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The Ashaninka are currently found in Brazilian territory on the upper Juruá. Originally from Peru and found nowadays along the Amônia, Breu and Envira rivers and the Primavera stream, the history of Ashaninka occupation of this region is however difficult to establish with precision. Information from local history sources is vague and provides few indications about the presence of this people on Brazilian territory.

The French priest Tastevin undertook several voyages on the upper Juruá in the first decades of the 20th century and found Ashaninka groups located in the Contamana foothills on the headwaters of the Juruá-Mirim, a left bank tributary of the upper Juruá. When mapping indigenous groups in Acre on the basis of travellers’ and chroniclers’ reports, Castelo Branco (1950: 8) stated that the Kampa were already circulating in this region at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries.

The population to be found today on the Amônia river derives from several places and is the product of successive migrations. In addition to population movements from Peru to Brazil by means of the upper Juruá or tributaries of the Ucayali, throughout the 20th century there have occurred several Ashaninka migrations from the Envira and Breu rivers in the direction of the Amônia. Similarly, although some Ashaninka families have remained fixed on the Amônia since the 1930s, there are kinship ties linking the Ashaninka of the Amônia to those located both in Peruvian territory and in other Brazilian locations.

According to a hypothesis common to many students of this group, the presence of the Ashaninka on the upper Juruá in Brazil (as well in the Bolivian Madre de Dios region) is the result of the activities of Peruvian caucheiros (latex collectors) who, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, brought them from the Ucayali to these border regions. However not all the Ashaninka agree with this version.

The Ashaninka allege that, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, the Amônia was also inhabited by Amahuaka indians, traditional enemies and regarded as ‘wild’ indians. For the caucheiros and the rubber estate owners, the presence of the Amahuaka represented a permanent threat to rubber collection and a source of constant concern. Regarded as excellent warriors, Ashaninka served the interests of both Brazilian and Peruvian employers, who strategically exploited the traditional hostilities between both peoples. Armed and encouraged by brancos who offered them trade goods, the Ashaninka decimated the Amahuaka and put them to flight. The Ashaninka currently living on the Amônia did not take part in the attacks on the Amahuaka, but can recall the tales of their elder relatives.

Although the Ashaninka participated in the collection of caucho and the protection of the rubber estates, they did not however become integrated into the extractive rubber economy unlike other indigenous groups in Acre. They did however become involved in the system of aviamento (production credit) which governed commercial dealings in the region.

The lower reaches of the Amônia, in the municipality of Marechal Thaumaturgo as far as the Artur (left bank) and Montevidéu (right bank) streams where the last rubber tappers residence of the former Minas Gerais rubber estate was located, were rich in latex and were progressively occupied by rubber tappers from north-eastern Brazil from the end of the 19th century. In addition to being rich in game, fish and rare woods, the upper Amônia in Brazil, from the streams referred to as far as the international boundary, was characterized by the absence of rubber trees. These upper reaches were little sought after by non-indians prior to the 1970s and the intensification of timber extraction.

The organization of work and population growth in the rubber estates required external labour to supply the estate stores with food and other products, thereby ensuring the permanence of the rubber tappers. The Ashaninka of the Amônia became part of the rubber economy by offering new services to the owners. With the extraction of caucho in progressive decline, the principal activity carried out by the group until the 1970s was to hunt wild animals in exchange for goods, supplying both meat and skins which were highly valued on the Amazon market.

Logging and the struggle for land

Far from urban centres and highways, the Ashaninka did not suffer directly or intensely the effects of the expansion of the ranching and agriculture economy that characterized the ‘second conquest’ of Acre in the 1970s. Although the ‘paulistas’ (the name given to new colonists arriving from southern Brazil) also acquired several rubber estates in the upper Juruá region with a view to transforming them into cattle ranches, the Amônia river remained relatively distant from this expanding frontier, although its margins did not escape being cleared for this type of economic activity.

Although some Ashaninka families went to work for ranch owners, planting swidden gardens or clearing areas for cattle raising, the crisis of rubber collection and the pressures deriving from the search for new resources arrived on the middle and upper Amônia essentially in the form of logging. This activity began in the 1970s and was intensified in the 1980s, increasing levels of contact between the Ashaninka and regional non-indian society.

