creating community: land titling, education, and settlement

Creating Community: Land Titling,Education, and Settlement Formation Amongthe Asheninka of Peruvian Amazonia

By

Evan KillickThe London School of Economics

R e s u m e n

Este artıculo analiza tanto el proceso como los efectos del proceso de titulacion de las

tierras indıgenas por parte del pueblo Asheninka en el Peru. Aquı se toman en cuenta las

relaciones entre el estado y los grupos indıgenas y se muestra como estas relaciones

pueden ocurrir en multiples maneras, difiriendo no solo entre distintos grupos nativos

sino tambien al interior de un mismo grupo etnico. El artıculo compara las diferentes

historias de varias comunidades Asheninka; tanto las que han luchado por la obtencion

de derechos a la tierra como las que han buscado su reconocimiento oficial como parte

de un proceso de formalizacion legal. En comunidades del segundo tipo el artıculo

muestra que el deseo de lograr una mejor educacion para sus hijos es el fundamento de

la busqueda del reconocimiento oficial. El artıculo toma en cuenta los efectos que

conlleva para los Asheninka el vivir en comunidades oficialmente reconocidas.

Concluye que las identidades y acciones comuna les pueden ser no una motivacion

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 Asheninka communities

in eastern central Peru. Through this analysis the article considers the relationship be-

tween 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 Asheninka 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 Asheninka’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.

2 2 J O U R N A L O F L A T I N A M E R I C A N A N D C A R I B B E A N A N T H R O P O L O G Y

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: Peru, Amazonia, tierras indigenas, educacion.

KEYWORDS: Peru, Amazonia, indigenous people, land rights, education.

THIS ARTICLE IS BASED ON FIELDWORK carried out in two Asheninka1 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 claim-

ing 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

Asheninka communities on the Ucayali with those of Asheninka communities in

the area of the Gran Pajonal. This perspective leads me to argue that the Ucayali

Asheninka 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

Asheninka. I examine how outsiders’ views of how communities should be struc-

tured interact with the Asheninka’s own preference for living in autonomous and

dispersed households. I also consider how Asheninka 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 Asheninka 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 Asheninka 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 Asheninka with that of their counterparts in the

Creating Community 23

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. Not-

withstanding this multiplicity the article also suggests that, however they are in-

volved 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 de-

scription of the Asheninka and their customary way of living.

Description of the Asheninka

To the observer, the Asheninka 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 self-

sufficiency, 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


In keeping with this way of living, in the Asheninka 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 re-

maining 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 Asheninka 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 chil-

dren 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 Asheninka

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 Fernandez

1991). Renard-Casevitz (1993) has argued that it is the Asheninka’s trading rela-

tionships 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 revert-

ing to their more dispersed living styles after the threat has been reduced. Obser-

vation of these characteristics has led Hvalkof and Veber (2005) to describe the

Asheninka 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 Asheninka context constitute the norm, while characteristics such as incorpo-

ration and aggregation, in turn, constitute something possible yet transitory

(2005:226). This basic outline of Asheninka society gives a foundation from which

to assess how this group has been involved in land-claiming processes.

The Asheninka and Land Rights

In common with many indigenous peoples, the Asheninka have historically

been subjected to varying degrees of exploitation and violence at the hands of


immigrants keen to gain advantage from the natural resources of the forest that

require cheap and plentiful labor. The most notorious period of rapacious extrac-

tion 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

Asheninka have been most populous.

S^ren Hvalkof (1998) has documented in detail the experiences of the

Asheninka in the Gran Pajonal, an elevated plateau surrounded by difficult, moun-

tainous 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 Asheninka 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 col-

onists who, as well as continuing to exploit the indigenous workforce, also made

increasing incursions into what had traditionally been Asheninka territory

(1998:104). Hvalkof shows how this added pressure encouraged increasingly po-

liticized young Asheninka 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 [Organizacion Asheninka

del Gran Pajonal]’’ that managed to establish itself with leadership posts, statutes,

and a general assembly, and led to the demarcation of 26 new Asheninka commu-

nities 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

Asheninka were increasingly becoming an element of political force which no-

body ever dreamed they would become’’ (1998:109).

