One of the most important social divisions among the Katukina is the contrast between genders. This pervades and encompasses all the actions of daily life. Infants are socialized into their appropriate sexual roles from a very early age. Although children are not expected to contribute to domestic production until puberty, they already perform the easier tasks identified with their gender. After puberty people are expected to involve themselves more with domestic activities and parents demand help from their children. In order to be able to marry, adolescent boys and girls must know how to carry out their specific tasks and the help they give their parents during this period is simultaneously a form of apprenticeship.

The two main activities performed by men are hunting and swidden clearance. The first is without doubt the activity most appreciated by everyone. Hunting demands much more than simple force and disposition. Boys around the ages of 12 to 14 begin to accompany their fathers in the forest, learning the skills required by a good hunter: recognizing animal tracks along with their cries and whistles, and their periods of activity and inactivity. The best time of the year for hunting is ‘winter,’ the rainy season, which begins in November and lasts until April. Most of the fruits serving as food for animals ripen and fall during this period, making the prey easier to locate. By moistening the forest floor, the rains make identification of animal tracks easier and soften the noise made by the hunter’s movements.

Despite the high value attributed to hunting, agriculture provides most of the items making up the people’s diet, as well as being the activity that absorbs most of men’s and women’s work time. Aipi manioc and banana are the main food crops. In addition, people plant sweet potato, yams, taro, papaya, pineapple and sugarcane. Recently the Katukina started reserving a large area of their swiddens for planting rice and maize for market sale.

Men are responsible for opening up swiddens for their wives and between the months of May and July clear the undergrowth and fell the larger trees. Once this phase is over, work in the swiddens is suspended until the vegetation dries out completely around the end of August and beginning of September. The cleared area is then burnt and the first manioc planted by men. Sweet potato, taro, yam, papaya, pineapple, sugarcane and cotton are all planted by women. Papaya and sugarcane are planted both in the swiddens and close to the houses. Rice and maize are planted by both men and women.

While male activities are performed outside the house, the majority of female activities are concentrated within its boundaries. The only exception is the harvesting of manioc and bananas from the plantations. Other activities – the preparation of food, caring for children, washing clothes and domestic utensils – are confined to the space of the house or its immediate surroundings.

Whenever she has time, a woman must also prepare caiçuma, a porridge that may be made from sweet manioc (atsa matxu) or banana (mane mutsa). Making banana caiçuma is easy: it simply requires cooking banana, mashing it (it is not chewed) and adding a little water. Preparing sweet manioc caiçuma demands more time and effort and the initiative for making it is always taken by adult women. The first step is to harvest manioc from the swidden; after being dehusked and washed, the manioc should be cut into small cubes which are then placed in a pan with water and covered with banana leaves; some sweet potatoes may also be added. After cooking, the women mash the manioc well with a wooden spoon and leave the pulp to cool. They then chew all the cooked manioc until it acquires a paste-like consistency. The next stage consists of sieving this paste. This done, the caiçuma is ready and consuming it simply requires adding some water. Women say that they in past times they also made caiçuma from peachpalm and maize.

Nowadays the caiçuma’s level of fermentation is fairly low, since it is consumed straight after its preparation and the amount usually made by women is only enough to last for two or three days. Katukina women say that in the past much sour caiçuma (katxa matxu) was made with a high degree of fermentation, but the men became drunk and fought. In order to curtail the brawls, women decided to stop preparing sour caiçuma and they currently only produce a weakly fermented sweet caiçuma which does not provoke drunkenness.

The caiçuma’s level of fermentation determines not just its alcoholic content but also its range of consumption. Sour caiçuma, when it was still produced, had a wide circle of consumption and was associated with periodic rituals. In contrast, sweet caiçuma is associated with a restricted circle of domestic consumption. The decision made by women to suspend production of sour caiçuma coincides with the cessation of certain Katukina rituals.

Most of the time men and women undertake different activities in different spaces. However, some activities escape this division and may be performed by men and women in the same space. The main examples are fishing and collecting wild fruits.

The Katukina plant lupine (asha) and uses its leaves to make a paste which they put in the rivers to suffocate the fish and make catching them easier. The only people not to take part during the large fishing expeditions are children under six years old and the women left to look after them (mother, older sister or grandmother). The period for undertaking the collective fishing trips runs from June to November, from ‘summer’ until the start of ‘winter,’ when the rivers and creeks are shallow and the fish take refuge in the backwaters. In the village on the Campinas river hunting is now becoming more infrequent and fish make up the main source of animal protein.

The harvesting of wild fruits is more usually done by women but also includes some participation from men. This is because the most abundant fruits (assai, burity, patauá, bacaba and cocão) are produced by very tall palm trees and at least one man is needed to accompany the woman and either cut down the tree or climb it.

The division of labour founds and maintains the reciprocity between the sexes in all Katukina activities. Circumscribed in domains, the different products and tasks of men and women and conceived as complementary to one another.

As part of the counselling which precedes the consummation of a marriage, parents tell the couple they must fulfil their specific tasks: the boy must hunt and prepare a swidden for his wife; in turn, she must harvest manioc from the swidden and prepare food and caiçuma on a daily basis, in addition to caring for their children and washing clothes. During such counselling, these obligations are repeatedly insistently and the young couple are made aware that their failure to fulfil their tasks may lead to separation.

The expectation of mutual cooperation between men and women is also expressed in the parts of the body on which both of them must apply the venom of a toad (Phyllomedusa bicolor) called kampo: men on their arms and chest, women on their legs. The kampo venom is associated with a variety of beneficial properties that dispel laziness and ‘panema’ (bad luck in hunting), as well as curing sickness. The application of kampo provokes vomiting and diarrhoea and thereby eliminates bad elements from the body which prevent the full development of its physical capacities. The Katukina say men need strength in their arms and chest to hunt and open up swiddens, while women require strength in their legs to carry the baskets filled with manioc tubers, as well as their children.