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Elvira Luisa Belaunde [1]

Although Quichua identity  is not homogeneous but specific to each locality,  there are two main  groupings, the Canelos based along the  Bobonaza River and the Naporuna in the Napo River. Both are thriving people and exert considerable influence upon neighbouring populations and current local socio-political developments. The total Quichua population in Ecuador and Peru is estimated around 60 000 and it is growing rapidly. A new term, `quichuaization’, has been coined to describe the processes of mixing, cultural change and demographic expansion in the area. Nevertheless there are very few studies of quichuaization at work from the ethnic point of view of those who feel the pull or are lead  towards it.

There is a need to go beyond external criteria of explanation based on a political economy of social change to reach a view from within.  This entails firstly, identifying  the  `markers of  contrast’ (Comaroff 1997) put  forward by local people to distinguish themselves from the Quichua. Secondly,  understanding how ethnic transformation is perceived  and experienced by local people in terms of these markers.   In other words,  the study should show how  quichuaization takes place as part of  a wider process of   contradistinction between local, Quichua  and other National identities rather than as a straight-forward movement  of transculturaltion. 

This paper looks at the interaction between the Naporuna and the Airo-Pai, a 500 strong Western-Tukanoan speaking people of North-Eastern Peru. The bulk of the ethnography for this study was collected during an intensive period of qualitative research in the Airo-Pai community of Vencedor Huajoya on the Santa Maria river, a tributary to the High Napo River.  My aim is to describe Airo-Pai notions of  quichuaization ,  their compliance with and their resistance to  it.  To the external observer, Quichua and Airo-Pai are clearly differentiated peoples. They look different, speak different languages, live separately, eat different foods on a daily basis and they rarely intermarry. Nevertheless, Airo-Pai men and women perceive that  they are “becoming Quichua”, as they phrase it.  The main questions examined in this paper are: which markers encapsulate their sense of distinctiveness from the Quichua? How are these markers transformed in quichuaization?  What is at stake in quichuaization from an Airo-Pai experience and point of view?

If by race we  understand the attribution of inherited social characteristics on  the basis of physical features  (Eriksen 1993:4), then this notion bears some relevance in our analysis, although  in an unconventional sense, because mere  physical appearance does not play a major role in Airo-Pai perceptions of difference and identity. Rather, it is body functions, and in particular, reproductive life which are key to their construction of their own and other people’s embodied identities. The study shows that ritual observances rooted on culturally specific notions of the body, reproduction and health stand at the core of Airo-Pai  collective awareness of their uniqueness as a distinct people which have endured through time and as a people who is changing to become another.

Whilst several elements of material culture  are borrowed from the Quichua and a feeling of National belonging into Peruvian society is constructed through the mediation of a regional Quichua identity, a true ethnic transformation is seen to occur solely when Airo-Pai  reproductive behaviour is abandoned in favour of Quichua  views on  reproduction.  Attitudes towards the reproductive body and children, therefore, are the key markers of contrast between themselves and the Quichua.  At the same time, power relations between Quichuas and Airo-Pai are ritually played out in shamanism, which itself is intrinsically linked to reproductive practices.

Friendships, fears and vulnerabilities

The Airo-Pai population in Peru is closely related to a people known as Secoya in Ecuador (See Vickers 1989; Cipolletti 1988; Moya 1992). The bulk of their livelihood is derived from forager-horticulturalist production and  limited trade of local products for commercial goods.  Men also periodically engage in paid labour in local farms and logging centres. There are seven communities, of which only Vencedor Huajoya is on a tributary to the Napo river and therefore in direct proximity to the main Quichua land. Nevertheless, the Quichua’s influence is felt upon the area as a whole and reinforced by an intense inter-village mobility.  The Quichua are largely a riverine people whilst the Airo-Pai prefer the interior environment. Their current group denomination “Airo-Pai” means “Forest-People” and contains a statement of territorial belonging to the land from which, they explain,  their ancestors emerged in times inmemorial. By contrast, the Quichua are perceived as foreigners even after nearly a century of occupation in the area.  They are  called “Loreto-pai” (People of Loreto) after the place, now a days in Ecuador, from which they came. 

