Chapter 4
Introducing Life in Santa Rosa: A Mobile Community
Mobile cultures.
Anthropologists writing ethnographies for the last century have utilized various strategies for
imparting the flavor and details of life in cultures very different from those of potential
readers. One of these, the ethnographic present, has been critiqued as portraying a view of
the cultures studied as static and unchanging, precisely a view which anthropologists have
been trying to oppose for decades. The ethnographic present remains a useful literary device
for conveying the routinized aspects of life documented during field research, because it is
not the writing technique which is at fault. The problem resides in views of cultures as static
and unchanging.
In this chapter, I employ an ethnographic present which is mobile, changing while I was in
the field (2001-2002). I do not intend to portray the Tacana of Santa Rosa as an ahistorical,
traditional people who have lived without change since time immemorial. Like all peoples,
the Tacana have a history of change due to choice and coercion, drift and direction. This is
apparent in their history, briefly outlined in the last chapter, as well as in the processes of
change that I document. What I detail, in this chapter and the next, is a temporary working
order, among people recently settled as independent hunter-gatherer-horticulturalists. These
people continue to move around. On first glance, this might appear as rootlessness. To me,
however, they seemed rooted to a region, rather than a specific locale. Past and present
58
circumstances, discussed briefly in the previous chapter, appear to have left a sort of short
cultural memory which indigenous leaders are trying to re-construct, a theme I return to in
Chapter 6. However, as a researcher, it was not easy to discover whether their memory was
indeed short in this way, or if they were simply holding it close to the vest. At the time of
my research, they were insecure in their lands and political power.
They were also
understandably suspicious of the uses to which strangers would put knowledge gained from
them. My success in overcoming this suspicion was variable.
In this chapter and the next, I present the reader with a slice of Santa Rosan life. One does
well to remember that just as families and towns differ from one another in the U.S., so they
do in the Tacana communities of Bolivia’s Amazonia.
However, limited comparative
research in other lowland Tacana communities in the region suggests that much of what I
observed in Santa Rosa held true for other Tacana communities of the Beni and Pando of
Bolivia during the time of my stay. Ethnographic knowledge is predicated on the presumed
value of an in-depth case study for a more general understanding of cultural groups. While
contemporary attention to multiple and contested practices and meanings is important, and
indeed is one focus of my own research and of this dissertation, there remains much to be
gained from the recording of my initial experiences in this culture in its general outline.
What follows in this chapter is in the form of an ethnography of the community of Santa
Rosa itself, during the time of my research, without attending systematically to outside
influences. The Santa Rosa I describe, while presented in present tense, no longer exists.
Santa Rosa culture, if you will, is as mobile as its people and I do not doubt that some of it,
and some of them, have moved on.
59
Location and layout.
At the time of my research, Santa Rosa was a community of approximately fifty inhabitants
located on the southern shore of the Beni River in the northern Bolivian lowlands. It was
situated about thirty kilometers, as the crow flies, from Riberalta, which was the nearest
urban area.
Travel to or from Riberalta took anywhere from six hours to two days,
depending on the time of year and the transportation available; winding one’s way upriver
from Riberalta, one covered approximately seventy-five kilometers.
Far from being an isolated, self-sufficient village, Santa Rosans depended upon Riberalta as a
political and trade center, and all had relatives of some sort living there and in other Bolivian
cities and communities. Indeed, the Tacana and other regional forest dwellers were quite
mobile, moving around as personality, circumstance, and labor opportunities dictated, a
point that I will return to below.
Santa Rosa was built in the tierras bajas (low lands subject to the annual floods of the rainy
season). Two major spatial arrangements of settlements correspond to the two types of land
which one finds in the lowlands: tierras bajas and alturas (higher lands that are not flooded
each year). Settlements built in the alturas are the denser of the two. These are organized in
a rectangle around a central soccer field and inhabitants usually share one main port.
Additional houses can be found jutting off the central rectangle. In contrast to the altura
settlements, communities like Santa Rosa, built in the floodplains, are long communities,
curvy lines rather than rectangles, with family compounds built along the river about 3-10
minutes walk apart. This ensures close access for each family to a port where they can fetch
water, tie up canoes, wash clothes, and bathe. This arrangement lends itself to more
60
Figure 4: Map of Bolivia Showing Region of Research1
Santa Rosa
Figure 5: Map Showing Primary Research Site and Surrounding Areas2
1
Source: Modified from a map obtained from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of
Texas Austin’s web site (http://www.lib.utexas.edu).
2
Source: Modified from a map obtained from web site (http://mapy.mk.cvut.cz/index_e.html).
61
independent, isolated activities than in those communities with communal ports and wells,
built in the alturas, and allows more privacy and independence in a small community where
everyone knows everyone else’s business. It results in an emphasis on the household as a
social unit at the expense of the community as a whole.
When I arrived in the spring of 2001, there were seven inhabited family compounds spaced
several minutes walk apart.
For my purposes, a compound is defined as a cluster of
dwellings including cooking and living/sleeping buildings located upon the same patch of
grass-free land. The practice of scraping away groundcover to leave a solid dirt floor in and
around compound buildings is much like that of planting lawns around houses in the
suburban US and serves as a convenient defining line for compounds themselves.
Soccer
Field
Beni River
Key
Inhabited 2001-2002
Built during 2001-2002
Abandoned during 2001-2002
Abandoned prior to 2001
Figure 6: Household Compounds in Santa Rosa – 2001-2002
62
When I left in the fall of 2002, one of the seven had been abandoned and three more had
been built, leaving a total of nine. In addition to these compounds, a school building and
teacher’s house by the soccer field were empty when I arrived, but were inhabited on and off
during my stay, by the teacher, a young couple, and me. By the time I left, a new school
building had been constructed as well. During the bulk of my fieldwork, I had a newly
constructed hut of my own next to the school building.
