SHIPIBO MATRIARCHY IThe Women Who Cut Their Clitorises
Defying all logic, the clitoral ablation ritual to which Shipibo girls were subjected until a few decades ago was a fundamental mechanism to sustain a society based on female power.
According to anthropologists who have worked with the Shipibo People, women enjoy great power within their society, preserved primarily through the union of the women in the family.
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally published in issue 210 of Cáñamo magazine, June 2015.
You are born a girl and everyone rejoices: when you grow up and get married, you will bring the arms of a male (and his knowledge) into the great female family to which you belong. The little brothers, on the other hand, will have to manage with their mother-in-law. You live in a large house with no interior divisions, on the banks of a great river, where there is plenty of fish and millions of mosquitoes. There are about twenty of you: grandma and grandpa, mom and the aunts (with their husbands, one of whom is your dad), a young uncle who is still unmarried (he likes to fool around here and there), and a good number of cousins of various ages. Your house is not in a village, because among your people, the Shipibo of the Ucayali, each family organizes itself independently, but from time to time neighbors are visited, and the matriarchs take the opportunity to plan marriages and alliances.
During the first two years of life, you never leave your mother’s arms. If for some reason she has to let you go, it’s no problem—the aunts take care of you. Your school is sharing the women’s tasks. The men hunt, fish, build houses, work the chagra (traditional plantation), carve canoes. You play with the clay used to make pottery, try to spin with cotton balls, watch people weave, get stained with the natural dyes that decorate skirts and vessels, and tinker around the hearth on the packed-earth floor. This playful approach to work doesn’t last long: by the time you’re six or seven, you’re expected to actively help with domestic chores. To make you disciplined and help you create beautiful designs, grandma gives you piripiri, a plant with magical properties capable of modulating your behavior. When you don’t respect family authority, they blow a remedy up your nose that makes you writhe on the ground, vomit, or soil yourself. Though that doesn’t usually happen: life is good, there’s laughter, plenty of food, no stress.
During your eighth summer in the world, neighboring families are invited to help plant several hectares of cassava and sugarcane. This is unusual, and you ask why. “To feed the guests, and to make guarapo (sugarcane wine), for your party,” says grandma. “For my party?” “Yes, next summer we’re going to make you a real woman, like us.” Grandma, perhaps unintentionally, has slightly hardened her expression; something clicks in your brain and takes you back to a very vague memory from early childhood: revelry, drunkenness, joy, screams, blood, violence… You don’t know exactly what awaits you, but you feel uneasy. In the afternoon, during your bath, you ask a cousin, already a young lady—her breasts have emerged and a shadow of pubic hair decorates her triangle. “To become a woman,” says your cousin, bringing her hand to her sex, “they have to cut the principle part.” “The principle part?” “Yes, it’s like a little seed you have between your legs.”
Grandmother Amelia (and behind her, her granddaughter Elita). At eighty years old, Amelia belongs to the last generation of women who underwent clitoral cutting.
* * *
When I found out that clitoridectomy had been a fundamental practice in Shipibo culture, my world fell apart (this is not a figure of speech). I had been twice to the Indigenous community of San Francisco de Yarinacocha, in the Peruvian jungle, in 2001 and 2004, and the experience had been so enriching and stimulating that a couple of years later I decided to quit my job and use my savings to pursue a Master’s in Amazonian Studies, which would allow me to combine my curiosity about Indigenous peoples with my professional aspirations. Shortly before traveling to the Amazonian city of Leticia, Colombia, where the master’s program was offered, I came across an academic article online describing the quintessential ritual feast of the Shipibo: the ani sheati, which could be translated as “great libation” or more loosely as “great drunken revelry.” The anthropologist explained that the central act of the fest consisted of a certain procedure performed on the genitals of young girls, and cited various records, articles, and chronicles to conclude that it involved the removal of the clitoris.
I kept searching and found a website where a Shipibo shaman proposed the possibility of reviving this tradition in the name of cultural revitalization. I left the internet café dizzy, floating and about to collapse, as if in a bad dream. It was impossible: in my memories of those idealized weeks, there hadn’t been the slightest hint that women had been subjected to such brutal machismo. I remembered them wandering freely around the community and the city, uninhibited with outsiders, smiling, naturally and wisely caring for the little ones. I believed blindly that the Shipibo society was one of love and kindness, a paradise finally rediscovered.
The power of Shipibo women is based on their unity: grandmother, daughters, and granddaughters tend to stay together throughout their lives and control domestic resources.
* * *
In the weeks leading up to your great celebration, a frenzy of activity unfolds. The women dedicate themselves to making ceramics: enormous jars to store guarapo and masato; bowls, plates, and trays on which food and drink will be served. The men are just as busy: they build two large houses for the guests; harvest sugarcane and extract its sweet juice with a rudimentary press, boiling it before fermenting it in the large buried jars; they intensify hunting trips and capture live animals to ensure fresh meat for the festive week. There is widespread concern about clothing and body adornment. The whole family must look their best; kilometers of cotton are spun to weave tunics for the men and skirts for the women. Masato, the cassava beer, flows generously to welcome the allied neighbors who have come to help. The atmosphere is carefree and festive, but you are afraid.
