Indigenous foodways in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Indigenous foodways in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Subsistence matters: The erosion & resurgence of indigenous foodways in the Ecuadorian Amazon – a presentation delivered at POLLEN 2024 in Lund, 10-12 June, 2024


Hi everybody. My name is Nina. Thanks for inviting me, I am glad to be here.

I have been at SDU for almost 2 years now, at the Dept for Business and Sustainability and affiliated with the Centre for Rural Research. I am part of the international research collectives Cultivate & Agroecology Now.

I was trained as a philosopher and anthropologist, and I have been working in what is broadly the environmental social sciences, maybe more specifically what is often called political ecology. I prefer to use ethnographic and participatory action research methodologies, whenever appropriate, but may also work quantitatively or with discourse and policy analysis.

Much of my work concerns food systems – basically who gets to eat what why and how – and the transformation of food systems: how can we make them more socially just and ecologically restorative?

I work in Europe and in South America, specifically in the Amazon rainforest – where I just spent most of October. And it’s particularly about my work in the Amazon that I want to tell you about today.

Not for some reasons of exoticism and adventure – but for the lessons that I find there for the world at large, and especially for those of us whose lives mostly unfold in the urban technosphere.


INDIGENOUS FOODWAYS IN THE ECUADORIAN AMAZON

In this presentation, I want to trace the entangled processes that erode subsistence opportunities and that have increasingly undermined indigenous foodways for the last 500 years. And I want to gesture towards ways of countering this erosion and reviving subsistence. I will do so by focusing on the erosion as well as the resurgence of indigenous foodways in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where I have worked, in patches, since 2005.

I also need to say that the same colonial relations that erode traditional foodways also have enabled my work in and on the Amazon region. I am aware of that and I have lots of complicated feelings and thoughts about that but I won’t focus on those in this presentation.

SUBSISTENCE

I am interested in and want to talk about subsistence. Subsistence is widely regarded as a primitive condition to be overcome. And those of us who underline its importance and value are often dismissed as romanticizing poverty and drudgery.

Yet I think that subsistence is derided and neglected as socio-economic activity and relegated to the ‘Other’ as cultural activity because it is made up of practices and values that constitute a kind of “outside” of capitalism – an alternative where supposedly “There is no alternative”.

So, one of the things I work on is to trace how capital expansion (as dynamic, heterogeneous, multi-directional process) erodes people’s autonomous subsistence. In fact, this erosion is a necessary condition for the possibility of capital expansion in the first place. In this sense, the erosion of subsistence is foundational for our economy.

But of course this erosion manifests and expresses itself in diverse ways in different geographical, temporal and cultural contexts. And I think that it is important to understand these diverse manifestations of how subsistence opportunities are eroded in order to be able to counter it and understand how to re-vitalise, enhance and expand people’s autonomous subsistence.



My concern with subsistence is a long-standing feminist concern. Building on Rosa Luxemburg’s (1913 [1951]) insights that capitalism has an inbuilt imperial drive in that it requires ‘non-capitalist areas’ (societies, classes dimensions) to expand into (to access resources, labour and to offload surplus commodities), feminists have long argued that her arguments pertain not only to the traditional subsistence economies of European colonies, but in the same way to women’s housework.

We owe this realisation, that reproductive, domestic (unpaid) work is the fundament of productive, industrial (paid) work to a strand of the feminist movement that came to be known as the Wages for housework movement – and that many people don’t know about.



The movement highlighted the multi-faceted, invisible and unrecognized work of women that is indispensable and wealth-producing, yet remains unpaid. They identified this work as the unpaid flip-side of wage-labour. It encompasses domestic labour and care work and we now often call this reproduction.



REPRODUCTION & SUBSISTENCE

But the realm of reproduction is not just a realm of unpaid labour; it is also a realm of commodity consumption:

Unpaid, reproductive activities in industrialised money-oriented economies (domestic labour, care work) are crucial to commodity production and the overall functioning of the formal economy. But what is more, they almost invariably require the consumption of commodities and for-profit services.

They are hence exploited – or value is extracted from them – in two ways: 1. the formal economy free-rides on these activities and the efforts associated with them – i.e. benefits from them without offering anything in return (externalises costs onto reproductive activities); 2. the realisation of these activities requires the consumption of commodities and hence results in profit and financial gains (internalises benefits arising from reproductive activities)

Subsistence work is reproductive work in the sense that it is life-making. It is oriented to the survival and thriving of the household and the community, it refers to community self-provisioning of food, shelter, medicine.

[As such it can in principle contribute to the formal economy by reproducing workers whose labour power then is used in industrial settings to create surplus value.]

But subsistence differs from reproductive activities in industrialised economies in that it does not require market relations and the consumption of commodities. Instead, the elements of subsistence reproduction are (largely) home-made, home-grown, home-spun in a context of kinship and community alliances.

Subsistence is oriented towards co-habitation. Subsistence relies on building alliances with the more-than-human world. In fact, it is premised on a mutually-enhancing metabolic relationship with non-humans. All known subsistence economies are oriented and structured by normative values that shape human interaction with their habitat and their co-inhabitants – and make that interaction a positive, enhancing one, that not just maintains but indeed enriches the ecology of a place.

