from: Dilwyn Jenkins: The rough
guide to Peru; Rough Guides, New York, London, Delhi; 6th edition
September 2006; www.roughguides.com
Independent natives in the jungle
- "Christian" colonization terror hardly possible in the jungle
Many archaeologists think that the initial spark for the evolution of
Peru's high cultures came from the jungle. Archaeological evidence from
Chavín, Chachapoyas and Tantamayo cultures seems to back up
such a theory - they certainly had continuous contact with the jungle
areas - and the Incas were
unable to dominate the tribes, their main contact being peaceful trade
in treasured items such as plumes, gold, medicinal plants and the
sacred coca leaf.
At the time of the Spanish Conquest,
fairly permanent settlements seem to have existed along all the major
jungle rivers, the people living in large groups to farm the rich
alluvial soils, but the arrival of the Europeans began the irreversible
process of breaking these up into smaller and scattered groups (a
process exacerbated by the nineteenth-century rubber boom, see later).
Yet the Peruvian jungle still resisted major colonization. Although Alonso de Alvarado had led the first
Spanish expedition, cutting a trail through from Chachapoyas to
Moyobamba in 1537, most incursions ended in utter disaster, defeated by
the ferocity of the tribes, the danger of the rivers, climate and wild
(p.499)
animals - and perhaps by the inherent alien character of the forest.
Ultimately, apart from the white man's epidemics (which spread faster
than the men themselves), the early Conquistadors hat relatively little
impact on the population of the Peruvian Amazon. Only Orellana, one of the first Spaniards
to lead exploratory expeditions into the Peruvian Amazon, managed to
glimpse the reality of the rainforest, though even he seemed to
misunderstand it when he was attacked by a tribe of blond women, one of
whom managed to hit him in the eye with a blow-gun dart. These "women"
are nowadays considered to be men of the Yagua tribe (from near
Iquitos), who wear straw-coloured, grass-like skirts and headdresses.
More "Christian" terror in the
jungle - uprising against church terror in 1742 - "Christian" free
central jungle
By the early eighteenth century the Catholic
Church had made serious but still vulnerable inroads into the
region. Resistance to this culminated in 1742 with an indigenous
uprising in the central forest region led by an enigmatic character
from the Andes calling himself Juan
Santos Atahualpa. Many missions were burnt, missionaries and
colonists killed, and Spanish military expeditions defeated. The result
was that the central rainforest remained under the control of the
indigenous population for the next ninety years or so; in fact, as
recently as 1919 the Ashaninka Indians were blockading rivers and
ejecting missionaries and foreigners from their ancestral lands.
Rubber boom destroying native
cultures since 1830 - white slavery since the 1880s - end of the rubber
boom in 1891
As "white-man's" technology advanced, so too did the possibilities of
conquering Amazonia. the 1830s saw the beginning of a century of
massive and painful exploitation of the forest and its population by rubber barons. Many of these wealthy
men were European, eager to gain control of the raw material,
desperately needed following the discovery of the vulcanization
process, and during this era the jungle regions of Peru were better
connected to Brazil, Bolivia, the Atlantic, and ultimately Europe, than
they were to Lima or the Pacific coast. The peak of the boom, from the
1880s to just before World War I, had a prolonged effect. Treating the
natives as little more than slaves, men like the notorious Fitzcarrald made overnight fortunes,
and large sections of the forests were explored and subdued.
In 1891, for example, the British-owned Peruvian Corporation was
granted the 500,000-hectare "Perene Colony" in the central rainforest
in payment of debts owed by the Peruvian state. That the granted land
was indigenous territory was ignored - the Ashaninka who lived in the
area were considered a captive labour force that was part of the
concession. The process only fell into decline when the British
explorer Markham brought Peruvian rubber plants to Malaysia, where the
plants grew equally well but were far easier to harvest (p.500).
Agricultural expansion and the
strategic colonos in the jungle - large deforestation in the 1950s and
1960s and since 1980 under the stupid president Belaunde - and oil and
timber industry
Nineteenth-century colonialism also saw the progression of the extractive frontier along the
navigable rivers, which involved short-term economic exploitation based
on the extraction of other natural materials, such as timber and animal
skins; coupled to this was the advance of the agricultural frontier down from the
Andes.
