Angatupyry

On a wooded hill in Paraguarí, in a cave then called Tatukua and now Cerro San José, somewhere between Yvytymi, La Colmena and Yvyku’i, a Paraguayan poet collected pebbles of strange shapes and read a creation story into them. Angatupyry comes out of that cave, and the poet said so himself. Narciso Ramón Colmán, who wrote as Rosicrán (born at Ybytymí in 1876, died in Asunción in 1954), published the Guarani verse epic Ñande Ypykuéra, “Our Ancestors”, in 1929, and a Spanish prose version, Nuestros Antepasados, at San Lorenzo in 1937. In the introduction he explains that the poem is the product of his imagination and, above all, of his own interpretation of those stones. The whole record of Angatupyry is that book and the retellings that descend from it.

The book opens its account of him at the making of people. Tupã shapes the first man and woman from clay worked with the juice of the ka’a ruvicha herb, the blood of birds, leaves of the sensitive plant and a many-footed insect, a recipe that must have smelled of crushed green leaves and wet earth. He names them Rupavê, the father, and Sypavê, the mother, and tells them to multiply and to respect everything he has made. Then, before he goes, he hands them two companions: Taû, the spirit of evil, and Angatupyry, the spirit of good.

Tupã’s explanation belongs almost entirely to the villain. Taû is there to supply hardship, because, Tupã says, if fear did not exist the humans would be very unhappy. Evil gets a job description and a philosophy. Good gets a place at the couple’s side and no speech at all, which is a fair summary of how the rest of the story treats him.

He comes into his own two generations later. Kerana, a granddaughter of Sypavê, is a girl of extraordinary beauty who spends her days asleep. Taû turns himself into a handsome young man and calls on her for seven days, and then he tries to carry her off. Angatupyry steps in, resolved to defend her, and the moment the two spirits come face to face they lock together in a savage fight.

It runs seven days and seven nights, and Taû is getting the worst of it. Then his grandfather Pytajovái arrives, the god of courage and war, who carries the fire of destruction in his entrails. The intrepid warrior sends Angatupyry rolling to the ground, and while the good spirit lies in the dirt, Taû takes the girl.

Good loses.

What follows is the part of Colmán’s book that everyone knows. Arasy lays a curse on Taû, and Kerana bears him seven children, one every seven months: Teju Jagua, Mbói Tu’ĩ, Moñái, Jasy Jatere, Kurupi, Ao Ao and Luisón. The seven have long, busy lives on the page and in retelling. Angatupyry has none. He appears at the creation, he appears at the fight, and the book does not bring him back. Some modern retellings hand him the victory over Taû; Colmán’s own text does not.

Everything else a reader might want is simply not there. No shape, no weapon, no home, no parentage beyond Tupã’s making, no rite or prayer addressed to him, no second telling from any other hand. His power is the one the story shows: he is the companion Tupã set beside the human line, the one who will fight for the innocent without being asked. His limit is the same story’s hard lesson. He can win a fair fight against evil and still be beaten when evil brings its family.

Colmán’s readers have not always been sure what to do with him. On the ninetieth anniversary of the poem, when Editora de los Bugres was preparing a new bilingual edition in 2019, the writer Cristino Bogado called Rosicrán, in the cultural supplement of the Asunción daily ABC Color, “inventor de toda una mitología fantástica, trucha”, the inventor of a whole fantastical and counterfeit mythology, and floated him as a candidate for the title of the Paraguayan Borges. Both halves of that verdict fit Angatupyry. He is an invention, made by a named man in a known year from a handful of cave pebbles, and he has been retold as Guarani myth ever since.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Angatupyry?

Angatupyry is the spirit of good in Narciso R. Colmán’s Guarani epic Ñande Ypykuéra, published in 1929. In the story, Tupã creates him and leaves him with the first human couple, Rupavê and Sypavê, as the counterpart of Taû, the spirit of evil.

Is Angatupyry an ancient Guarani god?

No. Angatupyry comes from a modern literary work, Narciso R. Colmán’s Ñande Ypykuéra (1929), with a Spanish prose version in 1937. Colmán wrote in his introduction that the poem was the product of his imagination and of his own interpretation of oddly shaped pebbles he found in a cave on Cerro Tatukua in Paraguarí.

Did Angatupyry defeat Taû?

No. In Colmán’s text, Angatupyry fights Taû for seven days and nights to protect Kerana and is winning until Taû’s grandfather Pytajovái, the god of courage and war, knocks him to the ground. Taû then carries Kerana off.

What is Angatupyry’s connection to the seven monsters of Guarani lore?

Angatupyry’s defeat is what allows Taû to take Kerana, who then bears the seven monsters: Teju Jagua, Mbói Tu’ĩ, Moñái, Jasy Jatere, Kurupi, Ao Ao and Luisón. In Colmán’s book, the seven children exist because the spirit of good lost that fight.

Related Entries

Tupã, Teju Jagua, Mbói Tu’ĩ, Moñái, Jasy Jatere, Kurupi, Ao Ao, Luison, Hadúr, Ahura Mazda, Angra Mainyu