Economically speaking, neither people is dependent  upon or subordinated to the other and their basic modes of livelihood are typically Amazonian, although the Quichua have better access to institutional support, trading and employment opportunities along the Napo and have a wider use of commercial products.  Nevertheless, both peoples occupy roughly a same niche within the regional division of labour and within National racial-ethnic stereotypes. They are both regarded as indians.

Quichua and Airo-Pai families endured together the hardship of the rubber boom and the abuses perpetuated by local bosses and river traders who ever since have impinged upon their lives and enslaved them to debt-peonage (Payaguaje 1990:44). As a result, long standing friendships exist between members of both groups and many have links of compadrazgo with one another. The lingua-france used between them is Spanish.  Compadres visit one another regularly and help each other. For instance, trading contacts, employment opportunities and travelling to the cities are facilitated by Quichua compadres, whilst Airo-Pai compadres provide access to game rich forest and rivers.  Airo-Pai communities, in particular, have also found support in recent Quichua organisations, under the guidance of Catholic missionaries, state institutions and NGO workers, which provide bilingual schooling for local children and other services. 

Nevertheless, latent demographic, territorial and ritual hostilities lay the background of their relationship. Quichua families generally prefer to dwell along the Napo shores but growing population  pressure has lead them to seek new land in the interior. Three centuries ago, the Airo-Pai forebearers , whom the Spaniards called Encabellados, were also numerous. Estimates based on historical records suggest a total population of 5000 or more individuals (see Cipolletti 1988:; Chantre y Herrera 1901:63). They were quasi exterminated, like many of their indigenous neighbours, by diseases of Western origin, such as small pox, measles, flu and yellow fever which up to date continue to cause ravages in their communities. At present they find themselves on the verge of extinction and painfully aware of their small numbers. “Now there are only a few of us left”, These are the sort of statements they exclaim when comparing their own and the Quichua’s population size.

Airo-Pai vulnerability to diseases is coupled with a low birth rate due to ancestral practices promoting long birth spacing and controlled pregnancy.  In general, children are born with at least three years of interval and very few women have more than five living children during their complete reproductive life.  Ideally a child should be able to eat and walk on its own before the mother carries another foetus. Both men and women have specific responsibilities sanctioned with ancestral duties as regard to their own and their partner’s reproductive well being (see Belaunde 1997; Vickers 1989:989:224). Quichua families, as Airo-Pai individuals often remarked upon, tend to have more children with shorter birth spacings. Sibling sets of eight or more, spaced by intervals of two years, are not uncommon. Diseases also take a heavy toll from amongst Quichua communities, but due to their more extensive exposure to populations of European origin and to their larger family sizes, epidemics has less drastic demographic consequences.

Amongst both populations the aetiology of death differs from bio-medical views. Death is attributed to sorcery, an idea which is spread throughout Amazonia.  But whilst the Quichua think of themselves as vulnerable to other people’s sorcery, the Airo-Pai consider that they are prey mostly to their own people’s ritual powers. Epidemics of diseases, in particular, are  said to be caused by frantic sorcery and uncontrollable group destruction. This notion of endogenous sorcery, although less common than exogenous sorcery, has also been described for other groups with a heightened awareness of their own ritual endowments (see Belaunde in press a; Erikson 1996; Ireland 1988). “We are finishing ourselves”. “Between ourselves Airo-Pai we kill one another”. These are typical statements by which men and women of all ages expressed their sadness to me when talking about their dead ones in past epidemics. Ultimately, the responsibility of death is put upon the account of men and women possessing ritual knowledge but unable to control it.  Until recently all men were introduced to the art of shamanism at puberty. Women learnt after the menopause but their reproductive functions bestowed them with specific ritual powers and duties.  In the last decade, shamanism has been partly left aside due to the influence of fundamental Evangelicalism (see Belaunde in press b). Nevertheless, a shamanistic cosmology and notions of agency impregnate and guide every aspect of Airo-Pai life and identity. Such a collective group perception rooted upon ritual notions provides the backbone of inter-ethnic perceptions of differential status  in the area.