The politics of place.
Forest towns like Santa Rosa were situated in multiple fields which gave meaning to their
physical locations. One field related to government, both by the Bolivian state and also by
indígenas themselves. I return to this point in a later chapter. Here, however, it is worth
noting that ideological and political mappings of the forest lands inhabited by Santa Rosans
and others like them were not stable. There was manipulation of boundaries and affiliation
by politicians as well as by indígenas, as will become evident below.
In consultation with a colleague, Peruvian anthropologist Enrique Herrerra, who had
worked extensively in the region, I planned to conduct my research in the community of
Santa Rosa, as I thought I would be living in the political center (the capitanía) of the region’s
Tacana and thus the residence of the head (the Capitán Grande) of the region’s Tacana
organization, the Amazonian Organization of Indigenous Tacana (OITA). OITA was one
of two Tacana organizations in Bolivia. OITA was affiliated with CIRABO (the Indigenous
Center of the Amazon Region), which was, in turn, affiliated with CIDOB (the Confederacy
of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia).
The other Tacana organization was CIPTA (the
Indigenous Center of the Tacana People) and consisted of Tacana inhabiting areas in the
63
Iturralde region north of the city of La Paz. CIPTA was affiliated with CEPILAP (the
Center of the Indigenous Peoples of La Paz), which, like CIRABO, was affiliated with
CIDOB.
While I easily secured permissions of the inhabitants of Santa Rosa to live and research
among them, two events had occurred prior to my arrival that changed my research locale
from a power center to a marginalized one. First, the river on which Santa Rosa had been
founded, the Genesguaya, changed course during the annual floods. With the Genesguaya
no longer flowing past old Santa Rosa, its inhabitants were left without a source of clean
drinking water.
Most of the inhabitants moved to the shores of the Beni River, about one hour’s walk from
the old location, including the Capitán Grande, the head of OITA. In addition, between the
move to the new location and summer of 2001, perhaps assisted by the end of the
historically recognized Tacana Center of Santa Rosa, the Tacana leadership had changed and
the political center of OITA had become another community called Sanctuario. (The
political center of the Tacana is determined by the residence of the Tacana capitán, and not
vice versa.) Not everyone who had lived in old Santa Rosa relocated to the new site. Some
inhabitants simply changed their community affiliation to that of another nearby community,
and some moved to Riberalta or other communities. Those that relocated, however, fought
to retain the community identity of Santa Rosa, most likely due in large part to a desire to
retain access to resources (such as a community school) already assigned to Santa Rosa. The
legitimacy of the new Santa Rosa as an appropriate recipient of resources allocated to old
Santa Rosa was contested by those who had remained in the old location and affiliated with
64
another community, however, and the Santa Rosa of my research site was struggling to
establish itself as a legitimate, independent community and to gain access to governmental
resources.
Santa Rosa’s situation was further complicated because the new location was in a contested
border territory between provincias (provinces).3 Santa Rosita, as the resettled community
eventually came to be called in official discourse, was in an ambiguous place. The border
which divided the provinces of Vaca Diez and General Jose Ballivian was designated as the
Genesguaya River. When the river changed course, it was unclear whether the boundaries
corresponded to the new course or the old one, and official opinion differed. Because of
this ambiguity, Santa Rosans could claim entitlement to government services from either
province. In practice, however, this was arguably more of a hindrance than help, allowing
Riberalta officials room to deny their obligations to serve the community by referring them
to Reyes, the political center of General Jose Ballivian.
Riberalta was much easier for Santa Rosans to access since it simply required a trip down the
river, and trips to Reyes entailed much greater expenditures of both time and financial
resources. In fact, trips to Reyes required a trip first to Riberalta by river, and then to Reyes
over land. In addition, while almost everyone had relatives in Riberalta, few had relatives
that they knew of in Reyes, which meant that they were more likely to end up hungry and
broke on a trip there, even if they could collect the 300 Bolivianos (versus B$10 to Riberalta)
which such a trip cost. In addition, the ambiguity meant that the communal efforts of Santa
3
Roughly equivalent to US counties.
65
Rosans were divided as opinion regarding the most beneficial affiliation shifted back and
forth between the two.
The habit of moving and the resulting lack of deep attachment to a particular spot (in both
material and symbolic terms) had interesting results for Santa Rosans and other Tacana in
the region. In contrast to the Tacana of the Ituralde north of La Paz, the relationship of
Beni and Pando Tacana to place tended to be a particularly strategic one, especially for those
located in border regions. For example, there was talk in Santa Rosa of moving across the
Beni river and thus from the Beni Department to Pando Department. They would have
done this in order to change regional indigenous confederacy affiliation from CIRABO
(Indigenous Center of the Amazonian Region of Bolivia) to the recently founded CIPOAP
(Indigenous Center for Original Peoples of the Amazonian Pando), and thus from Beni
Department to Pando Department politics where rumors suggested more resources were
available from politicos, indigenous and otherwise, who were trying to expand their power
base and increase their legitimacy and authority. While Santa Rosans did not make such a
move during my stay, I was told that such changes of location had occurred elsewhere in the
region.
The state of paths and the strength of social ties.
