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Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper focuses upon a place called the Vertical Village, a building in the center of Rio de Janeiro inhabited exclusively by indigenous peoples from different ethnic groups belonging to different parts of the country. In this paper, we discuss questions related to the experience of being indigenous in a city, the construction of a residential space as a village, and the constitution of indigenous identity in the urban context. Following the paths of three inhabitants of the building, the questions considered emerge from their transiting between cities and villages, frontiers either real or imaginary, prejudices and expectations of indigenous identity.

This paper focuses upon a place called the Vertical Village, a building in the center of Rio de Janeiro inhabited exclusively by indigenous peoples from different ethnic groups belonging to different parts of the country. In this paper, we discuss questions related to the experience of being indigenous in a city, the construction of a residential space as a village, and the constitution of indigenous identity in the urban context. Following the paths of three inhabitants of the building, the questions considered emerge from their transiting between cities and villages, frontiers either real or imaginary, prejudices and expectations of indigenous identity.

The flows through tubular forms in the body, material culture and the natural environment play a key role in the thought of the indigenous peoples of Northwest Amazonia. Using examples from daily life, mythology and ritual, this paper examines the tube as an abstract concept that unites physiology, psychology, and productive processes with wider sociological and cosmological issues. The material, visual, and acoustic manifestations of tubular flow (hair) also raise the issues of synaesthesia and fractal notions of totalization / detotalization. With tubes as tantamount to life itself, ritual attention is focused on regulating bodily and other apertures to ensure balanced, tempered flow. The paper concludes by suggesting that the cultural elaboration of tubes and synaesthesia in Northwest Amazonia may relate to the lineal, exogamic features of social structure characteristic of the region.

Present paper identifies care and healing practices, as well as reveals the perception about the results obtained with the use of plants in a quilombola community. The research used the qualitative as well as the quantitative approach, so it is a research by mixed methods, developed through the basis of the model of single case studies, carried out by questionnaire to 22 interlocutors, and analyzed through content analysis Thematiccategorial. This study was carried out in a quilombola community, located in the municipality of Ananindeua-PA. The results state that 100% of the participants know and use some kind of integrative / complementary practice, these being 85 plants, with the most diverse purposes. It was also identified the practices of care and cure used by the quilombolas, being the use of teas the most recurrent practice followed by the blessing, smoking, praying and bath of smell. The research made it possible to draw up guidelines for health professionals according to cross-cultural theory, respecting individuality according to beliefs and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an integrating approach of conceptual issues to evaluate the wellbeing in indigenous communities. The approach recognizes the consensual absence of a “wellbeing” definition. Therefore, understanding the local concepts of wellbeing could help develop planning tools for decision-makers in indigenous societies contexts. The approach is based on the concept of capacities developed by A. Sen in which a group of human wellbeing indicators are constructed and where cultural issues might be included without affecting the power of the indicator. A study with Uitoto (múrui-muina-mɨnɨka) and the called People of the Center indigenous groups of the Northern Amazonia has been done to discuss their particular idea of what wellbeing is. It is a concept the People of the Center summarizes in the word monifue (abundance). This concept is the result of the analysis of their symbolic and ritual contexts. The concept has been actualized through the time and today integrate issues of their contemporary life style. The paper describes some elements derived of this concept, and contributes to the conceptualization of issues that might be used in a valid model to describe the life style of these indigenous societies. The discussion of the paper is not based on technical issues of the model yet. The discussion define some limits where the variables to measure and relate should be placed. This is an important result about the understanding of the concept wellbeing of these indigenous societies and the elements that require to be transformed in concrete indicators.

