Creating Community: Land Titling,
Education, and Settlement Formation Among
the Ashéninka of Peruvian Amazonia
By
Evan Killick
Th e L on do n S ch oo l o f E co nom ic s
Resumen
Este artı́culo analiza tanto el proceso como los efectos del proceso de titulación de las
tierras indı́genas por parte del pueblo Ashéninka en el Perú. Aquı́ se toman en cuenta las
relaciones entre el estado y los grupos indı́genas y se muestra cómo estas relaciones
pueden ocurrir en múltiples maneras, difiriendo no sólo entre distintos grupos nativos
sino también al interior de un mismo grupo étnico. El artı́culo compara las diferentes
historias de varias comunidades Ashéninka; tanto las que han luchado por la obtención
de derechos a la tierra como las que han buscado su reconocimiento oficial como parte
de un proceso de formalización legal. En comunidades del segundo tipo el artı́culo
muestra que el deseo de lograr una mejor educación para sus hijos es el fundamento de
la búsqueda del reconocimiento oficial. El artı́culo toma en cuenta los efectos que
conlleva para los Ashéninka el vivir en comunidades oficialmente reconocidas.
Concluye que las identidades y acciones comuna les pueden ser no una motivación
sino mas bien la consecuencia en la comunidad de un reconocimiento oficial de
derechos a la tierra.
This article analyzes the process and effects of land titling in Ashéninka communities
in eastern central Peru. Through this analysis the article considers the relationship between nation states and indigenous groups and shows how this relationship can occur
in multiple ways, differing not only between distinct indigenous groups but also within
a single ethnic grouping. The article compares accounts of Ashéninka communities
that have had to fight for their rights to land with the experiences of communities that
have sought official recognition as part of an established legal process. In these latter
communities the article argues that it is the Ashéninka’s desire for schooling that
underpins their wish to gain official recognition. The article also considers the effects
Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 22–47. ISSN 1935-4932, online ISSN 1548-7180.
& 2008 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-7180.2008.00003.x.
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that living in defined settlements is having and concludes that communal identities and
action can be a result of the recognition of land rights rather than an impetus for land
rights claims.
PALABRAS CLAVES: Perú, Amazonia, tierras indigenas, educación.
KEYWORDS: Peru, Amazonia, indigenous people, land rights, education.
THIS ARTICLE IS BASED ON FIELDWORK carried out in two Ashéninka1 communities on
the Ucayali River in Peruvian Amazonia. It examines the reasons for the formation
of these settlements and how and why their members sought official recognition of
their status as comunidades nativas (native communities). The article begins by
noting the importance of the process of land titling for the indigenous peoples of
Peruvian Amazonia in countering centuries of domination by outsiders and claiming their rights to self-determination. Rather than starting from a position that
emphasizes the importance of land rights themselves, the article instead analyzes
the process of gaining official recognition as it was undertaken and understood by
the people involved. It does this through a comparison of the land titling process in
Ashéninka communities on the Ucayali with those of Ashéninka communities in
the area of the Gran Pajonal. This perspective leads me to argue that the Ucayali
Ashéninka with whom I worked did not demand land titles because of a desire to
control territory or in defense of a collective identity but rather because of their
wish to secure education for their children.
Having outlined the motives for acquiring official recognition, the article then
looks at some of the effects that living in these new forms of settlement has on the
Ashéninka. I examine how outsiders’ views of how communities should be structured interact with the Ashéninka’s own preference for living in autonomous and
dispersed households. I also consider how Ashéninka individuals are introduced to
new practices and bureaucratic processes that impact upon their personal identities
and patterns of living. Of particular interest is how living in communities and
claiming collective ownership of land is encouraging the Ashéninka to feel and act
as a collective rather than as autonomous families. One example of this is how
people now act collectively to defend and mark the boundaries of the settlement’s
land. Such observations lead me to argue that communal identities and collective
action can be as much a result of the recognition of land rights as a cause of
indigenous movements for land rights.
Through this close analysis of the Ashéninka experience the article considers
wider debates about the role of indigenous rights to land and the ways in which
indigenous groups interact with states and their legal and political processes. By
comparing the case of the Ucayali Ashéninka with that of their counterparts in the
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Gran Pajonal and the experiences of indigenous groups in other regions, the article
illustrates the multiplicity of ways in which these interactions can take place. Notwithstanding this multiplicity the article also suggests that, however they are involved in claiming official recognition of their land, indigenous groups are always
compelled in some way to adopt new political structures. I begin with a brief description of the Ashéninka and their customary way of living.
Description of the Ashéninka
To the observer, the Ashéninka way of living appears remarkably atomized. Men
and women generally form isolated and independent households centered on a
single conjugal pair. Each household lives on its own cultivated land some distance
through the forest from other households (see Fig. 1). The aim is complete selfsufficiency, and families can spend long periods with little contact with others.
Against this backdrop of autonomous nuclear families, however, there are two
cultural institutions that facilitate social interaction. One is the practice of holding
periodic gatherings in which one household invites others to come and join them in
drinking freshly prepared manioc beer. The other is the practice of forming
enduring, formal relationships with trading partners (ayompari) from distant
areas. These two practices work at the local and distant level, respectively, to draw
individuals and families into wider networks while allowing them to maintain their
autonomy and independence.
Figure 1 House in Pijuayal
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In keeping with this way of living, in the Ashéninka communities of Pijuayal and
La Selva where I conducted fieldwork, the distances between households could be
quite long. Although most households were 10–15 minutes walk apart, some were
situated over an hour away from their nearest neighbors. Localized clusters can be
discerned from among the whole group, with the houses of married children remaining in the general area of that of their parents. However, it is noticeable that over
time even households interconnected by close kinship ties move further and further
apart. As such, the main unit of Ashéninka society must be considered the nuclear
family: one married couple with their unmarried children (cf. Johnson 2003 for
comparative observations on the Matsiguenga). A husband and wife and their children aim to be entirely self-sufficient for all of their everyday needs and therefore to
have no need to rely upon others. Time and again people told me that living in close
proximity to others inevitably leads to problems, disagreements, and even violence,
as jealousies arise over spouses and domestic animals, and distrust grows between
neighbors. The consensus is that it is better, and more peaceful, to live apart.
