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Marubos tribe

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Marubo Tribe

The Marubo people seem to be the result of the reorganization of decimated and fragmented indigenous societies by rubber tappers or syringalists (owners of the rubber houses) and rubber tappers (natural latex collector), during the boom of the rubber period. A phenomenon that is very similar to what happens in their cosmology, where new entities are formed by the aggregation or transformation of parts of dead and mutilated beings. But this movement of dispersion and regrouping can go back to even more ancient times, as suggested by some names of Marubo sections in neighboring towns of the Pano ethnic group.

( Nukini Tribe )

Name and Language

Known by the name “Marubo”, these Indians accept such a designation even though it does not constitute a self-designation, which, among others, does not seem to exist. Their language is included in the Pano family. The Marubo say that their language is that of the “Chaináwavo”. Statement that exposes some questions related to its past, since Chaináwavo is the name of one of its sections that is now extinct. As a section, the Chaináwavo could not live in isolation since they had to marry members of another section. The current language of the Marubo has a ritual counterpart: in myths and in priest songs there is a parallel vocabulary that replaces many of the words in everyday use. At the moment young men can also communicate in Portuguese . For their part, the older ones, when faced in the past with the exploitation of rubber in their territory at the hands of Peruvian rubber tappers, learned some words of the Quechua and Spanish languages.

Location

The Marubo live in the upper course of the Curaçá and Ituí rivers of the Javari basin , in the “Javari Valley Indigenous Land”. Such territory is shared with the Korubo, the Mayá, the Matis, the Matsés, the Kanamari and the Kulina Pano, among other isolated peoples. It is a region full of small hills whose peaks, it is not surprising, seem to be joined together by the ridges that are made with the lush cover of the Amazon rainforest. To get to the urban centers, the Marubo have two options: or they go down the aforementioned rivers to arrive, near the mouth of the Javari in the Solimões river, at the municipality of ‘Atalaia do Norte’ (where the headquarters of the regional administration of the Funai (National Foundation of the Indian) is located , to ‘Benjamin Constant’ or to Colombian city of Leticia; or, in the opposite direction, they cross the watershed that separates them from ‘Juruá’, to then reach the municipality of ‘Cruzeiro do Sul’ in the state of Acre. This last option is much closer to the Marubo lands, but since it is a trip that is made partially by land, it can only be made if light loads are carried.

( Kuntanawa Tribe )

The Maloca

Whoever comes to a place inhabited by the Marubo for the first time, will surely be wrong if he tries to estimate the population by the number of buildings. The truth, the only inhabited construction is the oblong house covered with jarina straw from the ridge to the ground , which is located in the center of the highest part of the hill. There the inhabitants sleep, prepare food, eat, receive visits, sing healing songs and help the shaman. Known by the name of Maloca, this construction has a myth of origin , that of the hero Vimi Peya, who learned to make it after living for a period at the bottom of the waters with the alligators (alligators). Although each specimen varies in size, the maloca is always made in the same way, with the same lace and ties. The buildings that remain around the maloca, where the slope of the hill is accentuated, are individually owned. They are erected on stilts, have corridors and walls made of paxiúba shell (type of palm), thatched roof, and serve above all as deposits. Generally, what is kept in the warehouses are the items that they acquire from the ‘civilized’: iron tools, firearms, aluminum panels, steel cables to tie wooden logs, tin containers to collect rubber, knife for make incisions in the trunk of the rubber band, clothing and fabrics, sewing machines, among others. Starting from the hill where the maloca is erected, the chagras extend towards the valleys and the neighboring hills. Various shades of green are perceived according to the vegetables, tubers or cultivated plants: in the higher parts, on those ridges that join the hills from one side to the other, there are strips of wild yucca and papaya trees; while in the depressions you can find corn and plantain. The maloca houses several elementary families under the leadership of the owner of the house . He, like any other man, can marry one or more of his wife’s sisters. His wife’s brother, married children and nephews (sister’s sons) married to their daughters can live with him. Each woman and her children occupy a square space of more or less three meters (3 meters) on a side, which is delimited by the four (4) medullary pillars of the house -two central and two lateral-, where the fishing nets and small shelves are erected to store objects – some of which are simply tucked into the straw on the walls. Next to this medullary square, well towards the center of the maloca, there is a burning bonfire that is used to cook and shelter the inhabitants of the maloca.

