RECEIVING

One of the greatest internal problems in Comunidades today is stealing. Most of the

time it is people taking manioc or plantains from another person's garden but at times it can be as serious as people breaking into someone else's house to steal desirable goods such as batteries or sugar. These thefts are usually attributed to boys but I think these accusations, especially when done in public spaces such as Communal Assemblies, are aimed more at their parents than at the boys themselves. As I said earlier, young people are more likely to act anti-socially as learning how to live well is a life-long process. However, it is believed that if children act against

kametsa asaikiit is because they do not 'know' how to feelverguenza('shame') for their negative actions, which shows that they are not receiving the right advice or example from their parents.

Joel had a large manioc garden on which we had worked a lot and on which he had spent money hiring workers and organising working parties. However, he was tired of finding different parts of the garden where manioc had been stolen from, which took him to present his case at a Communal Assembly. He stood up, explained his case and finishing by saying “siblings, ask, don't be thieves!”190 _Joel

had no problem with sharing his manioc as we had many people visiting to ask if they could take some manioc from his garden and he never said no. He would go to the garden with them or ask them to take it from a specific part of the garden. Sometimes he would even offer his manioc, like the time we visited a neighbour who

190 One of the common translations of Ashaninka is hermanos/as ('brothers/sisters'), an image of consanguinity not affinity.

said he had no manioc beer because his manioc was still too young. At the Assembly he let everyone know that stealing was wrong and, as the well-respected person he is, advised the rest they should “give good advice to their children”.

The scarcity of game and, to a lesser extent, fish in the Bajo Urubamba, as well as the large amount of people living in close proximity in Nueva Esperanza, prevent them from following the extent to which food was shared in the time of the ancestors. Juaningo, a man in his sixties told me:

I share because our grandparents taught us to do it... [They] taught us we should share the meat of large game... When they got some they would share it with everyone... we share with our family, our neighbours... When there is manioc beer we share, happily, with everyone... My mother taught me how to share, that is why I have also taught my children to share... We are not like the Andeans who don’t know how to share...

It is important to note that Ashaninka people do not only share game. They also

share fish and other foodstuffs like avocados, pineapples, manioc, or plantains.

Manioc or plantains may be given out to people that ask for it, like Joel did with his manioc, but sometimes people will send fruit or even sugar cane to other houses. However, due to its scarcity and its great demand, game is the most complicated edible product to share .

Things today are very different than in the days of the ancestors who used to share everything with everyone. Houses are built close to each other so everyone can see who or what goes into them, as opposed to the days of scattered living in which nobody could see other people’s game. Men sometimes use a different path into the village when they come back from hunting in order to avoid running into people or may hide their kill or catch in their bags as they walk quickly to their houses, ignoring or making polite excuses to invitations to drink manioc beer. People that realise this will still mock the hunter, calling out from their houses asking for at least a little fish or the game animal's head for a soup. The hunter might just smile back, embarrassed. Obviously, honesty about the possession of food is not complete and it

depends on many factors including the size of the animal, the quality of its meat, and the links the hunter, his wife, or mother in the case of single men, have in the

Comunidad. Even if the Ashaninka people I lived among are taught from an early age how negative it is to bewatsatsinari/o ('he/she who does not share meat'), I was told that households are forced to act this way because it has become more difficult to find game. Javier explained as he led me through a path taking us directly to his house as we returned from an unsuccessful hunt:

I always think of sharing when I kill an animal... but when I kill something small it is only for my family; it is not that I don’t feel sorrow for others but if I share we will have nothing to eat. It is easier with fish because you can give a couple to your neighbours but not with game... I can only share when I kill something large like peccary... but still you can’t give some to everyone... The custom is to share; we have to share with our family... It’s not like in the time of the ancestors when there was a lot of game.

A friend once commented, half-joking, that it was unfair that his wife had distributed most of the peccary he had killed that morning among his married daughters and now they only had a small piece left for a watery soup. Most of the men I discussed the sharing of meat with said they would happily share it when they killed a large animal but agreed that small animals should be kept for one's children.

Interestingly, the shortage of game has created a redefinition of kinship networks as people discussed having ‘real’ kin as opposed to people that they ‘treat like’ kin. The responsibilities of sharing were only respected with the first group, close relatives of either a husband or wife, living in physical proximity. It could be argued that this has to be done because of how physical social organisation has changed. Whilst in the past people lived in separate houses extended throughout the forest, today they live in villages of close physical proximity which means there are more hunters in the same area but also more people with whom one has a responsibility to share.

their dogs, on their own or sometimes in groups of two or three. A man may take his wife with him if he is hunting for small animals close to the village or taking advantage of arestinga191_{. The killing is done by men who will also skin the animal if}

the skin can be sold in Atalaya.192 _{The animal is then taken back to the village and}

given to the hunter’s wife or mother who cuts it into pieces and decides who, if any, will get a piece. So, even if the man kills the animal and experiences all the physical and emotional dangers attached to the task, it is the woman who cuts it and decides on its distribution.

