Asháninka
The Asháninka or Asháninca (also derogatory: "Campa" or "Kampa") are an indigenous people in eastern Peru and western Brazil .
The name refers to an ethnic group that lives in the tropical forest of the western Amazon basin in the catchment area of the Apurímac , Ene , Perené and Tambo rivers , on the eastern edge of the western cordillera of the Andes .
population
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The Asháninka (the name means brothers of men) are estimated at between 25,000 and 65,000 people. Only a few hundred of them live on the Brazilian side. On the Peruvian side, the Asháninka are the largest group among the approximately 65 indigenous peoples of the eastern rainforest areas, to which a total of 300,000 people belong.
About 900 Asháninka live on the Brazilian side. They are originally from Peru. It is believed that they emigrated to what is now Brazilian territory at the end of the 19th century during the rubber boom . The reason for this was the Peruvian rubber barons from whom they fled. Today they live in Brazil, in the state of Acre, in 5 different areas, all of which are located on the Juruá River and its tributaries, Breu, Amônia, Envira and Primavera. Over half of the Asháninka live on the Amônia River.
The Asháninka people are made up of seven subgroups who live in over 200 settlements scattered along the jungle valleys; the most important are the Cutivireni, the Perené Asheninga, the Atsiri, the Nomatsiguenga, and the Caquinteo.
language
The Asháninka language is one of the pre-Andean Arawak languages . A distinction is made between several dialects such as Asheninka Pajonal, Asheninka Perené, Asheninka Pichis or Acheninka Ucayali-Yurua, whereby the members of the various language groups also understand the dialects of the other languages. The Machiguenga language is closely related .
Way of life
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The still limited traditional Asháninka live from subsistence farming . They operate slash- and- burn agriculture to plant fields in the rainforest in a sustainable way and to plant yuca , as well as sweet potatoes , corn , bananas , rice , coffee , cocoa and sugar cane .
Their intoxicating drink K'atu , which is prepared and served by shamans, is also well known .
The Ashaninka have comparatively few rituals or physical sacred objects. Typical is the Kushma, a garment in the form of a cowl, probably based on Inca clothing. Shamans use ayahuasca . The course of the rivers dominates the mythology, in contrast to the cardinal points with other ethnic groups of the lowlands. A strong dualism dominates the spirit world, either good or bad, demons or good spirits exist. In addition, the belief in witchcraft prevails. In the past, children, especially girls, were often given to missionaries to protect them from being lynched. Missionaries and others long trafficked Ashaninka children in order to raise them to be house slaves.
The Ashaninka have so far managed to preserve their traditional, subsistence-oriented life and at the same time harmoniously indigenize modern cultural elements : They reforest destroyed rainforest areas and teach foreigners the methods of their sustainable agriculture in a specially established school. In addition, they have an internet connection via a photovoltaic system, which they can use to contact the authorities if the “tropical wood mafia” turns up.
Messianism
The Ashaninka adhere to a strong messianism : They believe in the return of an 'itomi pava', a son of the sun who is often associated with the Inca - similar to the Inkarrí myth of the Quechuas in the Andean highlands. The Asháninka formed the core of the uprising movement under Juan Santos Atahualpa in the 18th century, which included numerous ethnic groups from the Peruvian Amazon lowlands and drove the Spaniards and whites out of the region for a century. In the late 19th century, however, at least part of the Asháninka briefly followed the rubber baron Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald , and in the early 20th century the Adventist missionary Ferdinand Stahl . In the mid-1950s, numerous Ashaninka believed the black guerrilla leader Guillermo Lobaton was the return of the Inca and supported the guerrilla war of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR).
Internal armed conflict in Peru
In the course of the internal armed conflict in Peru from 1980 to 2000, the Ashaninka were victims of forced recruitment, forced labor and massacres by the Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA . In 1989, fighters from the MRTA committed acts of revenge on Ashaninka, who were accused of collaborating against the MIR movement in the 1965 guerrilla war. Ashaninka then declared war on the MRTA and occupied the city of Puerto Bermúdez in order to hand over MRTA fighters to the government.
According to the official final report of the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation published in 2003 , out of a total of around 55,000 Ashaninka in Junín, around 6,000 were killed, around 10,000 were displaced within the rainforest area of the Ene , Tambo and Perené and around 5,000 were captured in the camps of Sendero Luminoso in the Andes held. 30 to 40 Ashaninka villages were wiped out. The remains of victims of these massacres are still being found today.
Dam project on the Ene
In 2011, plans became public that Brazilian electricity companies plan to build a dam in Pakitzapango on the Río Ene . The approximately 734 km² reservoir would flood 10 villages with 12,000 people, 10,000 of them indigenous. Opposition formed on the part of the Asháninka concerned.
support
To support the Asháninkas, the so-called "Munich Coffee" from fair trade is sold in Munich , of which 20 cents per kilogram sold was given to the President of the Asháninka ( Guillermo Naco ). The action is supported by the 3rd Mayor Hep Monatzeder .
See also
literature
- Jeremy Narby : The Cosmic Serpent. On the paths of the shamans to the origins of modern knowledge. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-608-93518-5 .
- Michael F. Brown, Eduardo Fernández: War of Shadows. The Struggle for Utopia in the Peruvian Amazon . University of California Press, Berkley 1993, ISBN 0-520-07448-3 .
- Eliane Fernandes Ferreira: From bow and arrow to the “digital bow”. The indigenous people of Brazil and the Internet. Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-8376-1049-9 , pp. 151-188.
Web links
- Ashaninka on the website Povos Indígenas no Brasil of the Instituto Socioambiental (Portuguese, partly English)
- Perú ecológico: Asháninka (Spanish)
- Literature about the Ashaninka in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin
- Asháninka . In: Munich coffee
- Asháninka website (Spanish) ( Memento from June 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ www.nordsuedforum.de , p. 8, pdf, accessed on April 7, 2013
- ^ Battle for Amazonia - The Internet Indians . In: SWR TV: Countries - People - Adventure , broadcast on January 27, 2015, accessed on March 23, 2015.
- ^ Peru: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission - a first step towards a country without injustice . AI Index: AMR 46/003/2004. Amnesty International, August 2004. pp. 15f.
- ↑ Jacqueline Fowks: Perú comienza las exhumaciones de la etnia que arrasó Sendero Luminoso. Un equipo forense tiene testimonios de la existencia de hasta 160 cadáveres de asháninkas . El País, June 13, 2014.
- ↑ Peru's dam busters . New Internationalist Magazine, No. 446, October 2011.
- ^ Pakitzapango dam threatens Ashaninka community. The New York Times, June 7, 2012.