The meaning of geographic distance is more relevant to anthropological analysis when it is
understood to be modified by physical, financial, and perhaps the psychological effort
expended to traverse it. In other words, accessibility is more important than absolute
distance in understanding how near or far a place is in the social realm. For example, a
community that was further as the crow flies but which was located on the same river as
66
Santa Rosa was often easier to reach by canoe and therefore closer in a real way to it than a
community which could only be accessed over land by a crude path. Along these lines, an
excellent indicator of the strength of social ties within Santa Rosa was the condition of
pathways linking family compounds.
It took effort to keep paths clear from the encroaching forest, especially during the rainy
season when foot travel was harder and plant growth dramatically more rapid. Well-worn,
wider, clearer, better kept paths were the result of frequent travel and targeted effort to keep
these paths in better condition. Conversely, where travel was easy (by river, for example),
social ties were more likely to be strong between the inhabitants thus linked. Better paths
were the result of and resulted in stronger social ties between those along the path, whether
these paths were between compounds, communities, or urban centers. If the path was feo
(ugly), it was not easy to traverse and could be hiding dangers such as poisonous snakes. It
took more than mediocre desire and will to limpiar (clean up) an ugly path, or just to traverse
it.
Distance, it can be seen, both reflected and reinforced existing social ties and social distance.
One can see this exemplified in the case of a marginal family that eventually abandoned their
compound and moved to another community. At the times that they were participating in
community meetings and affairs, the path to their house was wide and clean. When they
were not, the path was ugly and narrow. After all, why would one work to maintain a path
to other homes if it was not going to be used in real or symbolic terms.
67
A typical day.
At dawn, in Santa Rosita, I walk down the path that connects each family compound
listening to the rustling and soft voices of households beginning to stir as the day begins. As
I approach a casita (hut) of typical chuchillo4 construction, this wanderer (in this case, a U.S.
born anthropologist in the middle of that disciplinary rite-of-passage we call fieldwork)
shouts a warning “hoooo,” similar in function to the “you-who” associated with country
yokels in the US. A dog runs towards me, barking to add its own warning of my approach.
I pause and wait until a pre-teenage girl emerges to “tshhhhh” and throw rocks at the dog
which runs out of range, whimpering. “Pasa. Pasa. Pasa adentro. (Come on in.)”
Inside the hut, the girl’s father, mother, uncle, and siblings are eating plates of rice, green
plantain cooked in coals, and warmed meat from last night’s dinner. Since a typical meal
consists of rice, plaintain5 or yucca6 (sweet manioc), and some sort of meat, and breakfast is
no exception, this is no surprise to the anthropologist. “Siéntate, (Have a seat),” says the
girl’s father, jutting out his chin7 to indicate an empty spot on one of the family’s sleeping
platforms, constructed of the same chuchillo as the hut. “Invítale (Serve her),” the mother
reproaches another daughter. Her father quickly empties his plate so that the daughter can
wash it and his spoon8 with water from a bucket in a separate kitchen shelter and refill it for
Chuchillo is a bamboo-like plant which is the most common material used to enclose buildings in the forest
due to its easy accessibility and strength.
5 Regarding plantain and banana use by the Tacana of Iturralde, La Paz, Wentzel writes, “For being a postcontact introduction, plantains and bananas have been thoroughly integrated into Tacana agriculture, even
more so than rice. Tacana terms existed not only for these two major categories (to-be-cooked vs. fruit
bananas), but also for around 10 varieties within each...” (1989:192). These findings are consistent with my
own. Rice, in Tacana, was arusu, an easily-recognized adaptation of the Spanish word “arroz.”
6 As with the Tacana of my study, Wentzel documented the knowledge and use of only “sweet” manioc
varieties among the Tacana of Iturralde, La Paz (1989:194). Another similarity was the relative unimportance
of manioc in Tacana diets as compared to plantains (1989:195).
7 Santa Rosans and other Tacana of the region habitually point with their chins, rather than with their fingers.
8 Meals are eaten almost entirely with spoons, knives, and fingers. Forks are rare.
4
68
the guest. Hungry or not, the anthropologist accepts the heaped plate since to turn it down
would insult her hosts.
If I had not been well known to the family, there would likely have been long periods of
silence, since indígenas tend to be very reserved around strangers and those with whom they
don’t have confianza (trust). Since I am a compañera (companion or comrade) to them,
however, the two men continue to speculate about when one of the merchant ships which
regularly stops in Santa Rosita will arrive to trade.
After finishing breakfast, one of the daughters washes up and minds her younger siblings
while the other heads to the river laden with the family’s dirty clothing. The men and boys
head off to hunt, fish, or work in the chacos (forest plots of rice and yucca). The woman
oversees the work of her daughters as they go through the necessary activities of maintaining
the household. At midday, when the heat of the tropical day is at its harshest, the family has
a midday meal. Unless a task is urgent, this is also good time to rest and wait for the hottest
part of the day to pass. Meal times and rest times, however, are regulated by the logic of
one’s activities and not by the hour. Time discipline (Thompson 1993) has yet to penetrate
deeply into the lives of the Santa Rosans. The midday meal is usually eaten when the carne
(meat) has been killed and cooked. Rest, as well, tends to occur at a natural break in task
oriented activities.
After the meal and perhaps a rest, earlier activities are continued, or new ones begun. The
mother, father, and oldest children might return to the chaco to plant or harvest while a
daughter remains at home to mind those to young to participate. Brothers might take a
69
canoe to try their luck at fishing. Perhaps the father will decide to build another chair or
bench for his family, while the mother and her sister-in-law walk to the chaco to gather and
chop firewood. During such activities, I often provide comic relief with my clumsy attempts
to participate.
After afternoon and early evening activities are complete, I return to the house to eat again.
