The Achuar

35 images  |  View slideshow  |   | 
twitterlinkedinfacebook

Synopsis

The Achuar territory, which straddles the Ecuador-Peru border, is currently home to one of the most diverse and best protected eco-systems in the world. For the most part a 'non-contact' ethnic group right up until the arrival of catholic missionaries in the early 1970s, the Achuar have been thrown headfirst into a tumultuous and hugely abstract relationship with the outside world. The Achuar, who were granted title deed to their land by the Ecuadorian government remain stoic in their belief...
more »

  • Marko Vargos, the 'syndico' of Suwa community. The syndico acts as a community leader and represents the community in internal and external conflicts, a system set up by the missionaries in order to end the 'inter-tribal conflict'. Whenever i visited a community, the syndico was always the first port of call in order to confirm my permission to photograph.
  • Jherson Gualinga and his two friends at home in Kapawi community.
  • Achuar culture is polygamous and it is custom for an achuar man to take up to eight wives. Each wife then lives in his house and forms a self contained family unit based around the 'peak' (the large, raised wooden sleeping area pictured here). Each women has her own cooking utensils (except for the manioc mortar which is communal) and provides for her own children. When a woman dies her 'peak' is dimantled and used to dig her grave in the same spot it had been located during her life.
  • The omnipresent manioc beer, referred to as 'chicha' or 'nijiamanch'. Chicha forms the backbone of achuar society constituting not only a huge part of the diet but also the main lubricant of social interaction. Chicha is made from manioc (yuka), firstly the husk is taken off with a machete, the manioc is then washed in the river and boiled in water until it is soft, it is then mashed in a manioc mortar and the pieces are chewed and spat out until the entire mortar is full of liquid. The chicha is then left for 2,3,4 days (depending on the strength desired) to ferment in the saliva enzymes (this can be sped up using plantain leaves wich contain similar enzymes to saliva).
  • Every woman in a house has her own supply of chicha and as a visitor to the house you are obliged to partake in all of them. In one particular community, Wayusentsa, a meeting was held where i was asked to speak in order to assertain whether or not i should be given permission to photograph (permission was eventually declined), the entire community was present and some fifteen women were doing the rounds with their own pininks (special bowls hand crafted exclusively for the purpose) of chicha, each with it's own distinct flavour arising from a combination of the individual woman's saliva and the length of time it had been left to ferment. Dispening chicha is the only real role women are permitted to play in political gatherings such as this and, spurred on no doubt by the pride and seeming importance of the issues at stake, many women literally pour the chicha down your throat and no amounts of 'makete makete' (thank you) will convice them to desist.
  • Maria Antik painting a traditional 'pinink'. Pininks are the bowls used to serve the manioc beer, chicha or 'nijimanch'.
  • A young girl in Kapawi having a miserable morning. From an outsider's perepective it would be easy to imagine that a girl of this age doesn't have much to look forward to beyond chewing up chicha and watching her spit ferment from underneath the scales of an imbalanced gender dynamic. The woman do, however, manage to subvert a lot of male domination by partaking in unspoken, communal acts of disobedience in which they can trap their miscreant husbands within complex webs of social role play. A woman can, for example, pretend not to hear a call for more chicha and, in doing so, simultaneously embarass and immobilise her husband who can neither raise his voice nor ignore the situation without appearing weak and unable to keep order even within his own household.
  • Jacquelina Vargas epitomises the industry of achuar women. These three photos of her, all taken within the space of two minutes, illustrate the interminable multi-tasking that governs her life. It is very rare to meet an achuar women over the age of 55 and, some women confided to me, that the difficulty of domestic life provides some practical anaesthetic to the emotional troubles of life in a polygamous household.
  • Ximena Vargas helps her mother in the 'chakra'. The chakra is an area of semicultivated land around the family house in which papachinas, palmito, plantain and manioc are grown.
  • Maria Kiakua carries plantain downstream from the chakra. The plantain will be mixed with the carachama fish to make 'maito'.
  • Walking home from the forest with palmito (heart of palm)
  • Marko Vargas clears overgrowth from the chakra
  • Frederico Vargas cuts down a tree in order to create space for his family's chakra
  • Marko Vargos digs out the barbasco root which he ties in bundles and takes to the river for fishing. Fish are the predominant source of protein in the achuar diet, being much more abundant than hunted game.
  • Marko Vargos beats the barbasco root in order to release the poison. He will then wash the roots in the river, the poison in the roots acts by robbing the water of its oxygen, temporarily asphyxiating all the fish that pass by.
