User:Tara Lavelle

Shuar, in the Shuar language, means "people." The people who speak the Shuar language live in tropical rainforest between the upper mountains of the Andes, and the tropical rainforests and savannas of the Amazonian lowlands, in Ecuador extending to Peru. Shuar live in various places &mdash; thus, the muraiya (hill) shuar are people who live in the foothills of the Andes; the achu (swamp-palm) shuar (or Achuar) are people who live in the wetter lowlands east of the Andes (Ecuador and Peru).

The Shuar’s victorious past dates back to the Inca time period. The Shuar remained free from the Inca, along with being able to hinder the Spaniards during the Spanish Conquest. They also were able to fight off multiple encounters with missionaries in attempt to resist eastern influence. The Shuar are beginning to welcome modern society, however, some still remain secluded from the contemporary world and chose to continue traditional practices. The Shuar are recognized as being very gaurding of their freedom and have discourgaed many outsiders from entering their terriory.

Shuar refer to Spanish-speakers as apach, and to non-Spanish/non-Shuar speakers as inkis. Europeans and European Americans used to refer to Shuar as jívaros or jíbaros; this word probably derives from the 16th century Spanish spelling of "shuar" (see Gnerre 1973), but has taken other meanings including "savage" (and Shuar consider it an insult); outside of Ecuador, Jibaro has come to mean "rustic". The Shuar are popularly depicted in a wide variety of travelogue and adventure literature because of Western fascination with their former practice of shrinking human heads (tsantsa).

Social organization, homelife and contacts with Europeans
From the time of first contact with Europeans in the 16th century, to the formation of the Shuar Federation in the 1950s and 1960s, Shuar were semi-nomadic and lived in separate households dispersed in the rainforest, linked by the loosest of kin and political ties, and lacking corporate kin-groups or centralized or institutionalized political leadership.Upon marriage sons would leave their natal household, and sons-in-law would move in (see matrilocal residence). Men hunted and wove clothes; women gardened. Both men and women were involved in feuding warfare with other groups.A Shuar’s household is built by the male of the family and is usually abandoned after six years due to lack of wood or game in the area. Homes are also immediately abandoned if the male owner of the household dies.Households consist of a head male (warrior), a wife (maybe more than one) daughters, unmarried sons, and son in laws. The status of a male is determined by how many people he kills and how many tsantsa (shrunken heads) he possesses. Europeans would pay enormous amounts of money and large amounts of goods to obtain the shrunken heads. The abode is usually built deep in a desolate forest and contains a large garden. This is prime location for a Shuar home because it is better for drainage but mainly because it is easier to spot an attacker. The size of a Shuar home represents the amount of power that family holds. Inside a Shuar house, there is one large room with no interior walls. The large room is used for living and having guests over to dance. Shuar do not dance outside because that will essentially make them more vulnerable to attackers and bad weather. Also, the Shuar household is divided by gender. The men’s side is called the tanamasa, and the women’s side is called the ekenta. Women and men have separate jobs within the community because they believe that every element either has a male soul or a female soul. For example, manioc, one of the major crops of the Shuar, is only to be planted, reaped, and processed by the women, the same goes for men with corn. The labor in the Shuar community is strictly divided by gender due to religious beliefs. When Shuar first made contact with Spaniards in the 16th century, they entered into peaceful trade relations. They violently resisted taxation, however, and drove Spaniards away in 1599. Colonization and missionization in the 20th century however have led Shuar to reorganize themselves into nucleated settlements called centros. Centros initially facilitated evangelization by Catholic missionaries but also became a means to defend Shuar land claims against those of non-indigenous settlers. In 1964 representatives of Shuar centros formed a political Federation to represent their interests to the state, non-governmental organizations, and transnational corporations.The Shuar view land as public property in which nobody should have full ownership of. They are very protective of their territory and do not want anybody coming in and trying to acquire their land. Therefore, the Shuar Federation’s main purpose is to protect their region of domain. They have also installed many programs designed to help their culture flourish.