Afterwards, I reach into my pack to withdraw coca leaves. Someone quickly produces a
small container of piti, a special kind of ash, and chameiro, a specific liana bark. All three are
passed around. Like the other adults, I chew a piece of chameiro until it is damp and soft,
and then place it in a wad of dried coca leaves. After this bolo is secured in my cheek, I take
some of the bitter piti and add it to the mixture. On contact with the bolo, the piti becomes
sweet. “Azucar (sugar),” they call it. Perhaps someone else produces tobacco to roll into a
cigarette to share. We all settle in to enjoy a companionable moment. I might convince
someone to tell me a story to record. Or someone might recount some gossip, or discuss
where to find tomatoes for sale in a nearby community. The pleasant chill of the evening is
disrupted by biting insects, although the smoky woods burned in old cooking oil cans repel
the insects somewhat. On nights like this one, I add to my observations of the day.
Sometimes just listening, and sometimes asking questions or gently prodding a conversation
in a desired direction, I flesh out my understandings of Santa Rosa life. The following seven
sections describe what I learned about the structure of Santa Rosa life during my months
living there as a community member.
70
Household composition.
Ideal residence patterns are neolocal by household and ambilocal by community. An ideal
household consists of a man, a woman, and their children; in practice there are often
additions as well as truncations. Elderly parents, for example, will live with their adult
children, sometimes rotating among them and sometime residing with the one with whom
they get along the best. In addition, spousal partnerships are not especially stable, with
abandonment by both men and women a fairly common occurrence. Often, the partner left
behind when a spouse se escapa (escapes) will join the household of his or her parents or
sibling. Out of wedlock births are also common, with the single mother remaining in the
home of her mother or, less frequently, giving her baby into the care of another woman who
wants to adopt it. In the former case, grandmothers (mothers’ mothers) are often the de
facto mothers of this first child in terms of providing much of the care and affection. Like
the care-giving activities of elder sisters to younger siblings, this arrangement is an effective
way to train young women to be capable mothers, as well as to relieve the mother of undue
drudgery.
Households are often made up of members of three generations, and children grow up with
constant contact with both adults and with other children of all ages, a cultural pattern which
fosters more cooperative (as opposed to competitive) personalities and which contrasts with
the extreme age-grading of child-rearing in the US (Whiting 1978).
Even when the
community school is functioning, which only occurred towards the end of my fieldwork and
which was not guaranteed to continue much past my departure, children are in a one-room
schoolhouse which keeps them in contact with children of all ages and returns them to their
families and contact with elder kin and babies around one to two o’clock in the afternoon.
71
Subsistence activities.
Like many indigenous peoples in Amazonia, the Tacana of Santa Rosa are slash-and-burn
horticulturists. Their forest gardens are called chacos, and are usually one to two hectares in
size. Every adult male has a chaco, and when a boy takes a wife, he makes (with help) his
own chaco, both signaling symbolically and enabling practically his entrance into adulthood.
Specialized local knowledge of soil types guides the choice of site9. In the chacos, they plant
rice, yucca, and maize. Rice and maize were by far the dominant crops.10 Some plant trigo11,
sugar cane, beans, watermelon, cacao, pineapple, onions, peppers, tobacco, and coffee. They
use no beasts of burden or machines in the fields, other than the very occasional rental of a
chain saw for clearing land. Machetes, knives, axes, and flat hoes are their main tools,
purchased in town or from merchants.
The chacos are fertile for approximately two years and then are planted to platano (plantain),
becoming a platanal which is fertile for about three years, according to my informants. New
chacos are cleared in the dry season, when the freshly-cut forest can dry enough to be
burned off. Whenever possible, Santa Rosans expand the borders of the chacos they
possess, rather than creating new ones. In situations like the one in Santa Rosa, however,
new chacos must be created because neighboring chacos prevent border expansion in most
cases.
When they are no longer fertile, chacos are abandoned to be reclaimed and
rejuvenated by el monte (the wilds). Ideally, when chacos have to be created too far away for
For a more detailed discussion of Tacana soil classification and chaco site selection among the Tacana of
Iturralde, La Paz, see (Wentzel 1989: 158-161).
10 Wentzel attributes the dominance of rice and maize relative to tubers like manioc in the diets and fields of
the Tacana of Iturralde, La Paz, to the influence of mission production of these crops for market in the 18th
century (1989:147).
11 Literally “wheat,” but not the same grain that I know from my childhood on a Kansas wheat farm.
9
72
easy accessibility, communities are abandoned or relocated to locations with easier access to
fertile ground.
Work is often done cooperatively, on an even-exchange basis of one day for one day. This
exchange applies between relations and between friends, although there is little difference in
a community where everyone is related by marriage and/or blood ties (except the teacher
and anthropologist). Labor can also be hired at the regional going rate, but this practice was
not a common one. When labor is hired, bargaining about labor wages is not considered
appropriate, but rather stingy and antisocial for the payer and greedy of the payee, while
paying the accepted rate is considered just and respectful.
Harvesting could be done a
medias (where the owner and a non-owner harvester each take half). As Wentzel points out,
this practice functions to redistribute forest products within the community (1989:163).
Chacos are located on communal land, and continuities exist between Santa Rosa land
tenure and that of Tumupasa, the site of one of the original Franciscan Missions where the
Tacana were settled in the 18th century, as reported in Sondra Wentzel’s 1989 dissertation.
