We Share Like Brothers, but from Envy Comes Wickedness

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"We share like brothers, but from envy comes wickedness".

Shamanism and projects of development among Indigenous groups of the Lower Apaporis (Colombian Amazonia)[1]

Paper presented at the Alternative Economies, Alternative Politics panel

of CERES Summer School 2006 (Wageningen University, June 26-27, 2006) [2]

By

Carlos Franky

Universidad Nacional de Colombia, sede Amazonia

PhD Candidate, Rural Development Sociology, Wageningen University.

In November 2002, I attended a meeting of the Association of Indigenous Captains of the reserve Yaigojé Apaporis (Aciya). One of their goals was to discuss the distribution way of money resources, called the “territorial transferences” funds[3]. These financial resources are the State’s money given yearly to each community to subsidize the social sector, for instance in education. The discussions about the territorial transferences became in an instant controversial. When the calm was returned, the old Isaac Macuna, the most respected leader and shaman of the region, said: “We share like brothers, but from envy comes wickedness”.

In this paper I examine discourses that support Isaac Macuna’s phrase. This phrase was told in the context of the Apaporis’ inhabitants trying to consolidate a project of politic autonomy, despite of the cultural diversity and the past ethnic conflicts. Also referring to the context where the indigenous of this region oscillate between the desire to get western goods and services, and the desire to hold their cultural traditions.

I analyze characteristics of the indigenous cosmological discourse and their interactions with the discourses of the communal development projects carried out in this region. I argue that both discourses, the “western” and the “indigenous”, have an essential contradiction that oscillates between individualist projects (i.e. accumulation of status, power and capital) and collective projects that seek common welfare and communal solidarity. In other words, I do not equate the indigenous with the communal, neither the western with the individualist. For this reason, I argue that these contradictions in both discourses have their support on the respective thought traditions and do not only emerge from mutual influences.

THE LOWER APAPORIS

The region of Lower Apaporis is located near the frontier between Colombia and Brazil. It is a portion of the North-West Amazon and it is located down South of the socio-cultural complex of Vaupés. There reside approximately 1500 indigenous inhabitants of different ethnic groups that mainly belong to three linguistic families. The Yujup, whose language belongs to the Makú-Puinave family. The Macuna, the Tanimuca, the Letuama, the Yauna, the Barasana and the Bara have their languages within the Eastern Tucano family. And the Cabiyari, the Yucuna and the Matapi, speak languages of the Arawak family.[4]

The indigenous are mainly farmers and fishermen, activities that they combine with the hunt and gathering of foods from the forest. Their sources of income lies in the salaried temporary work in the region or outside the region, the sale of forest products in small scale, and the engagement of services provided by the government. The Lower Apaporis is not populated by white settlers. However, since XVIII century the region has been articulated to economic and politic international context. For instance, in the colonial age this region gave indigenous slaves that worked in the sugar plantations of the Lower Amazon.[5]

At present in the Lower Apaporis there are 18 communities that oscillate between 25 and 240 inhabitants; all members of Aciya. 17 communities are multi-ethnic because, among other reasons, the marriage exchange is practiced according to the rules of linguistic exogamy. That is a main feature of the socio-cultural complex of the Vaupés region. The other community is integrated by the Yujup people, a Makú group of nomad tradition that is endogamic.

In the Eastern Tucano and Arawak groups, the maloca, the communal house, is the main ritual component and one of the most important in social and political grounds. It represents the model of social organization of the people living in the cosmos. In addition, in the “maloca” ritual ceremonies, celebrations and institutional meetings with state agents and NGOs take place.

INDIGENOUS’ COSMOLOGICAL DISCOURSE

This discourse emerges from a religious thought linked to shamanic practices and entails an ethics to ensure the individual, social and cosmic welfare. For the aims of this paper I want to sketch only two conceptions of this complex discourse. The first is the “healing of the world” and the second is “the true human people”.

