ANÁLISIS DE LA DEMANDA

This Section will discuss what change means and how it is experienced by the Ashaninka people I lived among. They spoke of their past as being separated into differentTiempos ('Times’)88_{starting atPerani(‘before’), the mythical beginning, up to}

today's Tiempo de la civilización ('Time of Civilization’). When discussing these

periods different people emphasized the bodily transformations they and their

ancestors experienced in processes of becoming89_{as time passed and new foods were}

eaten90_{, new clothes were worn, and new beings appeared in the world. The key is}

that these transformations are physical but also moral as specific bodies give specific perspectives91_{that, I propose following their statements, granted them specific moral}

repertoires. I will argue that in order to understand how they experience change we must understand their ideas of the transformational nature of the body, the transformations they believe to have gone through historically, and how these have influenced their perspective.

Halbwachs (1992) got us thinking analytically in terms of how the past is shaped by the concerns of the present. It is this awareness of the present as actively constructed by the social beings that inhabit it which makes the past worth remembering, giving it historical significance as sequences of acts and events that

88 This was always said in Spanish. Fewer people saidépoca('epoch').

89 My informants use the Spanish volverse ('to become').Volverse como X (‘Become like X’), orSe ha vuelto comoX” (Has become like X), orNos estamos volviendo comoX (We are becoming like X).

90 Similarly, see Oakdale (2008) for the importance of food in thinking about change among Kayabí people.

91 Ashaninka people's thought and practice fits ‘perspectivism’ as outlined by Viveiros de Castro: “The world is inhabited by different sorts of subjects or persons, human and nonhuman, which apprehend reality from distinct points of view” relating to their bodies (1998:469) . A being's point of view — whether a being observed appears as a peccary, jaguar, or human being — depends on the kind of body from which that specimen is observed. See also Lima (1996).

have contributed to creating the present. Of course, memory is also a representation of lived experience which holds relation to real events. Halbwachs gave us insight on how memories are fundamental to the creation and maintenance of community and its importance in guiding social and political action. In this sense, memory helps explain the present situation of those whose past is remembered, elucidating the manner in which the group, the 'we' of the present, came into existence through the actions of the ancestors who fashioned 'our' world. Connerton kept us on a similar line but his analysis is closer to the Ashaninka lived experience of the body as a receptacle of memory. He asserts that “[T]he past is, as it were, sedimented in the body... memory is sedimented, or amassed, in the body” (1989:72). Thus, the body is inscribed with and becomes a container of memory.

Historical representation is a very selective process. The interesting point is finding out why my informants told me what they did about the past, which I cannot say are stories of what 'really happened', and avoided events we know did happen. I believe that the meaning of what they recalled is not fortuitous but depends on the context in which they told it. Their narratives use the past in a creative manner, combining elements of their common past to benefit their interests in the present. In this sense, the conscious appropriation of history involves both remembering and forgetting, both dynamic processes full of intentionality. Thus, specific instances of the past are remembered and forgotten not only for an understanding of the past but also to reflect on their lives today. I propose that Tiemposare a conscious re-creation of themselves in the present through these narratives of the past.

Lambek’s argument that “memory is never out of time and never morally or pragmatically neutral” (1996:240) fits well with the Ashaninka case. The people I lived among are skilfully reinventing themselves with the past they construct in their narratives. They strategically narrate it as empowering social action as their stories of the past describe both positive and negative change as being stimulated by their own choices not the actions of outsiders or more powerful beings which may be more

obvious from a quick reading of the historical record. Thus, any misgivings they have suffered are believed to be due to their own ignorant errors. This is the gnostic attitude that Varese attributes to Ashaninka people:

Error... is a consequence of ignorance and the cause of perdition of humanity, which was primordially transformed into animals. … Error and ignorance of norms are causes of real and symbolic perdition. The consequence of this concept is a gnostic essential attitude: Knowledge saves; ignorance leads to being lost.(2002:31)

Had they known better, I was constantly told, they would have fought back the Patrones/defeated Sendero earlier/etc. Of course, we know of Ashaninka people who killed Patrones and joined large-scale rebellions against missionaries, all in the

name of kametsa asaiki. However, even if their accounts might not be what 'really

happened' they are part of the “processes whereby individuals experience, interpret, and create changes within social orders” (Hill 1988:3). Whatever the veracity of these accounts may be, they show the Ashaninka body as being imbued with memory, which is a memory of the body. The body becomes the form and content of their recollection of the past92 _{and, I argue, their tool to think about the present and the}

future. Hence, it is not only important to think of what they prefer to remember but also how they do it as ”Cultural meanings are embedded not only in the events and personalities chosen to be… remembered but also in the process itself of remembering the past.” (Cormier 2003:123). It is only through the body that they can put the past and the future in context.

Discussing temporality implies thinking about change which, especially when talking about indigenous peoples, forces us to the debate between 'tradition' and 'acculturation'. I agree with Vilaça's critique that: “[Acculturation studies] do not pay enough attention to the indigenous sociocosmic conceptions... [I]ndigenous sociology is above all a 'physiology' so that in place of 'acculturation'... [we have] transubstantiation and metamorphosis (2008:183)”. This Section follows the

92 I take inspiration from Carneiro da Cunha and Viveiros de Castro’s (1985) assertion that, for Tupinambá people, vengeance becomes the form and content of their recollection of the past.

