POWER IIThe Rise of Inequality
Where nature is ravaged, misery creeps. Where the democratic paradigm is imposed, obedience flourishes. Where corporations triumph, inequality is born. And despite it all, the people of the jungle resist the designs of globalizing totalitarianism.
Olivia Newton-John’s husband’s company financed the Shipibo people’s congress. Neither she nor her husband stayed for the event, but they took the opportunity to pose for photos with the elders and the children, which were later posted on the company’s website.
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally published in issue 208 of Cáñamo magazine, April 2015.
Autonomy is possible in those Amazonian peoples where the forest provides: natural resources are not private, and the means of production and technical knowledge are accessible to everyone. This productive self-sufficiency leads to freedom, which prevents the existence of a neighbor who accumulates power, in any form, and thus elevates above the others. Equality is guaranteed by positive mechanisms (generosity: sharing what I do not need) and negative ones (the envy, that leads to theft, defamation, or witchcraft: when those who accumulate do not redistribute). This formula persisted for centuries, perhaps millennia, but it collapses within decades because the forest on which it was based turned out to be fragile.
Close to the cancerous city of Pucallpa, San Francisco de Yarinacocha is a Shipibo village of two thousand people and devastated forest. Autonomy is impossible because there are no longer natural resources, and the new means of production and technical knowledge are obtained with money in the global market (where people sell themselves). Although there is some resistance to accumulation, generosity diminishes in the face of money, while theft, defamation, or witchcraft no longer regulate things as before. Equality, freedom, and fraternity persist, but they watch helplessly as the values and figures of the new times arise: economic profit and political hierarchy, the rich and powerful.
Pedro Amasifuén, a forty-year-old resident of San Francisco, considers the “era of the agreements” the turning point. In his adolescence, in the early eighties, the territory of San Francisco was still rich in vegetation, fishing, and hunting. After school, this young man would take a bow and arrow, go out in a canoe to the lagoon, and within a couple of hours he would have enough fish for the whole family.
In 1985, the logging industry materialized in San Francisco in the form of tractors and chainsaws. Large trucks loaded with logs would pass by, sending them elsewhere for processing; and another intermediary, and another profit... even a man from Seoul made money! It may seem strange that a people who for centuries had followed an ethic of self-limitation toward natural resources allowed such plundering. The Swiss anthropologist Jürg Gasché recounts in his indispensable work Sociedad bosquesina that the economic demands of the State (especially schooling), the new religious and productive rationality spread by fundamentalist missionaries, as well as unscrupulous merchants, encouraged new predatory behaviors.
“There are Shipibo predators too, because they make agreements with the big loggers,” Pedro argues angrily. “And those loggers who came in! When I finished school, we young people finally had opinions. But now there’s no wood left.” However, it is likely that the money obtained from selling the wood was used by the community to improve the school where Pedro graduated as a high school student. Later, thanks to a scholarship from international cooperation (such good people), he pursued higher education in Iquitos. And look at this funny paradox: today, thanks to the technical knowledge provided by the global hierarchical society, specialized productively (and responsible for the destruction of the Amazon rainforest), Pedro is engaged—funded by a Scandinavian NGO—in reforesting a small patch of that great devastated herbal land that is today the territory of San Francisco. An absurd trajectory trying to return to the starting point: the providing forest, now dependent on international financial fluctuations and the inscrutable designs of a well-intentioned Finnish boss. In the miraculous case that the forest recovered its vigor, it would no longer provide autonomy.
Our conversation is interrupted by a loudspeaker, which excitedly summons the community members to an urgent meeting. Pedro vaguely translates to me that a “gringo” plans to build a tourist complex next to the community territory; apparently, he has committed a territorial invasion. Pedro goes to the meeting. Later, the decision is announced: men and women, children and elders, must gather the next morning in the invaded area to clear weeds and mark boundaries. In that same place, a meeting with the gringo will take place at eight in the morning. The presence of all community members is required. You will also be present, because I want you to see why in San Francisco there is no chief worth the name.
A walk to the far end of the San Francisco de Yarinacocha community reveals a pasture where life once flourished. There is no longer a providing forest near the cancerous city of Pucallpa.
* * *
In the Amazon jungle, there were never indigenous or native communities; the widespread use of this denomination is due to white fantasies. Sometimes I use the term because that is how they are legally considered in Peru, but their reality is far from truly communal. The territory of a “community” is by no means communal but individual or familial: it is divided among the neighbors, who make private use of the land, pass it on to their children upon death, donate it to friends if they wish, buy or sell it to the highest bidder (as long as the buyer is also a community member). The concept of community only operates in territorial conflicts with external actors; this gray morning, the poor (not so poor) and well-meaning Danish businessman Benny Loy will come to witness this.
The territory of the San Francisco community is a rectangle that begins at the shore of Yarina lagoon, where it measures 1,880 meters wide, and extends 7,330 meters toward desolation. Benny has legally bought a large adjacent tract of land to the community to set up a solidarity tourism business, but he has dubiously acquired a piece on the lagoon that the villagers unequivocally consider part of San Francisco. At dawn, a couple of hundred neighbors gathered there, cleared the boundary, and received the tall Dane and his Peruvian assistant, who shook hands confidently.