All along the Napo River, Airo-Pai men, women and even children are held to be dangerous sorcerers who should not be antagonised lest they put a curse and cause severe harm. Whenever I visited a Quichua community on my way to Vencedor Huajoya, men and women spontaneously expressed to me their anxiety at the thought of spending time amongst these wicked neighbours who could  cause injury in retaliation for the most trivial incidents, such as refusing to buy some of their local products or transpassing in their land. Inter-personal relationships are generally friendly. Although  ridden with suspicion, Quichua families are outwardly hospitable towards Airo-Pai visitors. Inter-marriages, however, are rare and when they occur they often entail an assimilation of the Airo-Pai spouse into the Quichua group. No Quichua person with a constituted network of  close relatives in the surrounding area would accept to join in an Airo-Pai community and expose herself or himself  to the potential dangers of  these frightening  too powerful and therefore unpredictable affines. 

Airo-Pai shamans  are feared by the Quichua but the reverse does not apply.  Rather, it is understood that considerable shamanic expertise can be gained by Quichua specialists in becoming apprentices to Airo-Pai shaman; and a few individuals actively foster links with Airo-pai communities to improve their ritual knowledge and status in the area.  But there are constrains to becoming ritually dominant. The very same powers which confer high status also make people vulnerable to harmful pollution from others. Key to Airo-Pai understandings of sociality and conjugal existence, is the idea that both men and women should comply fairly strictly with specific forms of behaviour and treatment of bodily substances during different stages of the reproductive life cycle. Quichua couples, they claim,  have a  loose attitude towards reproductive practices and therefore put their people at  risk.

Periods of menstruation, pregnancy and post-partum are surrounded with special procedures aiming  to protect the spouses, their children and the entire community from any possible harm caused by bodily fluids. Associated to this ritual behaviour is a set of indigenous contraceptive practices, including abstinence, couvade and use of contraceptive plants and rituals. Similar practices were reported by European chronicles in previous centuries who, amongst vivid descriptions of local people’s `savagery’, did not fail to manifest their admiration for indigenous practices of birth-spacing and  how these were conducive to great care being bestowed upon children. At present  many of such practices are still widely spread in Amazonia, although with significant cultural variations. In particular, they are much more elaborated and have a more compulsive character amongst the Airo-Pai than amongst the Quichua, at least according to Airo-Pai standards (see Belaunde in press c  and 1994; for comparisson see Maroni; Overing ;  McCallum 1989; Ellis 1997; Riviere 1974). 

When a women menstruates she stops working, sits in a corner of the house, avoids touching anything, bathing in the river and walking along the main paths of the village, and remains at the receiving end, waiting to be fed and looked after by other, especially by her husband who is held responsible for her well being. A similar procedure applies after birth as long as a woman is bleeding and the umbilical cord is drying. When she is pregnant, a woman and her husband eat in separated plates and avoid passing onto other community members the feeling of sickness which they associate to gestation and which is seen as being experienced by both spouses together. When the umbilical cord falls, both spouses and the people with whom they had daily contact during the pregnancy purge themselves together taking sacred plants and inducing vomiting.

Both pregnancy and menstruation are seen as endangering the wellbeing of people around. Men are particularly susceptible to being contaminated with menstrual blood, which is said to cause nasal bleeding and even haemorrhage and death. This is based on the understanding that menstrual blood, a powerful ritual substance, should be kept away from contact with sacred hallucinogenic plants and the other-world of shamanic experience. Menstrual blood is said to damage the head of men because the head is held to be the site hallucinatory visons and contact with the other-world. Respect of menstrual confinement  is perceived as being crucial to the maintenance of well being in the community as a whole and as a clear  manifestation of a woman’s social good disposition, which is sustained and reinforced by her husband’s bestowal of care during her menses, pregnancy and lactation.

Ritual differences are a major deterrent to prolonged physical contacts and co-residence. When visiting their compadres along the Napo, Airo-Pai  men and women often express their concern about the food and drink they are  served because menstruation and gestation do not stop Quichua women from preparing and serving food.  “She is pregnant, and still, she is serving us”, or, “maybe she is menstruating, how could we know”, they murmur amongst themselves; although their anxiety rarely takes them to directly refusing food, which would be  a serious offense. Such is the feeling of discomfort that most Airo-Pai will avoid if possible having to spend time amongst the Quichua. “We do not like being there and being served food by them”, they explain. The same applies when Quichua women visit the settlement. Visitors are welcomed but their physical proximity arises anxieties with regards to health and ritual  integrity.

