Barasana
Encyclopedia
The Barasana are a Tucano
an group located in the eastern part of the Amazon basin
, in the Vaupés District in Colombia
and Amazonas State in Brazil
. As of 2000 there were at least 500 Barasanas in Colombia, though some recent estimates place the figure as high as 1950. A further 40 live on the Brazilian side, in the municipalities
of Japurá
and São Gabriel da Cachoeira
. The Barasana refers to themselves as the jebá.~baca, or people of the Jaguar (Jebá being their mythical ancestor).
. The Barasana inhabit the Pirá-piraná river basin of the Comiseria de Vaupés
between the two main river systems of the Vaupés Río Negro
and the Apaporís-Caquetá-Japurá
. The area is a tropical rainforest
, interspersed with occasional stands of mirití palm
and savanna
with xerophytic vegetation
. Rainfall averages around 3500 mm (137.8 in) per annum.
Its climate is marked by four seasons, a long dry spell from December to March followed by the wet season from March to August, a short dry season between August and September, followed by a rainy season from September until December. The average temperature varies between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius (68 and 86 °F).
It is notorious for its treacherous rivers that are choked with dangerous rapids and falls. The number of fauna
l species is not rich, and individual animals not common, though hunting game is prized as the fundamentally male mode of procuring food. Fish also, despite the many rivers, do not abound.
, language group, exogamous group
or phratry
., living in an unbounded system, that is cosmopolitan
and multilingual
. Apart from the Maku and the Arawakan
, Vaupés Indians belong to Eastern Tukanoan language family
, most prominent of them being, other than the Barasana, the Desana, the Bará, the Tukano
proper, the Macuna
, the Tatuyo, and the Cubeo
. Despite the established system of intermarriage, their languages are mutually unintelligible. A Creole-type lingua franca
, called locally lingua geral
, created by the Jesuit missionaries
as a general language for communicating with Indians in the lower reaches of the Amazon, is also spoken among them.
thought that the east Tukanoan tribes invaded from the west, and that the autochthonous population consisted of the Makú, assuming that these smaller hunter-gatherers were older than the agriculturalist newcomers. Desultory Spanish contact with the Vaupés region goes back to the 16th century. But historical records show that the Tukano peoples shifted to the remote headwaters of the Río Negro
as a refuge, in flight from the slave trade and diseases, and forced relocations
introduced by the Portuguese
in the late 18th.century. It was Alfred Russel Wallace
, in travelling up the Vaupés river in 1850 who first took note of Indians like the Barasana and their dialect
s. and the rites of their Yurupary cult
. According to his account, traders were already active in the area. Catholic
and Protestant missionaries
entered the area in the last decades of the 19th century. One major reaction to this evangelisation in the Vaupés, initiated by Venancio Aniseto Kamiko, was to create a wave of messianic
cults among the tribes. Missionaries were convinced that the central cult of Yurupary, their culture hero
, was the work of the Devil
, though this was a series of rituals rather than a divinity. The result was widespread damage to the native culture. as ceremonial houses were burnt, ritual ornaments destroyed, and secret masks displayed to the tribe’s women and children, who were previously forbidden
to look at them. Messianic
shamanism
, strongly connected with jaguar shamanism, declined further with the establishment of Catholic missions
in the first decades of the 20th century. The German traveller Theodor Koch-Grünberg
spent two years at the turn of the century (1903–05) travelling throughout the region and provided a classic account of the Indians’ material culture and languages, which long remained the authoritative source for information of these tribes. Rubber-gatherers from the beginning of the 20th century began to aggressively exploit the area, as they did again the World War 11 when the urgency of improved rubber supplies led to a rubber boom
