Larphay: el soplo corrosivo de los no-humanos y las transmutaciones de las personas.

This paper examines the Quechua concept of larphay. In the Ch'isikata Quechua language the positions of subject, action, and object are not stable: the subject person can be transformed and for that, the action of larphay is relevant. In this text I will explain the notion of larphay through the narration of tales about the relationship between humans and non-humans. In many tales the non-humans (animals, vegetables, and objects) are transformed into humans in order to seduce and deceive, or to larphay -- to unload his non-human condition into the human. The «larphayed» people have been transmuted into the tian (double) of the non-human. Similarly, humans in certain circumstances can transform into vegetable, animal, mineral entities, or non-human supra-beings. This is possible due to the lack of boundary definition -- chawpi -- which allows for this exchange between beings of diverse conditions (cay). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]