Ashaninka - Ecology and Culture

The Ashaninka

Ecology and Culture of the Ashaninka

Location: Peru - Central Amazon Region
Population: 30,000 - 45,000
Language group:  Arawak

Culture

The Ashaninka tribe are one of the largest indigenous groups living in the Amazon today.  Their home territory is relatively high jungle region directly east of Lima in the Gran Pajonal plateau and along the rivers Apurimac-Ene, Tambo, Perene and to a lesser extent, the Urubamba.  Traditionally the Ashaninka are semi-nomadic, living in scattered communities of 50 to 200 people in an area a little bit larger than Wales, UK.   Despite fierce resistance to acculturation by the outside world, in the 21st century there are few communities without at least limited and sporadic contact and trade with non-Ashaninka people.  

As a tribe, the Ashaninka are still not well covered by anthropologists, but they have a rich culture tied into knowledge of plants and medicine, including the teacher plant (or hallucinogenic entheogen) ayahuasca, an important key to the tribe's spiritual wisdom and plant lore.  The entire territory is covered with a dispersed network of small communities.  The nearer the community is the closer the kinship connections.   So villages within a day or two's walk consist mainly of cousins, aunties and uncles.  Beyond that, the kinship relationships get weaker, non-existent or lost in the depths of time.  Every couple of weeks, a few villages get together for a party, drinking manioc beer and dancing. 

Food-sharing is a fundamental custom among the Ashaninka.  They live from harvesting the forest and rivers as well as having small clearings in the forest for gardens.  Wild fruits, honey and nuts are gathered along with snails and insect delicacies.  Fishing, both individually and collectively, provides much of the Ashaninka's protein, particularly in the dry season.  The rest of the year they're more dependent on game from the forest, which they hunt mainly with bow and arrows, though most villages have at least one shotgun (even if they don't often have cartridges). 

Greed and private personal consumption just doesn't happen in traditional villages.  Everyone gets their fair share.  When a large animal, like a Peccary is killed, it is cut up fresh and divided between two or even three villages along kinship lines.  Each relative will then cut it up and divide it further within their family units before cooking their portion.   Once it's ready to eat it is shared again. The food is traditionally eaten from a communal bowl, thus sharing again as a gesture of solidarity. 

Ecology

Most Ecotribal adventure expeditions take place on Ashaninka land.  Their tribal territory has been reduced severely in the last 100 years, but they maintain cultural as well as territorial control of communities and Reserves on the right bank of the Rio Ene and up into the Otishi National Park boundary, where the Vilcabamba mountain range separates the Apurimac-Ene from the Urubamba river basins.  Both these rivers are major Amazon headwaters and come down from the Cusco area.

A large new protected area, the Otishi National Park, has recently been officially designated between the Ene and Urubamba rivers, along with two indigenous communal reserves. These offer greater long-term security for the core of the forest in the project area. In 1997 and 1998 the equipment of Biological Rapid Appraisal Program (RAP) of Conservation the International with the participation of the ACPC, visited the area making evaluations in different places from altitudes of 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 msnm. These evaluations demonstrated that the Vilcabamba Mountain range provides an unusual biodiversity with endemic species.

The tours are focused on the Rio Ene basin, including three days trekking up the forested Cutivireni Valley to visit Parijaro - Peru's second highest waterfall and one of the world's 30 to 40 longest single drop cascades.   This is virgin rainforest territory and traditional heartland of Ashaninka culture.  Starting at about 600m above sea level, the forest is between lowland and cloud forest eco-niches, displaying flora and fauna associated with both.  The tour incorporates visits into Ashaninka Community forest, Ashaninka Communal Reserved forest areas and also to the edge of Peru's newest National Park – Parque Nacional de Otishi.

Typical wildlife found in the area include: high numbers of macaws; cock-of-the-rocks, toucans, parrots, hawks and humming birds; agouti, wild boar, ant-eaters, tapir; caiman, reptiles and insects; and more rarely, large cats (jaguar, ocelot and puma) and spectacled bears.

Main threats to the local ecology

Ecotribal began collaborating with the Ashaninka on eco-tourism as a specific response to reports in 2004 of illegal loggers starting to do deals with Ashaninka communities for their mahogany trees.  The income brought in by the eco-tours offers a direct and immediate alternative to selling their trees.  The Ashaninka recognise, to, that eco-tourism is sustainable now and into the future, whereas mahogany trees take generations to re-establish.

The greatest threats to the local wildlife and ecology are:

- illegal logging
- future oil prospecting (seismic testing scheduled for 2008)
- coca-growing colonists

Over the last few years illegal timber extraction, especially of mahogany, has been on the increase throughout the Peruvian Amazon, including on the Ene River and its tributaries.   On paper, mahogany is protected by Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) and by Peruvian export quotas that in 2005 set a 23,600-cubic-meter limit on shipments of the wood.   But with mahogany becoming scarcer elsewhere in Latin America, pressure on Peru's mahogany stands has intensified to the point that some environmentalists believe the species is in real danger of disappearing from the Peruvian Amazon within a decade.