Three days before the full moon, a horn sounds. Booohhhhuuuuuhhhhh...! — "We’re coming," the guests announce from afar, "prepare the masato and guarapo." Your father rushes to the riverbank excitedly and sounds his own horn. Boohhhhuuuuuhhhhh...! — "We’re ready, you are welcome." The women wait with the alcoholic drinks, dressed in their most elaborate attire, their faces adorned with beautiful designs, wearing beaded crowns topped with feathers, bracelets, necklaces made of coins, embroidered cloaks. The first group comes from upriver, having rowed for three days to get there. They leap onto the shore and joyfully receive the drink. The women cry, the men let out fierce shouts, and the flutes celebrate the reunion with simple melodies.
In the guesthouse, the hosts line up in front of the newcomers. The contest of strength begins. Taking turns, one against one, they grapple and try to throw their opponent to the ground, amid howls and half-feigned roars. No one wants to be defeated. Herculean muscles, elasticity, and speed… Shaped since childhood by a thousand different labors, their sculptural bodies twist in impossible contortions. The winner invites the fallen one to drink; they approach the large jar and dip a little vulva-shaped cup into the guarapo (the women use a penis-shaped one). But you realize not all the aggression is pretend: a mature man faces your young uncle (the one who plays around) with unusual violence, challenging him to settle some scores the next day.
More guests arrive, the liquor flows, food is plentiful, there’s circle dancing, secret fornication, and everyone is talking to you. It’s your big day, you’re going to become one of us, don’t be afraid, it doesn’t hurt, that thing you have there is a nuisance, men won’t want you if we don’t remove it, it will give you the spirit you need to support a family, to raise your children. You nod, but you’re intimidated by the unleashed transgression, the overflowing impulses.
The next day, with drunkenness in full swing, a scene overwhelms you. Surrounded by all the guests and under the watchful eyes of the elders, your adventurous uncle and the furious man engage in ritual combat, wielding macanas — clubs carved from hardwood, resembling paddles, with narrow elongated blades and sharp edges. They know a blow with the edge could take a life, so they use the flat side to try to knock each other out. With sharp cries, the women incite the violence, while the elders monitor the limits of the fight to prevent a death. Your cousin, the young woman, tells you what happened. Your uncle must be punished because he was with another man’s wife, and she points to a mature woman who cheers excitedly for her lover to be punished. After a fierce beating, at a signal from the elders, the offended man pulls out a cane knife, sharp as metal. The adulterer lowers his arms and offers his head to receive the punishment he deserves: the knife slices through, releasing a crown of blood. There are screams of horror and satisfaction. They carry your uncle, half-unconscious, into the house, where your grandmother applies certain herbs to his head to stop the bleeding. The offense is settled.
During the ani sheati, in addition to the practice of clitoral cutting, men would settle scores with anyone who had had sexual relations with their wife through a ritual duel (still from the film The Men of the Montaña by Harry Tschopik).
* * *
When I learned about the practice of female genital cutting, which shattered my idyllic vision, I considered canceling my trip and abandoning my interest; paradoxically, the discovery ended up fueling my curiosity. Once in Leticia, my master’s program professors—seasoned anthropologists—revealed a world where my Western notions of right and wrong did not fit. They pointed out the incongruity of the Western concept of the individual within Amazonian society, gave different meanings to marriage and sexual relationships, and listed numerous examples of bodily intervention used to transform a human being into a member of the group. They never passed judgment.
The extensive bibliography on the Shipibo people brought me a disconcerting surprise. Far from being a machista culture, as female cutting might suggest, it was in fact a matriarchy—researchers, both male and female, agreed without hesitation. For Peter Roe, the most remarkable feature of Shipibo myths was that women assumed “many of the key roles that in other societies would be played by men,” and he stated that Shipibo women held “the real power” in their society. Warren DeBoer believed that “women regulated the daily life of the household” and that men “occupied a precarious social position.” Françoise Morin observed that “the birth of girls was more highly valued than that of boys.” Angelika Gebhart-Sayer noted that Shipibo women enjoyed “more rights, freedom, self-realization, and spontaneity than women in other cultures could dream of.” María Heise wrote that “the autonomy exercised by Shipibo women in the control and distribution of goods within the family unit reinforces the strong position they have always held within the group.”
The key to this power lay in the “post-marital residence rule”—that is, where newlyweds establish their home. In the matrilocal variant practiced by the Shipibo, the man moves into the woman’s large house (with her mother, aunts, and grandmother). The husbands of these women are not related to each other, as they come from different houses, and they compete for the mother-in-law’s favor. Violence against women is nonexistent; men would be immediately expelled because they are not indispensable—their contribution would be taken over by others until the woman finds a new husband. The solidarity of the women in the household ensures their strength.
