Guambianos

Death and Afterlife. After a person dies, a purification ceremony must always be performed. Many people attend these rituals, the object of which is to free the spirit of the deceased and permit it to travel to the other world. The spirits of the dead must not be allowed to remain roaming around the places where the deceased once lived and worked. That is why after a person's death his or her house and fields must be submitted to a purification ceremony. The ceremony is performed by one or several shamans who, while drinking aguardiente (hard liquor), chewing coca, and smoking cigarettes or tobacco, go through the rooms of the house and its surroundings using a long pole of chonta -palm wood to capture malevolent spirits. While one of the shamans captures and purifies the spirit, the other one plays a potentially divinatory role. He has the ability to "feel" and to receive "signals" from the beyond, which indicate whether the ceremony has been successful.