in the area. Their violent presence caused considerable upheaval and suffering, finally driving the Indians, after fierce resistance, into the less accessible backwaters. Population decline, as a result, has been a marked feature of the past one hundred and fifty years, The earliest professional ethnological fieldwork was done by Irving Goldman
in 1939-40 among the Cubeo Indians. Postwar missionary work, colonizing movements, and the activities of the linguists attached to Christian proseyltisation still engage, according to Stephen Hugh-Jones, in the ‘criminal folly’ of ethnocide by their programmatic hostility to traditional religion
swidden
horticulturalists
who supplement their food with hunting and fish-gathering, with different roles allocated to men (poisoners) and women (gatherers of the poisoned catch). The economy is inelastic, subsistence-oriented and egalitarian. As both hunter-gatherer
s, and gardeners, the Barasana exploit the forest in various ways to obtain a wide variety of foodstuffs. Bitter manioc is the main crop
, from which their staple
of cassava bread
is prepared, indeed Barasana culture itself is said to be grounded on cultivation of manioc production. but they also harvest maize
, bananas, plantains, yams
, sweet potatoes, pineapples, sugar cane, and considerable quantities of fruits picked in the forests, or from cultivated trees like the Madras thorn or mene
. Fishing
supplies most of the protein
in their diet
, supplemented by game
, rodent
s and birds mostly, but woolly monkey
s and peccary
are also culled, traditionally with blowpipe
s, but most recently also with shotguns. Unlike most South American peoples, the Barasana are not particularly passionate about honey
, which they gather occasionally. Beeswax
on the other hand is highly prize for its use in ceremonial contexts. From manioc leaves they extract a native chicha beer
. Coca
and tobacco
, the latter prepared either in cigar
s or as snuff
, are also cultivated. They prepare their local entheogen
ic drink yagé
from the endemic jungle vine
, a liana
locally known as the ‘vine of the soul’ or ‘vine of the ancestors’.
. Women marrying out, though speaking Barasana as their native tongue, are therefore excluded from Barasana identity. Concern for exogamy is obsessive and is considered by Reichel-Dolmstoff to be the most important social rule of all.
The Vaupés social system may be divided in four units in ascending hierarchy, namely (a) the local descent group, (2) the sib, (3) the language-aggregate, and finally (4) the phratry. Kinship is based on a ‘a Dravidian’ type sib
system, with bilateral cross-cousin marriage
between people from hierarchically order patrilineal sibs.
Like most other groups of the Vaupés system, the Barasana are an exogamous
patrilineal and patrilocal
descent group, with a segmentary
social structure. The constitutive groups live in isolated settlements in units of four to eight families dwelling in multifamily longhouses.
The Barasana have seven exogamous phratries, and five sibs, common descendants of the Yebi Meni Anaconda
people, traditionally ranked hierarchically in decreasing order of seniority, with each assigned a distinct ritual role as (1) Koamona, ritual chiefs (2) Rasegana, dancers and chanters (3) Meni Masa, warriors (4) Daria, shamans and (5) Wabea, cigar lighters. These ritual functions restricted to distinct sibs, reflect a dying tradition, and survive now mainly as a matter of ideology. Barasana society is rigidly divided along sexual lines. Men and women enter dwellings by different doors, pass most of their lives in separation, a reality reinforced by their ceremonial Yurupari rites. Yet in Vaupés societies women have higher status, and marriages are more stable than in other South Amerindian groups, perhaps since inter-tribal warfare ended several decades ago, which may explain why women are not ‘pawns in the displays of male brinksmanship.’
Tucanoan languages
Tucanoan is a language family of Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru.-Family division:There are two dozen Tucanoan languages:*Western Tucanoan**Correguaje **Tama **Macaguaje ...
an group located in the eastern part of the Amazon basin
Amazon Basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...