In contrast to this peaceful and independent everyday existence, the Ashéninka
are also renowned for their ability to organize themselves into large groups that
undertake concerted action, particularly against threatening outsiders. Historical
examples include their rebellions against Franciscan missions in the 17th and 18th
centuries and rubber traders after the collapse of the rubber market in the 1940s, as
well as their actions against more recent terrorist militias (Brown and Fernández
1991). Renard-Casevitz (1993) has argued that it is the Ashéninka’s trading relationships and their maintenance of social networks over large geographical areas
that have underpinned this ability to form large resistance groups. When it does
occur however, such collective action tends to be short-lived, with families reverting to their more dispersed living styles after the threat has been reduced. Observation of these characteristics has led Hvalkof and Veber (2005) to describe the
Ashéninka social system as being very flexible, where fragmentation and rupture
are commonplace but where momentary union and collective action can have their
place at different times (2005:226). They further suggest that rather than seeing
social disintegration and fragmentation as abnormal, such characteristics within
the Ashéninka context constitute the norm, while characteristics such as incorporation and aggregation, in turn, constitute something possible yet transitory
(2005:226). This basic outline of Ashéninka society gives a foundation from which
to assess how this group has been involved in land-claiming processes.
The Ashéninka and Land Rights
In common with many indigenous peoples, the Ashéninka have historically
been subjected to varying degrees of exploitation and violence at the hands of
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immigrants keen to gain advantage from the natural resources of the forest that
require cheap and plentiful labor. The most notorious period of rapacious extraction and concomitant exploitation of local labor was during the rubber boom of the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. Even after this period, however, similar practices
continued as new products and activities came to the fore, and the use and trading
of slaves was reported in some regions until recent decades (Gray 1998:169; Weiss
2005:52). Most recently it has been the timber industry and cattle ranching that
have depended most on local labor. Such demands for labor and the levels of
exploitation involved tend to increase in relation to a region’s distance and relative
inaccessibility from urban centers, precisely those areas of Peru where the
Ashéninka have been most populous.
S^ren Hvalkof (1998) has documented in detail the experiences of the
Ashéninka in the Gran Pajonal, an elevated plateau surrounded by difficult, mountainous terrain and swift streams that have historically been difficult to access. Its
history is filled with attempts by outsiders to control the local population and it has
hosted some of the worst examples of the abuse of indigenous peoples. Hvalkof’s
article concentrates on the period of the 1980s when Ashéninka in the region
started to act against their oppressors and claim control over the land they
occupied. This was precipitated by a marked resurgence of cattle-raising by colonists who, as well as continuing to exploit the indigenous workforce, also made
increasing incursions into what had traditionally been Ashéninka territory
(1998:104). Hvalkof shows how this added pressure encouraged increasingly politicized young Ashéninka men, supported by protestant missionaries working in
the region, to spearhead the formation of local, indigenous political organizations
that sought to demarcate their land (1998:105). He notes that this process produced
‘‘a real and independent indigenous organization, OAGP [Organización Ashéninka
del Gran Pajonal]’’ that managed to establish itself with leadership posts, statutes,
and a general assembly, and led to the demarcation of 26 new Ashéninka communities between 1984 and 1988 that curbed further colonist expansion (1998:109).
Hvalkof argues that as a result of this political mobilization, and in spite of the fact
that ‘‘patron–peon relationships’’ continued to underpin the economy, ‘‘the
Ashéninka were increasingly becoming an element of political force which nobody ever dreamed they would become’’ (1998:109).
Although he takes care to put these events within the longer historical reality of
the Ashéninka’s responses to various colonial and national projects to take control
of their land and labor, Hvalkof’s account suggests that the degree of political
cohesion and national influence that these movements achieved was of a different
order to those that they had achieved historically. Previous rebellions had achieved
their aims of driving out incomers or those who sought to oppress indigenous
groups with relatively brief periods of violence followed by a return to their
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fragmented living style. In contrast, these new political movements, formed in relation to and in accordance with the structures of national laws, encompassed an
inherent structure that meant that they could endure even after the immediate
threats had passed. Elsewhere Hvalkof has argued that ‘‘the most important result
of this development may not be the titled land itself, but the organizational process
it fomented through a highly participatory strategy of implementation’’ (1994:30).
He goes on to show how, in contrast to other areas, the process of land titling in the
Pajonal and the strategies that it forced the Ashéninka to adopt then played an
important role in their ability to counteract terrorist activities in the area by Sendero
Luminoso (1994:30–32).
This process, where encroaching outsiders compel an indigenous group to act
cohesively, thereby helping them to produce a new form of political organization
and a sense of common identity that did not exist before, has been shown to occur
in a number of cases across South America. Occhipinti (2003), writing about Wichı́
and Kolla communities in Argentina, argues that ‘‘land claims cases have served as
the central element in a political struggle that has spurred these communities to
reinvent and reimagine what it means to be indigenous in contemporary Argentina’’ (2003:157). For these communities, she writes ‘‘gaining land titles is perceived
as a major victory, symbolic of independence, autonomy, and a sense of cultural
unity’’ (2003:170). Rubenstein (2001) has similarly written extensively on the
foundations of the Shuar Federation in Ecuadorian Amazonia. The Shuar were one
of the first Amazonian indigenous groups to set up such a political organization
and Rubenstein quotes a Shuar man’s rationale for this action:
The fundamental problem was we Shuar didn’t count for anything to the settlers; to
the law we were nothing without rights. Just despoilers of the settlers’ land! So Shuar
began to be interested in forming a union of all the Shuar, with the goal of defending
ourselves against the menace of being expelled from our lands. [Rubenstein
2001:279]
In his analysis of the history of the Federation, Rubenstein persuasively shows
how the Federation both emulated and defined itself in contradistinction to the
Ecuadorian state, taking its legitimacy from its actions both for and against the state
(Rubenstein 2001:264). Jackson (1995) has similarly noted among the Tukanoan
groups of the Colombian Vaupés ‘‘that preserving indigenous culture and history
frequently implies increasing use of non-Indian models, models that are worlds
away from traditional Tukanoan ways of organizing politically or maintaining
cultural forms’’ (1995:320).