Both kinds of expansion assumed that Amazonia was a limitless source of
natural reserves and an empty wilderness - misapprehensions that still
exist today. The agricultural colonization tended to be by poor,
landless peasants from the Andes and was concentrated in the Selva
Alta, on the eastern slopes of that range. From the 1950s, these colonos became a massive threat to
the area's eco-system when, supported by successive government land
grants, credit and road building, subsistence farmers and cattle
ranchers inflicted large-scale deforestation (p.500).
In the 1960s, President Fernando Belaunde put the colonization of
Amazonia central to his political agenda - believing it to be a
verdant, limitless and "unpopulated" frontier that was ripe for
development, offering land to the landless masses. New waves of colonos
["strategic colonos"] arrived and, once again, indigenous inhabitants
were dispossessed and yet more rainforest cleared.
Things quieted down between 1968 and 1980, during the military regime,
but when Belaunde returned to power in 1980, peasant colonization
continued, by and large along tenuous penetration roads built by the
government, but also with further state sponsorship and funding by
international banks.
Over the last few decades, the intrusion of oil and timber companies
has seen repeated exploitation of the rainforest. Even worse, vast
tracts of forest have disappeared as successive waves of colonos have cleared trees to grow
cash crops (p.501)
(especially coca); this large-scale, haphazard [arbitrary]
slash-and-burn agriculture has been shown by conservationists to be
unsustainable.
Economic crises after 1985: White
colonialist coca barons install their regime in the jungle:
deforestation by coca production and terrorism in the jungle
When the Peruvian economy began to suffer in the mid-1980s, foreign
credit ended, and those with substantial private capital fled, mainly
to the US. The government, then led by the young Alan García, was
forced to abandon the jungle region, and both its colonist and
indigenous inhabitants were left to survive by themselves.
This effectively opened the doors for the coca barons, who had already
established themselves during the 1970s in the Huallaga Valley, and
they moved into the gap left by government aid in the other valleys of
the ceja de selva - notably
the Pichis-Palcazu and the Apurimac-Ene. During the next ten years,
illicit coca production was responsible for some ten percent of the
deforestation that occurred in the Peruvian Amazon during the entire
twentieth century; furthermore, trade of this lucrative crop led to
significant corruption and, more importantly, supported the rise of terrorism. Strategic alliances
between coca growers (the colonists), smugglers (Peruvians and
Colombians) and the terrorists (mainly, but not exclusively, Sendero
Luminoso) led to a large area of the Peruvian Amazon becoming utterly
lawless.
Each party to this alliance gained strength and resources whilst the
indigenous peoples of the region suffered, stuck seemingly powerless in
the middle.
Over the last fifteen years the Peruvian authorities have persecuted
the colonos for their illegal
crops, and their greatest successes in this area have come largely from
among the indigenous groups themselves, like the Ashaninka tribe. Armed
by the authorities, these tribespeople were among the vanguard of
resistance to the narco-terrorists,
whose movement, once rooted in politics and agriculture, had become
bloodthirsty, power-hungry and highly unpopular.
In the aftermath of the civil war, which began to fizzle out with the
capture of Sendero's leader in 1992, the international financial
institutions, whose earlier loans had helped fund the disastrous
colonization, started to partly determine development policy in the
Peruvian Amazon so that those same loans could be repaid; resources
such as fossil fuels, lumber and land were privatized and sold to the
highest bidder.
New exploitation and destruction
of Peruvian jungle under dictator Fujimori
President Fujimori's neo-liberal agenda led to new investment in this
legitimate exploitation, which was unfortunately mirrored by a huge
increase in illegal mining.
Hordes of landless peasants from the Cusco region also flocked into the
Madre de Dios to make their fortune from gold mining. In itself this was
neither illegal nor an environmental threat, but the introduction of
front-loader machines and trucks - which supplanted [eliminated] child
labour in the mines in the early 1990s - increased the environmental
damage and rate of territorial consumption by this unregulated
industry.
By 1999, a massive desert had appeared around Huaypetue, previously a
small-time, frontier mining town, and the neighbouring communities of
Amarakeiri Indians (who have been panning for gold in a small-scale,
sustainable fashion for some thirty years) are in serious danger of
losing their land and natural resources. Attempts by NGOs and
pro-Indian lawyers to maintain the boundaries of Indian reserves and
communities are constantly thwarted [inhibited by intrigues] by
colonists who are supported by local governments.