This paper deals with the intertextuality of certain objects among the Carib-speaking Yukpa and focuses especially on the Yukpa notion of 'writings' tumeno. Even if Yukpa baskets do not carry iconographic motifs the name for basket is "the one that possesses 'writings'" and there is a basket called tumeno. The agency of the 'writings' is demonstrated by focusing on bags that carry the tumeno of the snake. It is argued that these 'writings' are not symbolic but iconic and indexical. As such they form part of inter-species semiosis and are used to communicate toward non-human others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss how a certain literary aesthetics of matter, present in the literature of Clarice Lispector, invests in the dissolution of Western rationalism, contributing to a rethinking of tenuous frontiers between pairs modernly thought in dichotomous relation, such as humanity and animality, nature and society, objectivity and subjectivity, transcendence and immanence, etc. In this sense, the perception of the world found in some narratives of Lispector can be approximated to that aspect of the Amerindian multinatural perspectivism that extends the human condition to other species of the universe, endowing them with intentionality. Thus, proposing a dialogue between anthropology and literature, this essay analysis some texts by Clarice Lispector based specially on theoretical postulates of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Bruno Latour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper is the introduction to the dossier with three articles resulting from the Symposium “Economic, Political and Symbolic Management of ‘Traditional Knowledge’: Indigenous Criteria and External Redefinitions” of the 53rd International Congress of Americanists (Mexico, 2009). We have modified the subtitle of the Symposium, adopting in exchange for this dossier the subtitle of the Congress’ motto: “The Construction of a Self-Identity in a Globalized World”. The first part of the text remembers Ana María Spadafora, co-organizer of the Symposium and editor of the dossier, who passed away in 2010. The second part presents the aim of the Symposium and the contribution of the three articles in the dossier, plus Ana María Spadafora’s article, which was published earlier in this journal. Even though they touch on quite different research fields—bio-trade in Mexico and Peru, commercialization of handicrafts in French Guiana, modifications of traditional knowledge among the Ashéninka of Peru, and dreams of Pilagá women of the Chaco as practical action—all four papers show that the emphasis on relational aspects, the polyvalence of thoughts and practices or the imbrication of speaking, thinking and doing are stronger constants than the persistence of this or that emblematic element of “ethnic tradition.”

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper is an interview to the elder Kaɨmeramuy of the indigenous group muina. From his perspective and personal experience, Kaɨmeramuy tells the story of the Indians in Leticia and the process of social organization that led to the construction of the urban maloca and the confirmation of the Cabildo de los Pueblos Indígenas Unidos de Leticia (Cabildo of the United Indigenous Peoples of Leticia) (Capiul). The knowledge of these experiences allows us to understand how ideas and thoughts about the construction of urban spaces in the Amazon as well as forms of territorial appropriation of indigenous groups in the urban context have emerged and materialized

Resulting of fieldwork among the Kalapalo Indians, this paper is grounded on an ethnography concerning sorcery and shamanism. It intends to describe and analyse an event that took place in 2006, when a Kalapalo promoted a syncretism between shamanic and Christian knowledge through his experiences with the non-indigenous world. Such a situation lifted him to the status of shaman of shamans; following that, his condition deteriorated to the status of a dangerous sorcerer. Upon concentrating too great a power in his person, the accusations of sorcery soon found a way to prevent the crystallization of an instituted power. Sorcery would be better understood in terms of a mechanism which fosters the Upper-Xinguan ethos and controls the subversion of this ethos.

This paper aims to review the use of the terminology traditional “populations” and “communities”, highlighting the ambiguities of their uses and appropriation of both concepts in the Amazon reality. The work is the result of a literature search, where surveys have been conducted on the subject. In literature the use of the terms traditional “population” and “communities” it seems to be more of a semantic preference than epistemological and conceptual distances, since the authors use both terms, usually with the same connotation, although there are criticisms related the use of terminology. In Brazilian legislative and legal proceedings there is the use of two terms, as in the case of the National Protected Areas System (Law N° 9.985/2000) and Decree 6040/2007, which prevails in the first the term “populations” and in the second, “peoples and communities”, which does not reflect, however, significant differences in how the definitions of the characteristics of these traditional groups. In the scenario of Amazon biological and cultural diversity, the appropriation of both definitions “population” and “community” contributes to the understanding of social collectivities categories that fight for recognition and to maintain their way of life.

The Amazonian language Resígaro was heavily influenced by the unrelated, neighboring Bora language. Bora influence involves cultural assimilation, some loanwords, and heavy morphological borrowing. What social circumstances lead to this influence? This paper reviews our current knowledge about the cultural and linguistic features that Resígaro borrowed from Bora and interprets these as reflecting a particular social history involving bilingualism and ceremonial exchange.