, in the Vaupés District in Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
and Amazonas State in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. As of 2000 there were at least 500 Barasanas in Colombia, though some recent estimates place the figure as high as 1950. A further 40 live on the Brazilian side, in the municipalities
Municipality
A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...
of Japurá
Japurá
Japurá is a municipality located in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. Its population was 13,026 and its area is 55,791 km². It forms the Japurá microregion together with the municipality Maraã . The southern border of both the municipality and the microregion is the Japurá River....
and São Gabriel da Cachoeira
São Gabriel da Cachoeira
São Gabriel da Cachoeira is a city and a Municipality located on the Northern shores of the Rio Negro River, in the region of Cabeça do Cachorro, Amazonas state, Brazil. Between 1952 and 1966, it was officially called Uaupés, after the nearby Vaupés River. Most of its inhabitants are indigenous...
. The Barasana refers to themselves as the jebá.~baca, or people of the Jaguar (Jebá being their mythical ancestor).
Geography, Ecology
Barasana territory lies in the central sector of the Colombian Northwest AmazonAmazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...
. The Barasana inhabit the Pirá-piraná river basin of the Comiseria de Vaupés
Vaupés Department
Vaupés is a department of Colombia in the jungle covered Amazonas Region. It is located in the southeast part of the country, bordering Brazil to the east, the department of Amazonas to the south, Caquetá and Guaviare, and Guainía to the north covering a total area of 54,135 km²...
between the two main river systems of the Vaupés Río Negro
Vaupés River
Vaupés River is a tributary of the Rio Negro in South America. It arises in the Guaviare Department of Colombia, flowing east through Guaviare and Vaupés Departments. It forms part of the international border between Colombia and the Amazonas state of Brazil. On the border it merges with the...
and the Apaporís-Caquetá-Japurá
Japurá River
The Japurá River or Caquetá River is a river about long rising as the Caquetá River in the Andes in the Southwest of Colombia. It flows southeast into Brazil, where it is called the Japurá. The Japurá enters the Amazon River through a network of channels...
. The area is a tropical rainforest
Tropical rainforest
A tropical rainforest is an ecosystem type that occurs roughly within the latitudes 28 degrees north or south of the equator . This ecosystem experiences high average temperatures and a significant amount of rainfall...
, interspersed with occasional stands of mirití palm
Moriche Palm
The Moriche Palm, Mauritia flexuosa, also known as the Ité Palm, Ita, Buriti, or aguaje , is a palm tree. It grows in and near swamps and other wet areas in tropical South America....
and savanna
Savanna
A savanna, or savannah, is a grassland ecosystem characterized by the trees being sufficiently small or widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of C4 grasses.Some...
with xerophytic vegetation
Xerophyte
A xerophyte or xerophytic organism is a plant which has adapted to survive in an environment that lacks water, such as a desert. Xerophytic plants may have adapted shapes and forms or internal functions that reduce their water loss or store water during long periods of dryness...
. Rainfall averages around 3500 mm (137.8 in) per annum.
Its climate is marked by four seasons, a long dry spell from December to March followed by the wet season from March to August, a short dry season between August and September, followed by a rainy season from September until December. The average temperature varies between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius (68 and 86 °F).
It is notorious for its treacherous rivers that are choked with dangerous rapids and falls. The number of fauna
Fauna
Fauna or faunæ is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna"...
l species is not rich, and individual animals not common, though hunting game is prized as the fundamentally male mode of procuring food. Fish also, despite the many rivers, do not abound.
Ethnic group context
The Vaupés area is inhabited by roughly 20 tribes or descent groups. The word tribe is generally disdained by anthropologists, who prefer to define groups by such terms as sibSib (anthropology)
Sib is a technical term in the discipline of anthropology which originally denoted a kinship group among Anglo-Saxon and other Germanic peoples. In an extended sense, it then became the standard term for a variety of other kinds of lineal or cognatic kinship groups...
, language group, exogamous group
Exogamy
Exogamy is a social arrangement where marriage is allowed only outside of a social group. The social groups define the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. In social studies, exogamy is viewed as a combination of two related aspects:...
or phratry
Phratry
In ancient Greece, a phratry ατρία, "brotherhood", "kinfolk", derived from φρατήρ meaning "brother") was a social division of the Greek tribe...
., living in an unbounded system, that is cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
and multilingual
Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...