As the danger from terrorism faded in the mid-1990s, oil and gas exploration by
multinational companies began in earnest [by new Fujimori laws which
gave the foreign industry more rights as to the Peruvians]. Initially
the Peruvian government appeared to be bending over backwards to assist
them, and the (p.502)
reserves discovered - mainly in the Madre de Dios and the Camisea -
were believed to be of world-shattering importance, with only the
Amazonian indigenous organizations and environmental conservationists
active in opposition. Momentum has slowed down for the moment; the
decision to drill in the Río de las Piedras ["Stone river"] has been
reversed, but work on the Camisea gas pipeline is well underway.
End of 1990s: new products for
alternative crops
In the late 1990s, the price of coca continued to drop in Peru as
production shifted to Colombia, and many peasants and jungle Indians
alike were seriously looking for alternative
cash crops, such as the traditional chocolate and coffee
products or newer options like uña
de gato (a newly rediscovered medicinal herb) and barbasco (a natural pesticide).
Mining and petroleum and gas exploitation continues apace, but with
improvements to the jungle road infrastructure and the attention of the
global timber markets turning from Southeast Asia back to the Amazon in
recent years, it seems that the illegal, and sometimes legal but
unsustainable, loggers are the
major threat to the remaining Indian cultures and their lush tropical
rainforest environment. The way things are going it's hard to see how
much longer the indigenous peoples can maintain their traditional
territories. Without the forest the present forest-dwellers' children
will be without a means of surviving or earning a living. The present
Peruvian government, lead by President Toledo, has continued with
Fujimori's approach of privatization and engagement with multinational
companies for the exploitation of Peru's resources, particularly those
hidden beneath the rainforest canopy [roof] (p.503).
Indigenous jungle tribes
Some tribes are assimilating and
working for the western money system - other tribes fight for their origin culture
and identity
Outside the few main towns, there are hardly any sizeable settlements,
and the jungle population remains dominated by between 35 and 62 indigenous tribes - the exact number
depends on how you classify tribal identity - each with its own
distinct language, customs and dress. After centuries of external
influence (missionaries, gold seekers, rubber barons, soldiers, oil
companies, anthropologists, and now tourists), many jungle Indians
speak Spanish and live pretty conventional, westernized lives,
preferring jeans, football shirts and fizzy bottled drinks to their
more traditional clothing and manioc
beer (the tasty, filling and nutritious masato).
But while many are being sucked into the money-based labour market,
others, increasingly under threat, have been forced to struggle for
their cultural identities and territorial rights, or to retreat as far
as they are presently able beyond the new frontiers of so-called
civilization. In 1996, for instance, oil workers encountered some
previously uncontacted groups while clearing tracts of forest for
seismic testing in the upper Río de las Piedras area of Madre de Dios,
northwest of Puerto Maldonado. In this region it appears that some of
the last few uncontacted tribal communities in the Amazon - Yaminahua,
Mashco Piro and Amahuaca Indians - are keeping their distance from
outside influences.
In 2002 these same remote groups came out of the forest en masse to
prevent further intrusion by aggressive illegal loggers in their last
remaining territory at the headwaters of the Río de las Piedras. In
August of that year some four hundred Indians appeared on the
riverbanks as a flotilla of illegal logging launches made its way
upstream from Puerto Maldonado. Shaking and rattling their bows and
arrows, the Indians raised long vines as a barrier across the river and
then attacked the boats, badly injuring several loggers. In the last
few years there's been little information forthcoming from this area;
reports suggest that the loggers have moved on through here to work
closer to the Brazilian border and the Indians have retreated further
into the few remaining areas of even more isolated forest, including
Manu.
For most tribes, the jungle offers a semi-nomadic
existence, and in terms of material possessions, they have, need and
want very little. Communities are scattered, with groups of between ten
and two hundred people, and their sites shift every few years. For
subsistence they depend on small, cultivated plots, fish from the
rivers and game from the forest, including wild pigs, deer, monkeys and
a great range of edible birds. The main species of edible jungle fish
are sabalo (a kind of
oversized catfish), carachama
(an armoured walking catfish), the feisty piranha (generally not quite
as dangerous as Hollywood depicts), and the giant zungaro and paiche - the latter, at up to
200kg, being the world's largest freshwater fish. In fact, food is so
abundant that jungle dwellers generally spend no more than three to
four days a week engaged in subsistence activities (p.501).