The interior of the forest is where the Hupd’äh, indigenous group of the Upper Rio Negro, Amazonas state, Brazil, feel safe and happy and it is to hunting camps that many families go at times of plenty. When perambulating in the forest, whether to collect fruit or vines, hunt, or visit relatives in other communities, is really a moment of happiness, a time when Hupd’äh feel completely at ease. Generally, the food supply decreases during the months between June- July and November-December, when fruits of the forest are scarce and there is less possibility of catching game, leading to a period of food shortage. This paper aims to present an analysis of Hupd’äh relationship with their territory, paying attention to the notion of “living well” as it emerges from analysis of data collected during an ethnographic experience among Hupd’äh, as well as from the ethnological literature on the region.

This is the first of a three-part account of a visit to Iquitos at the time of the New Millennium by the narrator, who lives in Colombia, has been drinking yajé (ayahuasca) with its indigenous shamans and for a book he is writing about the subject, decides to investigate the rituals in Peru. It is in the form of a travelogue divided into vignettes: his voyage upriver from Leticia to Iquitos, his impressions of a city which revolves around eco-tourism and his encounter with his host, Zappa, an American expatriate who exports shamanic plants and runs ayahuasca ceremonies but lacks the due rigor and respect for indigenous traditions, the narrator believes, who measures what Zappa does against the relatively unspoiled source of Native-American healing he experienced in the Putumayo. Despite Iquitos´s lack of authenticity, he is charmed by its local color, friendliness and reminiscences of the age of the rubber boom, but does not ignore the poverty, provincialism and backwardness of a big city which, like any other in the Amazon, is losing its original environment and indigenous customs, nor the absurd division of what he regards as a single nation of the Amazon into three countries which equally exploit its jungles. But he makes those points in a humorous rather than propagandistic way as he ruefully relates his hassles at the border control, sights of a useless military presence and other "folkloric" incidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses articles in the issue on topics including anthropology, natural sciences, and Amazon.

The paper examines how the association between plants and graphic arts led to the simultaneous patrimonialization of the Shipibo-Conibo kene designs and of the traditional use of ayahuasca by the Peruvian government in 2008. It describes the context of production and commercialization by women of kene objets and its link to immaterial designs seen in ayahuasca sessions and used in new shamanic paintings. It examines the notions of visuality, materiality and identity laid out in the kene patrimonialization report and compares them to the stress put upon health and the sacred in the ayahuasca report. Although they had several limitations, both cases state the changing character of designs and plant use and avoid drawing inventories and reifying knowledge and visionary practices.

The border is more than a limit. Nevertheless, it is not possible to blur the limits in border studies. This paper shows how the limits that divide the towns of Leticia (Colombia) and Tabatinga (Brazil) are a result of the relationships between these towns and the border. This relationship is expressed spatially through symbolic mechanisms, which puts in evidence the differences between the States. These spatial expressions do not disappear with changes in the border, but cause changes in the ways they are symbolized in the territory.

In the current discourses and practices of indigenous people of Amazonia, there is a mixture of various, conflicting kinds of rationality, which points out the coexistence of different conceptual frameworks. This coexistence appears in so many diverse forms that it would be very simplifying to describe it merely in terms of acculturation and resistance. It can be better approached as a cultural heterogeneity, which has to be analyzed case by case. This article focuses on an Ashéninka woman, who was one of my main informants ten years ago in a project for the evaluation and analysis of ethnobotanical knowledge on the Brazil-Peru border, and who later on was responsible for taking care of a medicinal garden for a project financed by a European NGO. This led to a marked impoverishment of her ethnomedicinal knowledge. To explain such a paradoxical outcome, the paper describes former and current processes of regional and interethnic borrowing, analyzes the indigenous conceptions about knowledge and therapeutic efficacy, and underlines the emphasis on relational criteria. These criteria are precisely what this woman is giving up now.

The creation of extractive, agro-industrial and ecological spaces in indigenous territories raises a series of questions regarding the future of these territories and, particularly, the indigenous project of territorial and political autonomy in Latin America and elsewhere. These spaces are first of all social spaces, crossed and interwoven by power relations that define mobile frontiers between life and death, domination and autonomy, inclusion and exclusion. This paper deals with the situation of the Awá people and their territory in Ecuador, in a context of growing territorial and environmental pressures from the state, logging, mining, and palm-oil companies, as well as from the growing interest and actions regarding the conservation of its “nature”.