  • The entire family are involved in fishing trips and whilst the head of the household washes the barbasco roots in the river, every set of hands are then employed in collecting the asphyxiated fish in buckets, t-shirts and baskets.
  • A successful barabarasco fishing trip can land a family well over a hundred fish. PIctured here is a handful of carachama that will be used in a 'maito'.
  • Jacquelina Vargas guts a carachama fish by the side of the river whilst the rest of the family continue to scour the river for more fish that have floated up to the surface.
  • A moment of distraction during a lesson in how to gut carachama fish with a machete. Jacqueline is teaching her daughter, Ximena, who has just noticed that her baby brother has crawled off into the river and is drowning for the tenth time that afternoon.
  • Fernando Antik (tsamarin) and Aja Antik prepare to go hunting. Hunting trips can last up to four days and Fernando would bring his daughter along in order to carry chicha, the only food that would be eaten during the hunt. She would also be responsilble for carrying succesfull catches (monkeys, peccaries, tapir etc.)
  • Fernando Antik (tsamarin), Aja Antik and their dog hunting for howler monkeys with a blow gun 'cerbotana'. Hunting is less common than in the past with many communities only hunting once and week or in order to provide for a party or ceremonial gathering. Hunting trips can be spurred on by a 'kuntuknur', a dream that is interpreted as a prediction of favourable hunting conditions.
  • Hunters use a pyrannah jaw to carve into their blow gun darts in order that the tip, poisoned with curare, snaps off inside the animal and cleverer animals such as the howler monkeys are unable to pull the darts out.
  • Other protein rich foods can be gathered more easily form the forest. Jacquelina Vargas wraps up 'muntish', a species of larva, she has collected in a palm leaf to take home and cook in a 'maito'.
  • Muntish can be either roasted in the fire as part of a 'maito' or simply eaten raw. Here Jacquelina Vargas teaches me the joys of eating live muntish that we have just removed from the inside of a dead palm tree. Muntish have no blood, containing a sort of gooey interior that explodes in your mouth. The taste is almost impossible to describe but definitely grows on you.
  • Maria Kiakua cooking 'maito'. Maito can be made with a number of incredients including yuka, muntish, fish, chicken, palmito (heart of palm) and plantain.
  • A vollayball game underway in Kusutkau community. The arrival of the missionaries and a trader from Peru have enabled both the purchase of a volleyball net and leisure time in which to play.
  • Rosalinda Mukucham looks on as everyone rushes out to meet the missionaries as they land in Kapawi community.
  • Maria Jimpikit, a missionary from Puyo, returns after the school summer vacation to resume her teaching position in Kapawi missionary school.
  • Missionaries have a presence in just two of the sixty four communities in the achuar nation and have had to compromise their catholic doctrine with indigenous beliefs. As everywhere in South America, catholicism now accounts for the majority religion, however it is a very maleable type of catholicism that incorporates achuar beliefs in 'arutem' (the spirit of the forest) and tolerates the use of natem (ayahuasca) and tobacco juice to aid in quests that achuar frequently take into the forest to renew their spiritual energy.
  • Sunset on a dried up sandbar on the Pastaza river. Another half an hour downstream is the border with Peru where the achuar are in the midst of an intense legal battle with LA based occidental petroleum. Occidental were drilling crude oil in the Peruvian achuar territory, an area of land they renamed block 1 AB, for thirty years. They eventually stopped under pressure from the achuar, however, due to their use of long outlawed extraction technology and their reluctance to invest in clean up procedures, they have left behind them 9 billion barrels of highly saline toxic waste material as well as millions of gallons of crude oil leaked from faulty pipelines, that have run through the river networks destroying and contaminating the ecosystems the achuar rely on.
  • Wampuch's wife begins cooking Wayusa on a fire in their home. The Wayusa is left to cook over night and will be drunk at 4AM the next morning.
  • As well as being prasied for its cleansing qualities, the Wayusa ceremony functions as a devise for promoting inter-family cohesion and communication. The custom is for the entire family to get up at 4AM, to drink Wayusa together, to vomit and then return to the fire to drink chicha and to interpret each others dreams, to make plans for communal work and to resolve any problems the family or an individual might be facing. A common topic of discussion during contemporary Wayusa ceremonies is anxiety and apprehension regarding the outside world, particularly as a result of the oil disasters over the border in Peru.
  • Drinking Wayusa with Wampuch Mukucham. The blurriness in this photo is caused by a lack of light (I mean delicately controlled aesthetic effect) rather than any hallucinogenic properties of Wayusa. Unlike natem, wayusa has no visionary properties, it is an emetic tea which drunk in huge volumes induces vomiting.