The abundance of hardwoods, mainly in the part occupied by the Ashaninka, led the Amônia to become known locally as the ‘river of wood’. The intensification of logging in the 1980s, with mechanized extraction and clear cutting, had disastrous consequences for the environment and the native population. Logging activities profoundly affected the social organization and cultural reproduction of the Ashaninka of the Amônia.

From the initial felling to the sale to industry, the logging system on the Amônia involved several types of protagonists: the logger, the middle man, the bosses in Cruzeiro do Sul and the European buyers. The Ashaninka and the non-indian squatters operated at the bottom of this system as simple labour. Their labour power was needed to open forest trails, find and cut the trees into logs which were then rolled down to the streams. This work was generally carried out in the ‘summer’, in other words during the dry season.

According to the Ashaninka, the bosses generally recorded their production in notebooks, but ‘always robbed us’. The indians were swindled both on the length and cubic volume of the wood. Ashaninka affirm that in these transactions a length of mahogany could be exchanged for a kilo of salt or of soap.

Several companies bought timber coming from the Amônia, but Marmude Cameli Limitada was the greatest culprit for the damage to the environment and the Ashaninka population as it took part in all the illegal incursions into the indigenous reserve and the removal of mahogany and cedar on an industrial scale. More than a quarter of the reserve suffered directly or indirectly from intensive logging, profoundly affecting the lives of the indians. The area most affected is located between the Taboca, Revoltoso and Amoninha streams, where three illegal mechanized invasions took place in 1981, 1985 and 1987 opening up a total of 80 kilometres of logging roads in the forest.

The Ashaninka refer to this period as a time of penury and hunger, in contrast to the state of plenty that existed on the upper Amônia when they lived isolated from non-indians. During the logging decade the piyarentsi ritual was frequently invaded by squatters accused of getting the indians drunk on cachaça and of sexually abusing the women. Indigenous music and dance were looked down upon by the brancos who brought their cassette players and imposed their own musical preferences.

Because of the presence of the brancos the frequency of the piyarentsi and the kamarãpi diminished; some Ashaninka also stopped wearing the kushma and started dressing like the local population; the native language was the object of discrimination and many men, constantly called upon to cut timber or to carry out other tasks for the brancos, progressively left off producing their handicrafts, to the extent that some objects produced exclusively by men, such as bows, arrows and headdresses, almost disappeared.

As well as this reduction in their cultural activities, the logging period is also regarded by the Ashaninka as the period of most illness and deaths. The intensive contact with brancos is marked by the multiplication of diseases: influenza, pneumonia, whooping cough, measles, hepatitis, typhoid fever, cholera... Although there are no data that allow an exact assessment of the impact of these diseases on the indigenous population, the Ashaninka affirm that they became endemic, leading to various deaths, affecting above all the children and decimating many families.

Nevertheless, while the indians refer to the ‘time of logging’ as a period of great difficulty and many anxieties, they also emphasize that it was this that lead to the organization of the community and to the union of the group in its struggle for its rights. Within this process the struggle for the demarcation of the reserve is regarded as the decisive moment that allowed them to escape their dependence upon the bosses and to regain their freedom.

From the mid-1980s the growing mobilization of the Ashaninka people of the Amônia connects with the indigenous movement in Acre, marked by an increasing level of conflict between indians and brancos which reached its peak at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s.

The ‘time of rights’

Throughout the 20th century the Ashaninka of the Amônia lived a different historical situation from that of the group located on the Envira river. For example, the threat from the Amahuaka was progressively overcome during the rubber period and large scale timber extraction resulted in a level of contact with brancos unknown by the Ashaninka of the Envira, whose territory is further removed from the pressures of national society.

Official indigenous protection activities really started on the Amônia in the mid-1980s, at the height of the logging. To this extent the arrival of Funai is seen as the beginning of a new era: the ‘time of rights’, marked by growing political awareness, the struggle for land and the expulsion of brancos.

In early 1985 a team from the indian protection agency in Brasilia was sent to the area to continue the work of plotting and demarcating the Terra Indígena started in 1978. By a coincidence, the working group arrived in the area at the moment of the second logging invasion. With the return of the team Funai sent alerted the IBDF (the federal forest agency), the predecessor of Ibama, and the Federal Police, who sent representatives to the area, seizing 530 illegally felled trees and fining those responsible.

