The Shipibo

An Endangered Culture

Prepared by Ariana Alva Ferrari

ANTH 321.01 Endangered Cultures

May 20th, 2015

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...2

I. Pressures…………………………………………………………………………3

a. Mainstream Peruvian Culture

b. Degraded Environment

c. Tourism

d. Education

II. Historical background……………………………………………………………6

III. Cultural identity………………………………………………………………….7

IV. Responses…………………………………………………………………….…..10

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...………..11

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INTRODUCTION:

In a recent interview with a Shipibo man, a graduate student from the Pontifica

Universidad Catolica del Peru found out how the Shipibo man felt about what was

happening to his culture. The Shipibo man replied with a metaphor, comparing modern

times to the rainy season of “jenetian” where the river currents are so difficult to navigate

that one cannot go back nor forward (Espinosa).

The Shipibo-Conibo is a group of indigenous people with a population approximately

35, 000 individuals. The Shipibo live in 132 communities that can be both urbanized and

distant villages along the Ucayali River in the Amazon rainforest of Peru. According to

Tacelosy, as of 2010 there are no longer any communities that could be considered

isolated, and the closest Shipibo community to an urban center is a 15-minute walk from

the city.

The story of the Shipibo people of the Peruvian jungle is a story of cultural struggle

and survival. As opposed to many neighboring tribes, the Shipibo have endured being

erased from numerous forces, as they have learned to resist the ways of the modern world

in their own terms. However, in spite of their physical survival through many centuries, I

argue that they are an endangered culture because there has been a dramatic change on

their population demographics, unsustainable lifestyle, changed in their functional

structures, and loss of language.

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I. AGENTS THAT THREATEN SHIPIBO CULTURE

Mainstream Peruvian Culture:

Currently, travelers to Ucayali, government controls, conscription into the army,

schools, and missions have brought the Shipibo continuous contact with outsiders and

thus Shipibo culture seems destined to merge with the mainstream of Peruvian culture, as

seen in their Spanish names and bilingualism (Bergman).

Bergman argues that the Shipibo people were drawn into a commercial economy after

the government of Peru engaged in an agricultural program meant to provide production

loans to indigenous people. In 1978 the Peruvian government donated lumber, nails, and

metal roofing for a cooperative store (Bergman).

According to the author Eakin, men of Shipibo if considered to have a political

opinion would be of socialism. The reason behind that is that two governments in Peru

have helped hem by giving the Shipibo people donations. Furthermore, the Shipibo have

adopted western-style clothing bought from the markets in Pucallpa but some people still

wear the traditional clothes like cushma for extra warmth, protection against mosquitos,

or on festive occasions.

The figure bellows shows a Shipibo-made cushma:

In addition, the importance of indigenous feasts like the

girls’ haircutting ceremony is declining as borrowed feast

days, either Christian or national supplant them. Christmas

and Easter, for example are celebrated, as is Peruvian

Independence Day. Even the forms of political and social

organization are being influenced by Peruvian mainstream

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culture. Such is the case of how authority is dealt with in the village. According to Eakin,

a chief whom in the past used context circumstances exercises the authority in the village

and personality to decide whom the new leader would be. At present times, a leader is

measured by how much help he has brought to the village in the form of establishment of

schools, or recruiter for laborers. The role of the leader has changed a lot throughout the

years, as now it is a requirement to speak Spanish, the colonial language.

To illustrate through another example, one of the traditions that have being left

behind is the female transition to adulthood. It took place on the girl’s first menstruation

and the ritual followed a clitoridectomy (Roe). According to Roe, the last ceremony was

held in about 1950s mainly because the local mestizos and missionaries preoccupations.

Degraded Environment: Pucallpa, which had a population of around 2,500 in the

early 1940s, reached some 25,000 in the early 1960s, and its population is now thought to

be in the neighborhood of 250,000. That is a hundredfold growth in fifty years. As a

result, Hern argues, local environments are being degraded by massive population

pressures (Hern). According to Tacelosky, a major development that caused this massive

population pressure occurred during 1940s after a road connecting Huanuco and the

Ucayali River was completed. The city of Pucallpa flourished and suddenly the Shipibo

found themselves in close and regular contact with Mestizos and their culture. Eakin

furthers this point by stating that this eventually led to Shipibos getting engaged in the

cash system, get hired by natural resource-extraction companies, where these jobs are

mostly temporary and employ local people (Eakin).

Tourism: De Rios presents a new trend in the tourism industry of the Peruvian

jungle. The rise of tourists from Europe and the U.S in search of Ayahuasca sessions has

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increased since the plants psychoactive reactions became known around the world

(DeRios). The threat to the Shipibo culture rests on the increase of people claiming to be

Shipibo Shamans and falsely healing the tourists for profits. These healers do not have

the capacity, preparation or knowledge to apply the sacred plants of the Shipibo. As a

result, in a Shaman’s own words, there is a spiritual and psychological crisis among the

Shipibo culture for the sake of generating money from tourists.