The cosmos

Through mythology the Marubo describe the universe and tell how it was formed . In general terms, for them beings are always made of parts of other beings, starting with the earth’s surface, which is composed of soft parts of bodies of dead animals that are hardening. Also They consider that the water of the rivers and their fish, as well as the plants and herbs of the jungle, are made from other beings. In the same way the cultivated plants arose, according to one of the three (3) myths that speak about their origin. Likewise, for them the universe is composed of several layers, the upper ones known as heavens and the lower ones as earths. Human beings live in the layer of earth that is on top of the others – where the fog is seen. According to the Marubo, humans have several souls that can be synthesized into two types: the one on the right or “of the heart” and the one on the left.

tribu-indigena-los-marubo

After death, the last one remains wandering among the layer of earth where mortals live, while the other is directed along the path of mist (Vei Vai), where it travels many places, passes through various tests and dangers to which it does not it can succumb – for it would remain in that layer forever – until it reaches the place where the souls of the members of its section live. There the soul will find two changes: that its skin has been transformed into Roka’s skin (white-faced saki monkey -Pithecia pithecia), and that it has passed into a life full of abundance, health and happiness. The term that designates that sky where souls arrive and have these changes, is shokó.

( Arara Shawadawa Tribe )

Rites

Those owners of the maloca who gain prestige for their peaceful and restrained way of acting, who promote festivals and peace, and who are sought after as advisers, deserve the title of kakaya. Perhaps the less formal and frequent rites are meals and drinking parties, in which a maloca invites its neighbors when there is game meat, cassava, corn or chontaduro to spare. . Much more elaborate, important and infrequent is the Tanaméa party, for which the hosts clean the roads that connect their maloca with the invited malocas, in addition to opening some clearings to wait for the guests who come walking from their malocas, and receive them with drinks. . However, the entrance of the guests to the host maloca is aggressive, since they begin to excavate the external patio and destroy the straw from the walls. In return, the inhabitants of the maloca take the decorations and accessories that the guests bring. In each maloca the festival of the “corn harvest” is held annually. In this rite, the following activities predominate among men: the application of nettle or exposure to the bite of the conga ant (Paraponera clavata), and games where the different phases of venatorial activity are imitated. All this is done in order to promote good results in collective hunting days . Another event that is also conceived as a ritual occasion is the transportation of the new trocano (a sacred percussion instrument made of a wooden trunk that has a deep rectangular cavity), from the interior of the jungle where it was made, to the interior of the maloca. The heavy instrument is tied to the center of a long trunk, which the men later lift and place on their shoulders to carry it. In turn, these men who were entrusted with the demanding load activity, in addition to leaning on poles to be able to walk more easily amidst so much weight and slippery and muddy roads from the rains, must also endure the tickles that are caused to them. women who classify them as husbands. In what has to do with its life cycle, the most visible rite is the funeral. In the past, this ritual included cremation, pulverizing the bones and mixing them with a pasty food, the ingestion of this mixture by relatives, and the parade with parts of the body of the deceased in order to help their “Soul of heart” to find the way and overcome the post-death tests. Currently, the corpse is wrapped in its sleeping net (hammock) and taken to the cemetery that is well away from the maloca. The people who maintained the most distant relationships with the deceased are those who carry him to the cemetery, where they deposit him in a grave on which a small hut or tapiri is built.

Magic

The most frequently performed rites have a high magical component, which is manifested in two (2) ways: healing chants and shamanic sessions. For example, when someone is ill, his companions sit on benches around his sleeping net (hammock) and any mature man who is a close relative of the patient feels obliged to initiate the intonation of the songs. Although there are recognized specialists in these songs: the  kenchintxô  or “curators”. The chants last at least forty-five minutes (45 min.), And must be repeated or replaced by others at intervals that correspond to the number of times that the severity of the evil demands it. Before chanting the first time and in between, the curators drink ayahuasca (or yajé) and blow Rapé (Rapé snuffed through the nose). In the whole process, there is a standardized sequence: in an introduction it is narrated how the spirit of the disease was formed (which is made up of parts of different beings); then there is a narrative about how the disease entered the person; later comes the invocation of beings and qualities that enter the body of the patient to combat the disease, among which the feminine spirit has a preponderant role Shoma; and finally comes the recovery of the convalescent.

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