Juyá

Juya (Wayuunaiki for 'rain') is, with his wife Pulowi, one of the two governing beings of Wayuu cosmology and a celebrated case in comparative mythology. He is the rain personified as a nomadic, hypermasculine hunter who roams the sky, descends to fertilise the arid Guajira, and is also a 'powerful killer'. Where Pulowi is fixed, subterranean and female and presides over drought, wind and the wild game, Juya is mobile, celestial and male and brings the life-giving wet season; Wayuu narrators set the two in a complementary opposition, and in some myths Juya's slaying of men repays a debt to Pulowi. He visits Pulowi in her many manifestations across the peninsula, making the pair both spouses and antagonists.

Children

• Wolunka

Domains

• rain and storm
• hunting and the hunt
• fertility and procreation

Powers

• to bring the rain and water the parched Guajira
• to wander the sky as a hunter who strikes and kills

Epithets

• juyaPerrin, Michel. The Way of the Dead Indians: Guajiro Myths and Symbols. Trans. Michael Fineberg. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. (secondary)

Relations

• spouse: PulowiJuya the wandering rain and Pulowi the subterranean mistress of game are husband and wife; their union and opposition (rain against drought, sky against earth, life-giving against death-dealing) is the structuring axis of Wayuu cosmology.Perrin, Michel. The Way of the Dead Indians: Guajiro Myths and Symbols. Trans. Michael Fineberg. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. (secondary)

Sources

• Juya is the Wayuu deity of rain, conceived as a wandering hypermasculine hunter and killer, husband of Pulowi, and one of the two fundamental supernatural principles of Guajiro myth.: Perrin, Michel. The Way of the Dead Indians: Guajiro Myths and Symbols. Trans. Michael Fineberg. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. (secondary); Goulet, Jean-Guy. El universo social y religioso guajiro. Caracas: Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, Centro de Lenguas Indigenas, 1981. (secondary)