Education: According to Tacelosky, there were three views towards language that

were argued when the Peruvian government when Summer Institute of Linguistics

decided to establish their Bilingual Education programme, and that was language as a

problem, language as a right and language as a resource. Unfortunately, the predominant

orientation towards language was it as a problem where language minorities should

incorporate to the mainstream culture and society. A speech given by the Peruvian

President in 1967 supported this view by exposing his efforts to fully integrate

indigenous people to the national life through and their means to do so would be through

education. The table below summarizes the sentiment in regards of language among

Shipibo.

Table 1 shows reasons given why people should use Shipibo and Spanish Source: Tacelosky interviews

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II. HISTORY

According to Ronald Bergman author of Amazon Economics the first evidence of men

in the Ucayali basin was 3,000 B.C., he argues that these hunters and gatherers started

cultivating manioc around that time and thus population growth among the tributaries of

the Amazon River. As evidence has showed, numerous ground stone axes indicate they

cleared patches of rainforest to grow crops. He further adds that by 1200 B.C, these

people began trading with Andean tribes.

About 800 B.C the Panoans, the parent group of the Shipibo entered the southern

portion of central Ucayali, they are believed to share ancestry with the Aymara and

Quechua people based on linguistic evidence.

The Shipibo had their initial contact with European in mid 1600s when

missionaries and soldiers penetrated the area. The Jesuits established a Panoan mission

in 1637. Author Bergman states that Jesuit Father Samuel Fritz was the first person to

leave a written account of the Panoan speaking Indians in the Ucayali River. His tales are

based during the 1686 and 1723 while carrying missionary work. Another record shows

that in 1760 Franciscan fathers attempted to Christianize the Panoans. However they

strategically united forces with a neighboring tribe, the Conibo and in both cases ended in

violent deaths of missionaries and Indians as illustrated in the destructions of the

Huallaga River Mission and Panatahua Mission.

The first known displacement of the Shipibo occurred in the early 17th century,

when the Campa forced the Cashibo to move to the upper Aguaytia River, thus pushing

the shipibo to the mouth of the river, displacing the Conibo.

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Historically, the riverine Indians of the Ucayali were the Conibo, Setebo and

Shipibo and hostile relations among them characterized them. However, intermarriage

and mutual pressure for acculturation resulted in the other two amalgamations with the

Shipibo and only minor dialect differences remain.

By mid-nineteenth century, Shipibo and other river tribesmen served as paddlers

on the canoes of expeditions sent out by missionaries. In return of this service, the

Shipibo were able to expand their trade routes, providing tribes along the river with metal

goods in exchange of more products.

From the 1880s to 1920s the gathering of wild rubber took over most of the

economic activity in the entire Upper Amazon Basin. As of 1925, it is reported that as a

result, of the boom riverine population was greatly reduced to 1300-2000 people.

According to Tacelosky, individual family groups came under the total domination of

particular patrones (land owners) and there was a great displacement of population.

Espinosa argues that the second half of the twentieth century saw the beginning of

ethnographic research in the area, the structure of ayahuasca sessions and tourists took

place after Burroughs, Carlos Castaneda, Michael Harner and other ethnographers

studying indigenous applications of psychoactives began publishing their studies.

III. CULTURAL IDENTITY

Peter G. Roe, Ph.D, is a professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware. In

his book, The Cosmic Zygote, he exposes the cosmology of the Shipibo. In his own

words, the Shipibo are “canoe Indians,” fully at home in the Ucayali and adjacent waters.

He further informs on the mythology of Shipibo culture, Roe states that the Shipibo

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generally believe that the sky , to which the shaman has access to is the abode of God and

spirits. The relation between earth and sky is often seen as a stairlike connection. When

under the influence of Ayahuasca, the shaman is able to ascend these stairs to heaven.

The shaman drinks one or two cups to induce a trance. In his trance he sees animals,

people and spirits. (Roe).

Also, According to Bergman Shipibo society is matrilineal and residence is

matrilocal. The matrilocal residence pattern promotes social cohesion between the village

women. Among all, sharing is the base of their culture (Bergman).

Central to Shipibo religion is the belief that both animate and inanimate objects have

spirits that initiate and govern most natural phenomena. To illustrate, an eclipse is

believed to be caused by the Sun closing his eyes. Among the most feared animal spirits

are poisonous snakes, the dolphin, and the water boa (Roe). In addition, Roe argues that

the Shipibo use a combination of dietary restrictions, medicinal herbs, and the practice of

the shaman to combat diseases and ailments.

