be tougher than people, less susceptible to hot and cold forces in the environment. Despite their natural resilience, cattle may suffer health problems caused by hot/cold imbalances. Salt balls can help maintain a proper balance, and restore equilibrium to a too hot or too cold bovine.

By local reckoning, raw sugar and salt are hot, and lard is cool. The hot and cool substances combine and attenuate each other, and thus the balls themselves are warm, and balanced. [Some people say raw sugar is hot because of the lye or cal is supposedly contains.] In the perennially cool climate of Shoray the classificatory warm salt balls help cattle to maintain a correct bodily temperature. Diseases classified as cold predominate here, among both humans and animals, so salt balls may be seen as a preventive medicine to ward off possible cold illnesses. When illness is present, salt is not offered to cattle, being considered too strong for a weakened creature with unbalanced humors to cope with. Rather, herbal teas made according to the same recipes used for human medicinal teas may be given, and other external treatments applied. In cases of classificatory hot diseases (such as diarrhea) salt and salt balls are naturally withheld, and cool remedies are offered. The most popular is whey with bicarbonate of soda. Whey is known to be extremely cold, to the extent of being a health risk for cheese makers.

Another important health benefit of salt ball feeding is a cleansing function. The lard in salt balls is said to act as a purgative, loosening old or compacted food residues and helping them to slide ( resbalar ) out. Salt contributes to this process by requiring the animal to drink copious amounts of water, which in turn ensures a thorough cleansing. Together the lard and water wash out the digestive tract, leaving it clean and in better condition. One organ in particular is mentioned as in need of cleaning: the omasum, or third division of the bovine stomach ( librillo ). The omasum is a chamber filled with many sheets of rough, protrusion-covered tissue, like the pages of a book. The sheets or leaves fit close together, making tight passage for food material. Given the extreme obstacle the omasum presents to food passage, farmers reason it may require regular cleanings. When an animal is suffering digestive problems or illness, farmers must consider the possibility that the omasum is responsible.

The extension of hot/cold categories to cattle illnesses and cures is one of many signs that conceptions and knowledge of human conditions in general are being applied to animals. This extension of human categories to animals is quite explicit: farmers acknowledge that cattle and humans have a lot in common, including health needs and disease susceptibilities. Examples of shared health problems are luna (infection), aire (colic or bloat), s usto (fright), ojo (evil eye), arco (literally rainbow, producing body pains), parasites, and of course trauma. Another disease state, known as encalmado, with symptoms ranging from sadness to loss of appetite, loss of condition and diarrhea, is not a human disease category, but is treated as though the patient were human, with hot, stimulating, highly nutritious soup made from the long, slow cooking of a whole guinea pig.

Psychology . Just as psychogenic influences are known to affect human health (see Rebhun 1994), so too do they affect animal health. Unrequited desire is potentially dangerous, especially for pregnant women and cows. Desires or longings should be satisfied, or else irreversible damage may be caused to the fetus, possibly even resulting in abortion. Salt desire is one such hazard for pregnant cows. It is considered inadvisable to give the normal salt ration to cows in advanced pregnancy, since they could overheat and abort. But pregnant cows want lots of salt and would suffer acute frustrated desire should they see other cows enjoying a serving. They must not be allowed to perceive their fellows satisfaction. Bulls can also suffer feelings of deprivation. During plowing season bulls exist in a continual state of elevated body heat. Salt given during this period would cause overheating and result in diarrhea and illness. Consequently, it is not fed to bulls that worked the previous week. Precautious farmers salt their herds out of sight, earshot and smell range of pregnant cows and working bulls who are not being so indulged.

Many other emotions are observed in cattle. Anger and fear are particularly dangerous to health, leading to illnesses known as colerín and susto . These conditions are treated with the same teas and cleaning used for people. Cattle experience other benign affective states, such as playfulness, possessiveness, meanness, laziness, stubbornness and dissimulation, which require the appropriate combination of patience and firmness of their owners. The feelings, desires, and personalities of each cow must be taken into account for proper management.

Management. Salt ball feeding is one aspect of a general approach to cattle management which is locally known as estimando el ganado or esteeming the cattle. This means that extra care and expenditure are applied to the usual chores of feeding, moving, watering, tying, salting and routine managing of cattle. Such details would include nail clipping, rope adjustment around the horns, treatment of small wounds, stomach upsets, etc. Both personal pride and economic benefit are the expected dividends of esteeming ones cattle.

Esteeming incurs costs, something local farmers consider very carefully before choosing. Most farmers spend nothing extra on their cattle, other than the cost of the rope used to tie them to their stakes. They consider themselves too poor to afford the luxury of pampering animals, no matter how valuable or how much they contribute to the household economy. Farmers who decide to invest extra money and time in their animals may consider their choice a sacrifice, but for a good cause. It costs about 40 cents a head, on the average to provide a serving of salt balls. This cost can be substantial if one has 20 or so head of cattle and offers a weekly ration. It may take an hour or more to grind up the salt and sugar and knead them in to the lard. The feeding of individual portions, measured out, formed into balls, sometimes wrapped in squash leaves and placed neatly in each cows mouth also adds to the time needed to attend to the cattle. These investments are seen as worthwhile if they keep cattle healthy and allow them to produce more milk and meat or increase their sale price.