. Apart from the Maku and the Arawakan
Maipurean
Arawakan , also known as Maipurean , is a language family that spans from the Caribbean and Central America to every country in South America except Ecuador, Uruguay and Chile...
, Vaupés Indians belong to Eastern Tukanoan language family
Tucanoan languages
Tucanoan is a language family of Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru.-Family division:There are two dozen Tucanoan languages:*Western Tucanoan**Correguaje **Tama **Macaguaje ...
, most prominent of them being, other than the Barasana, the Desana, the Bará, the Tukano
Tucano people
The Tucano are a group of indigenous South Americans living in the northwestern Amazon, along the Vaupés River and the surrounding area. They are present in both Colombia and Brazil, although most live on the Colombian side of the border...
proper, the Macuna
Macuna
The Macuna are a Tucanoan-speaking group of the eastern part of the Amazon basin, located around the confluence of the Pirá-Paraná and Apaporis rivers, in the Colombian Vaupés Department and the Brazilian state of Amazonas. There are no reliable census data for the Macuna...
, the Tatuyo, and the Cubeo
Cubeo
The Cubeo are an ethnic group of the Colombian Amazon. Cubeo is a generic name that is used in local Spanish and appears in the literature in reference to a social and linguistic group. Although the term does not have any meaning in their language, the Cubeo refer to themselves by that name in...
. Despite the established system of intermarriage, their languages are mutually unintelligible. A Creole-type lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
, called locally lingua geral
Língua Geral
Língua Geral is the name of two distinct linguae francae spoken in Brazil, the língua geral paulista , now extinct; and the língua geral amazônica , whose modern descendant is Nheengatu....
, created by the Jesuit missionaries
Jesuit Reductions
A Jesuit Reduction was a type of settlement for indigenous people in Latin America created by the Jesuit Order during the 17th and 18th centuries. In general, the strategy of the Spanish Empire was to gather native populations into centers called Indian Reductions , in order to Christianize, tax,...
as a general language for communicating with Indians in the lower reaches of the Amazon, is also spoken among them.
History
The various Tukanoan myths of origin refer to a westward upstream migration from Brazil, and Reichel-Dolmatoff believes that there is a ‘kernel of historical truth’ behind these uniform traditions. Curt NimuendajúCurt Nimuendajú
Curt Unckel, better known as Curt Nimuendajú , was a German-Brazilian ethnologist, anthropologist and writer. His works are fundamental for understanding the religion and cosmology of many native Brazilian Indians, especially the Guarani people...
thought that the east Tukanoan tribes invaded from the west, and that the autochthonous population consisted of the Makú, assuming that these smaller hunter-gatherers were older than the agriculturalist newcomers. Desultory Spanish contact with the Vaupés region goes back to the 16th century. But historical records show that the Tukano peoples shifted to the remote headwaters of the Río Negro
Vaupés River
Vaupés River is a tributary of the Rio Negro in South America. It arises in the Guaviare Department of Colombia, flowing east through Guaviare and Vaupés Departments. It forms part of the international border between Colombia and the Amazonas state of Brazil. On the border it merges with the...
as a refuge, in flight from the slave trade and diseases, and forced relocations
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
introduced by the Portuguese
Portuguese people
The Portuguese are a nation and ethnic group native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian peninsula of south-west Europe. Their language is Portuguese, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion....
in the late 18th.century. It was Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
, in travelling up the Vaupés river in 1850 who first took note of Indians like the Barasana and their dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s. and the rites of their Yurupary cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
. According to his account, traders were already active in the area. Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
and Protestant missionaries
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
entered the area in the last decades of the 19th century. One major reaction to this evangelisation in the Vaupés, initiated by Venancio Aniseto Kamiko, was to create a wave of messianic
Millennialism
Millennialism , or chiliasm in Greek, is a belief held by some Christian denominations that there will be a Golden Age or Paradise on Earth in which "Christ will reign" for 1000 years prior to the final judgment and future eternal state...
cults among the tribes. Missionaries were convinced that the central cult of Yurupary, their culture hero
Culture hero
A culture hero is a mythological hero specific to some group who changes the world through invention or discovery...