Matriarchy, however, is not patriarchy in reverse, as feminist anthropologist Heide Goettner-Abendroth explains: “Matriarchies are not societies where women rule over men (as a misinterpretation might suggest), but rather, without exception, they are gender-equal societies, and in most cases, completely egalitarian societies, where hierarchies, classes, and domination of one gender over the other are unknown. In matriarchies, equality does not mean merely flattening differences. The natural differences between genders and generations are respected and honored, but these differences do not lead to hierarchies, as is common in patriarchy.”
Three generations of Shipibo women bear witness to the changes their society has undergone.
* * *
You cannot sleep all night. The music and revelry blur with your anxiety. The party continues with drunkenness and dancing. You bathe at dawn. Grandma paints your face with intricate designs. Someone hands you a bowl full of guarapo, but you dislike the sweet, alcoholic taste and return it. Grandma makes a decisive gesture—“drink it.” You finish it, with some disgust. They comb your hair, give you the skirt designed for the occasion, put silver earrings and seed anklets on you. Another bowl of guarapo. They talk to you: be strong, don’t be afraid, we all go through this, the men won’t want you otherwise...
When you leave the house, already dizzy, the music and exclamations of admiration for your beauty intensify. You smile, stunned by the alcohol and attention. Everyone wants to dance with you and offers you more and more guarapo. Amid the euphoria, you stumble, fall, and when you try to get up, you can’t. Your mother lifts you and makes you walk. The moment arrives. Through the haze of alcohol, you feel a heightened fear from the dizziness of drunkenness. You hear excited shouts as they pass by. They firmly lead you to the back of the house, away from the general commotion. There is the little bench your grandfather carved in recent weeks; other women from the family wait for you with serious expressions.
They strip you of your skirt. They lay you down on the bench. They grab your legs and spread them apart, holding you firmly against the seat. You feel exposed and vulnerable. You have to be strong, we’ve all been through this, you too. Grandma grips the cane knife. Bathed in cold sweat, overwhelmed by the midday heat, feeling unreal, you hear the distant excited shouts of the men. Framed by your bare and open legs, you see grandma kneel; you feel a pinch in the seed; grandma releases, and immediately a thousand thorns pierce you, an inconceivable pain. From a plate, grandma takes a herbal poultice and applies it to your sex. It is cool, it relieves you. At that very moment you lose consciousness; and someone says you have ceased to be a child.
One of the fundamental elements of the festival was music. Nowadays, festivals are organized seeking to revive past times—without the clitoral cutting, a practice that was abandoned more than half a century ago.
* * *
Amelia is around eighty years old. She is a tall, slender woman, very agile for her age. She lives with her daughters, a son-in-law, and several grandchildren in a small, peaceful matrilocal stronghold of resistance in San Francisco de Yarinacocha, near the city of Pucallpa, the ancestral territory of the Shipibo people. Whenever I visit her, she is always working: now she is grating yucca, rubbing it against a wooden paddle studded with metal spikes. When I ask her why they used to cut the clitoris, she shrugs without the slightest affectation. “Her grandmother said it was a nuisance,” translates Elita, Amelia's great-granddaughter. I have heard this more than once, with a strange nuance: that the clitoris would grow too much and prevent a woman from walking properly; although I interpret that originally this explanation did not refer to a supposed physical nuisance but rather a spiritual, emotional, or perhaps social one.
I try to understand why, within a matriarchal society, what we would consider a brutal aggression took place and yet they considered it an indispensable condition of being a woman. Surely one must take into account that while for us sex is associated with pleasure and orgasm, among the Shipibo it relates to procreation. However, it seems to be an exceptional practice in the Amazon, probably occurring only among the Shipibo and a related group. Why precisely in a matriarchal society? In my opinion, it was a way to guarantee the unity of the female core. In a large matrilocal house, where cohabitation was so close, there was the possibility that women of the family would have extramarital relations with other men, and the only available ones were the husbands of their cousins or aunts. This could represent a serious harm to the female core: the adulterous man could always return to his mother’s house or find a new wife, which was quite common, but the woman had no place to go and would be forced to live with the sister, cousin, or aunt she had cheated on. The situation could trigger permanent instability.
By reducing pleasure, not only would women have less interest in sexual relations per se, but if an adulterous relationship took place, they would never be considered guilty or punished: as we saw before, the cuckolded husband took revenge in a public and ritual duel where he cut the scalp of the intruder. Thus, clitoral cutting also became an excuse by which women could be unfaithful.
“Back then, it was said things were prettier,” translates Elita, Amelia’s great-granddaughter. “She said she would wear her earring, her necklaces full of silver coins, her skirt, and blouse. Her mother taught her to wear typical clothing with face designs. All that.” Amelia no longer dresses typically, nor even traditionally. She wears a simple black fabric skirt, inexpensive, and a blouse of some shiny synthetic blue material. Elita, her great-granddaughter, wears jeans, a printed brown cotton t-shirt, a baseball cap, and sandals. “I didn’t know those things my grandmother told me.”