As mentioned above, esteeming is a general approach to management. Its other aspects include careful placement of stakes to which cattle are tied, use of the thickest rope one can afford, moving and watering three times a day, provision of pasturage according to the animals health and physical condition, choice of steeper or flatter area for staking depending on the same considerations, close attention to the animals physical and emotional state each day, night visits when a pregnancy is near term or when it is gravely ill, and swift application of appropriate treatment when something is found to be amiss. Owners who take this approach to their cattle tend to be a little smug about their choice, with respect to neighbors who invest less time and money in their cattle. Yet they may also see this management routine as fundamentally necessary and basic, complementary to their own interests as owners. Farmers who stake their animals carelessly are bound to loose more to falls on the steep slopes. Owners who dont get up at night to check parturient cows may find dead cows and calves in their pastures in the morning. Owners who dont manage their pastures carefully may find themselves without grass for their animals and with thin and weak cows. From this perspective, is it eminently reasonable to pamper ones cattle, and foolish not to.

In this mixed agricultural economy, cattle hold a preeminent place. They sustain household economies in the long and short term, provide labor and represent savings with interest. It is therefore no wonder that they may be given special treatment and consideration, according to local knowledge about their essential selves, their needs, desires, habits and propensities. Much of this knowledge is implicit, in other words it must be inferred from statements and behavior. It is to this sort of knowledge I now turn.

Implicit Senses

Implicit knowledge is taken to be self evident; it needs no explication, no commentary. It is transparent and it may elude being made manifest. Such knowledge is constituted by the very system of classification within which it is ordered. Classificatory systems in turn are modeled on the social structure and processes which encompass them. This formulation, based on Mary Douglas work (1975) provides a means of elucidating what Shoray farmers know about cattle.

With regard to animals, Douglas has noted that the pertinent categories and principles of classification are based on models people use for themselves. The order of animals categories mirrors human organization. The same principles underlie both systems of categorization (1990:33). The reasons for this replication are pragmatic: it allows for understanding and prediction of animals ways, needs and debilities. Such models are concerned with solving practical problems within the guidelines of local theory and knowledge. The following, then, is an attempt to delineate a deeper logic upon which the previously described practices and knowledge are based.

Salt, lard and sugar are the three fundamental ingredients in local cooking and cuisine. All meals contain all three and indeed without them a meal or dish would be considered unpalatable and incomplete. Generally, drinks are sweetened with sugar, while soups and main dishes are prepared with lard and salt (see Weismantel 1988 for a complete discussion of these ingredients in Ecuadorian peasant cuisine.) As condiments, they enhance the taste of plain foods, and add nutrients besides. Not staples themselves, they complement the corn, rice and potatoes which are the daily fare in Shoray. By extension, salt, lard and sugar are seen to serve the same purposes in cattle diets. They complement the grass that is the main dish of cattle. By feeding salt balls to cattle, farmers implicitly acknowledge the fundamental similarities in nutritional requirements between people and cattle.

A second implicit sense in salt ball feeding derives from the raw use of the ingredients. In contrast to their use for human consumption, where they are cooked and serve as adjuncts to other, main, ingredients, for cattle they are fed raw, and they themselves are the main ingredients. This contrast acknowledges the difference between cattle and people: cattle eat raw foods (cold(!)water, grass), while people eat cooked foods. Rawness is appropriate to their animal state (see Weismantel 1989) while cooked food is appropriate for the human one.

Thus salt ball feeding makes the implicit statement that cattle are like us, they eat what we eat. But cattle are different from us, they eat raw food. This implicit knowledge is expressed in sayings such as The only thing they cant do it talk [ Solo les falta el habla]. It is expressed in explications that bulls show their pride ( orgullo ) and self-esteem by bellowing, and that cattle feel jealousy, envy, anger and passionate desire which must be satisfied in order to avoid noxious consequences. It is seen in cattles demonstrations of love for their young, their fear of strangers, and in the individuality of each cows personality. This is common knowledge among cattle owners, so common that it goes without saying. Cattle are very much like us, except for the obvious physical differences between us.

As stated above (Explicit Meanings), fattening and cleansing are two principal reasons for feeding salt balls to cattle. These two purposes have an implicit semiotics as well as the explicit exegesis offered by farmers: they may be understood as metaphors for the attainment and maintenance of health and well-being. As with the rest of the meanings clustered around salt balls, the implicit senses of fattening and cleaning apply to humans as well as animals.

Fat is a pan-Andean metaphor for goodness. It embraces health, happiness, strength, well-being and even wealth (see Bastien 1985:599-600; also Allen 1988:45, 121). In the local sense, fat does not necessarily mean an excess of adipose tissue. Any animal or person in evident good health is said to be fat. The term fat may thus refer to a lean or average constitution, that is also lively and energetic. In other words, fat refers only partially to a physical quality or measure, and more to a degree of well-being as evidenced in appetite, character, attitude, mood and activity.