Tsantsa, the shrunken heads, and the three souls
The Shuar believe that the “real world” can only be seen through hallucinogenic drugs. They accept the notion that they can see invisible elements such as life and death when on certain drugs. Therefore, they want to communicate with and make use of the elements of the “real world.” The Shuar believe in three different types of souls. The first, and most desired soul, is the arutam. The Arutam, meaning “ancient specter,” can only be acquired through hallucination and is only momentarily visible. However, once one acquires the arutam soul, they immediately lose all fear of death. It is said that physical forms of death cannot harm anyone that holds this soul. However, they are not immune to all types of death because diseases can still kill them. The second soul is the musiak. The musiak soul is ignited when a carrier of the arutam soul is murdered. The avenging soul of the casualty carries on while seeking revenge on his or her murderer. This is where the notion of “shrunken heads” derives from. The head is cut off the body and shrunk so that the musiak soul cannot have time to travel far enough from the body to gain revenge on the victorious warrior. Charcoal is rubbed on the face of the tsantsa (shrunken-head) so that the musiak cannot see out. Then, once brought back to the victorious warrior’s village, there are three feasts held in honor of the head.When preparing a shrunken head, first, a slit is made in the back of the scalp so that the hair can be peeled away and the skull can be removed from the skin. Then the preparer sews the eyes shut and keeps the mouth together with skillets before placing the head in boiling water. When the head is removed from the water it is 1/3 its size and all of the extra skin is peeled off with a knife. Finally, to complete the process, scolding stones are placed through the neck into the head to shrink the areas that were not affected by the boiling water. The hot stones are also used for shaping the face and the lips are dried by using a hat machete. Then the head is hung over a fire to dehydrate and blacken. The whole head-shrinking process takes about a week. When it is over, the first feast thrown in honor of the tsantsa begins. During the feasts, fighting is prohibited because the Shuar believe that the vengeful musiak soul can cast itself from the head and turn the fight into a murder. Finally, on the last night of feasting, the soul is set free of the tsantsa and able to return back to its home village. In the 19th century muraiya Shuar became famous among Europeans and Euro-Americans for their elaborate process of shrinking the heads of slain Achuar. Although non-Shuar characterized these shrunken heads (tsantsa) as trophies of warfare, Shuar insisted that they were not interested in the heads themselves and did not value them as trophies. Instead, they sought the muisak, or soul of the victim, which was contained in and by the shrunken head. Shuar men believed that control of the muisak would enable them to control their wives' and daughters' labor. Since women cultivated manioc and made chicha (manioc beer), which together provided the bulk of calories and carbohydrates in the Shuar diet, women's labor was crucial to Shuar biological and social life. In the late 1800s and early 1900s Europeans and Euro-Americans began trading manufactured goods, including shotguns, asking in return for shrunken heads. The result was an increase in local warfare, including head hunting, that has contributed to the stereotype of Shuar as violent.[2][3]The third and last soul is known as the nekas wakani or the “true soul.” Everyone is born with the nekas wakani and when a Shuar dies, the nekas wakani travels back to where he or she grew up. It is believed that the nekas wakani lives in a spirit house that is a mirror image of the one the deceased grew up in. Then the soul repeats the life of the person whose body it was expelled from, moving from location to location just as he or she did when alive. However, the one difference between the nekas wakani and a living being, is that the soul lives in constant hunger. Nothing can satisfy the soul’s starvation because when eating food, it is really eating false illusions of the food the live person ate in his or her former life. When the true soul has repeated all stages of the person’s life, they are then turned into a human demon.

Adulthood rituals
Prior to missionization in the 1940s and 1950s Shuar culture functioned to organize and promote a warrior society. Boys of about eight years would be taken by their fathers or uncles on a three to five day journey to a nearby waterfall, during which time the boy would drink only tobacco water. At some point the child would be given maikua (Datura arborea, Solanaceae), in the hope that he would then see momentary visions, or arútam. These visions were produced by a wakaní or ancestral spirit. If the boy were brave enough he could touch the arútam, and acquire the arútam wakaní. This would make the boy very strong, and possession of several arútam wakaní would make the boy invincible. Shuar, however, believed that they could easily lose their arútam wakaní, and thus repeated this ritual several times. A Shuar warrior who had lived to kill many people was called a kakáram. Shuar believed that if a person in possession of an arútam wakaní died a peaceful death, they would give birth to a new wakaní; if someone in possession of an arútam wakaní were killed, they would give birth to a muísak.