This paper approaches the indigenous perceptions about the formation of an infant body by the Tikuna Indians of San Martin de Amacayacu, who live in the south of the Colombian Amazon Trapeze. Indigenous concepts about nutrition are not comparable with the concepts of nutrition and malnutrition from the perspective of biological quantification. For the natives, body formation initiates with their myths of origin, everyday subsistence activities, relationships with natural beings and the bestowal of care of infant babies and small children. For health professionals, in contrast, the conception of the human body is based upon a biological, nutritional and anthropometric logic. The article shows the differences between these two visions, calling for an intercultural rethinking to make them compatible in order to avoid infant deaths associated with nutritional deficiencies.

The Brazil-Peru border is inhabited by the second largest concentration of peoples in voluntary isolation of the world. These societies maintain a high degree of autonomy and avoid permanent contact with the surrounding societies. Since 2000, this region has been the target of policies aimed to favor the access to world markets (timber, oil, hydroelectric project), and the construction of infrastructure within the frame of the regional integration project IIRSA. This paper analyzes this situation, which threatens the survival of the isolated peoples who live in the region and has led to migratory processes of some of them from Peru into Brazil, and the reordering of the indigenous territories in this border region. These migrations often result in tense situations that can lead to conflicts between isolated and contacted groups. This calls for new strategies by the Brazilian and Peruvian organizations responsible for the protection and safeguarding of their rights, and for a greater integration between the institutions of both countries.

According to the specialized literature, there are two types of nominal incorporation across languages. The first one is a syntactic process in which a nominal nuclear argument juxtaposes to the verb, resulting in a complex verb of restricted meaning. In the other one, similar to lexical composition, two lexical items are put together to form a third one. This paper describes the nominal incorporation in Parkatêjê, which occurs as a lexical process.

This paper analyzes, based on historical and ethnographic data, the discursive contradictions and practical tensions in the relationships between indigenous peoples and nation-states in the political borders Brazil-Colombia-Peru and Brazil-France (Overseas Department of French Guiana). The analysis focuses on the processes of nationalization and on the impact of different pro-Indian policies on the living conditions of the indigenous peoples in these border regions.

This text is the introduction to a dossier that collects four of the papers presented in the discussion group “Indian Frontiers of Latin America” (Leticia, 2009), organized by the Institut des Hautes Etudes de l’Amérique Latine (IHEAL), the Institut des Amériques (IDA) and the Amazonia Campus of Universidad Nacional de Colombia. This event gathered researchers and regional actors involved in the management, administration, protection and analysis of the frontier regions and of the populations that inhabit them. We decided to privilege the participation of young researchers, of those that allowed us to consolidate an ample view of the international scenario of the Amazon basin, and of those that gave us the possibility of launching a dialogue between academic discourses and those of the NGOs. The indigenous character of the populations that inhabit the frontier regions of South America gives these regions a particular situation. A conscious reflection about their dynamics and tensions cannot be carried out without reference to their ethnic nature or without thinking the political frontiers as cultural frontiers.

This paper presents some morphosyntactic features of Ocaina, a seriously endangered, underdescribed language of the Colombian-Peruvian Amazon region. Ocaina has an extensive nominal classification system and number markers—dual and plural—suffixed to both nouns and person markers on verbs. Grammatical relations follow a nominative-accusative pattern and are coded by a relatively rigid constituent order SOV (Subject-Object-Verb); by verbal prefixes (o-s-V) and enclitics (o-V=s), with just one prefix for objects of monotransitive and ditransitive verbs; and by the marking of oblique objects of certain verbs by case suffixes and postpositions. Most of the Ocaina features described are shared with Uitoto of the Witotoan family; many are also shared with Bora (Boran family), whose genetic link to the Witotoan family is still hypothetical. All these languages share certain features with neighboring languages, such as those of the Vaupés region, e.g. nominal classification and nominative-accusative alignment. We suggest that some aspects of Ocaina morphosyntax are probably inherited from the Witotoan family while others are better explained by areal diffusion.

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mundo Amazónico is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)