One morning Joel brought a large peccary to the house, took it to his wife Sisi and went to rest. When he was up a couple of hours later it had been chopped into pieces and put into two different containers. He asked about a large piece: “And this large one?” His wife looked at him and said, mockingly, “It’s for comadre, leave it there! Or did you cut it yourself?” Women, or children if they have any, then take the meat to whoever it was intended for or may keep it and give it to the intended people when they visit. These would be theirfamilia legitima(‘real kin’) andcompadres

or close friends with which they were in good terms and who usually give meat or fish to the hunter's household. These households will also redistribute part of the game they receive, making the network of people that care for each other even wider. As expected, this distribution is not done very publicly but is done as discretely as possible in a village where everyone knows what is going on. For example, some of mycompadres would come to my house and quietly invite me to go with them to eat in their houses instead of circulating food into the house I was living in. Like the parents who feed their children, the sharing of food with other households evidences a level of kindness and care that Ashaninka people see as an intrinsic part of their identity, of being human, and of the strengthening of communal life.

191 This is when the river grows leaving small islands of earth on which animals congregate.

192 Women do kill small animals that they might find in their gardens using a machete. There are cases of women that are good hunters but these are usually widows. I was told in the Perene that women should never hold a man’s bow or shotgun, just like men should never hold a woman’s cotton spinning stick. However, I never saw this prohibition being respected.

I was repeatedly told that receiving food brings the responsibility to devolver

(‘give back'). This responsibility is not only about food but, as I will explain later, includes different favours that people who care for each other do, like participating in working parties or helping when someone is sick and cannot carry out tasks like getting manioc or firewood. The reciprocity for a product or favour is delayed until the situation arises when the person can 'pay back' the favour. It is clear that these exchanges are based in a relationship of trust and delayed reciprocity mirroring the

Ayompari trade I explained in the previous Section. In the same sense, the exchange of food and favours are not the only outcome of the relation. Like eating together it is an important sign of care and concern for the person and their family. But most

importantly, both Ayompari trade, and I extend this to everyday sharing and

reciprocity, are based on Ashaninka people’s “right to demand” and their “obligation to give” (Hvalkof and Veber 2005:232).

The people in Atalaya who never feed Ashaninka people lack this humanity or ethical value. They choose not to share even if they may be rich from an Ashaninka perspective. My Ashaninka friends always pointed out their stinginess and desire for making money. For example, a friend told me that he would give his

money to his wife because she was como serrana ('like an Andean') and would not

spend it. My informants criticised how Andean buyers at the port in Atalaya193 _were

so picky when buying their chickens or how they paid so little for their rice and timber. Joel told me a story of an Ashaninka man many years ago who was given a

shotgun as advance payment for mahogany. His Patrón asked him to mark the

timber with his initials and throw the pieces onto the Ucayali so he would then pick them up downriver. The Ashaninka man cut a piece of timber of the same size as the shotgun, threw it onto the river and thought that was the end of a fair exchange as both were of the same size.

193 Every morning there are around a dozen buyers of Andean descent waiting by the ports in Atalaya for canoes with products they can buy, like game, live animals, or agricultural products.

People in Nueva Esperanza have a much closer example of Andean stinginess in Mañuco, a man from Ayacucho who was married to an Ashaninka woman. The

couple and their family lived in a small island in front of the Comunidad where his

daughters studied in the primary School. After he learned of the high prices game

gets in Atalaya he decided to give cartridges to some men in the Comunidad to hunt

for him so he could sell the game in Atalaya in the hope of making a large profit.194

However, he salted the meat of the four peccaries he received instead of taking it straight to Atalaya as he did not know that salted meat gets less than half the price that fresh meat does. People found his misfortune hilarious and thought he had it coming for having so much meat and not sharing it. When Gerardo found out a week later as we drank manioc beer, he advised him that he should not take salted game to

Atalaya. He advised him to instead “share it in the Comunidad and you will make a

better profit, you will get game back... you will make friends!”

A few weeks later Mañuco killed a sloth and took it across the river to the

Comunidadso that someone would help him cut the meat as his Ashaninka wife, who would normally skin the animal, was away in Atalaya with their children. He only wanted a small piece for a soup and said that whoever wanted some could take what they saw fit. However, Ashaninka people do not eat sloth as eating it makes a person as lazy as the animal so no one helped him. He could not understand why they did not want his meat, started drinking alcohol, and passed out. He got up the morning after and left, hung-over and carrying the sloth, still not understanding why no one wanted what he saw as perfectly good meat.

His attempt to show he cared for others ended up with him leaving the village in a state of anger, making people avoid him and confirming their stereotypes of

194 Some younger unmarried men sell the game they hunt in the Comunidad or take it to Atalaya. Some older men do this too but these are usually those specialized in hunting for sale. I have seen fish and game being sold inComunidadesbut it was not common and it was always at reduced prices. It is noteworthy that whilst Ashaninka language is used all day in the Tambo, they switch to Spanish for economic transactions. There is a very large separation between selling (behaving like an Andean) and distributing (behaving like an Ashaninka person).

Andeans as people who do not know how to control their negative emotions, as opposed to Ashaninka people who place great importance to the control of these emotions.

YO VOY Y LE BOTO MI RABIA EN EL MONTE(‘I GO AND THROW MY ANGER

AWAY IN THE FOREST’): KNOWING HOW TO CONTROL STRONG