However, it would be wrong to see in the fear of  pollution per se the main motivation behind Airo-Pai refusal to mingle with Quichua people. If proper control of reproductive functions is so important to them it is because it is intimately linked to child rearing practices.  What Airo-Pai individuals find particularly unacceptable in their neighbours is the fact that women are frequently pregnant  and burdened with the care of several young children to whom they cannot dedicate their undivided attention  and provide  adequate comfort.  Probably, there is nothing more difficult to bear for an Airo-Pai than a crying baby or toddler . Airo-Pai children are never allowed to cry alone for more than a few minutes and adults go to great  length to calm a child who is persistently anxious and unsettled.  Although the same can also be said of most Amazonian peoples, amongst whom mistreatment and physical punishment of young children is severly condemened, (see for instance Ireland 1988; McCallum 1989),  Quichua child rearing techniques place less emphasis upon preventing and calming children crying. At least, this is how the Airo-Pai perceive it and it is also what I observed. Quichua toddlers, in particular, are regularly left to sob calling their mothers for long periods of time and finally calm themselves of their own as their sobbing faints away.

The Airo-Pai’s perception of the Quichua’s relaxed attitude towards the reproductive body and the treatment of toddlers fills them with “cadaye”, a  feeling and emotional state which is best translated as “fear of anger”. Both men and women fear the divine anger and illnesses which the transgression of reproductive rituals may bring about as well as the bad temper of toddlers left to cry on their own.  Fear of anger was the main reason put forward to me by both male and female Airo-Pai as to why they strongly disfavour inter-marriage with the Quichua.  Married to a Quichua,  either male of female, Airo-Pai individuals must leave their relatives and settle with their affines amongst whom reproductive practices so greatly differ. Unable to hold on to their own tradition, individuals are forced to adopt, at least partially, their affines’ ways.  Indeed, in all the cases of intermarriages I observed, involving either a male of  a female Airo-Pai, the spouse had changed  reproductive attitudes and had  many and closely spaced children.  “Look at all my children”, explained to me a twenty eight year old mother of eight  married to a Quichua , “My cousins only have a few.  I have turned into a Quichua”.  A similar change into Quichua ways is perceived as taking place in the case of  full Airo-Pai couples who nevertheless opt for having many children.  Although rare, these cases show that Airo-Pai  perceptions of quichuaization do not depend upon intermarriage but rather on a deliberate change of attitude towards reproduction.

Open condemnation of couples with many closely spaced children takes on a distinctively denigrating tone reminiscent of racist judgements when it is articulated with ideas of animality.   “We are not oppossums to live like that!” (quoted in Vickers 1989), they exclaim. Lack of control in breeding is taken as a sign of social degeneration which is passed onto the following generations for as long as perceived inappropriate reproductive practices endure. These denigrating judgement do not only apply to other people, like the Quichua, but to their own close relatives who by the same token are posed as alien. Even born and  bred Airo-Pai individuals embracing Quichua-like reproductive behaviour are strongly disapproved of and perceived as being sadly estranged  from their relatives and somehow less than properly human.

Living like the Quichua

With respect to institutional knowledge, trading contacts, material culture and relationships with the National society, however, the Quichua clearly have the upper hand and provide a model of a Peruvian and yet regional Amazonian identity which is highly desired by their neighbours and which they spontaneously imitate.  Hudelson (1985: 70) suggests that one of the most important drives towards quichuaization is indigenous peoples’ fascination exerced by the Western goods and National services which are generally more avaible to the Quichua.  Here, I argue that although  important  the desire for and adoption of  aspects of the Quichua lifestyle does not constitute, from an Airo-Pai perspective, a real change in cultural identity but  rather a means of constructing and appropriating a new regional identity  within the National society.

Certain items of material culture are particularly significant in creating a new lifestyle copied from the Quichua and which is perceived to provide an adequate material framework for a new existence as members of the National society.  For instance, house and village structures are important innovations transposed from Quichua villages. Traditional long-houses hidden in the forest have been abandoned in favour of individual elevated houses gathered by a river shore. There is a strong tendency towards sedentarisation and the establishment of enduring settlements with a school and health post built with materials donated by the state and a cementery where the dead are buried together. Traditionally, as in amongst many other Amazonian groups, they were buried under the house and these were regularly abandoned at the death of a powerful shaman (see Vickers 1989:250).