Such descriptions link to a wider debate over the relationship between states
and indigenous groups. An important exemplar of this debate is the volume edited
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by Ferguson and Whitehead (1992). In his article in that volume, Whitehead argues
that ‘‘specific tribal identities have been shaped by the slow and tenuous expansion
and contraction of the colonial states in the region, notwithstanding their geographical distance or relative isolation from these states’’ (1992:134–5). He holds
that indigenous groups’ reactions to this expansion by the state has been to emphasize ‘‘the immediate locality as the only safe sphere of interaction’’ and ‘‘language as a political marker’’ and thus that ‘‘the kind of inward-facing, bounded, and
isolated social unit that is classically a modern ‘tribal’ formation’’ should be
understood as a response to European expansion in the New World (1992:139).
Updating such arguments Rubenstein, following Morton Fried (1975:99–105), argues that the Shuar Federation should be understood as a ‘‘secondary tribe’’: ‘‘a
polity precipitated through contact with, and actions by, a state. It is chartered by
the state, mimics the form of the state, and is at times an instrument of state policies’’ (Rubenstein 2001:264). Thus he argues that ‘‘what is from the Shuar perspective inclusion in a larger entity is from the Ecuadorian perspective an extension
into a new geographic and social space’’ (2001:264). As can be seen in Hvalkof’s
descriptions, this analysis appears to conform to the experiences and actions of the
Pajonal Ashéninka. There the Ashéninka needed to mimic the mechanisms and
political structure of the state in order to gain its protection from encroaching
outsiders. In the case of both the Shuar and Pajonal Ashéninka, this has meant
setting up official political organizations that can interact with the state in order to
claim rights and obtain a degree of legal parity with other members of the nationstate. My own experience among the Ashéninka on the Ucayali, however, illustrates
that this option is only one of many possible responses.
Echoing Whitehead, and in the same edited volume as his essay, Brown and
Fernández (1992) note that ‘‘there is no evidence to suggest that Asháninka constituted a ‘tribe’Fthat is, a circumscribed, corporate, ethnolinguistic groupFin
any meaningful sense prior to European contact’’ (1992:179). They further argue
that ‘‘internal contradictions of the Peruvian state have given rise to different institutions in the Amazonian frontier and that competition among these institutions provides opportunities for Asháninkas to pursue varying strategies of cultural
survival’’ (1992:194). These are key, interconnected observations for the Asháninka
case, suggesting that given the flexibility of Asháninka culture, combined with the
multiplicity of the Peruvian state’s reactions to its indigenous inhabitants, we
should expect a wide range of different reactions by Asháninka in distinct regions to
the state’s influence and projects.
My objective in the rest of this article is to examine the complexities of this
interaction and how the relation between the state and indigenous groups can occur in different ways, not only for different ethnic groups but also within particular
groups and even within more localized groupings. This will be done through a
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comparison of the reactions and strategies of Ashéninka people living along the
Ucayali with that of their compatriots in the Gran Pajonal. Through this specific
ethnographic comparison, the article, as well as attesting to the diversity of
Ashéninka approaches to the state and land titling, will also address the more
general question of what happens when a group of people who are not part of the
wider indigenous rights movement are granted land titles. I begin by describing the
general reactions of the Ashéninka with whom I worked to ideas of community and
wider political cooperation.
The Community of Pijuayal
At one point in my fieldwork, as I read through the book that contains the minutes
of Pijuayal’s communal meetings, I came across a meeting held in June 2001, at
which an Ashéninka teacher working in a nearby Shipibo community had
explained that he wanted to set up a new indigenous organization. He proposed
to call the organization FECONASHI (Federation of the Asháninka Native Communities of Iparia),2 and hoped to include all ten of the local Ashéninka communities. At a later date I met this teacher and he told me how, when he came to this
region after growing up in a town on the Pachitea and attending college in the local
city of Pucallpa, he was struck by the relative lack of political cohesion and action
taken by Ashéninka people along the Ucayali. He explained that his idea was for the
federation to act ‘‘for the mutual economic and political benefit’’ of the communities. By working together, he argued, they would be able to have more influence in
local politics and get government and non-governmental support for local projects.
He was particularly interested in setting up income-generating projects and one of
his key ideas, recorded in Pijuayal’s minutes, was that each community would raise
money that would then be used by one community to set up a new project. The
proceeds from such an endeavor would then be passed to another community for a
similar project, and the process repeated until all of the communities had set up
their own income-generating projects in turn. The minutes of the meeting do not
record the individual reactions of those present to this scheme, although they do
note the election of one community member to the council of the federation. When
I discussed this idea with people in Pijuayal, however, they were dismissive of the
plan. They talked with respect for the teacher who was trying to organize it, but they
remained unconvinced that any such cooperative society could ever run smoothly
among them, and questioned the desirability of such an organization.
This reluctance to act cooperatively could be seen even within the community
itself. The current mestizo3 primary-school teacher, Wagner, often berated those
present for their lack of a sense of ‘‘community’’ and commented on how the center
of the settlement was never kept neat and how no one helped him with problems
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in the school. As I detailed above, the Ashéninka with whom I worked were fiercely
independent, preferring to provide for their families’ needs using only its immediate
members and without recourse to the help of others. It is this desire for autonomy
that seems to underpin their distrust of working together too much. These attitudes
appear to contrast with the political activism and organization described by Hvalkof
(1998) and Hvalkof and Veber (2005) in the Gran Pajonal. The Ashéninka on the
Ucayali have formed into communities and gained titles to their lands, and yet this
process does not seem to have induced them into forming regional, or even local,
political or cooperative organizations. This difference has led me to consider the
local importance of comunidades nativas, and also their historical formation and
how this may have differed from examples in the Gran Pajonal.
