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Ecuador Oriente Indians
Although the Indians of the Oriente first came into contact
with whites in the sixteenth century, the encounters were more
sporadic than those of most of the country's indigenous population.
Until the nineteenth century, most non-Indians entering the region
were either traders or missionaries. Beginning in the 1950s,
however, the government built roads and encouraged settlers from
the Sierra to colonize the Amazon River Basin. Virtually all
remaining Indians were brought into increasing contact with
national society. The interaction between Indians and outsiders had
a profound impact on the indigenous way of life.
In the late 1970s, roughly 30,000 Quichua speakers and 15,000
Jívaros lived in Oriente Indian communities. Quichua speakers
(sometimes referred to as the Yumbos) grew out of the
detribalization of members of many different groups after the
Spanish conquest. Subject to the influence of Quichua-speaking
missionaries and traders, various elements of the Yumbos adopted
the tongue as a lingua franca and gradually lost their previous
languages and tribal origins. Yumbos were scattered throughout the
Oriente, whereas the Jívaros--subdivided into the Shuar and the
Achuar--were concentrated in southeastern Ecuador. Some also lived
in northeastern Peru. Traditionally, both groups relied on
migration to resolve intracommunity conflict and to limit the
ecological damage to the tropical forest caused by slash-and-burn
agriculture.
Both the Yumbos and the Jívaros depended on agriculture as
their primary means of subsistence. Manioc, the main staple, was
grown in conjunction with a wide variety of other fruits and
vegetables. Yumbo men also resorted to wage labor to obtain cash
for the few purchases deemed necessary. By the mid-1970s,
increasing numbers of Quichua speakers settled around some of the
towns and missions of the Oriente. Indians themselves had begun to
make a distinction between Christian and jungle Indians. The former
engaged in trade with townspeople. The Jívaros, in contrast to the
Christian Quichua speakers, lived in more remote areas. Their mode
of horticulture was similar to that of the non-Christian Yumbos,
although they supplemented crop production with hunting and some
livestock raising.
Shamans (curanderos) played a pivotal role in social
relations in both groups. As the main leaders and the focus of
local conflicts, shamans were believed to both cure and kill
through magical means. In the 1980s group conflicts between rival
shamans still erupted into full-scale feuds with loss of life.
The Oriente Indian population dropped precipitously during the
initial period of intensive contact with outsiders. The destruction
of their crops by mestizos laying claim to indigenous lands, the
rapid exposure to diseases to which Indians lacked immunity, and
the extreme social disorganization all contributed to increased
mortality and decreased birth rates. One study of the Shuar in the
1950s found that the group between ten and nineteen years of age
was smaller than expected. This was the group that had been
youngest and most vulnerable during the initial contact with
national society. Normal population growth rates began to
reestablish themselves after approximately the first decade of such
contact.
Increased colonization and oil exploration also displaced the
indigenous population, hurt the nutritional status of Indians, and
damaged tribal social relations. The Indians' first strategy was to
retreat to more remote areas--an option that became less available
with increased settlement of the tropical forest. Land pressures
also produced a decline in the game available and, hence, in Indian
protein levels. Even livestock raising did little to improve Indian
diets, since this was done primarily for sale rather than
consumption. In addition, the decline in migration opportunities
increased tribal hostility and competition between rival shamans.
Critics contended that the government took little effective
action to protect Indians. Although the government had designated
some land as "indigenous communes" and missionaries had organized
some Indians into cooperatives, Indians remained disadvantaged in
conflicts with settlers, who had greater familiarity with the
national bureaucracy.
Data as of 1989
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