The most important ceremony that the indigenous enact is the “healing of the world”. Usually, each maloca yearly organises two to four “big dances” for this purpose. These ceremonies are social events that take place for three days and involve people from more than one maloca or community; sometimes up to 300 people meet in the same maloca. The “healing of the world” has several interrelated purposes.

The first one is to purify “the contamination of the cosmos”, which has existed since the creation of this cosmos. If this contamination is not eliminated or transformed in “sources of life”, it will become a source of illness and death.

The second purpose is to avoid and delay “the end of the world”. According to shamanic belief, the creator deities also condemned the new world to an inevitable end, one that has been postponed through the enactment of the “healing of the world” ceremonies.

The third is to fertilize the cosmos and to ensure the reproduction of human beings and every living thing. The fourth is to promote the socialization of both, children and young people. Therefore the “healing of the world” ceremony is also linked to initiation rites.

The last purpose is to “take care of the people”, guaranteeing their general well being. This ceremony is used to prevent and avoid illness or social conflict, as well as to advise people in order for them to “live well”.

Acording to the natives of the region, the "healing of the world" can only be celebrated by “true human people" who "live well." Mahecha (2004) has demonstrated in detail how this is related to the indigenous’ notion of self. Here, I only want to stress that the “true human people" embody the socially accepted behaviours and values, which are transmitted by the example and “advice” of parents, adults and shamans.

The indigenous’ advice is intended to encourage each person to take care of his/her body; to control desires and emotions; to acquire the capacity to analyze and proceed correctly; to shape, to increase, and to control shamanistic powers and knowledge; to produce the necessary foods to maintain the family nucleus; to participate actively in the social and ritual life of the community; and to fulfil the reciprocity and good manners. In short, “the advice” is about “true human people's” well-being and about how to reach it, to preserve it and to transmit it.

However, people do not always “think or act well”. The myths and the stories about human ancestry, describe a lot of suffering, whose origin stems from poor individual behaviour and a lack of control, emotions and desires. The myths and stories show wars, illness, starvation and all sorts of misfortunes caused by ambition of power, pride, envy, and so on. With this same principle of their cosmology, the indigenous explain “things of the white people”. With the arrival of the white people, among other things, new sources of power appeared and therefore new strains between individualist projects and collective projects.

For instance, one thing the Indians have always wanted from the western world is its commodities. Since the XVIII century, knowledge to be related to the white people and to be able to speak, read and write in Portuguese or Spanish, constitutes a new kind of power. This power is analyzed from an indigenous way of thinking in shamanic terms: “industrial technology and paper are the white people’s shamanism” (cf. Albert and Ramos 2002). Nowadays this goes hand in hand with developmental projects, which are a source of commodities and power.

IN SEARCH OF DEVELOPMENT

The Indians evaluate that today their life oscillates between “their own things” and “the white people’s things”. “Their own things” represented in the formation of new generations of “true human people” and in the “healing of the world” (Aciya 2000). “The white people’s things” associated with western services, like education, and with the access to commodities, for example through the development projects. In effect, Indians can participate in these projects during their formulation or execution by means of leaders who can explain themes, translate them, or organize them into activities. Every time is more frequent that the leaders receive salaries for their job, which can come from the funds of the NGOs.

The Gaia Amazons Foundation and International Conservation Colombia[6] are the NGOs that have a lingering and constant work in the region. Both NGOs have among their objectives to conserve the natural resources and to contribute with the population's wellbeing. Although, the Gaia Amazons Foundation concentrates its work on the invigoration of the cultural identity of the indigenous groups. The discourse of these NGOs are not "developmentistic", because they do not seek to reduce the poverty neither to stimulate the transition toward a capitalist economy (cf. Ferguson 1990; Wade 2001). However, these NGOs used concepts borrowed of the development discourses. For example, community participation or “empowerment” of the local communities. Also, they face similar problems to those described for the development projects (cf. Rondinelli 1993; Shepherd 1998; Baiocchi 2003). Aspects that are also includes in discourses and projects related to conservation (cf. Helden 2004; Romero and Andrade 2004).