As Wentzel writes,
In Tumupasa, land tenure had always been communal, in the past apparently without
clearly defined territorial boundaries but occupying a much larger area. At the time
of research, members of extended families tended to remain in the general area
where they often established permanent plantations and had priority use rights over
their fallows. Beyond respecting this occupation, internal movement of residence
and site selection for fields were not restricted. The Tacana land tenure system had
intergenerational flexibility as well since young couples had the option of finding a
73
suitable place for settlement and fields, often reoccupying old fallows that were
abandoned for different reasons. (1989:155)
In Santa Rosa, chacos are “owned” by individuals or nuclear families for as long as the
chacos remain in existence.
It is a case where labor creates ownership, however, the
ownership extends only to the crops which the land produces, and to the mejoras
(improvements) done to the land. The chaco creator has usufruct, not permanent title, of
the land until the chaco is abandoned. Since the chacos are isolated in the forest, and
surveillance of produce is difficult, theft of crops is often reported and is a common
complaint amongst each other. The rule of labor creating ownership extends to fruit trees,
as well as crops. The fruit of trees that grow wild belongs to whoever picks it. If one plants
an orchard, however, the fruit belongs to the planter. Papayas, for example, belong to
anyone who picks them because “nadie lo siembra” (nobody plants them).
I was told that chacos are owned by men unless an adult woman lacks a spouse. This was
the case with one of the elderly women in the community. Men were usually in charge of
the chacos while their wives owned and controlled the animals—typically pigs, ducks, and
chickens, animals introduced to the Tacana by Franciscan missionaries (Wentzel 1989: 147).
I heard from several sources that women have better luck raising animals then men. Since
men were more likely to stay away from home for multiple days (often for hunting and
fishing trips), this is not an especially surprising belief. Women would sometimes also
control garden space, growing cebolla (onion), pepino (cucumber), or other plants with seeds
purchased in Riberalta or from ADRA, a boat which traveled up and down the Beni and
Madre de Dios rivers providing medical and agricultural aid. Household decisions were
generally made jointly between spouses, although my observations suggest that among
74
evangelical converts, men were more likely to assume a dominant position as head of the
household and enforce an evangelical rhetoric of obedience to the man by the female
members of their household.
While work in the chaco is an activity shared with women, hunting and fishing are primarily
male activities. Women do participate in these activities on occasion. However, they are
considered men’s work. Hunting is most commonly done with salones (.22 rifles). Balas
(bullets) are one of the essential regular purchases of Santa Rosans. Since cash is dear, much
effort is expended towards the goal of not wasting bullets. Shots are taken with care, and
skill is economically beneficial, as well as being a matter of personal pride and social status.
Being a good shot is important in securing a reliable meat supply since traders are not always
reliable sources of bullets—they run out before reaching Santa Rosa or simply do not arrive.
Nor is there a community store or other easily accessible source. Dogs are an important aid
to hunts, and good hunting dogs are highly prized. I was told that there was a special herb
which would make a puppy become a good hunter.12 Hunting is done day or night. Night
hunting using flashlights is especially common, and seems to be preferred. I was told that
more game animals are out at night. The limiting factor in night hunting is pilas (batteries)
which are relatively expensive ($10 Bolivianos for a pair) and which are of poor quality and
thus short duration. The most common wild animals which ended up in the cooking pot
during my stay were huaso (deer), jochi pintado (paca), jochi colorado (agouti), perdiz (partridge)
taitetú (collared peccary), capybara, tatú (armadillo), chancho del monte (white-lipped peccary),
paraba (macaw), pava (guan), peta (tortoise), oso hormiguero (anteater), marimono (black spider
Wentzel writes that among the Tacana of Iturralde, La Paz, hunting dogs underwent ritual and special
training to become so (1989:219). There were hints that this sometimes occurred among the Tacana of my
study, but I was unable to document concrete claims of this activity.
12
75
monkey), maneche (howler monkey), and silbador (caphuchin monkey). Anta (Tapir) was
captured one time during my research and was considered a prize by all. A Santa Rosa boy
came yelling happily “Estamos de anta. Estamos de anta” (literally “we’re of Anta,” closer to
“we’re in Anta” in the sense of “we’re in the money.) Since antas are large animals (about
the size of Shetland pony), there was much meat to share and a festive atmosphere
accompanied its capture.
Since there is no refrigeration, meat is stored in the form of livestock or charkey (jerky).
When hunts are unsuccessful, domestic chickens are the most common meat source.
Poultry had the added bonus of supplying protein in the form of eggs, as well, although
allowing eggs to hatch was more common than regular egg consumption. Indeed, the more
one could successfully secure meat through hunting and fishing, the more ones holdings of
poultry and pigs could increase and provide insulation from future hunger. One of the local
signs of extreme poverty was to be “sin carne” (without meat). In fact, descriptions of the
poverty of this or that family were almost invariably accompanied by the phrase “sin carne”;
it was almost definitional.
Santa Rosans ate a lot of fish, which stands in contrast to the Tacana of Iturralde, La Paz,
according to Wentzel, of whom writes that “…fishing was always of little importance to
their subsistence” (1989:236). The rivers of the region in which Santa Rosa was located were
full of an amazing diversity of types of fish. If Santa Rosa had been located on the Madre de
Dios river, the other large river running through the regions where I lived, Santa Rosans
would have to have been worried about the mercury they were ingesting. It was commonly
stated that gold extraction on that river had left it polluted with mercury. I was told that the
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Beni fish were safer for consumption, although I have no data to back up that assertion.
Fishing, like hunting, also took place during the day and night hours. Fishing was most
often done from canoes made by hollowing out a tree trunk using fire, axes, and machetes.
Fishing sometimes occured quite a distance from Santa Rosa in inland lakes13 and streams.