The meeting begins. A ring of neighbors crowds around the stage where the three people designated by the assembly stand to present the invader with their arguments, which basically boil down to “Get out of here!” The young Límber Gómez, calm and gentle, wearing work clothes, is the first to speak. He laments the historical territorial plundering his people have suffered, presents a title from the Ministry of Agriculture clearly delimiting the community, and declares, “Last night we already made a decision: we give you one day to move your things. I don’t think it’s in your interest to fight with us.” He then reveals that the confusion arose because decades ago a mestizo schoolteacher was offered land to build her house; she took it as a gift and tried to appropriate it legally by registering it. Finally, Límber talks about ecology, the polluting evil of capitalist companies, the bucolic placidity of communities, etc. His speech is received with approval by those present.
Next is Manuel Gómez, close to sixty, skilled in oratory. He speaks calmly, and his measured speech hints at serious consequences if Benny does not leave. “We indigenous people are like the dove, but ready like the snake. When they attack us, then yes. But the viper, no matter how venomous, won’t attack you as long as you don’t step on it. This is ours. Here are our footprints. Since childhood, we’ve bathed here, naked. Our land is our own mother, it gives us food, medicine, life, and protection. And you must understand, Mr. Benny Loy, that this land is ours.” In the same calm tone, he asks him to take his things and leave. Murmurs of approval follow. The third and last intervention is by Secundina Cumapa, a very politically active Shipibo leader, who refers to international laws protecting indigenous peoples’ rights and appeals to good intercultural understanding to get him to evacuate.
The Danish businessman Benny Loy, during the meeting where he disputed with the neighbors of San Francisco over the land on which he intended to build the dock for his hotel complex. Although his intention was to settle the matter only with the formal authorities, the community did not allow it: “The authority is the people,” they responded.
Benny Loy is a burly man with white hair and beard. He has his arms crossed over his chest, defensive. Although his disagreement with what he has heard is clear, he begins his speech with kind words: brothers, help, I’m not doing this for my own benefit… He does not give up his right, guaranteed by a property title. He says there is no doubt that legally he is the owner of that land, although he says nothing about the equally official title from the Ministry of Agriculture that the Shipibos have. He argues that this piece of land is essential to launch his project: it will be the port through which tourists will enter. Enthusiastically, he lists the benefits it will bring to the community: the crafts the women will sell; the local labor that will be needed.
His speech seems to calm the crowd. Maybe some are thinking it over. Benny’s assistant, a mestizo who must know all the tricks, speaks up at that moment: “We want to talk to your authorities to reach a harmonious solution, beneficial for both sides, because here no one can come out harmed, neither you nor Benny Loy. What I would ask you is to give us one week to talk to the authorities, and they will be messengers for all of you.” Far from convincing the neighbors, the proposal excites them, perhaps because they imagine the same as I do: that the authorities will be taken to Pucallpa, invited to eat at a nice restaurant, handed a fat envelope… That the rampant corruption afflicting complex societies will repeat itself. The people shout no; no one will be left out of such an important matter; no one is less than the “chief” of the community, a figure legally created by the Peruvian government. “We have our own law: the assembly is the highest authority before the authorities.” The villagers break into applause and exclamations. “It’s the people that says yes or no!” someone shouts harshly. And goes further: “Besides, we have nothing to negotiate here.” Contempt for Benny and his sidekick grows.
From this moment, the tone of the meeting changes. The villagers freely intervene to remind Benny Loy again and again that the only solution is for him to leave. The Dane feels attacked, says he is in San Francisco out of “love” and is met with “violence.” His stubbornness stirs the mood. They accuse him that the hotel will promote prostitution and crime; they warn that if he dares to bring the police, there will be a battle; someone shouts that not even Bin Laden will take their land, another, over the rest of the angry voices, declares: “Go to hell!” The neighbors are so enraged that, on his assistant’s suggestion, Benny Loy withdraws from the turmoil and talks for a few minutes with the village spokespeople. They soon return and take the center of the circle again. Silence falls. “We’ve already talked about it, and for me things are… I’m not used to the way things are done here. And of course, I’m not in my country. And I don’t want conflict. I’ve come here out of love, that’s why I came, to help. It seems to me it’s not worth it for a piece of land,” says the tall Dane, sighing, resigned. “So it’s yours.” Saying this and the explosion of joy are one and the same. “Good!” “Very good!” “We’ve won!” The villagers jump, children run, faces smile, hands clap, and Benny Loy cannot help but catch the joy, even though surely a couple of hours earlier he expected a very different outcome.
After the meeting, Benny Loy had no choice but to relinquish any rights over the disputed land. The unwavering unity of the villagers and the threat to boycott his business were too much for the well-intentioned Dane.