Santos-Granero and Barclay (1998) have also described the process of indigenous community formation in the central jungles. As with Hvalkof and Veber, the
degree of cohesion they describe in Asháninka and Yanesha communities in the
foothills of the Andes appears to be more coordinated than that which I observed
on the Ucayali. Again, the primary difference here seems to have been the relatively
high numbers of incoming settlers in the highland regions, which are situated that
much closer to Peru’s urban centers. Yet, even as Santos-Granero and Barclay describe the process of land titling in a similar manner to Hvalkof (1998), they also
note the importance of schools in bringing people together (Santos-Granero and
Barclay 1998:239). They suggest that it was in the 1950s, with the arrival of the
Summer Institute of Linguistics in the central jungles, ‘‘that the phenomenon of a
community with a school as a gathering point for the indigenous population
became widespread’’ (1998:239). Examining this process more closely they quote
an Asháninka resident of Betania:
In our grandparents’ day, there was no community y . When everyone gets together to work, it’s called community y I think that the school is bringing everyone
together y . Before, in our grandparents’ day, there was no school y . Almost
everyone wandered here and there. [They] only [gathered] when they drank manioc
beer y . When they were finished everyone went home, and later, they invited
everyone to get together again. [Santos-Granero and Barclay 1998:243, originally in
Villasante 1983:108]
This process of community formation, with its emphasis on the role of schools,
appears to be more like that which occurred in the communities that I studied on
the Ucayali. The settlements of Pijuayal and La Selva were founded after the introduction of new national laws aimed, in part, at alleviating some of the problems
suffered by indigenous groups in the central jungle (Brown and Fernández
1992:190).4
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The first Law of Native Communities was passed on June 24, 1974, under the
military government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado. Its stated aim was to ‘‘establish an agrarian structure which would contribute to the integrated development of the jungle in such a way that its population could maintain a level of living
compatible with human dignity’’ (Smith 1979:42). The government also saw the
law as a means of formalizing the state’s relationship with its indigenous inhabitants who, up until this time, had no official legal recognition. Article 161 of the
1979 Constitution, which further advanced this law, gives clear recognition to the
comunidades nativas of the jungle as ‘‘judicially autonomous entities in their
organization, communal work and use of the land, both economically and administratively speaking, within the confines established by law’’ (Roldán and
Tamayo 1999:101–102, my translation).
Pijuayal was founded in the years following the revision of the Law of Native
Communities, gaining its official title in 1985. Two brothers-in-law, Agustin and
Germán, both Ashéninka men who had come into the area from further up the
Ucayali, were the main instigators of Pijuayal’s formation and official recognition.
At the time, they were living close to their wives’ parents in the area known as
Mashantay. There had previously been a school at the center of this settlement that
was staffed by bilingual teachers supplied from the Summer Institute of Linguistics.
However, at some point in the late 1970s the teachers had stopped coming and the
settlement had lost its central focus. My host, Jorge, who had married into the same
family as Agustin and Germán, told me how the fish and game in the area had also
been depleted and how the site of Pijuayal, situated on the larger Amaquaria River,
offered plentiful fish as well as new hunting grounds and space for manioc gardens.
Agustin was the instigator of the move to the new area, a distance of about five
miles. While there was general agreement that this was a better area in which to live,
Agustin also convinced people to move by promising to build another school. In
describing their decision to relocate, people told me that this was the most important issue for them and Agustin himself described this as his central preoccupation. It was to this end that Agustin and Germán applied to the Ministry of
Education for an official government teacher, and also initiated the long process
of gaining official recognition of their community. In the meantime Agustin built
his own school, in the form of a traditional thatched house, and then convinced a
Shipibo man from the nearby community of Amaquaria to come and act as a
teacher in return for a crop of rice that was grown on a communal agricultural
plot.5
Thus, whereas Hvalkof (1998), Gray (1998) and Hvalkof and Veber (2005)
emphasize the importance of the protection of land and ethnic identity in the setting up of communities among various Asháninka groups, this did not seem to be
in the minds of the Pijuayaliños as they set about gaining official recognition of
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their lands. Rather, as both Agustin and Germán described, they primarily wanted
to have their new community officially recognized so that the ministry of education
would take their demand for a teacher seriously. Before considering the wider
implications of this difference, and the manner in which it affected how the
Pijuayaliños conceptualized and actualized their desire for official recognition of
their community, I first wish to consider the importance of education to my
informants and how it fits with wider aspects of Ashéninka culture.
The Importance of Education
The central importance of education to the people I lived with was brought home to
me on a particular occasion well into my fieldwork when Ipaulita, the oldest of my
friend Jorge’s unmarried daughters, went with another girl, Daisy, to visit La Selva.
They promised to be gone for only a few days. After a week or so had passed and she
had still not returned Jorge grew increasingly annoyed at her absence. He and his
wife Edith, who was much more relaxed about Ipaulita’s absence, started to argue
over what should be done, and Jorge turned to me lamenting about his wayward
daughter. He told me that his ‘‘heart hurt,’’ not only because of her refusal to return,
but even more because she was missing school. If she missed school then she might
as well ‘‘vivir en los cerros, sin sal y fósforos’’ (live in the hills, without salt or matches). For Jorge, his children’s attendance at school was the main impetus for their
living in the comunidad. It was also an important part of their becoming ‘‘civilizado,’’ a status that distinguished them from those Ashéninka who lived, or still
live, away from others without any of the trappings of modern life. He often told me
that he had deliberately built his house right next to the school about eight years
previously so that his children could all receive an education. During my final
months in the area Jorge decided to move his entire family to Amaquaria, the
nearby Shipibo community, so that another of his daughters, Sylvia, could attend
the secondary school there.
The attraction of education for indigenous peoples has been noted before in
Amazonian (for example Gow 1991, Rival 1992, 1996, 2002) and beyond (De la
Cadena 2005:278). Both Rival and Gow argue that modern education in government-run schools is linked, in the minds of their informants, with the notion of
becoming ‘‘civilized.’’ Gow notes his Piro informants’ view that ‘‘people who cannot read or write, who cannot count, and who cannot speak Spanish well are people
who ‘have not civilized themselves’ (que faltan civilizarse)’’ (Gow 1991:233). Beyond just being ‘‘civilized’’ for its own sake, the important point is that people who
are not educated are ‘‘at the mercy of those who do possess such accomplishments.
It is said of such people that no saben defenderseFthey do not know how to defend
themselves’’ (Gow 1991:233).6 This same idea underlies my informants’ insistence
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on the importance of schooling for their children. Many of the men often appeared
resigned to the exploitation that they suffered at the hands of outsiders, telling me
that they themselves did not know any better. But they were adamant that if their
children learned how to read and, most of all, how to work with numbers, then they
would not be cheated in the future. The power of this idea was illustrated by the fact
that Ipaulita had in fact already ‘‘graduated’’ twice from the school. In each of the
last two years she had been considered a member of Class 6 (the final year) and both
the previous and current teachers had deemed her to have finished her primary
education. At the start of each subsequent school year, however, Jorge had insisted
on her continuing at school, despite her and her teachers’ attempts to explain that
this was no longer appropriate. In the end it was only the fact of getting pregnant
(during the very trip to La Selva that so upset Jorge) that made him relent.