Amazonianist trend in analysing these social processes in the context of the centrality of the body and its transformations to indigenous perspectives. I believe that analysing how they think of their bodies and its historical transformations can shed light on how they think about change and experience it as for Ashaninka people, like other Amazonians, “to change tradition is...'to change body'” (Vilaça 2007:184). This is crucial when we consider that those I lived among believed they were becoming

‘like Mestizos’. Several Amazonianists have noted that Amerindian lived worlds

point more to a constant 'becoming' than a stable 'being'.93 _{Thus, to see their ideas of}

'becoming likeMestizos' as loss of culture/tradition is a grave oversimplification as it imposes an essentialised notion of cultural practices they do not share.94

It is unnecessary to remind the reader that bodies are socially constituted, in the sense that they are constructed as an object of knowledge or discourse. Or that from an indigenous Amazonian point of view bodies are not asocial biological objects but the locus of the construction of sociality, the “primary site where personhood, social identities, and relationships to others are created and perpetuated.” (Conklin 2001:xx) There is a tendency among indigenous Amazonians to think of the human body as transformable (Viveiros de Castro 1998) and it has

been suggested that in their thought the body is inherently unstable.95 _Ashaninka

perspectives focus on the centrality of the body, its construction, and its transformations. This body is not a generic biological trait but a socially constructed

entity built through experience and social relationships.96 _{They construct their}

desired bodies through eating some substances, avoiding others, by choosing to wear different clothes, which become an extension of their body, and by living together.

Ashaninka language does not have a word for body so the Spanish word

93 Ex. “For the Araweté, the person is inherently in transition; human destiny is a process of other becoming.” (Viveiros de Castro 1992:1)

94 Except during politically-staged performances of ethnicity. 95 See for example Taylor (1996) and Vilaça (2005).

96 See Gow (1989; 1991) for similar ideas amongst the related Piro (Yine) people. See also Vilaça (2002; 2005; 2007).

cuerpo (‘body’) is used in its stead. In fact, the closest Ashaninka word isnowaka(‘my flesh’) or i/owaka (‘his/her flesh’), which is the same term used for that of animals. Weiss tells us that “The parts of the body that [Ashaninka people recognize and name are also] recognized in the bodies of animals… and are given the same names. The human heart, for example, is…, nosire… The corresponding organ in any other creature, whether it walks, swims, or flies, is… isire (his heart).” (1975:426) However,

noshire is more than just the heart as it is also translated as ‘my soul’ or ‘my thoughts’. This does not mean that the heart and the soul are the same, but rather that the heart is the seat of a person’s soul and true thoughts. Weiss explains that:

[T]he heart is understood to be the seat of thought and speech, the function of the brain being unknown. "I think about him" is, in the [Ashaninka] tongue, nokenki- sireiri (literally "I relate about him in my heart, or soul"). One informant… argued that the soul actually pervades the body, which is why a blow on the head or on a limb can do great damage, but the center of the soul remains in the heart. (1975:427)

Weiss points out that Ashaninka people feel “contempt for the physical body because of its limitations, and its insignificant role as mere "clothing" or "skin" of the soul.” (1975:258) Similarly, I was told that upon death the body may decay underground but the soul may stay behind as a ghost or may head for the sky. In fact, I was told by an old sheripiari that upon his teacher’s death “he left here his former clothing, his former skin to rot… but what was his soul here went and lived with the good spirits.” It seems that the human body is simply the clothing of the soul, and so what is put on it (ie. clothes, paint) is only a different clothing for the internal locus of Ashaninka personhood.

Like other Amazonians, the Ashaninka body grants them their perspective on the world and therefore of whom they are in relation to everyone else. I propose that this perspective also includes morality as, at least in the Ashaninka case, it is obvious that having the ‘strong’ body of an Ashaninkasanori(‘real Ashaninka person’) is only achieved through relations of positive morality by acquiring and consuming food in

the way taught bykametsa asaiki.97_{Comparatively, White and Andean people are said}

to be different, physically and morally, because of what they eat and drink and their stinginess as they do it.

This understanding of past and possible future bodily transformations constructs their sense of the present and their own identity. Following the view that “...the notion of the person and a consideration of the place of the human body in the vision that indigenous societies produce of themselves are fundamental for an adequate comprehension of the social organization and cosmology of these societies” (Seeger et al. 1979:3), this Section seeks an understanding of Ashaninka peoples' accounts of their past, their understanding of who they are in the present, and their ideas of what they will become in the future. This will be done through an analysis of what I was told about the Ashaninka body and how it has transformed since the days when they were the only beings on earth.