* * *
At night, over a plate of fattened chicken soup bought in Pucallpa, I discuss the victory with my host, the herbalist doctor and ayahuasca entrepreneur Roger López, who shows pride in the unity of the people. “There was my mother, my grandmother who carried a stick,” he laughs. Paradoxically, the “people” are not so happy with Roger. Just as the people fear and fight the figure of the community “chief” and other formal “authorities,” due to a long-standing individualism by which no villager obeys, depends on, or delegates to another, they also disapprove of anyone accumulating economic power—and Roger is doing just that. The neighbors laughed at this visionary entrepreneur fifteen years ago when he requested a piece of land outside the village to set up a natural medicine center. The dream has become reality: Suipino, his lodge, now has about ten cabins and a large reforested area with medicinal plants. Thanks to his unwavering determination, this admirable man receives hundreds of foreigners each year, who leave him their good money, of course. And with money come problems.
Money is not shared according to the logic of reciprocity that characterizes forest societies and which, according to Gasché, constitutes another cornerstone of egalitarian society. Roger recalls that in his childhood, when a hunter arrived in the village with a good catch, the inevitable shout would ring out: “¡Pihue moa!” — “Come eat now!”, an invitation for all neighbors to come eat or take a share; the next day, the one who gave would receive. “Generous reciprocity and generosity in abundance have a wealth-distributing effect,” says Gasché. But now in semi-urban San Francisco, no one would think of shouting: “Come take the money I earned from these gringos!” The money is not shared, it accumulates, and in doing so generates social classes and, for the first time, bosses to whom one must obey: Roger has about ten employees; he has assumed his role as an entrepreneur with astonishing ease.
Because there is no redistribution in the abundance of money, a negative regulation operates: envy. Some neighbors speak ill of Roger and try to sabotage his work, for example, by demanding back the land they once ceded to him. Roger says—and rightly so—that his countrymen “don’t let me work”; he accuses them of being lazy and thieves, and of sending him terrible curses. The death of his daughter in a tragic traffic accident, the death of his sister-in-law after contracting hemorrhagic dengue, were caused by envious sorcerers.
Ayahuasca shamanism is probably the only business that has produced “wealthy” entrepreneurs among the Shipibo. Roger López, owner of the Suipino natural medicine center, says that his success has aroused the envy of his neighbors. For Gasché, envy and its consequences (theft, defamation) are social mechanisms to prevent inequality.
* * *
The Amazonian society, asserts the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres, was an egalitarian society: without a state and without a market—that is, without a political chief with coercive power and without enterprises or individuals producing beyond basic needs to accumulate surpluses (and therefore power). He criticizes the prevailing evolutionism in the social sciences that postulates that these types of societies are at the beginning of an evolutionary line that would lead them to the most perfect and developed form of Western capitalist states. He argues that this has not happened due to incapacity, but rather because of “the refusal of primitive societies to be overwhelmed by work and production, by the decision to limit stocks to socio-political needs, by the intrinsic impossibility of competition, and in one word, by the prohibition—unformulated yet nonetheless expressed—of inequality.”
But the dynamic of the state and the market economy assimilates everything. A good example is the first Interregional Congress of the Shipibo-Konibo People, attended by “authorities” (formal, legal) from various communities and financed by the American company Amazon Herb, which produces natural cosmetics from jungle plants. The owner, John Easterling, offers some words to open the event: that he is a lover of the jungle, that he has helped the Shipibo people a lot, putting money into various projects and processes, that this congress is “very important for the world.” His wife is Olivia Newton-John, blonde as in Grease, who takes the stage to sing about us being a chain and the sun shining. Afterwards, accompanied by a group of cameramen, they leave the auditorium to pose by the Yarinacocha lagoon with Shipibo children and elders dressed in traditional clothing; months later, I would see the photos on their website, reporting how well they get along with the indigenous people. Then they get in the car and leave, never to appear again at this congress so important for the world.
Inside, already seated on the auditorium stage (and not leaving it for two days) are the leaders. They are men already in maturity, politically formed in the 1970s within the SINAMOS initiative of the General Velasco Alvarado government; the aim then was for the jungle people to achieve “living standards compatible with the dignity of human persons” (as if the indigenous lived like animals). From that initiative arose associations, unions, federations... a whole political and associative fabric created where before there was only family authority and solidarity relationships among neighbors. Now, these leaders (not so much jungle people, it seems to me) want to take one step further. “We must seek that the Peruvian State recognize the nationality of the Shipibo people,” says one. “We will have an Amazonian republic,” celebrates another. Someone goes further and immediately calls for the institutionalization of the Shipibo people: to create a governing council, with a president and eight secretariats, the seed of the future government of the Independent Shipibo-Konibo Republic. In fifteen years, another estimates, there will be Shipibo petrochemical engineers, pharmacists, lawyers, great entrepreneurs. “We must not let the oil companies in so we can extract it ourselves.”
The would-be ministers rub their hands together: what a beautiful future. They also have the right to rush forward and fall into the abyss with full pockets and words of praise.