This underlying emphasis on formal schooling for children so that they will be
better able to defend themselves in the future can be seen as fitting with older
Ashéninka cultural ideas and, in particular, with their emphasis on individuals’
independence and equality. As I noted in my description of Ashéninka society,
nuclear families aim to be as self-sufficient as possible. This means that a woman
will tend to her agricultural plot with only the help of her daughters while a man
will usually prefer to hunt and fish completely alone. Further, illnesses would be
diagnosed and treated within the family with parents using their own knowledge of
herbal treatments and shamanic practice to cure their children. Similarly, disputes
with other individuals or households were dealt with by the individuals involved,
without recourse to any outside authority or mediation. Even attempts to influence
‘‘higher order’’ things, such as the weather or luck in hunting, were made by individual men themselves. Alongside this desire for self-sufficiency runs a belief in
the essential equality of all people. While leaders can and do emerge in relation to
specific needs and circumstances, such as when coordinated large-scale cooperation is necessary, everyday living is marked by a distinct egalitarian ethos. Distinctions between people are downplayed or even actively negated and individuals are
adamant about their own abilities to make decisions and take necessary actions
over most issues. This idea of the inherent equality of people also stretches to encompass non-Ashéninka. While recognizing the power of outsiders, Ashéninka
individuals do not seem to see themselves as inferior to them. As Veber writes:
Long-standing economic relations with nonnative settlers have not induced the
Pajonal Ashéninka to conceive of themselves as marginal in terms of a totalizing
system in which settlers y or other non-Ashéninka y represent the center. On the
contrary, as far as the Ashéninka are concerned, they themselves are the center of
their world; other people may have their own centers, but these are not important to
the Ashéninka. [1998:384]
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Yet, even as Ashéninka individuals see themselves as the equals of outsiders, in
the reality of their interactions with outsiders they feel themselves to be at a disadvantage and unable to defend themselves in a world in which reading and the use
of numbers are of central importance. This is what Jorge was referring to in his
anger at Ipaulita, for without these new forms of knowledge she might as well refuse
to interact with the outside world at all. Veber has noted that this desire for foreign
knowledge can be seen throughout the Ashéninka’s recorded history and that ‘‘although all previous experiments with schooling for the Pajonal Ashéninka have
failed, the Ashéninka have never abandoned their interest in it’’ (1998:396). This
embracing of Western-style education has distinct consequences for Ashéninka
communities and how individuals see themselves in relation to each other as well
as to Peruvian National Society. These changes, however, do not seem to lessen
people’s desire for an education for their children.
So far I have argued that it was people’s desire for a teacher and school that
underpinned their organization into a community, rather than a need to control
territory or defend a collective identity. It might be argued that these two ideas are
interrelated in the sense that my informants’ desire for education was based on the
notion that this would better allow their children to defend themselves. The distinction, however, is that in desiring a better life for their children individuals are
thinking of their own specific children rather than the benefits that might accrue to
a wider cultural or ethnic grouping. While the effect of having more educated
people in the community might facilitate its survival and therefore the continuation of the larger ethnic group to which individuals belong, this consequence was
not explicitly considered by those involved, who were instead focused on the relatively circumscribed goal of gaining a schoolteacher who could teach their own
children. Having outlined why Pijuayaliños wanted a school and therefore an organized community, I will now examine how this focus on a school influenced the
manner in which Pijuayaliños experienced the process of gaining official recognition of their community.
The Act of Titling
The success of the Pijuayaliños’ claims lay in no small way to help they gained from
outsiders. Obtaining a full title to land involves no less than 26 distinct stages (Gray
1998:171) and requires attendance at various different government offices and the
filing of specific requests, application forms and documents: procedures difficult
for forest-dwelling indigenous people to undertake without assistance. Agustin
described to me how they were helped with the arduous and excessively bureaucratic titling process by a number of timbermen working in the area.7 These timbermen ferried Agustin and Germán back and forth to the relevant ministries in
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Pucallpa, and even transported some of the government surveyors (known locally
as ingenieros8) to the jungle when the latter did not have the petrol or boats to travel
there themselves. Agustin remained vague about exactly who these ingenieros, were
but it seems likely that most of them were working with various government and
non-governmental organizations that helped to promote and facilitate the titling of
land to indigenous communities during this time.
As I have described above, from the manner in which Agustin, Germán, and all
local Ashéninka who had been involved in this process discussed it, it was always
clear that their main preoccupation was with gaining a good-quality schoolteacher.
In this sense they seemed to see the actual process of receiving official recognition as
more of a means to an end than an end in itself. Consequently, they were not at first
overly concerned with other results of the process such as receiving titles to their
land, but rather went along with the steps of the process as it was shown to them. In
short, from my informants’ point of view, the actions of the timbermen and ingenieros, along with the final procurement of official documents, were acts that were
necessary for them to receive a teacher, not acts to affirm their territory and cultural
identity.9 I follow Veber in seeing these necessary actions and documents as ‘‘tokens
of civilization,’’ conceived of as potent rituals or powerful entities in themselves that
must be somehow ‘‘captured’’ (1998:396). In this view, documents are imagined to
have significance in and of themselves, and the cutting of a boundary is not only
done to make a physical mark of ownership in the landscape but also as an act of
symbolic significance that ensures the continued presence and official recognition
of the comunidad and hence of the school and government teacher.
This idea was further emphasized to me by the importance that was given by my
informants to the official map of the comunidad that formed the central piece of
documentation for the land title. This was kept in a special folder wrapped up in
plastic and carefully hidden away in Agustin’s house. It was only brought out for
‘‘official’’ matters, and was treated with a kind of care I never saw reserved for any
other article. For example, I had great difficulty convincing Agustin to let me borrow it for a few days in order to correlate it with my own geographical survey.
