DEVELOPMENT-PERU: Indians Want Modernity without Losing Identity

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

LIMA, Mar 2 2000 (IPS) - Indigenous leader Santiago Contiricon was pleased to see his nephew, Benito, return home to the Ashaninka community in the Peruvian jungle along with 38 other schoolteachers who will conduct their classes in their native language.

The Ashaninka town of Puerto Ocopa has had its own primary and secondary schools for years, but none of the teachers were Ashaninka. They came from other parts of the country and learned the Ashaninka language, but tended to teach their students in Spanish.

Benito Contiricon will replace some of the supposedly bilingual teachers in the coming weeks, and perhaps by 2001 he will be the director of the community school.

Though many members of this indigenous community own rifles, some still use bow and arrow to hunt in the forest. Most families farm small plots of land, and many individuals hope to someday buy a “pequepeque” (outboard motor) for their canoes.

“We want to assimilate with the national economy and achieve a level of development that ensures the well being of our people, but we do not want to stop being Ashaninkas, as has happened with other native nationalities,” commented Santiago Contiricon.

There are some 300,000 indigenous peoples living in the Peruvian jungles, gathered in 1,450 communities belonging to 65 ethnicities, which represent 12 linguistic groups.

In the last 50 years, 11 ethnic groups have completely disappeared and another 18 have officially been declared at risk of extinction, decimated by disease or eroded as a result of the mass exodus of their members to the cities on the coast or in the sierra.

There are approximately 80,000 Ashaninka people, who tend to live in small villages along the banks of rivers in the central Peruvian jungle. Most farm on small plots – having left behind the days of hunting, fishing, and gathering – and sell their harvests in the cities downriver.

The central jungle suffered the brutal colonisation of rubber tappers in the first half of the 1900s, followed by the invasion of loggers, and, in the last 50 years, the massive onslaught of migrant farmers coming from the sierra regions.

In the final two decades of the 20th century, drug traffickers arrived in the area and tried to force the Ashaninkas to grow coca for cocaine production.

But the indigenous people suffered most recently at the hands of the Maoist guerrilla group, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), which turned the local dwellers into captives by forcing them to grow food for the guerrilla fighters.

The government arrested some of the Ashaninkas enlisted by Shining Path, but most were given “liberated prisoner” treatment and were promised assistance. It was through this framework that Ashaninka leaders negotiated with the Alberto Fujimori government to create several new aid projects.

The indigenous leaders won government backing to sign agreements for co-operation and technical training with universities, Catholic institutions and non-governmental organisations in areas of nutrition, bread baking, shoe making and mechanics.

The Ashaninka also receive help in perfecting and systematising some of their own technical knowledge in ceramics and textiles, for example, with sights set on improving production but respecting the original traditional designs.

In the city of Huancayo, a commercial centre in Peru’s central sierra, a group of Ashaninka women inaugurated an exposition of craftwork that included hand-made wooden kitchen utensils, ceramics for domestic use or decoration, and textiles dyed with colours obtained from the seeds of wild plants.

But not all Ashaninkas are content with a motor for their canoes, or even a motorcycle to travel the jungle roads. Some Ashaninka communities plan to set up their own web sites on the Internet.

The Marankiari Bajo community, located on the banks of the Perene River, signed an agreement with the Peruvian Scientific Network (RCP), the country’s principal Internet provider, to train 14 secondary school-aged Ashaninkas, both girls and boys, in information network management.

“There are Ashaninkas that have become professionals and technicians, but they do not work within the core of our communities. Using the Internet, perhaps we will be able to reintegrate them,” commented Mino Eusebio, a Marankiari Bajo community leader.

“Not only should they learn how to operate computers. We would also like them to be able to assemble and repair them. We want our own web page on the Internet in order to show our culture to the world and exchange experiences with other indigenous peoples around the globe,” added Eusebio.

The first e-mail message sent by this Ashaninka community reads, “We are 240 families, 1,027 people, living on the banks of the Perene River. The climate is tropical, humid and rainy, and the temperature varies between 19 and 38 degrees centigrade. The altitude is 950 metres above sea level, a seven-hour drive from Lima.”

“The RCP provided us with mutual solidarity support and granted us space for alternative communications between indigenous peoples via the Internet. Our e-mail address is the following: ashaninkaamauta.rcp.net.pe,” says the message.