I suggest that in the Ashaninka case the conscious production of historical memory arises from the contemporary necessity for a definition of collective identity. Thus, historical consciousness of this sort is not the next step in a cognitive understanding of the past but is taken as a model by choice. The events they choose to remember about the past are strategic and context-specific and so can be modified as time passes and their needs change. Bajo Urubamba Ashaninka people, with such a mix of dialects, degrees of adaptation, and regional origin, all in an area that is not part of their ‘traditional’ territory, need these collective histories for the sake of social cohesion at a time when they must be united to deal with the impositions on their lives by powerful outsiders. This memory also becomes necessary when claiming belonging to the area now that their territories are under threat. As Malkki asserts, “[C]ollective histories flourish where they have a meaningful, signifying use in the present... actors produce historical consciousness where they need it for the sake of

97 See Londoño Sulkin (2005) for an insightful account of the link between morality and perspectivism among Muinane people.

life and action.” (1995:242)

I ask the reader to join me in thinking of Ashaninka bodies like Lévi-Strauss did of myth: transformations evidencing historical processes. I aim to look at social change as Ashaninka people experience it, that is, from the perspective of their mode for producing transformations. In Amazonia bodily transformations can be caused by the exchange of bodily substances following activities such as sexual intercourse, sleeping together, living in close proximity, and participating in homicide, or by modifications to the kinds of clothing, as well as by sharing food and eating

together.98 _{I believe that, like their Yine (Piro) neighbours, Ashaninka people}

experience the world as an ongoing “system of transformations”:

The shifts... in style of clothing, shamanry or ritual life… are genuine changes, and must be understood as so by the analyst. They are understood to be so by Piro people. But they do not raise... the problem of continuity and change, for Piro people know that they are transformations of transformation.(Gow 2001:309)

I am not the first to highlight the importance of Ashaninka ideas on the transformational nature of things. Weiss wrote four decades ago that for them “there is no such occurrence as the creation of something out of nothing, but only the transformation of something out of something else.” (1972:169). I use this idea as an analytical tool to help me unpack the anthropological questions surrounding these changes. Following Vilaça's work, I believe that instead of focusing on changing traditions we should focus on the changes in bodies that create them.

I am aware that there may be other ways of remembering the past and note that there are some who recognize other shorter Tiemposor different versions of the experiences in these. It is clear that the past is never represented in a uniform or uncontested way, even within the same society. However, for the purpose of my thesis I look at the main line of understanding of the past that I encountered in the

Bajo Urubamba. I believe that the accounts of these Tiempos were sorted out by so

98 See for example, Conklin (2000; 2001), Fausto (2007), Gow (1991; 2000), Lagrou (2000), Rival (1998), Vilaça (2005; 2007).

many different people in such a similar manner because it has become a political

necessity to do so as this view is coherent with their present-day kametsa asaiki

project. I must also note that there was more emphasis put on specific Tiempos

depending on context as the ‘Time of Slavery’ had more emphasis in political contexts and the ‘Time of the Ancestors’ was emphasised when complaining about the lack of game. It is also important to note that different Tiempos receive different emphasis by different age groups. I will not address all these variations due to a lack of space but recognise their importance and will definitely concentrate on them in future research. It is also interesting to note that the separation intoTiemposwas done when speaking in both Ashaninka and Spanish.

Before we move on I must recognise that by discussing concepts such as ‘history’, ‘time’, ‘memory’, and ‘body’, I am immersing myself in debates that surpass the borders of our discipline. However, it is not my intention to embark on a deconstruction of these notions as academic concepts but to treat them ‘ethnographically’, that is, in the way they work and are used in Ashaninka everyday life. I use these terms because it is the only way to translate the terms my informants used so that they can be understood by the reader.

Chapter 2 is the first of this Section. It will guide the reader through the processes of 'becoming' and body transformation that my Ashaninka informants believe they, as part of an imagined community, and their ancestors experienced in the Tiempos in which they divide their past. I point out that, in common with other indigenous Amazonian peoples, they believe that the changes in their bodies were caused by the consumption of new food and the wearing of new clothes. I follow these transformations paying a close attention to the shifts in perspective that came with them. Chapter 3 will deal more explicitly with their ideas of their current ‘civilised’ body and the ‘civilised’ perspective that comes with it. I expand on what Ashaninka people in the Bajo Urubamba say about their lives as 'civilised' people and the advantages it grants them over their ‘uncivilised’ ancestors. Finally, Chapter

4 will show this perspective in action in everyday life through their belief that the most important part about being ‘civilised’ is knowing ‘how to defend ourselves’ and ‘how to live in a Comunidad’. It is noteworthy that whilst it is highly attractive to

'become civilised' there is always the danger of 'becoming like Mestizos' which is

highly undesirable and dangerous. Whilst 'becoming likeMestizos' is a serious loss of humanity, ‘becoming civilised' is about empowerment in the pursuit of the ‘good life’. For my informants being 'civilised' is not opposed to 'tradition'; it is a conscious choice to counter the ignorance of their ancestors.

This Section is my contribution to the Amazonian literature dealing with indigenous notions of the past that has flourished in the discipline in the last twenty years.99_{The question of the historical creation of the body is extremely important for}

my Ashaninka informants and their ideas and accounts of these transformations must be taken seriously if we want to understand how they experience change, who