, was the work of the Devil
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
, though this was a series of rituals rather than a divinity. The result was widespread damage to the native culture. as ceremonial houses were burnt, ritual ornaments destroyed, and secret masks displayed to the tribe’s women and children, who were previously forbidden
Tapu
Tapu, tabu or kapu is a Polynesian traditional concept denoting something holy or sacred, with "spiritual restriction" or "implied prohibition"; it involves rules and prohibitions...
to look at them. Messianic
Millenarianism
Millenarianism is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000 year intervals...
shamanism
Shamanism
Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. To quote Eliade: "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy." Shamanism encompasses the...
, strongly connected with jaguar shamanism, declined further with the establishment of Catholic missions
Catholic missions
As the church normally organizes itself along territorial lines, and because they had the human and material resources, religious orders—some even specializing in it—undertook most missionary work, especially in the early phases...
in the first decades of the 20th century. The German traveller Theodor Koch-Grünberg
Theodor Koch-Grunberg
Theodor Koch-Grünberg was a German ethnologist and explorer who made a valuable contribution to the study of the Indigenous peoples in South America, in particular the Pemon Indians of Venezuela and the indigenous peoples of Brazil in the Amazon region.After studying humanities at the University...
spent two years at the turn of the century (1903–05) travelling throughout the region and provided a classic account of the Indians’ material culture and languages, which long remained the authoritative source for information of these tribes. Rubber-gatherers from the beginning of the 20th century began to aggressively exploit the area, as they did again the World War 11 when the urgency of improved rubber supplies led to a rubber boom
Rubber boom
The rubber boom was an important part of the economic and social history of Brazil and Amazonian regions of neighboring countries, being related with the extraction and commercialization of rubber...
in the area. Their violent presence caused considerable upheaval and suffering, finally driving the Indians, after fierce resistance, into the less accessible backwaters. Population decline, as a result, has been a marked feature of the past one hundred and fifty years, The earliest professional ethnological fieldwork was done by Irving Goldman
Irving Goldman
Irving Goldman was an anthropologist. He is known for his acute ability to reconstruct the worldviews and systems of thought of the indigenous peoples whose lives and thought he analysed in several major works, some now regarded as classics in the field of anthropology.-Life:Goldman was born in...
in 1939-40 among the Cubeo Indians. Postwar missionary work, colonizing movements, and the activities of the linguists attached to Christian proseyltisation still engage, according to Stephen Hugh-Jones, in the ‘criminal folly’ of ethnocide by their programmatic hostility to traditional religion
Economy
The Barasana are slash-and-burnSlash and burn
Slash-and-burn is an agricultural technique which involves cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields. It is subsistence agriculture that typically uses little technology or other tools. It is typically part of shifting cultivation agriculture, and of transhumance livestock...
swidden
Shifting cultivation
Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned. This system often involves clearing of a piece of land followed by several years of wood harvesting or farming, until the soil loses fertility...
horticulturalists
Horticulture
Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...
who supplement their food with hunting and fish-gathering, with different roles allocated to men (poisoners) and women (gatherers of the poisoned catch). The economy is inelastic, subsistence-oriented and egalitarian. As both hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
s, and gardeners, the Barasana exploit the forest in various ways to obtain a wide variety of foodstuffs. Bitter manioc is the main crop
Crop
Crop may refer to:* Crop, a plant grown and harvested for agricultural use* Crop , part of the alimentary tract of some animals* Crop , a modified whip used in horseback riding or disciplining humans...
