Kuntanawa
Oxford University Press eBooks – June 18, 2014
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
The Kuntanawa tribe, once thought extinct due to rubber production in Brazil's Acre state, has re-emerged with a strong ethnic identity. Descendants of a Kuntanawa woman, previously labeled mestizo rubber tappers, now actively pursue territorial rights and cultural recognition. Their use of ayahuasca plays a crucial role in this revitalization, serving as a powerful symbol of their identity and facilitating interethnic relations. This dynamic highlights the complex interplay of ethnicity and culture within the context of urban and sociocultural dynamics in Latin America.
Abstract
Abstract The Kuntanawa are a tribe that belongs to the Pano linguistic branch, who, by the early decades of the twentieth century, were assumed to have been exterminated owing to the expansion of rubber production in the upper reaches of Amazonian tributaries, and in particular in the state of Acre in Brazil. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, descendants of a Kuntanawa woman, who had until then been identified as mestizo rubber tappers, began a process of ethnic auto-recognition as well as a struggle for territorial rights. The ritualized use of ayahuasca plays an important role as part of this process of cultural reinvention, acting as a Kuntanawa subjectivity operator, as well as working as an ethnic identifier in the larger field of interethnic relations. This double movement is the subject of ethnographic and theoretical reflections on the issue of “ethnicity” and “culture.”