It was generally regarded as a fun and relaxing activity. In one case, it appeared to be a
pleasant excuse for a couple with numerous children to be alone. Fishing was done using
hooks and lines, as well as nets. Most common was hooks. I never observed or heard of the
use of dynamite or fish poison by or from Tacana.
An important belief which affected hunting and fishing activities was that over-extraction of
forest resources was a bad thing. Practically speaking, locals were smart about the long term
consequences of such practices, which resulted in dwindling animal and plant populations
and hambre (hunger).
This very rational understanding of their relationship to their
environment had a supernatural expression. El Duende (the spirit) who was el dueño del monte
(the owner of the forest or wilds) would take revenge on those who abused forest gifts. A
Santa Rosa mother told me a story of her eldest son’s childhood. He loved to fish when he
was little, and all he did was fish and fish. He got very ill, and nothing they did would make
him better. They went to a curandero and were told that his sickness was his punishment
from el dueño de los peces (the owner of the fish), el Duende, for overfishing. They did a cure
and he got better, but he learned his lesson. He still likes to fish, but he doesn’t fish as much
as he used to.14
Technically not lakes but rather land flooded during the rainy season and which became cut off from the
rivers as the dry season progressed.
14 Wentzel recorded more specific beliefs regarding dueños of particular animal species, of cultivated plants,
and three spirits of the forest, Dejahuahuai, Chibute, and Einidu, who were the dueños of all animals by the
Tacana of the Iturralde (1989:144).
13
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Collecting was another very important subsistence-related activity, and one shared by
women and men, adults and children. Fruits, nuts, medicines, building materials, even a sort
of fish which would end up trapped in drying puddles towards the end of the dry season
were all collected. These forest products added seasonal variety to the diet and made life
pleasant and possible in the absence of much cash. Knowing where to find forest products
was a matter of knowledge, skill, luck, and strong social networks. Sharing the knowledge
too widely or with the wrong people could result in someone else beating you to the source.
Such knowledge was sometimes closely guarded.
While expertise in women’s work is confined to women and expertise in men’s work to men,
both women and men know how to perform the tasks typical of the other and do so as
temperament and necessity dictate. In other words, male and female roles are not rigid,
although there is evidence to suggest that they become more so with conversion to
evangelical Christianity, a powerful trend in the region at the time of my research. With
evangelical conversion came a strong rhetoric of the man as head of the household that
affected that status and choices of female household members. Most notably, evangelical
women stopped participating actively in community meetings where decisions were made
and their daughters were pulled out of soccer games.
Trade.
The economy of Santa Rosa is a combination of barter, credit, cash, and gifts. The primary
form of trade for Santa Rosans is barter, where they pay with forest products that are
commodities. In contrast to barter where local and even individual use-values are the
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primary price determinants, the products traded by Santa Rosans are commodities and prices
are determined in the context of regional markets. Commodities of a given market value are
offered in the place of cash for the same amount. Cash is hard to come by in the forest, and
the most important locally traded commodities taking the place of cash are plantains and
Brazil nuts. Seasonal fruits, dried meat, and live chickens are also sold/bartered for goods
from the city. Pigs could be, but no one in Santa Rosa ever had enough pigs to offer in that
way. The most common purchases are bullets, oil, sugar, coca, clothes, flour, candy, and
rice. Santa Rosans can secure these goods from several sources: merchant boats, markets or
stores in the city, or from their neighbors.
Most commonly, Santa Rosans buy items from merchant boats, based in Riberalta, which
travel up and down the Beni. During a typical week, one or so such boats will stop at Santa
Rosa. Usually, boats will stop as they travel up river and the merchant will advance goods
against a delivery of forest products which will be collected on the way back down river.
Reasons for this include practical ones: a lighter boat consumes less gas and is more
maneuverable, encouraging both the advance of goods and the postponement of cargo
collection; plantains will rot if stored too long prior to reaching market; and advancing goods
ensures that the community inhabitants will plan to have their forest products collected and
ready to load on the merchant’s return, speeding up the return to Riberalta, and reserving
these commodities from sale to another boat.
Trade relationships were not purely economic. They were social relationships as well.
Merchants were expected to at least partially adjust to the behavior norms of forest dwellers.
The better the sense of friendship and mutual obligation developed between merchants and
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community folk, the more reliable each was as trading partner. Merchants were more likely
to arrive on schedule; Santa Rosans were more likely to reserve products for sale and to have
them already stacked at port for the merchants’ arrival.
Most of these boats are operated by Aymara or Quechua speaking kollas, indigenous
highlanders who have migrated to Riberalta. Kollas are thought to have excellent heads for
business, numbers, and sales and to be hard workers. The most savvy of merchants are
careful not to advance too many goods to inhabitants of forest communities. If too much
debt accumulates, it can be very hard to collect, as the example later in this chapter will
show. Often merchants will cease stopping at the ports of communities who owe them too
much, deeming them mala gente (bad people). Debt control on the part of the merchant can
be tricky since forest dwellers believe merchants have an obligation to trade with them. “No
hay” (“There isn’t any”), is a common refrain. While often true, this claim can also function
as a convenient social lie to control the sale of goods when too much debt has accumulated.
Merchants are not the only ones to try to control debt. Many Santa Rosans work hard to
control debt levels as well, although circumstances often make this difficult since no one has
money squirreled away for emergencies. Given their rubber-tapping history, discussed in
Chapter 2, most Santa Rosans and/or their elder kin have had experience with debt peonage.
While this past compounds their aversion to large debts, most have a hard time keeping
from getting further and further into debt.
Santa Rosans not only trade with traveling merchants, but they also go to the city of
Riberalta to trade.