Manioc beer, which is drunk on a daily basis amonsgt Quichua families but only occasionally amongst the Airo-Pai, is another element of  material culture borrowed from the Quichua in the last thirty years. Older Airo-Pai individuals still remember the first time they drunk it and how surprised they were when they first tasted it. Many claim that they dislike it. Traditionally, peach palm fruit (Bactrix Gasipaes) beer and a  drink made of plantain and manioc (pore cono) were prepared by all the members of the community together for ritual occasions. Manioc beer, by contrast is prepared only by women. Changes in beer recipes have therefore had an impact on gender relations as men have been estranged from the process of preparation of ritual drink. The abandonment of traditional beer making has also deeply affected the nature of their festivities. Many of the ancient Airo-Pai gatherings were fertility rituals and revolved around the impersonation of the divinities, playing the sacred jetu flutes, singing, dancing and drinking peach palm beer. Unfortunately there are no ethnographic records of these rituals but it is known that dressing up like the divinities was a key aspect of the celebration . People say that without their traditional beer, the rituals cannot be held. By contrast, manioc beer provides the fuel to new rituals during which changing ethnic, alterity and National belonging are played out.

On the 28th of July, Peru independence Day, the Airo-Pai take great pleasure in organising a festivity in full Quichua fashion . The gathering is generally held in the school building and the teacher is one of the main organisers, although the entire community spontaneously participates. Men and women dress up with typical Quichua clothing. Men leave aside their daily tunics to put on shirts and trousers, and women cover their breasts with nicely hand sown flowery blouses.  All the adult women prepare large amounts of manioc beer which they allow to ferment for two or three days before drinking. Each household donates a chicken – only eaten in similar occasions - and contributes manioc and other ingredients to prepare a typical Quichua soup using commercial seasoning powder. The food and drink are served following Quichua ways. Each person is given an individual plate and a spoon, unlike daily meals when food is shared from one plate and eaten with manioc bread.  Women feed beer to everyone around by holding a full bowl of beer into the mouth of the drinker and waiting until he or she drinks it all. Everyone’s spirits are high  and there is a great deal of laughing and dancing as people become progressively intoxicated.  When drunk, people, especially men ,burst into exclamations such as “We seem Quichua”  (loretopaije paiye)  in Airo-Pai and “we are living like the Quichua”  (estamos viviendo como Quichua) in Spanish, with some occasional Quichua words.  Although these were spontaneous utterances, It is likely that my presence during the feast contributed to an exacerbation of people’s need to proclaim such statements; and several men insisted upon explaining to me that they were wearing Quichua clothes and eating Quichua food.

An understanding of such events requires an examination of indigenous notions of agency and embodiment. The Airo-Pai expression  ‘to seem like something else’ or  ‘to appear like something else’ (linked to the suffix –je attached to a noun) is typically associated with a culturally specific understanding of how the perception of a reality and agency in the world is affected  by the transformation of both the perceiving agent and the object of perception.  A person’s embodied self  is understood  as being wrapped  within  a `skin’ (canihue), a concept which Airo-Pai individuals also translate in spanish as ‘clothing’ and sometimes ‘body’. The ‘skin’ is more than a mere physical organ. It is conceived as a  means through which perception and agency are carried out. The skin projects an image which can be perceived by others and at the same time it enables a person to act upon the world in accordance to its skin nature. For instance, an Airo-Pai ‘skin’ and embodied appearance enables a person to act upon the world according to Airo-pai ways and to see the world as Airo-Pai usualy do in their daily life. This `skin’, unlike the mere physical organ  can be transformed or `taken off’, as they explain, through  rituals instances, such as dreams, smells and hallucinogenic trance. It is therefore possible to take on another embodied wrapping and hence project another image of oneself , perceive reality from a different point of view and act upon the world according another nature. Related ideas of embodiment  and agency have been described for many other Amazonian groups, (see Viveiros de Castro 1998 for a general discussion on Amazonian perspectivism). 

