Pává

The Yurupari tradition belongs to the Tukano, Arawak and Maku peoples of the Vaupés basin in the Colombian and Brazilian Amazon. Its hero is the Son of the Sun, born to the virgin Ceucy, who conceived by eating a fruit.

Yurupari means the one who covers the mouth, because men keep the secrets of his religion. The name is Tupi, brought by missionaries who equated the figure with the Devil. He replaces the matriarchal laws of the world with the laws of the Sun.

His voice lives on in sacred flutes and trumpets of paxiúba palm, which women must not see. The central rite is a male initiation for boys of twelve to fifteen, when flutes roar with the voices of the ancestral Anaconda and Jaguar.