There, they sell their forest products to merchants who meet the
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incoming boats at the port. Often, but not always, Santa Rosans have preferred trading
partners for whom they reserve their commodities. Forest products can be transported from
Santa Rosa in one’s own motorized boat if such a boat is owned, as was the case for one
family by the end of my field research. However, most Santa Rosans and their neighbors
must either transport their products on the private boat of another, or on a boat belonging
collectively to a community. On a private boat, Santa Rosans pay for the transport of their
products to Riberalta. On a community boat, a rate is determined which ideally just covers
the cost of gas and boat upkeep. Since boats, and more specifically the motors which run
them, are such large expenditures, access to and control over them can be a contentious
issue.
As mentioned above, most forest dwellers have members of their extended families living in
the city. Santa Rosans sleep in the homes of their relatives, at the headquarters of the
indigenous organization CIRABO, or on the boat during their stay, which usually lasts a day
or two, before heading back upriver. Staying long in Riberalta, el pueblo, is expensive, and
stays are typically not prolonged. If someone wants to stay longer, they can catch a ride on
another boat heading up river, since traffic is frequent enough that there are usually boats
heading upriver every 2-3 days. However, passage on a boat of a merchant friend or
indigenous community is preferred because it is more pleasant, secure, and cheaper. The
accepted rate for passenger transport during my fieldwork was about 5 bolivanos, or about
$.80. However, passengers were to pay “por su voluntad”, that is, a fair amount that they
could afford to pay. In this statement, one sees again the echo of “from each according to
ability, to each according to need,” an ethic which appeared in many areas of regional life.
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Trade in the community could be an entrepreneurial activity and/or a social obligation. On
occasion a Santa Rosan would decide to try his or her hand at being a mercante (merchant).
Someone would return from Santa Rosa with a bag of used clothing or other city goods and
attempt to resell them. This occurred sporadically. More commonly, intercommunity trade
is a social obligation required by friends and kin who cannot run to the store to buy the
products they require when they run out.
Religion.
When I arrived in Santa Rosa, the entire community was Catholic. Given the history of the
“civilizing” of the Tacana by Catholic missionaries in the early 18th century, this is not
especially surprising. It is likely that indigenous religious practices predating missionization
were synchretically combined with Catholic practices, although I did not collect evidence of
this. I did, however, directly witness curing ceremonies using tobacco, alcohol, and coca and
hear stories about forest spirits which indicate continuity with some pre-contact beliefs.
Some individuals also recounted ayahuasca curing ceremonies, including one where the
participant said he believed he had been transported to Spain and hoped I had pictures
books so he could confirm whether or not it was true.
Catholic practices in Santa Rosa included individual family shrines, christening, and
celebrating saint's days, such as el Dia de San Juan (the Day of Saint John). To celebrate this
day, or San Juanear, during the time of my research, one got up just before dawn to bathe in
the river and to sprinkle water on anyone who remained in their beds. The predawn
activities were primarily preformed by the unmarried children of the town. In addition,
Catholic Santa Rosans attended occasional masses in Riberalta, as well as in nearby forest
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communities on the rare occasions when traveling priests stopped in. There was a man in a
neighboring community who was not a priest but who was trained to preside over Catholic
rituals in the absence of priests. The regularity of these, however, was sporadic. Santa
Rosans wanting to faithfully and fully practice their Catholic religion were frustrated in their
attempts by the Catholic’s church failure to provide accessible priests for the required
confessions
During my research in Santa Rosa, I witnessed the arrival of a new, evangelical Christian
family to Santa Rosa and the conversion of numerous Santa Rosa households to evangelical
Christianity.15
Evangelism gained a foothold in the community when an evangelical
kinswoman came to live in Santa Rosa with her husband and children. They began to hold
weekly and sometimes bi-weekly culto., and conversions began to occur along family lines,
exaggerating pre-existing cleavages in the community.
In contrast to the Catholic masses conducted by priests or their trained representative in the
community, culto was frequent and novel. In culto, participation was encouraged and duties
were spread around. Prayers were out loud and often simultaneous, with each person
praying an extemporaneous, personal prayer at the same time as everyone else in the room.
Mensajes (messages) were delivered most often by the new man, but others shared this duty
as well. This man also possessed a guitar with at least one bad string, and he would
accompany the singing of advanzas in Spanish. Bible readings were given by the most
literate. In culto, repentance was a common message, as well as the sinful nature of the vices
of dance and drug (particularly chewing coca leaves and drinking alcohol). Indeed, the
The contemporary phenomenon of rapid conversions of Latin American Catholics to Evangelical
Christianity is well documented. See, for example, Cahn 2003, Freston 2001, and Stoll 2005.
15
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common way of telling between creyentes (evangelicals, literally “believer”) and Catholics was
to see if they drank liquor or danced. By the end of my research, all of the kin of the original
converted woman had decided to “try to be creyente.” Another family had remained
Catholic but had retired from the community, and another remained Catholic and appeared
to have no intention of converting.
Recreation.
One of the main forms of recreation for the Tacana of Santa Rosa as well as other regional
forest dwellers is soccer. In fact, a soccer field is a ubiquitous feature of forest communities,
almost always located at the community’s center. Both men and women play soccer, but
men play it more. Soccer is played during the dry season in pick-up games as well as in
organized tournaments.