The lard in salt balls thus fattens both physically and metaphysically. The latter is at least as important as the former. In order to be truly healthy and productive, both aspects of fatness must be attained. Salt balls help cattle to become healthy in this ample, fat sense of the term.

Cleaning the body is another pan-Andean metaphor for curing illness and fomenting health. As with fat, cleaning has both physical and abstract referents. The lard is said to clean the digestive tract, particularly the tortuous omasum, with the help of water. Old, compacted, dried food residue and other objects are made to slide downward and out.

In a less concrete sense cleaning refers to the removal of supernatural and spiritual afflictions (see Muñoz-Bernand 1986: 122; Estrella 1977: 127-8, 134; Ruiz 1990 182). Both people and animals may be cleaned in this sense: curing of evil eye (ojo), fright (susto), rainbow (arco), air or wind (mal aire, mal viento), and bewitchment (daño) necessarily involve a smoke or cane liquor (trago) blow-cleanser, and /or an osmotic vacuuming with guinea pig or egg, and or/ a brushing off with certain herbs. The salt ball administration is, by comparison, a broad spectrum cure, and may be preventive as well as remedial. The evil, the rotten, and the bad in general are supposed to slide out of the animal. The omasum is an apt symbol for the hidden places where evil and illness lurk and propagate. Salt balls mechanically and metaphorically get into the omasum, and cause rotten and extraneous stuff, in material or non-material forms, to evacuate.

Conclusion

Cattle are the most valuable type of domestic animal most peasant farmers possess. The loss of one is truly a matter to cry about. Yet the possibility of loss is ever-present. Cattle regularly die by falling off the steep slopes or by strangulation on their ropes (despite owners efforts to tie carefully). Losses of this sort are sometimes due to carelessness or neglect, but just as often must be attributed to fate, bad luck, or Gods will. In addition to the dangers of the terrain, disease and parasites also kill cattle. Owners feel nearly as helpless in protecting their animals against illness as they are in keeping them from killing themselves on the slopes. They feel they lack the knowledge and the economic means to cure their cattle from capricious diseases, and there is no veterinarian to consult anywhere in the vicinity. More likely, illness and death from disease may come from fateful or divine causes, in which case a veterinarian would be of no help.

In this situation, with very valuable animals constantly exposed to the dire possibilities of bad luck, and nearly uncontrollable threats to their health, an owner might reasonably want to categorically include such animals within the realm of beings governed by known rules of health. By defining cattle as susceptible and responsive to the same care and treatments that work for humans, cattle owners may hope to exercise some control over the destiny and well-being of their animals. In feeding salt balls, cattle owners affirm what is good and necessary for humans is likewise good and necessary for cattle. In this case perhaps their eventual illness will respond to human treatments, their health be maintained according too the same principals as human health. Perhaps even God will look after them and protect them as He sometimes does for their owners.

Why do some people feed salt balls regularly, others sporadically, and still others not at all? Economic reasons are usually given for not feeding salt balls. Lard and block sugar are considered simply too expensive to buy them in the quantities necessary for cattle. This decision is made using the same criteria and considerations as those used in human health matters. While no doubt advisable to spend on health aids, peasant families typically budget little or nothing for this type of expense. Any health aid requiring a cash outlay is made only as a last resort, after local remedies have been tried and have failed. At this point, some people choose to spend cash, while others resign themselves to illness and loss, and commend themselves to God. The former are those who feed salt balls sometimes, figuring some salt balls are better than no balls. The latter treat their animals with cash-free aids and remedies, the inevitable choice of the poor. Thus even in choosing not to feed salt balls, Shoray farmers are applying the same logic, the same decision criteria, as those who do: cattle are like us; we treat them as a kind of family member, since that is what they are.

References

Allen, Catherine J.

1988 The Hold Life has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Balladelli, Pier Paolo

1988 Entre lo Mágico y lo Natural: La Medicina Indígena. Testimonios de Pesillo. Quito: Abya Yala.

Bastien, Joseph W.

1985 Qollahuaya-Andean Body Concepts: A Topographical Hydraulic Model of Physiology. American Anthropologist 87(3): 595-611.

Douglas, Mary

1975 Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

1990 The pangolin revisited: a new approach to animal symbolism. In Signifying Animals: Human Meaning in the Natural World. Roy Willis, ed. London: Routledge.

Estrella, Eduardo

1977 Medicina Aborígen: La Práctica Medica Aborígen de la Sierra Ecuatoriana. Quito: Epoca.

Muñoz-Bernand, Carmen

1986 Enfermedad, Daño e Ideología. Quito: Abya Yala.

Rebhun, L. A.

1994 Swallowing Frogs: Anger and Illness in Northeast Brazil. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 8(4): 360-382.

Ruiz, Edgardo

1990 Fundamentos y Metodos Terapeuticos en la Medicina Andina. In Ciencia Andina, Vol. II. Quito: CEDECO-Abya Yala.

Weismantel, Mary J.

1988 Food, Gender, and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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