A visit with the Shuar

The Shuar are one of several indigenous groups that still inhabit the Upper Amazon region of Ecuador. In the past they were actually known for shrinking the heads of their enemies, but that practice has since ended (lucky for me!). The organization I work with helps Shuar communities develop sustainable forms of income in addition to helping them to secure legal land titles in an effort to prevent outsiders from claiming land rights. The Upper Amazon region is extremely rich in biodiversity and indigenous cultures that date back many hundreds of years, but at the same time it’s also rich in minerals that wash down from the Andes and over time accumulate in these lower elevation areas. This brings mining companies, and oftentimes conflict, environmental damage and cultural degradation, which is why my organization is trying to assist these cultures; if they’re making a good living off of sustainable activities that don’t harm the surrounding environment, they’ll be less prone to sell out to the mining companies that want to excavate on their land.

A few weekends ago, one Shuar settlement, El Kiim, was having its annual festival so I headed out there (about 4 hours from Loja) with a few coworkers of mine. It was the day after my birthday so I was operating on 4 hours of sleep in a chuchaqui (hung over) state, which made the ride on the primitive unpaved roads very enjoyable! I was expecting the community to be a bit more “indigenous” with people wearing traditional clothing, banging drums, and dancing around a fire pit, but instead people were wearing Adidas shorts and T-shirts, playing soccer and volleyball, and dancing to Madonna remixes. So much for stepping back in time 500 years! The day was still interesting, with older members of the community telling stories (of which I understood about 5%), a wood chopping and a blow-dart contest for the men, a platano roasting and chicha (see below) making contest for the women, a lunch consisting of yucca, chicken and bits of wild fern wrapped up in a big leaf and steamed, and later in the day some traditional dances. There was also a chicha drinking contest, which one of the directors of my organization from California (Mike) decided to enter. Chicha is an alcoholic drink made from smashed yucca root. In the past the women would chew pieces of yucca and spit them out into a big pot. They’d then let this mixture ferment for a few days and then everyone in the village would drink it. Today the spit is left out of the equation, which I was thankful for when I had to try the stuff later in the day! However, you drink the chicha out of a big communal clay bowl (which I don’t think it washed very often) so you get a little bit of everyone’s spit instead. Yum! In the contest, Mike had to drink a whole bowl of chicha. He did it in 1 minute 40 seconds, and then proceeded to tell me the same stories 6 times over for the rest of the afternoon since it was a pretty strong batch. The Shuar guy after him drank the whole bowl in 18 seconds!

The next day, most people from my organization went back to Loja, but Mike and I wanted to check out a more remote Shuar community so we headed another 2 hours into the jungle until the road ended. Then we hopped in a motorized canoe for another 2 hours until we got to a community called Shaime. The boat trip there was spectacular and we squeezed through an amazingly lush canyon with waterfalls, and tons of birds and plant life, which unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any good pictures of since there wasn’t enough light for the camera. This community was a bit more “rustic” but there was still electricity so it didn’t exactly mesh with the “indigenous” images I had conjured up in my head. Luckily, there were festivals going on here so a bunch of people were dressed up in their traditional clothing, which gives this area 10 points over the first village in my mind’s authenticity scale! (Apparently if you go way out into the jungle (i.e. days in a canoe) you can find the “real thing”.)

In addition to the village, a Shuar guide took us for a walk in the forest which was pretty neat. Huge, buttressed trees, Tarzan vines, “authentic” jungle bird sounds, medicinal plants, strange roots hanging down from the sky and sweeping the forest floor, and knee-deep, boot-swallowing mud. We walked for a few hours and then headed back in the boat to where we left the car, picking up random folks along the riverbanks along the way. One family that got into the boat consisted of a mother and father and two small kids all wearing mud-covered rubber boots and holding nylon satchels of freshly picked wild berries and huge golf ball-sized wild grapes. They all smiled intently, greeting everyone else on the boat with a kiss on the cheek or a lighthearted handshake, and the kids leaned over the side of the boat trying to reach the light spray of water that danced off the worn metal hull of the boat. The sun was low in the sky, gently reflecting off the water and highlighting the trees along the riverbank in a pinkish shade of orange. The mother and father stood arm and arm at the front of boat looking out to the horizon and it was as if time stood still for a brief moment. Mike looked over at me and the corners of our mouths lifted ever so slightly forming subtly appreciative smiles. No one spoke. At this very moment on the Nangaritza River the complexities of the world seemed to fade away amongst the delicate ferns lining the riverbanks. Everything was good, and in this simple moment the world was at peace.

Enjoy the pictures below and as usual click a few times to enlarge. Then click slide show to view full screen.