In Santa Rosa, friends and family come from neighboring
communities on a regular basis for Sunday afternoon games, usually leaving early enough to
return home by dark. Women and children come along and watch, chatting, exchanging
news and gossip, and cheering on the players. If enough women are present who want to
play, a woman’s game will be organized after the men’s game and it will be the men’s turn to
cheer. In formal tournaments, sometimes there are organized or pick-up women’s games,
but they are secondary in importance to the men’s tournament and women’s responsibilities
of preparing meals and caring for children. Within the community, the division of play by
gender is seen as one of convenience and attention to responsibilities and skill levels. Co-ed
games happened when there is not enough time or players for two separate games. Like
many areas of life among the Tacana with whom I lived, the will to participate was more
important than gender. However, gender was implicated in crafting this will to participate.
That is, women are less inclined to want to play, and less inclined to spend the time at play
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that would allow them to highly develop soccer skills. In addition, families that have
converted to evangelical Christianity are more likely to overtly control their female members
and prevent participation in activities like soccer.
Participation in community teams is not strictly controlled, and players (usually relatives)
from neighboring communities will often play regularly as a member of the team of another
community.
This happens for reasons including wanting to play with friends and/or
relatives, wanting to play on a more competitive team, and lack of interest or numbers for a
team in one’s own community.
Ideally, players sport store-bought soccer gear including special shoes with cleats and
matching team jerseys. Very rarely, one sees shorts matched to a jersey. Because storebought uniforms were expensive, this is one area where patronage was solicited from
wealthier acquaintances, a practice that will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.
Prizes for tournaments were also procured from madrinas and padrinos (godmothers and
godfathers) of the tournament.
Health.
In the event of injury or illness, Santa Rosans first tried local herbal remedies, medicines
such as aspirin and acetaminophen, and curing ceremonies. Curing using tobacco, coca, and
alcohol could be performed by a curendero. This type of curing could also be done by
someone who was not considered to be such an expert, but who still “sabe curar” (knows
how to cure). In fact, most adults know at least the basics of curing, and would utilize this
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knowledge if no one better qualified were around. The use of an individual with a reputation
of proficiency in curing, however, was preferred.
Neither Santa Rosa nor the nearby community of 21 of September has a health post. Such
posts, however, do exist in some communities in the region, with facilities built and locals
trained during the ebbs and flows of governmental and NGO projects. Most primary care in
Western medicine at the time of my research was given by the Adventist Development and
Relief Agency International (ADRA) boat Esperanza del Oriente (Hope of the East). The ship,
funded by the Bolivian Ministry of Health, the Spanish government, and private donations
to ADRA, had a health staff and agronomist, and had been traveling up and down the Beni
and Madre de Dios rivers since 1996.
The health staff gave babies DPT and TB
vaccinations, and gave children vitamin A and mendasol, an anti-parasite treatment. They
gave out Seguro de Salud (national health insurance) cards.
Anyone who was sick was
examined, but medicines for most individual illnesses were not included in the national
health insurance plan, with malaria as an exception. Santa Rosans were expected to pay for
medicines for other health conditions. They did so with cash as well as with chickens and
other commodities. However, some couldn’t afford the medicines and the health staff was
generous about allowing the community members to owe them. One of the doctors told me
that he was owed around $800 Bolivianos (approximately US$130) by the people of the
communities he visited.
During my fieldwork period, the first child of a girl of approximately 16 years died at five
months of age. The girl told me she didn’t take it to the doctor, even though she had been
in Riberalta at the time of the death. There are multiple reasons for this. First, both in and
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out of Santa Rosa, a common view of hospitals is that they are expensive, dirty places, where
people “se muere, no más” (just die). Doctors aren’t necessarily seen as benevolent savers of
human life, and it seemed that Santa Rosans were very unlikely to go to see a doctor without
a personal referral from someone they knew and trusted who had had a good experience
with him or her. Another reason not to go to a hospital or even to a doctor was the
expense. Medicines and consulting fees required cash, and cash was something in very short
supply in Santa Rosa. In a case where I personally intervened to help save the life of another
critically ill infant, it cost me approximately $60. It is very hard for a Santa Rosan to come
up with this much cash. The Swiss Evangelical Mission in Riberalta would loan forest
dwellers money for health care, but the loan had to be paid back in labor to the Mission in
Riberalta. This was not an attractive option to Santa Rosans if they had families to support
in their home community (which almost all had).
Leaving the community.
The Tacana and other forest dwellers in the region are, typical of many Amazonian groups,
very mobile. The Tacana of Santa Rosa traveled for reasons of survival, recreation, and to
collect their dues as citizens of the Bolivian state. The pursuit of health care is one reason to
leave Santa Rosa. Another is to take products to Riberalta to sell. Yet another is to work as
a seasonal laborer collecting Brazil nuts from November to March. As mentioned above,
travel for soccer matches is frequent, as well. Any benefits due them from the Bolivian state,
such as pensions for the elderly had to be collected in the nearest political center, which was
Riberalta.
Voting centers for national elections were closer, located in nearer rural
communities. Finally, young men left Santa Rosa to complete a year of military service,
which could take them to other parts of Bolivia and expose them to the wider world.
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Conclusion.
In this chapter, I introduced in general outline the temporary working order of Santa Rosa
life at the time of my research. On the banks of the Beni river, three extended families had
forged a community only a year or two old. While I lived there, one of the families
withdrew, leaving behind a young woman who had married a young man from one of the
remaining families. The young man’s family added to its local members with a birth, as well
as the marriage, and with the arrival of the evangelical kinswoman and her husband and
children.
The third extended family had preserved its size, but the construction of a
personal boat resulted in more time spent away from the community, primarily going to and
from Riberalta. As noted earlier, the mobility of Santa Rosans is evident in numerous ways.
In this chapter, I addressed the mobility of its members and membership and the structure
of daily life. In the next, I turn to the values and norms that organize social life.
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