The Indian leaders’ participation in the projects of these NGOs presents the contradiction of contributing to the integration of these communities in the market economy, against their goals of strengthening ethnic autonomies. This due to the salaries generate relationships characteristic of capitalism, as income inequality, in detriment of Indian relationships of production and exchange.

Indians who have assumed the role of brokers have been in an ambiguous position. Their individual prosperity is only welcomed, if they behave as “true human people” and they redistribute their commodities in a socially accepted way. But, if they let themselves get carried away by amoral behaviors, such as egoism, they will be rejected by the others and any adversity that might happen to them will be seen as a consequence of their bad conduct. Of course, they can also be victims of less esoteric attacks, like robbery. From this perspective, the wickedness can be interpreted as strategies against power and goods accumulation.

MORALITY AND POWER

I found in the projects of development many words that remit to morality. However, both defenders and critics of development pay little attention to the moral dimension of development projects or the local conception about what it is “living well”. The latter, tend to stress on political dimensions of this discourse (cf. Ferguson 1990; Nuijten 2004). Perhaps this has happened because, like Escobar affirms (2002), discussions associated to the development have left the field of ethics, to enter in the technical domain of the “social sciences”.

However, discourses about the development have their roots in western thought traditions which also carry a moral tension between individualist and collective projects. Part of this tension is related with opposed conceptions on the relationship between individual wellbeing and collective wellbeing. Among these traditions, I want to focus on the Christianity, because I found similar concepts among this doctrine and development projects that emphasize participation and the community wellbeing.

Obviously, Christian ideas have also affected indigenous discourse, as equally as it happens with democracy discourse, among others. Isaac Macuna’s idea on “sharing as brothers” is a good example. It combines elements of the system of kinship with new social relationships generated by capitalism. Among the former is “sharing food” in order to transform affine relative in consanguineous, diminishing political tensions caused by the descendant (Hugh-Jones 1995; Århem 2000; Mahecha 2004). And among the latter is “just redistributing money and commodities” in the community, counteracting the discourse about capitalist individual progress. This joining between Christian and Indians moral elements has generated an indigenous discourse guided toward coexistence that allows Indians to cohabit in their current communities.

Also the cosmological indigenous discourse has influenced the western discourses. For example, the territorial indigenous discourse has generated scholar reflections that challenge our concepts about the relationship (or separation) between “culture” and “nature”, as well as our moral behaviors toward “nature” (cf. Viveiros de Castro 2002; Cristancho and Vining 2004). The same happens with shamanistic practices that have been incorporated in the global spiritual market of the “New Age”. At the same time, this has contributed for the Indians to get a bigger political support for their social claims.

CONCLUSIONS

The cosmological indigenous discourse clearly shows a relation between morality and policy. It reminds us of the advantages of moral behaviour by the individual, collective and cosmic welfare: only who behaves as a “true human person” can accede to power by “living well” and contributing to the “healing of the world”. Likewise, the discourse warns about the dangers of amoral conducts that can carry illness, death and destruction.

I have tried to present that the cosmological indigenous discourse and the development’s discourses carry a strain between individualist projects and collective projects, which have the support of their traditions of thought and of their mutual influences. I observed this strain during the realization of developmental projects in the Lower Apaporis. Each project produces a field of intercultural dialogue; it has a background of asymmetric relations of domination produced by the prevailing politic and economic global system. But, it also has a conjunction of factors such as, the search for a communal welfare through working together and agreement, supported by the interaction between indigenous and western moral discourses.

For these reasons, I would like to stress the importance of understanding the filters and values that people use to interpret and manage developmental projects.

This understanding can be achieved through more ethnographic studies on how the communities are assuming the new material and ideological components that are involved in development; which are the tools the people need to acquire in order to socially control these components; and how the agency of the people is manifested in the management and determination of those projects. Perhaps this helps us to build more just social relationships among the different beings that inhabit the cosmos.