Illness and Shamanism
Since Shuar’s believe that the “real world” can only be seen when using hallucinogenic drugs, they commonly look to Shamans (bewitchers/curers) to enter into the real world and utilize the forces that affect the waking life. They strongly believe that witchcraft is the cause of all deaths unless they are diseases such as the measles, whooping cough, cold, etc. In other words, all diseases obtained through contact with Europeans or Euro-Americans. They fought primarily with spears and shotguns, but — like many other groups in the region — also believed that they could be killed by tsentsak, invisible darts. Any unexplained death was attributed to such tsentsak. Although tsentsak are animate, they do not act on their own. Shamans (in Shuar, "Uwishin") are people who possess and control tsentsak. To possess tsentsak they must purchase them from other shamans; Shuar believe that the most powerful shamans are Quichua-speakers, who live to the north and east. To control tsentsak Shuar must ingest natem (Banisteriopsis caapi). Many Shuar believe that illness is caused when someone hires a shaman to shoot tsentsak into the body of an enemy. This attack occurs in secret and few if any shamans admit to doing this. If someone takes ill they may go to a shaman for diagnosis and treatment.

Shuar and the Ecuadorian State
The discovery of oil in the upper Amazon has motivated Ecuadorian and Peruvian interest in the region. In the 20th century Ecuadorian Shuar and Peruvian groups like the Achuar have had significantly different histories.

There are at least 40,000 Shuar, 5,000 Achuars and 700 Shiwiars in Ecuador.

At the end of the 19th century Catholic Jesuits re-established missions among the Shuar, and poor and landless Euro-Ecuadorians from the highlands (colonos) began to settle among Shuar. Shuar entered into peaceful trade relations, exchanged land for manufactured goods, and began sending their children to mission boarding schools to learn Spanish. In 1935 the Ecuadorian government created a Shuar reserve, in part to regulate Euro-Ecuadorian access to land, and gave Salesian (Catholic) missionaries charge over the reserve. Missionaries were largely successful in the acculturation process, teaching Shuar Spanish, converting Shuar to Christianity, encouraging the Shuar to abandon warfare and the production of shrunken heads, encouraging Shuar to abandon the puberty rites through which Shuar acquired an arútam wakaní, and encouraging Shuar to participate in the market economy. They were largely but not completely successful in encouraging Shuar to abandon polygyny for monogamy. They were relatively unsuccessful in discouraging the practice of shamanism.

By the 1950s Shuar had lost a considerable amount of land to settlers. At this time they abandoned their semi-nomadic and dispersed settlement pattern and began to form nucleated settlements of five to thirty families, called centros (Spanish for "centers"). These centros facilitated missionary access to Shuar. They also provided a basis for Shuar petitions to the Ecuadorian government for land; in return Shuar promised to clear rainforest to convert to pasture, and the government provided loans for Shuar to purchase cattle which they would raise for market.

In the 1960s Salesian missionaries encouraged leaders of the centros to meet and form a new organization. In 1964 they formed the Federacíon Interprovincial de Centros Shuar-Achuar ("Interprovincial Federation of Shuar and Achuar Centros"; many Achuar live in Ecuador, although most live in Peru). The Federation is democratic and hierarchically organized, most of its leaders are salaried by the Ecuadorian state. In 1969 the Federation signed an accord with the Ecuadorian government in which the Federation assumed administrative jurisdiction over the Shuar reserve. The Federation assumed the duties of educating children, administering civil registration and land-tenure, and promoting cattle-production and other programs meant to further incorporate Shuar into the market economy. Since that time the Federation has splintered into several groups, including a separate Achuar Federation, although the various groups maintain cordial relations.

Thanks to the work of the Federation Shuar identity is very strong; nevertheless, most Shuar also identify strongly to the Ecuadorian nation-state and have entered Ecuadorian electoral politics. Many Shuar also serve in the Ecuadorian Army, and the Army has appropriated the 19th century stereotype of Shuar as "fierce warriors", forming elite units of Shuar soldiers (although all commissioned officers are non-Shuar). These units distinguished themselves in the 1995 Cenepa War between Ecuador and Peru.