Although he takes care to put these events within the longer historical reality of

the Asheninka’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


fragmented living style. In contrast, these new political movements, formed in re-

lation 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 Asheninka 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 Wichı

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 Argen-

tina’’ (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 Vaupes ‘‘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


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 geo-

graphical 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 em-

phasize ‘‘the immediate locality as the only safe sphere of interaction’’ and ‘‘lan-

guage 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), ar-

gues 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 pol-

icies’’ (Rubenstein 2001:264). Thus he argues that ‘‘what is from the Shuar per-

spective 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 Asheninka. There the Asheninka 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 Asheninka, 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 nation-

state. My own experience among the Asheninka 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

Fernandez (1992) note that ‘‘there is no evidence to suggest that Ashaninka con-

stituted 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 in-

stitutions in the Amazonian frontier and that competition among these institu-

tions provides opportunities for Ashaninkas to pursue varying strategies of cultural

survival’’ (1992:194). These are key, interconnected observations for the Ashaninka

case, suggesting that given the flexibility of Ashaninka 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 Ashaninka 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 oc-

cur 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


comparison of the reactions and strategies of Asheninka 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

Asheninka 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 Asheninka 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 Asheninka 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 Ashaninka Native Com-

munities of Iparia),2 and hoped to include all ten of the local Asheninka commu-

nities. 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 Asheninka people along the Ucayali. He explained that his idea was for the

federation to act ‘‘for the mutual economic and political benefit’’ of the commu-

nities. 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


in the school. As I detailed above, the Asheninka 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 Asheninka 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 indig-

enous community formation in the central jungles. As with Hvalkof and Veber, the

degree of cohesion they describe in Ashaninka 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 de-

scribe 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 Ashaninka resident of Betania:

In our grandparents’ day, there was no community y . When everyone gets to-

gether to work, it’s called communityy 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 in-

troduction of new national laws aimed, in part, at alleviating some of the problems

suffered by indigenous groups in the central jungle (Brown and Fernandez

1992:190).4


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 ‘‘es-

tablish an agrarian structure which would contribute to the integrated develop-

ment 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 inhab-

itants 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 ad-

ministratively speaking, within the confines established by law’’ (Roldan 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

German, both Asheninka 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 German, 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 im-

portant issue for them and Agustin himself described this as his central preoccu-

pation. It was to this end that Agustin and German 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 set-

ting up of communities among various Ashaninka groups, this did not seem to be

in the minds of the Pijuayalinos as they set about gaining official recognition of


their lands. Rather, as both Agustin and German 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

Pijuayalinos 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 Asheninka 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 fosforos’’ (live in the hills, without salt or match-

es). 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 ‘‘civil-

izado,’’ a status that distinguished them from those Asheninka 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 govern-

ment-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 can-

not 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). Be-

yond 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


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

Asheninka cultural ideas and, in particular, with their emphasis on individuals’

independence and equality. As I noted in my description of Asheninka 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 in-

dividual 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 coopera-

tion is necessary, everyday living is marked by a distinct egalitarian ethos. Distinc-

tions 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 en-

compass non-Asheninka. While recognizing the power of outsiders, Asheninka

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 Asheninka to conceive of themselves as marginal in terms of a totalizing

system in which settlers y or other non-Asheninka y represent the center. On the

contrary, as far as the Asheninka are concerned, they themselves are the center of

their world; other people may have their own centers, but these are not important to

the Asheninka. [1998:384]


Yet, even as Asheninka individuals see themselves as the equals of outsiders, in

the reality of their interactions with outsiders they feel themselves to be at a dis-

advantage 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 Asheninka’s recorded history and that ‘‘al-

though all previous experiments with schooling for the Pajonal Asheninka have

failed, the Asheninka have never abandoned their interest in it’’ (1998:396). This

embracing of Western-style education has distinct consequences for Asheninka

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 dis-

tinction, 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 continu-

ation of the larger ethnic group to which individuals belong, this consequence was

not explicitly considered by those involved, who were instead focused on the rel-

atively circumscribed goal of gaining a schoolteacher who could teach their own

children. Having outlined why Pijuayalinos wanted a school and therefore an or-

ganized community, I will now examine how this focus on a school influenced the

manner in which Pijuayalinos experienced the process of gaining official recogni-

tion of their community.

The Act of Titling

The success of the Pijuayalinos’ 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 bureau-

cratic titling process by a number of timbermen working in the area.7 These tim-

bermen ferried Agustin and German back and forth to the relevant ministries in


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, German, and all

local Asheninka 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 ing-

enieros, 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 bor-

row 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 Arhem 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 Paez 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 Paez 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 Vitonco held an official

copy of the document, this was not enough for them; they believed that the original


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 out-

siders, 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

Asheninka 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 Pijuayalinos

did not invest their documents with the same mystical attributes as the Paez In-

dians, 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 Asheninka’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 Asheninka’’ (1998:394; see also Aroca Medina

and Maury Parra 1993:23). The difference between an official comunidad and the

customary form of Asheninka 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