This reverence for official documents has been noted in a number of indigenous
groups in South America.10 Århem describes how among the Makuna official
documents are ‘‘treated with reverence and invested with an almost sacred quality’’
(2000:85). Meanwhile Rappaport (1985), working among the Páez Indians of
highland Colombia, describes how when she told local leaders that she was going to
consult archives in Quito they asked her to obtain the original title to their land
granted by the King of Spain to their ancestral leader Juan Tama. She describes how
the Páez believe that Tama was ‘‘born in a mountain stream, the son of the Waters
and the Star’’ and how ‘‘even though the Indian council of Vitoncó held an official
copy of the document, this was not enough for them; they believed that the original
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manuscript, being of supernatural origin, was more efficacious in the defense of
their boundaries than its copy’’ (1985:27). This is an understandable reaction when
indigenous people see the importance that is placed on such documents by outsiders, and the power that their ownership, or lack of ownership, seems to have. As
Veber argues in the case of the Gran Pajonal, ‘‘the magical realism inherent in the
Ashéninka project was proven as true as the legal-organizational aspects of it,’’ in
that once groups had procured these documents their control of the land and power
in the local area was seen to dramatically increase (1998:396). While Pijuayaliños
did not invest their documents with the same mystical attributes as the Páez Indians, nevertheless, they considered them to have a power that was more than
symbolic. This importance also covered the actions that these maps required,
namely the physical inscribing of the boundaries that they depicted onto the actual
landscape, a fact to which I will return below.
This brief account of the formation of a specific indigenous settlement again
emphasizes how the desire for official recognition of the community had little to do
with self-preservation in terms of protecting their land from outsiders. In fact it was
outsiders, in the form of government laws and timbermen, who helped to make it
possible, which makes an interesting contrast with the process of land titling as it
has been described in other areas. I now want to go on to examine some of the
effects that the formation of these new settlements had on people in the area, for
while the Ashéninka’s desire for education for their children can be understood as
fitting within their own cultural understandings, the fact of living in nucleated
settlements still goes against their own statements about how they prefer to live
apart.
Living in Communities
Veber notes that the Law of Native Communities of 1974, based as it was on existing
peasant communities in the highlands, presupposed a ‘‘communal village-type
organization of the rural population, a form of social organization foreign to many
Amazonian peoples, including the Ashéninka’’ (1998:394; see also Aroca Medina
and Maury Parra 1993:23). The difference between an official comunidad and the
customary form of Ashéninka living in isolated homesteads is starkly obvious. Not
only are such comunidades expected to have a school building, but also there are
specific guidelines governing the terrain around the school. For example, it should
face onto a field of a certain size, which is to be used for morning assembly and for
recreation time and sports. By extension, there should be a cleared grassy area all
around the building. In most comunidades, houses are then beside the playing field
and along the length of grid-like ‘‘streets’’ that stretch out in four directions. Larger
settlements should have other official buildings, one for the agente (community
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manager)11 and one for the jefe (chief), as well as a separate communal building in
which to hold meetings. Teachers were constantly encouraging the community to
build such structures and to keep the whole area cultivated and clean (see Fig. 2).
While none of these aspects are legally necessary, the reality is that all outsiders
who come to these communities constantly remark on a settlement’s relative conformity to this generic model. This was particularly the case when representatives of
the local government or health services visited. Indeed, Santos-Granero and Barclay note that SINAMOS,12 the government agency originally charged with helping
to implement indigenous land titling, ‘‘played an important role in promoting
nucleated settlement and indigenous organization, thus reinforcing the new ‘native
community’ model’’ (1998:243). While SINAMOS had been disbanded by the time
of the formation of Pijuayal, the connection between land titles and nucleated settlements appears to have been widely held. Thus, not only were people from
Pijuayal faced with the new idea of gaining official recognition, but they also found
themselves having to conform to the state’s idea of how people should live, and then
having to deal with the new social structures that this created.13
Hvalkof and Veber (2005:172) argue that native communities should not be
seen as a completely new form of living, as periods of living in more nucleated
forms have always punctuated Ashéninka history. While this is true to a degree, the
fact that such agglomerations have tended to be instigated by outsiders, particularly
missionaries, and to have disintegrated after a period of time, attests to the relative
dominance of the desire for separation among the Ashéninka. As I noted at the
Figure 2 Celebrating Peruvian Independence Day in La Selva
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beginning of this article, Hvalkof and Veber themselves suggest that rather than
seeing social disintegration and fragmentation as abnormal, within the Ashéninka
context they can be understood to constitute the norm, while ‘‘incorporation and
aggregation constitute something possible and transitory’’ (2005:226). This emphasis on separation is finally attested to by the words of the Ashéninka living in
such communities and their constant discussion of the problems and issues that it
raises for them. In particular, people often made comparisons between their relatively dispersed form of living and that of neighboring Shipibo communities
where, to their minds, people were constantly falling out with each other and
violence between individuals was a commonplace owing to everyone’s relative
proximity.
As well as compelling Ashéninka to live closer to each other, living in geographically defined comunidades nativas also changes people’s relationship with
the land on which they live and with other settlements and groups around them.
Gow writes:
For native people, a comunidad nativa is a combination of the following elements: a
named village with a defined territory, and an associated group of people. These
people are known to be in the comunidad nativa because their names are written in
the list of comunidad nativa members. This document and the title of property
given to the community by the state embody the comunidad nativa. The territory of
the comunidad nativa is known to all adults, and y a cleared path runs the entire
length of the boundary. [1991:205–6]
For the Piro, who have long lived in relatively close-knit settlements, the creation of comunidades nativas did not represent as great a change as it did for the
Ashéninka, for whom these defined settlements and ‘‘communities’’ were novel.
This form of living connected people more closely to the land on which they lived
and made a definite separation between those who are counted as members of the
communities and outsiders. These ideas were exemplified in a particular sequence
of events that I witnessed during my fieldwork in Pijuayal.
Events began at a communal meeting when the issue of a neighboring comunidad’s encroachment into Pijuayal’s land was raised. It was alleged that the
inhabitants of Santa Rosa de Ranuya were intent on stealing territory, and timber,
from Pijuayal. This had apparently long been suspected, yet little had been done
about it before. New impetus to take action was precipitated by a number of things.
Firstly Antuco, Agustin’s oldest son, had been elected agente of Pijuayal. Antuco
was caught by a new fervor to turn Pijuayal into a ‘‘proper’’ comunidad, a conception based on what he had learned in school and from mestizos. Hence, at the
next communal meeting, Antuco made an effort to get as many families there as
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possible, and a sizeable number turned up to decide what action to take against the
Santa Rosans. Between these two meetings, another important event had occurred
that roused my informants even more: two ingenieros had turned up specifically to
look at the state of the comunidad’s boundaries. They were part of a commission
from AIDESEP,14 the national indigenous organization that acts to help indigenous
groups in various matters. Although the ingenieros went no further than to confirm
the two boundary markers closest to the community itself (which were never in
dispute), their presence galvanized the Pijuayaliños as it suggested that ‘‘the state’’
was on their side and considered such matters to be important.