According to Espinosa, there are three main personal qualities that Shipibo men

must have:

a. To be Onan, shamans wisdom come from knowledge given by nature, a

wise person should spend time learning from plants, observing them,

talking with them and with their spirits. This knowledge implies a strong

criticism of modern city life and allows for contemporary Shipibo to avoid

consumerism.

b. To be koshi: strength, bravery, moral strength, political power it

designates leadership. Highest authority for solving problems

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c. To be jakon joni; hardworking, responsible, generous

Furthermore, author Eakin introduces the Shipibo artistic expression as key to

differentiating their cultural identity. Common Shipibo design typically consists of a

number of interlocking geometric motifs with a dominant right angle step and they

appear in pottery, fabrics, artifacts, tools, in body-painting motifs, and formerly in canoes

and paddles. A more recent application includes designs for the tourist trade. Men,

women and children traditionally wore a metal nosepiece (Eaking).

Figure 2: Facial geometric designs

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IV. RESPONSES

Espinosa presents an article showing how Shipibo have being responding to threats to

their culture. As a response to their new social and cultural context, the Shipibo people

began organizing themselves into a new type of alliances. As opposed to their past

alliances for purposes of resource acquisition or getting rid of the enemy, these alliances

were formed with the main purpose of trying to catch up to modern times (Espinosa). In

1976, the first Shipibo youth organization was formed. It was called the Agrupacion

Juvenil Shipibo later Juventud Nativa del Ucayali (JUNAU) of 20 high school students.

The organization expresses general needs, demands and rights. They organized the first

conference to address their concerns about modernization. This was followed by another

attempt to voice their culture during the 1980s. A group of students realized the

importance of the media through radio programs and the Shinanya Joni program was

born, literally meanings “People Who Think.” In this radio program, traditional wisdom,

old sayings, myths and contemporary western knowledge were broadcasted. Later the

Native Student Council of Ucayali (CENU) was founded.

In 1997, Shipibo young men founded the Shipibo Cultural Association in the

country’s capital, Lima to promote cultural and political activities.

In 2003, the most important indigenous organization in the Ucayali region was

founded, called the Organizacion Regional de Aidesep (ORAU) as well as a Peruvian

Indigenous Communication Network. OJIRU, another youth organization organized an

important regional debate in Ucayali about tax exemptions for the Amazon region.

In 2007, the Senen Soi Amazonian Indigenous School was launched with the aim of

empowering indigenous youth with training courses about rights, advocacy, legal and

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political tools to deal with pressing challenges they encounter especially regarding their

lands, natural resources, and the environment. Among other new organizations include

Non Nete “our world and our time”, Bari Wesna, Bena Shinan, Metsa Nii “beautiful

forests.” The author argues that these Shipibo youth associations are helping young

people to become jakon joni in the contemporary world by being good family providers

through means of an urban lifestyle. As a consequence of all this political attempts to

increase the awareness of their presence in the capital and in the world, the Shipibo

people grew apart and two categories were formed “Urban Shipibo” and “Rural Shipibo.”

CONCLUSION A Shipibo shaman was interviewed by ethnologist De Rios too see what he had to

say about being an endangered culture and what paths should be taken to move

away from being endangered. In his own words,

“Knowledge is the renewable resource of the Amazon. If a people don't have knowledge, really, if it becomes lost, one will not know how to find the way to development in the

future. If one doesn't have knowledge, one lives in a truly poor community. The indigenous people have this knowledge, it’s a matter of setting off on the path of

improvement on the basis of Shipibo knowledge. There is no other way to development” (DeRios).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bergman, Roland W. Amazon Economics: The Simplicity of Shipibo Indian Wealth. Ann

Arbor, MI: Published for Dept. of Geography, Syracuse University by University

Microfilms International, 1980. Print.

de Rios, MarleneDobkin. "Interview With Guillermo Arrévalo, A Shipibo Urban

Shaman, By Roger Rumrrill." Journal Of Psychoactive Drugs 37.2 (2005): 203-

207. E-Journals. Web. 27 Mar. 2015.

Eakin, Lucille, Erwin Lauriault, and Harry Boonstra. People of the Ucayali the Shipibo

and Conibo of Peru. Dallas, TX: International Museum of Cultures, 1986. Print.

Espinosa, Oscar. "To Be Shipibo Nowadays : The Shipibo-Konibo Youth Organizations

As A Strategy For Dealing With Cultural Change In The Peruvian Amazon

Region." Journal Of Latin American And Caribbean Anthropology 17.3 (2012):

451-471. Anthropology Plus. Web. 16 Apr. 2015.

Hern, Warren M. "The Impact of Cultural Change and Population Growth On The

Shipibo of the Peruvian Amazon." Latin American Anthropology Review Mar.

1992: 3-8. American Anthropological Association. Web. 1 Apr. 2015.

Kathleen Tacelosky (2001) Bilingual Education and Language Use among the Shipibo of

the Peruvian Amazon, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development,

22:1, 39-56, DOI: 10.1080/01434630108666424

Roe, Peter G. The Cosmic Zygote: Cosmology in the Amazon Basin. New Brunswick,

NJ: Rutgers UP, 1982. Print.