In 2000 representatives of Marmude Cameli Limitada were sentenced by a lower court to compensate the Ashaninka community of the Amônia river to the amount of around R$ 5.5 million. As well as this sum, the defendants were sentenced to pay around R$ 6 million to the Diffuse Rights Fund ‘for the costs of environmental restoration’. However the defendants appealed the conviction and the case is still waiting to be heard.

Conflicts with squatters

According to the Ashaninka, the period 1987 to 1992 represented a period of great insecurity, whilst at the same time marked by the progressive organization of the indians in defence of their rights, above their right to land, and by the growth of the number of confrontations with non-indian squatters.

In order to escape their economic dependence on the logging bosses, in 1986 the Ashaninka set up a cooperative. A series of prohibitions was put in place: felling trees, hunting for commercial purposes or with dogs, the presence of brancos at the piyarentsi ritual. This increased the hostility of the squatters, who began circulating unfounded rumours about the Pianko family, the main leadership of the cooperative, trying to link it to leftwing guerrilla movements and cocaine trafficking.

The upper Juruá is known to be one of the main drug trade routes. Coming from Colombia or directly from Peru, cocaine enters Brazil by means of the region’s trails and rivers. It is important to distinguish use of the coca leaf from consumption of cocaine. Although derived from the leaf, cocaine undergoes a chemical process that transforms it into the drug. For their part the Ashaninka have traditionally chewed the coca leaf (koka) along with a type of vine (txamero) and a white powder (ishico) extracted from a rock found on the headwaters of small streams and used as a sweetener. Together with tobacco (sheri), the coca is consumed during the piyarentsi and kamarãpi rituals, although its use is frequent and not confined to these occasions. In addition to its cultural dimension (an aspect that is important to emphasize), the Ashaninka also say that chewing coca enables them to fight tiredness and suppress hunger. Amongst the shamans, who in the course of their activities undergo periods of dietary restrictions, the use of coca is indispensible. Growing coca is carried out by each family in the house patio or swidden garden and, although it is used intensively, production is always limited and corresponds only to the needs of each family. In the case of a shaman, the greatest level of production represents only a few dozen plants.

The Ashaninka of the Amônia have always opposed cocaine trafficking on their lands. Indigenous leaders state that they have received numerous offers to encourage the community to plant coca on a large scale or simply to allow the passage of the drug through the area.

In 1990 and 1991 the Ashaninka increased their denunciations to the authorities. Several letters were sent to Funai, Ibama, Incra, the Federal Police and the Office of the Federal Prosecutor. The indians called for measures to speed up the process of demarcating the area and of compensating and resettling the squatters outside the limits of the reserve. They denounced illegal incursions onto the Terra Indígena, illegal logging, hunting with dogs and for commercial ends, drug trafficking and death threats against their leaders and allies... The letters also emphasized the emergency situation and the risk of imminent conflicts between the Ashaninka and the non-indian squatters.

In August 1991 on a trip to Brasília, the Ashaninka leadership were accompanied by the anthropologist Margarete Mendes and the lawyer Ana Valeria Araújo Leitão, a legal adviser at the Núcleo de Direitos Indígenas (NDI, one of the institutions that gave rise to ISA). In the federal capital the group had meetings with the highest authorities of Funai, Ibama, the federal Environment Secretariat, the Office of the Federal Prosecutor and the Federal Police.

The trip to Brasília was decisive in accelerating the process of demarcation and caused enormous impact on the upper Juruá. The death threats increased, coming from those squatters and their families most hostile to the indians. In Brasília, the NDI worked on the procedures for demarcating the area. Via a British diplomat and with the help of the Gaia Foundation, this NGO contacted the Overseas Development Administration (ODA), the international cooperation agency of the British government and obtained the funding needed to carry out the demarcation of the Terra Indígena. The work was finally undertaken between the 3rd and the 23rd of June 1992 with the important participation of the Ashaninka. Following the demarcation, the Terra Indígena Kampa do Rio Amônia, comprising 87,205 hectares was formally registered by the Vice President of Brazil, Itamar Franco, on the 23rd of November 1992.

After being victims of the logging industry, principally in the 1980s when they suffered the incursions of machinery from companies from Cruzeiro do Sul, the Ashaninka of the Amônia were able after years of struggle and great efforts to expel the bosses and the non-indian squatters from their lands. However they still struggle against the repeated incursions by loggers coming mainly from Peru.