A few days later I thus found myself involved in a boundary-cutting expedition
that was to last three days. Progress was slow and tiring as we cut a three-mile long
and 20-foot wide swathe through the forest, working in the difficult terrain at the
base of the hills that lie behind the community (see Fig. 3). After my numerous
experiences of the uncoordinated labor usually carried out by purely Ashéninka
groups, I was surprised by the concerted and planned nature of this communal
action and the fact that so much effort was spent on cutting this, to my mind,
Figure 3 Cutting Pijuayal’s Communal Boundary
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useless line. There was no evidence that people from Santa Rosa were taking timber
from this area, and given its hilly terrain and relative inaccessibility and distance
from the Ucayali River, it held little agricultural value, so there was little chance of
people from other areas actually making use of the land. Those on the expedition,
however, focused on two issues: that they had a duty to defend what was now their
land, and that proper communities maintained clear and marked territorial
boundaries.
Here, I contend, we again see the particularities of these people’s understanding
of the land-titling process. I have already shown how, for my informants, the desire
for official recognition of comunidades nativas was linked to their desire to educate
their children. In this view, which sees land titles as a consequence of official recognition of comunidades nativas rather than as the original stimulus for gaining
government recognition, government policies can be seen to have created a new
preoccupation and reason for association for the Ashéninka. Cutting the boundary
is, in part, another ‘‘token of civilization’’ (Veber 1998:396) that must be enacted in
order to ensure the continued presence and official recognition of the comunidad
and hence of the school and government teacher. Again in contrast to the situation
in other areas where Ashéninka territory was being encroached by incomers, I argue
that in Pijuayal it was only once the communities had received recognition and
ingenieros had come to the area to show individuals the importance of maintaining
their boundaries that such ideas took hold and led to determined communal effort
to maintain and protect their land. This was an effect that, having occurred when
Pijuayal was first registered, was reenacted in the episode that I observed. The
election of a younger, schooled member of the comunidad to a position of authority, coupled with a visit by official representatives of the government’s laws,
stimulated Pijuayaliños to take this concerted action. I never saw any evidence that
Santa Rosans were actually taking timber from Pijuayal’s land; rather, the concern
must be understood in terms of new ideas about the importance of acting ‘‘properly’’ in recognizing and defending communal land. Furthermore, these actions
were taken against another Ashéninka settlement rather than against mestizo colonists, and thus there was no sense that the Ashéninka were defending their way of
life against encroaching outsiders.
These ideas were not restricted to Pijuayal. In La Selva, Silo, a young man in his
late twenties, described how the people from the neighboring Shipibo community
of Amaquaria had once come to La Selva in a group, demanding that the boundary
between the two comunidades be changed. The inhabitants of La Selva, on hearing
this, came out in a large group, complete with flags and bows and arrows, to stop the
Amaquarians at what they considered to be their border. Silo described how a vocal
standoff and acrimonious exchanges had ensued, and he laughed at the remembrance of how enraged my comadre (co-mother, I was godparent to her daughter),
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Melita, had been, and how she had threatened to kill the ‘‘invaders.’’ The Amaquarians had brought government ingenieros, hoping to gain official backing for their
desire to change the original boundaries laid down in the 1980s. In the end, however, the ingenieros were forced to rule in favor of the status quo because of the
presence of gardens on the La Selvan side right up to the boundary line. I noted that
cultivated plots still bordered this line. Again, this story suggests the manner in
which land rights encourage collective action in defense of this new-found ‘‘property.’’
These actions can also be understood as another example of the Ashéninka’s
willingness to join together for specific purposes that has been seen throughout
their history whenever they have faced major outside threats (Brown and
Fernández 1991, Hvalkof 1998). However, the important fact is that this defense
of communal lands is a new preoccupation for the Ashéninka. The Ashéninka have
always had some sense of local affiliation and have been willing to take action
against those who threaten them. While this suggests the existence of definite
continuities between pre-existing Ashéninka notions of place and community and
those formalized through state decree and the titling of land, there are two reasons
why I consider the latter to have introduced definitive changes. First, groups
are now associated with definite and prescribed areas of land that they actively
monitor, and second, these groups are now less flexible as they are based on
formal membership rather than, as previously, on chosen allegiance and friendship.
As Århem has noted among the Makuna of Colombia, new village structures
transform local political landscapes by ‘‘freezing the formerly fluid boundaries between local y groups’’ (2001:136). Rosengren similarly writes that among the
Matsiguenga ‘‘the introduction of Comunidades Nativas has y fomented the development of a group consciousness that did not exist earlier, when settlement
groups consisted of a number of loosely related and dispersed households’’
(2003:230).
By granting titled land to groups of people that have formed into a comunidad
nativa, the government can be seen to have introduced not only a new sense
of ownership but also a new impetus for frequent communal cooperation, for
assigning land to one specific group of people creates a separation between
‘‘us,’’ sharing title to this land, and ‘‘them,’’ intruders and those from neighboring
communities. Moreover, given the size and dimensions of the titled lands, the
group must work together if it wants to protect these effectively. I therefore
contend that in Pijuayal and La Selva the act of entitling a particular piece of land
to a defined group of people has brought into existence a new form of community
where hitherto there had only been an ephemeral grouping. Furthermore, this
state of affairs is characterized by its supposed permanence. By connecting a
specific group to a specific territory the flexibility inherent in the old system is
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taken away. Firstly, the group is no longer able to separate, as subgroups
cannot claim new territory, and hence have nowhere to go. Secondly, and more
importantly, the jefe has acquired a new and more permanent prominence,
by virtue of his dominance of the surrounding land and claims over the
school whose construction he instigated.15 If individuals choose to wander
away they must leave the comunidad altogether and take their children from
the school. While it is possible for them to move to an entirely new comunidad,
they cannot effectively deny the power of the jefe, or move their allegiance
to another individual while remaining in the same area and having
access to the central features of the comunidad (cf. Rosengren 2000,
2003).