[I will come back to this later]

The erosion of subsistence I am interested in is hence the process of colonising reproduction with commodities and market relations. It’s about the movement away from life-making to the consumption of stuff. How does that happen and how can we reverse it?

And here is where the Amazon comes in – as I will try to illustrate the erosion of subsistence through experiences from the Amazon.

AMAZON

For most people, the Amazon rainforest is THE wilderness, untouched nature, pristine biodiversity. But we now know that this idea is based on almost 500 years of fantasy and denial.



In 1541, shortly after the Conquest of Peru and Ecuador, Francisco de Orellana, leading a violent expedition, was the first European to travel down the Amazon River. His chronicler Carvajal recorded sprawling cities, living lavishly.

Carvajal described the Amazon as a busy waterway which had, on both sides of the river, populous towns with elaborate temples, plazas and fortresses. He recorded cities that extended for miles and described a superabundance of food.

Carvajal wrote that, in one village, they found enough meat and fish and fruit and cassava bread “to feed … a thousand men for a year.” Carvajal added that “what is more amazing is the slight amount of work that all these things require.”



Upon their return to Europe, Carvajal’s report was censored as fake news because the European mindset could not handle the idea of another and potentially more advanced civilisation where food seemed unlimited and labour was minimal….

As these cities and peoples disappeared within a few decades after the Conquest due to disease, warfare and enslavements and the nature of biodegradable building materials, Europeans have ever since wrongly marvelled at the Amazon as wild, untouched nature.

During the past 3 decades, archaeologists, geographers, soil scientists, geneticists, and ecologists have realised this is a myth and shown that large parts of the Amazon are not wilderness but in fact a carefully created forest garden, a horticultural artefact, a cultural forest. Maybe the most important findings are human-made, fertile dark earth (terra preta) and large, ancient city-like areas with huge amounts of edible trees.



But this has not yet replaced the more generally held view of the Amazon as untouched by humans.

This false view of “the untouched” has contributed strongly to ideas and policies of conservation – which has shaped landscapes ever since and contributed to the displacement of indigenous people from their territories.

Since 2005, I have worked, off and on, with Napo Runa of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Runa means people in Kichwa, and Napo Runa are the people of the Napo River, which flows through Ecuador into Peru and eventually merges with the Amazon River.

MAPS

Ecuadorian Amazon. One of the most biodiverse regions of the world, due to the converging of the Andean and Amazonian ecosystems.



My own fieldwork has taken place in and around the town of Tena. Tena is the capital of the Napo province. To the east there is the rainforest. To the west, the foothills of the Andes.

NAPO RUNA

From the time of the Conquest via the rubber boom to mass colonisation and oil exploitation, the indigenous inhabitants of the Napo region have experienced a variety of ways in which their labour, skills and knowledge have been used in order to serve other (usually white) people’s ends. Nonetheless, indigenous inhabitants of Napo were by no means passive victims of exploitation. They rose in rebellions, learned how to play the colonial actors out against one another, collaborated with them, or migrated deeper into the forests to escape them.

However, the genocidal and ethnocidal violence perpetrated upon them cannot be diminished simply by a better understanding of their active resistance and creative adaptation. Numbers suggest consistently that the indigenous population dwindled by ninety percent in the first 50 years of contact.

Even though many Napo Runa today engage in wage labour relations, most families’ livelihoods are still partially based on subsistence horticulture, usually with added small scale production of cash crops, such as cacao or coffee for the market.



Older Napo Runa say that the forest has been maintained through powerful and intimate relations between humans and non-humans. These relations resemble relations that people would usually have to other people. Plants, for example, need to be wooed like an estranged lover to ensure that they develop and grow. Animals and humans can get married as well as prey on each other.

We might say that these human-forest relations have enhanced the forest, made it more abundant, more diverse. This is a very different approach and perspective than that of ‘conservation’ or ‘sustainability’ – both words which aim to keep things as they are rather than work together to make things richer.

[And there is a lesson here: human impact on the earth is not necessarily destructive. The so-called anthropocene has another side, where humans act as keystone species to enrich their habitat.]

Central to traditional Napo Runa subsistence is the chakra. The chakra is a forest garden that exists in a network of forest gardens, some close and some far from a family’s home and all at varying levels of maturity, fulfilling different kinds of roles at different life stages. The chakra mimics the complexity of the surrounding natural forest. It has always been central to Napo Runa life, supporting health, social bonds, community relations, and intergenerational knowledge transmission. The chakra was governed by women.

Marina Antonia, Napo Runa elder

Yet over the last 500 years, since Carvajal, the Amazon (like all of the landscapes of the Americas) has experienced a catastrophic collapse of its rich ethnic diversity and pre-Conquest civilizations, and with this have come radical changes in forest relations: the erosion of subsistence and conviviality with the forest!

A really rough, broad brush stroke overview of the processes that condition this erosion looks like this:

EROSION OF INDIGENOUS FOODWAYS IN THE ECUADORIAN AMAZON

During 300 years of colonial rule, Amazonian people were subjected to forced labor (encomiendas) and relocated to settlements (reducciones) for resource exploitation and Christian indoctrination.