When the Airo-Pai exclaim “We seem Quichua” they mean that they have changed their Airo-Pai ‘skins’ and put on Quichua ‘skins’ for the ritual celebration of Peru’s National day.  A parrallel therefore exists between this ritual and the ancient fertility rituals during which fruit beers were drunk and the gods were embodied by the living. The new ritual transforms the Airo-Pai into Quichua, a people whom they perceive as being a model of  Amazonian Peruvianness and regional identity within a national society stratified by race and class.  At the same time, this temporary ritual impersonation reflects upon more enduring changes of appearance and material culture undergone by the Airo-Pai such as housing . Nevertheless, these changes are not understood as affecting  the core of their Airo-Pai identity.  As long as people;’s “hearts” (joyo) remain Airo-Pai , they explain, their persons also remain Airo-Pai and  quichuaization , although deeply transforming their perception, appearance and capacity to act upon the world and the National society, is not seen as entailing a radical change of self and ethnicity. 

Becoming Quichua: a change of heart

The Airo-Pai concept of the ‘heart’ is another key notion of the indigenous understanding of embodiment, knowledge and agency. The ‘heart’ is centre of memory and moral decision making which at the same time establishes a continuity of wisdom  and values being passed down generation to generation. A person’s  ‘heart’ grows with personal experience but also principally as the person  listens to the advice provided by elders and learns to take responsibility for work and action in accordance  to their  example and  recommendations.  The words of advice elaborate upon culturally appropriated ways of relating to relatives, spouses and children. In particular,  they put great emphasis upon the respect of culturally specific reproductive behaviour, menstrual and pregnancy restrictions, birth spacing and child rearing attitudes (see Belaunde 1994).

As an older man clearly explained to me, disregard for their ancestral reproductive practices and rituals would be a direct strike at their ‘hearts’ which much deeper consequences than any change of appearances and material culture. Such a radical change may not visible to the eyes, but it  would entail a radical alienation. 

“If we do not  follow our elders’ advice and have menstruating women serving food and couples bearing many children, we would not  be Airo-Pai any longer.  If you were to look at us you would see an Airo-Pai, my body would still be Airo-Pai, but my heart would be other”.

Conclusion

From an Airo-Pai understanding, quichuaization takes place when members of their society transform their reproductive attitudes. This may occur with or without intermarriage or  village fusion with Quichua communities. It is sufficient for Airo-Pai individuals to make the decision of disregarding their elders’s advice as to proper reproduction to change themselves and their children into Quichua. Conversely, cultural resistance to ethnic change is acted out in the daily respect of their reproductive ideas and  rituals, whether these are apparently trivial ways of serving food or major decisions concerning  contraception and birth-spacing based on traditional techniques. 

What is at stake in Quichuaization from an Airo-Pai point of view is a transition from a controlled to an expansive reproductive behaviour, which in turn  is seen as operating a change of ethnic identity, a loss in ritual status and a fall into a lesser  mode of life. Nevertheless, such a transition may be unavoidable if  they are to prevent their physical  extinction.  The way forward for their physical survival  may also draw the ending line of their existence as a distinct  people.  

Airo-Pai communities are not the only ones  facing such an alternative. Changes in reproductive behaviour and the abandonment of traditional fertility practices and birth control have been reported for a few other Amazonian peoples, such as the Shipibo (Hern 1994), although the study of  the full significance of  demographic and reproductive changes in Amazonia is still at a first stage of development.  Interestingly, the Airo-Pai case poses a question to current tenants of Demographic Transition Theory which universally assumes that modernisation and integration within National societies entails a transition from natural to controlled fertility (see Henry 1961).  An understanding of Airo-Pai and other people’s reproductive practices can only be reached if indigenous ideas of agency are incorporated into the analysis.

Embodied markers of contrast - by appropriate perception, agency, and most significantly  reproductive behaviour rather than mere  physical appearance – ethnicity and class are found in operation here. Becoming Quichua  entails a change in ritual endowments, status and duties derived from ancestral inheritance and an alteration of child rearing techniques, which may have profound consequences on family life and individual psycho-social development. It also  means partaking in a growing sector of the National society, which unlike Airo-Pai society is not isolated in a pocket of ancestral land but extends beyond limited cultural boundaries and is able to ecxerce influence upon local and regional political processes. In this sense, ethnic change into Quichua is a move towards a wider society stratified by class and race into which indigenous peoples are incorporated as Amazonian peasants and labourers with shared economic interests beyond local territoriality.  

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[1] Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of Durham.