, from which their staple
Staple food
A staple food is one that is eaten regularly and in such quantities that it constitutes a dominant portion of a diet, and that supplies a high proportion of energy and nutrient needs. Most people live on a diet based on one or more staples...
of cassava bread
Cassava
Cassava , also called yuca or manioc, a woody shrub of the Euphorbiaceae native to South America, is extensively cultivated as an annual crop in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible starchy tuberous root, a major source of carbohydrates...
is prepared, indeed Barasana culture itself is said to be grounded on cultivation of manioc production. but they also harvest maize
Maize
Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...
, bananas, plantains, yams
Yam (vegetable)
Yam is the common name for some species in the genus Dioscorea . These are perennial herbaceous vines cultivated for the consumption of their starchy tubers in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania...
, sweet potatoes, pineapples, sugar cane, and considerable quantities of fruits picked in the forests, or from cultivated trees like the Madras thorn or mene
Pithecellobium dulce
Pithecellobium dulce is a species of flowering plant in the pea family, Fabaceae, that is native to Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. It is introduced and extensively naturalised in the Caribbean, Florida, Guam and Southeast Asia. It is considered an invasive species in Hawaii.It...
. Fishing
Fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....
supplies most of the protein
Protein
Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...
in their diet
Diet (nutrition)
In nutrition, diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism. Dietary habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods to eat. With the word diet, it is often implied the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight-management...
, supplemented by game
Game (food)
Game is any animal hunted for food or not normally domesticated. Game animals are also hunted for sport.The type and range of animals hunted for food varies in different parts of the world. This will be influenced by climate, animal diversity, local taste and locally accepted view about what can or...
, rodent
Rodent
Rodentia is an order of mammals also known as rodents, characterised by two continuously growing incisors in the upper and lower jaws which must be kept short by gnawing....
s and birds mostly, but woolly monkey
Woolly monkey
The woolly monkeys are the genus Lagothrix of New World monkeys, usually placed in the family Atelidae.There are four species of woolly monkey. All originate from the rainforests of South America...
s and peccary
Peccary
A peccary is a medium-sized mammal of the family Tayassuidae, or New World Pigs. Peccaries are members of the artiodactyl suborder Suina, as are the pig family and possibly the hippopotamus family...
are also culled, traditionally with blowpipe
Blowpipe
Blowpipe can refer to:*The Blowpipe missile*Blowgun, a weapon*Blowpipe *Blowpipe , several Transformers characters....
s, but most recently also with shotguns. Unlike most South American peoples, the Barasana are not particularly passionate about honey
Honey
Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
, which they gather occasionally. Beeswax
Beeswax
Beeswax is a natural wax produced in the bee hive of honey bees of the genus Apis. It is mainly esters of fatty acids and various long chain alcohols...
on the other hand is highly prize for its use in ceremonial contexts. From manioc leaves they extract a native chicha beer
Chicha
For the musical genre, see Peruvian cumbiaChicha is a term used in some regions of Latin America for several varieties of fermented and non-fermented beverages, rather often to those derived from maize and similar non-alcoholic beverages...
. Coca
Coca
Coca, Erythroxylum coca, is a plant in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. The plant plays a significant role in many traditional Andean cultures...
and tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
, the latter prepared either in cigar
Cigar
A cigar is a tightly-rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines, and the Eastern...
s or as snuff
Snuff
Snuff is a product made from ground or pulverised tobacco leaves. It is an example of smokeless tobacco. It originated in the Americas and was in common use in Europe by the 17th century...
, are also cultivated. They prepare their local entheogen
Entheogen
An entheogen , in the strict sense, is a psychoactive substance used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context. Historically, entheogens were mostly derived from plant sources and have been used in a variety of traditional religious contexts...
ic drink yagé
Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca is any of various psychoactive infusions or decoctions prepared from the Banisteriopsis spp. vine, usually mixed with the leaves of dimethyltryptamine-containing species of shrubs from the Psychotria genus...
from the endemic jungle vine
Banisteriopsis caapi
Banisteriopsis caapi, also known as Ayahuasca, Caapi or Yage, is a South American jungle vine of the family Malpighiaceae. It is used to prepare Ayahuasca, a decoction that has a long history of entheogenic uses as a medicine and "plant teacher" among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Rainforest...