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 con-

formity to this generic model. This was particularly the case when representatives of

the local government or health services visited. Indeed, Santos-Granero and Bar-

clay 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 set-

tlements 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 Asheninka 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 Asheninka. As I noted at the

Figure 2 Celebrating Peruvian Independence Day in La Selva


beginning of this article, Hvalkof and Veber themselves suggest that rather than

seeing social disintegration and fragmentation as abnormal, within the Asheninka

context they can be understood to constitute the norm, while ‘‘incorporation and

aggregation constitute something possible and transitory’’ (2005:226). This em-

phasis on separation is finally attested to by the words of the Asheninka 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 rel-

atively 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 Asheninka to live closer to each other, living in geo-

graphically 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 cre-

ation of comunidades nativas did not represent as great a change as it did for the

Asheninka, 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 co-

munidad’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 con-

ception 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


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 Pijuayalinos 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 Asheninka

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


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 rec-

ognition 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 Asheninka. 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 Asheninka 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 au-

thority, coupled with a visit by official representatives of the government’s laws,

stimulated Pijuayalinos 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 ‘‘prop-

erly’’ in recognizing and defending communal land. Furthermore, these actions

were taken against another Asheninka settlement rather than against mestizo col-

onists, and thus there was no sense that the Asheninka 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 remem-

brance of how enraged my comadre (co-mother, I was godparent to her daughter),


Melita, had been, and how she had threatened to kill the ‘‘invaders.’’ The Amaqu-

arians 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, how-

ever, 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 ‘‘prop-

erty.’’

These actions can also be understood as another example of the Asheninka’s

willingness to join together for specific purposes that has been seen throughout

their history whenever they have faced major outside threats (Brown and

Fernandez 1991, Hvalkof 1998). However, the important fact is that this defense

of communal lands is a new preoccupation for the Asheninka. The Asheninka 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 Asheninka 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 Arhem has noted among the Makuna of Colombia, new village structures

transform local political landscapes by ‘‘freezing the formerly fluid boundaries be-

tween local y groups’’ (2001:136). Rosengren similarly writes that among the

Matsiguenga ‘‘the introduction of Comunidades Nativas has y fomented the de-

velopment 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


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 Asheninka 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 Asheninka 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 (Garcıa Hierro

and Surralles 2005:259–60). By taking a specific ethnographic example and ana-

lyzing one indigenous group’s reasons for forming an officially recognized settle-

ment, 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 im-

petus for settlement formation and its effects from the point of view of the

Asheninka themselves.

The article has shown how the Asheninka of Pijuayal and La Selva formed

communities and then sought official recognition for them in order to gain gov-

ernment-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


in order to maintain their communities, power or identity (Gray 1997:89). For

independent Asheninka individuals it was the reality of the government laws and

the need to create bounded settlements in prescribed ways that produced a com-

munal identity where previously there were individual families. Further, these laws

have created fixed separations among the Asheninka, 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 influ-

ence of bringing people together in order to acquire them, is an act of social trans-

formation 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 Hugh-

Jones 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

1The Asheninka are part of the larger ethnic group now known as the Ashaninka. There are various

subgroups of Ashaninka. Divisions are chiefly based on linguistic differences with distinct dialects re-

lated 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 Araw-

akan neighbors, the Matsiguenga and Nomatsiguenga. I will chiefly use the term Asheninka when re-

ferring to the people with whom I worked. However, the term Ashaninka will also be used to encompass

all of the ethnic subgroups of Asheninka and Ashaninka.2Federacion de las Comunidades Nativas Ashaninkas de Iparia.3Mestizo is used locally, and self-referentially, to refer to people of mixed heritage.4Brown and Fernandez 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 Ashaninka 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 Ashaninkas and other Amazonian Indians’’ (1992:190).5The 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,


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.6In 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).7The timbermen were themselves keen for the comunidad to be officially recognized, as this would

enable them to claim that they were legally helping the Asheninka 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.8This term is used in the region to refer to all skilled workers and professionals.9The fact that the assistance of the timbermen was precipitated by their own ulterior motives does

not mitigate the importance of their contribution; without it, Asheninka individuals would never have

been able to see the process through to its conclusion.10There 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 Asheninka 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.11This 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.12SINAMOS: Sistema Nacional de Movilizacion Social (National System of Social Mobilization).13It may be the case that the Ucayali Asheninka, 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.14AIDESEP: Asociacion Interetnica de Desarrollo en la Selva Peruana (Inter-ethnic Association for

the Development of the Peruvian Jungle).15Space 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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creating community: land titling, education, and settlement

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