→ change in patterns of cohabitation with the forest

→ vilification of shamanic practices and forest relationships and change in cosmovision

Ecuador gained independence in the 1830s, and the Amazon became crucial for rubber production. By the 1890s, the Amazon’s economy was dominated by rubber exports. The industry employed violent strategies, including debt peonage (a form of bonded labour), torture, and slavery, resulting in internal displacements and significant demographic changes.



Post-rubber boom, the region saw an increase in cattle ranches and commercial farming. Over the centuries, Napo Runa became accustomed to goods like salt, machetes, and cotton cloth, which became part of their identity and distinguished them from other groups who chose to move deeper into the forest.

→ displacement and severance of territorial ties

→ change in material culture and growing importance of commodities

During the Great Depression, there was a gold rush in the Ecuadorian Amazon – which today is again on the rise with much illegal gold mining. From the 1940s onwards, oil explorations led to opportunities for wage labour in Shell and other oil companies, and a concomitant re-evaluation of gender roles, with male “productive” labour becoming to be valued higher than female “reproductive” labour. Whereas before, while both genders had separate domains, these were understood as complementary and each valuable in its own right.

→ pollution undermining the viability of subsistence lives

→ wage labour devaluing subsistence

In the 1960s and 70s, improved infrastructure, land shortages in the Andes, and agrarian reforms led to mass colonisation of the Ecuadorian Amazon and continuous conflicts over access to land. Forested land was declared ‘fallow’ and opened up to appropriation by those willing to clear, farm and/or graze the rainforest, resulting in rapid population growth – the population quadrupled in 20 years – and urbanisation, further displacement and political organisation of indigenous people.

→ increasing difficulties with respect to land access

→ urbanisation and other land use changes undermining the viability of subsistence lives

→ legal and economic incentives for conventional and market-oriented agricultural production

The erosion of opportunities for autonomous subsistence has made many traditional practices and knowledges irrelevant to people’s lives, which in turn leads to abandonment of them.

While most Napo Runa families today still rely on their chakras for subsistence, the chakra is becoming less diverse, leading to ecologically simplified landscapes and nutritionally impoverished diets.

While this process of chakra simplification had already started decades before, over the last 19 years that I have been going to the Amazon, the chakra has been transformed from a space of subsistence practice, embedded in social and spiritual relations, at the heart of Napo Runa culture, to a space of market-oriented production.

NUTRITION

A recent study found that while chakra diversity still exists, it is not reflected in families’ diets and nutrition.



Most chakra foods consumed today are starchy and low in nutrition. Traditionally, yuca/manioc is transformed into asua, a fermented drink with increased nutritional value and health benefits. Asua is increasingly replaced by beer and soda pop, with children growing up on cheap sweets and imported rice. The closer communities are to urban centres, the lower the diversity on their dinner plates.

Processed foods and drinks have become status symbols. Men, no longer able to hunt and fish due to shrinking territorial rights and environmental degradation, now earn money to buy animal proteins. They also take on more roles in the chakra (which used to be a woman’s domain) yet usually with a focus on market production.



→ as subsistence opportunities decrease, the viability of traditional foodways also decreases, leading to further abandonment

Over the last 10 years or so, international development agencies and NGOs in particular have come to value the chakra as highly diverse agroforestry space to be revived. However, almost entirely with a view to monetise the chakra and market its unique products. In this way, these processes are also part of the chakra’s transformation. Particularly with respect to cacao and guayusa, what we are seeing are quasi-monocultures: one to several hectares of mono-species tree plantations, possibly with a handful of other trees scattered across the plantation to qualify as diverse agroforestry.

Grupo Chakra, a multi-stakeholder platform, promotes the chakra for ecological, economic, and nutritional reasons and supports producer associations to marketise ‘novel’ chakra food products to the growing urban middle class.

Its focus is almost entirely on presenting the chakra to the outside world in order to create livelihoods for indigenous and non-indigenous forest dwellers in the form of selling chakra produce regionally, nationally and internationally.

The recent UN recognition of the Kichwa chakra as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System supports this process of formalisation. While it offers international validation and potential support, it also risks further commodification if the focus shifts to marketing chakra products rather than supporting indigenous food sovereignty. The challenge lies in using this recognition to empower communities without reducing their ancestral practices to solely serve the production of marketable commodities.

It is in into this context that we are coming with some funding for a research project that uses participatory video to encourage community conversations about the chakra, its process of change and its role in community resilience and cultural resistance.

The project involves collaboration with six indigenous communities across the Upper Napo River in Ecuador and the Chambira Basin in Peru. Two indigenous community researchers (one woman, one man) from each community have been trained to use participatory video as a way to spark conversations and reflections within and between communities with respect to the changes that the chakra is undergoing, the ancestral knowledge and practices that are disappearing, and the implications of these changes for a good life in the Amazon.



The revival of subsistence starts with coming together to remember how things were and then reimagine together how they could be.

Thank you!