Such consequences are perhaps unavoidable given the geographic area over
which the Ashéninka are dispersed and the fact that other indigenous and migrant
populations are interspersed within their territory. There is no way of delimiting
one area for the group as a whole, and thus land titles must be granted to more local
groups. My point is not to criticize the granting of land titles themselves, however,
but rather to show how the process of land titling can affect indigenous groups in
different ways and specifically how, on the Ucayali, the recognition of land rights
has induced Ashéninka to act collectively in ways that they would not have done
previously.
Conclusion
The indigenous rights movement has been characterized by a stressing of the shared
characteristics of indigenous groups across the world, particularly of their shared
history of economic and political marginalization (Niezen 2003:218) and their own
emphasis on collective, rather than individual, rights and well-being (Garcı́a Hierro
and Surrallés 2005:259–60). By taking a specific ethnographic example and analyzing one indigenous group’s reasons for forming an officially recognized settlement, this article has sought to contribute to debates about the role of land titles.
Rather than beginning with the reasons why land titles are important in the larger
political, social, and economic context, I have instead tried to understand the impetus for settlement formation and its effects from the point of view of the
Ashéninka themselves.
The article has shown how the Ashéninka of Pijuayal and La Selva formed
communities and then sought official recognition for them in order to gain government-sponsored education for their children. This situation stands in distinct
contrast to depictions of indigenous South American peoples that show how their
demands for land rights are based on their desire for independence and the
protection of their cultural identities. My informants did not seek titles to their land
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in order to maintain their communities, power or identity (Gray 1997:89). For
independent Ashéninka individuals it was the reality of the government laws and
the need to create bounded settlements in prescribed ways that produced a communal identity where previously there were individual families. Further, these laws
have created fixed separations among the Ashéninka, dividing them into specific
communities where previously a continuous and fluid system of separation and
cooperation would have existed. In this view land titles, and the associated influence of bringing people together in order to acquire them, is an act of social transformation for indigenous groups rather than an act of cultural affirmation or
protection.
Acknowledgments
Fieldwork was carried out on the Ucayali river in Eastern Peru from August 2001 to
July 2003, supported by the Central Research Fund (University of London), the
London School of Economics, and the Royal Anthropological Institute. My greatest
debt remains to the people of the Ucayali for letting me into their lives. Earlier
versions of this article were presented at the London School of Economics Latin
America Seminar and the University of Oxford departmental seminar and I am
grateful to those present for their comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to
my doctoral supervisors Peter Gow and Deborah James, examiners Stephen HughJones and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro for their insights and encouragement, and
the two reviewers for the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology for
taking the time to give detailed suggestions.
Notes
1
The Ashéninka are part of the larger ethnic group now known as the Asháninka. There are various
subgroups of Asháninka. Divisions are chiefly based on linguistic differences with distinct dialects related to particular river systems and geographical areas (Heise et al. 1995). Culturally, however, all of the
subgroups are very similar and also share many cultural characteristics with their closely related Arawakan neighbors, the Matsiguenga and Nomatsiguenga. I will chiefly use the term Ashéninka when referring to the people with whom I worked. However, the term Asháninka will also be used to encompass
all of the ethnic subgroups of Ashéninka and Asháninka.
2
Federación de las Comunidades Nativas Asháninkas de Iparia.
3
Mestizo is used locally, and self-referentially, to refer to people of mixed heritage.
4
Brown and Fernández note that, in part, it was the experience of Peruvian army officers of the
desperate social conditions and exploitation at the hands of colonists suffered by Asháninka groups that
‘‘helped to inspire a leftist military coup in 1968 and the subsequent enactment of a progressive Native
Communities Law that promised land titles to Asháninkas and other Amazonian Indians’’ (1992:190).
5
The central importance of education in setting up communities was further attested to by the fact
that my informants recounted the history of settlements in the area in terms of schools. For example,
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when talking of Mashantay, no one could tell me whether or not it had been an official comunidad
nativa. Rather, their descriptions of the rise and fall of the settlement centered on its procurement of a
teacher and his subsequent refusal, after teaching for a number of years, to return. Similarly, accounts of
the history of Pijuayal were structured around the names of teachers who had come and gone and the
fates of the various structures that had been used to house the school.
6
In a similar example, an old man in a highland settlement near Cuzco described to De la Cadena
how he had decided to set up a school in the 1920s after a hacienda owner had almost tricked him into
taking a letter recommending his own arrest to the police. ‘‘It was then that I decided to put an end to our
ignorance and organize the school’’ (2005:278).
7
The timbermen were themselves keen for the comunidad to be officially recognized, as this would
enable them to claim that they were legally helping the Ashéninka to extract timber from their own
lands. My current research is to study these relationships from the timbermen’s point of view and bring
out the interesting practical and ideological dynamics that these relationships entail on both sides.
Unfortunately space does not permit a full discussion of the implications of this cooperation here.
8
This term is used in the region to refer to all skilled workers and professionals.
9
The fact that the assistance of the timbermen was precipitated by their own ulterior motives does
not mitigate the importance of their contribution; without it, Ashéninka individuals would never have
been able to see the process through to its conclusion.
10
There is also an interesting parallel here with Gow’s analysis of early Piro interpretations of
writing when he argues that the ‘‘ugliness’’ of Western writing and its apparently un-uniform nature
suggested to the Piro that the power of documents lay less in the marks on them than in the paper itself
(2001:208). While among the Ashéninka the nature of writing was more fully understood, they still
seemed to reify the documents themselves rather than the words that were written on them.
11
This is one of the official positions in a comunidad nativa. In Pijuayal and La Selva, the agente was
considered to be in charge of the internal management of the settlement: the upkeep of the communal
areas, buildings and paths, along with keeping the peace.
12
SINAMOS: Sistema Nacional de Movilización Social (National System of Social Mobilization).
13
It may be the case that the Ucayali Ashéninka, having been helped to form these communities by
outsiders, feel more compelled to conform to foreign ideas about community structure than their
counterparts in the Pajonal who, having been more instrumental in getting their land demarcated, saw
no compulsion to adapt their customary form of living. Further comparative research would be needed
to confirm or deny this hypothesis.
14
AIDESEP: Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo en la Selva Peruana (Inter-ethnic Association for
the Development of the Peruvian Jungle).
15
Space has not allowed me to consider the personal strategies employed by local leaders, such as
Agustin, in using schools and other benefits brought by outsiders to enhance their own political and
economic positions.
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