, a liana
Liana
A liana is any of various long-stemmed, woody vines that are rooted in the soil at ground level and use trees, as well as other means of vertical support, to climb up to the canopy to get access to well-lit areas of the forest. Lianas are especially characteristic of tropical moist deciduous...
locally known as the ‘vine of the soul’ or ‘vine of the ancestors’.
Social Structure
The Tukunoan descent groups are subdivided into ranked and named sibs. The dominant feature of their social organization is language group exogamy, which requires that one must always marry a spouse speaking a language different from one’s own. Among the Barasana themselves, exceptions however do exist to the principle of linguistic exogamy, since they intermarry with Taiwanos whose language is regarded as almost identical to their own. This means that one’s father’s language determines one’s inclusion or exclusion in Barasana identity, which accounts for the custom of virilocalityPatrilocal residence
In social anthropology, patrilocal residence or patrilocality is a term referring to the social system in which a married couple resides with or near the husband's parents. The concept of location may extend to a larger area such as a village, town, or clan area...
. Women marrying out, though speaking Barasana as their native tongue, are therefore excluded from Barasana identity. Concern for exogamy is obsessive and is considered by Reichel-Dolmstoff to be the most important social rule of all.
The Vaupés social system may be divided in four units in ascending hierarchy, namely (a) the local descent group, (2) the sib, (3) the language-aggregate, and finally (4) the phratry. Kinship is based on a ‘a Dravidian’ type sib
Sib (anthropology)
Sib is a technical term in the discipline of anthropology which originally denoted a kinship group among Anglo-Saxon and other Germanic peoples. In an extended sense, it then became the standard term for a variety of other kinds of lineal or cognatic kinship groups...
system, with bilateral cross-cousin marriage
Parallel cousin
In discussing consanguineal kinship in anthropology, a parallel cousin is a cousin from a parent's same sex sibling, while a cross cousin is from a parent's opposite-sexed sibling...
between people from hierarchically order patrilineal sibs.
Like most other groups of the Vaupés system, the Barasana are an exogamous
Exogamy
Exogamy is a social arrangement where marriage is allowed only outside of a social group. The social groups define the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. In social studies, exogamy is viewed as a combination of two related aspects:...
patrilineal and patrilocal
Patrilocal residence
In social anthropology, patrilocal residence or patrilocality is a term referring to the social system in which a married couple resides with or near the husband's parents. The concept of location may extend to a larger area such as a village, town, or clan area...
descent group, with a segmentary
Segmentary lineage
A segmentary lineage society is characterized by the organization of the society into segments; what is often referred to as a tribal society....
social structure. The constitutive groups live in isolated settlements in units of four to eight families dwelling in multifamily longhouses.
The Barasana have seven exogamous phratries, and five sibs, common descendants of the Yebi Meni Anaconda
Anaconda
An anaconda is a large, non-venomous snake found in tropical South America. Although the name actually applies to a group of snakes, it is often used to refer only to one species in particular, the common or green anaconda, Eunectes murinus, which is one of the largest snakes in the world.Anaconda...
people, traditionally ranked hierarchically in decreasing order of seniority, with each assigned a distinct ritual role as (1) Koamona, ritual chiefs (2) Rasegana, dancers and chanters (3) Meni Masa, warriors (4) Daria, shamans and (5) Wabea, cigar lighters. These ritual functions restricted to distinct sibs, reflect a dying tradition, and survive now mainly as a matter of ideology. Barasana society is rigidly divided along sexual lines. Men and women enter dwellings by different doors, pass most of their lives in separation, a reality reinforced by their ceremonial Yurupari rites. Yet in Vaupés societies women have higher status, and marriages are more stable than in other South Amerindian groups, perhaps since inter-tribal warfare ended several decades ago, which may explain why women are not ‘pawns in the displays of male brinksmanship.’