THE TSACHILA INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

Montserrat Ventura Oller
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Sent: November 2010

Introduction

The Tsachila indigenous people, traditionally referred to by the Spanish term “Colorados” (meaning “colored red”) due to their custom of painting  their bodys and hair red using achiote (Bixa Orellana) dye, live in the Santo Domingo de los Tsachila province, which lies within the Santo Domingo county and the Puerto Limón parish. This is a lowland, subtropical climate area.

Until the first half of the 20th century Tsachila finances were based upon itinerant farming, hunting, fishing and gathering. Similarly to other South American lowland societies, the Tsachila were feebly integrated into the market economy, and their social organization was based on extended family ties and scattered households: family groupings making up residential units, usually under the influence of a local “pone” (shaman), who represents authority and prestige on the same level as the “miya” (chef). From 1958 onwards, due to the construction of roads going through the region and linking other regions of the country, permanent contact with national society began. And since 1964, the Ecuadorian Institute of Agrarian Reform and Settlement (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonización, IERAC) encouraged a new form of controlled colonization in the area, particularly among highland colonists, considering Tsachila land to be waste land for not being permanently cultivated. Tsachila units were organized into communes between 1954 and 1963. In 1971, the Ecuadorian state granted them the “Charter of the Colorados Indigenous Tribe” (currently of Tsachila Nationality), introducing a unifying ruling figure for the ethnic group: the Governor. The new model of communes divided their geographic unity by granting them lands separated by colonists’ properties (CAAP 1985; Benítez and Garcés 1988; CONAIE 1989, Ventura 1996, 1997, 2009).

Communes would basically grant property rights in a communal way, with a double corollary: on the one hand, the Tsachila territory was protected from colonists’ invasion; but on the other hand, this territory had to be strictly delimited and was therefore fixing a permanent habitat. Tsachila families could only enjoy usufruct on lands which were being farmed at the time of legalization, meaning that their traditional mobility -synonymous with their economic strategy as well as with solving conflicts by moving within their territory-, was highly restricted.

The Tsachila are currently participating into market economy through the commercialization of farming products such as bananas, cocoa and coffee, as well as profit-orientated traditional medicine. They are still relying on fishing as subsistence activity, and to a lesser extent, on hunting. Some young people are becoming specialized workers in the outside world.

The Tsachila nationality that boasted 30,000 people at the beginning of the colonial era, according to some authors, suffered a progressive reduction due to several factors, particularly a diphtheria epidemic at the beginning of the last century, resulting in the latest important migratory movement from the Cocaniguas area to the current settlements. Even if the numbers provided by last-century authors differ, it is still believed that they are all short of expressing the real situation, mainly due to the difficulty for researchers to enter the jungle environment. Stevenson, in 1825, reported a population of 3,000 (Stevenson 1826); Rivet of 300 in 1906 and Karsten of 600 in 1924.

Around the 1950s, Santiana estimated the Tsachila population to be 204. As the Ecuadorian census didn’t take into account ethnic groups until recently, it is difficult to rely on data from that time. According to a study carried out in 1974 by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería, MAG), the Tsachila were comprised of 915 individuals (MAG 1974). Twelve years later, in 1986, Robalino reported a population of 1,403, distributed as follows: Bua (282), Tahuaza (28), Otongo-Mapalí (96), Congoma (343), Naranjos (98), Chigüilpe (247), Poste (180) and Peripa (129) (Robalino 1989). According to the 1997 census, the population exceeded 2,000 people, grouped into 7 of the 8 above communities: Tahuaza (also known as Filomena Aguavil) disappeared as a result of the pressure exerted by colonists and private companies.

Let us now underline that Tsachila society doesn’t currently constitute a homogenous group, due to variations in the way of life within or between communes. Distance to the Santo Domingo town center and road conditions, as well as access to electric energy and other services, are some of the causes of this variation. Some other factors to be highlighted are the transformations that took place in the first decade of the 21st century, resulting in the progressive if feeble incorporation of different sectors in the national society. Among these sectors are: education, participation in indigenous management organisms, and collaboration with national and international development entities. Regarding the occupied territory there are no reliable data either, due to the continuous invasions suffered at the hands of colonists. According to the MAG study mentioned above, this territory amounted to 9,059 hectares. However, after consulting some data existing in a few communes, we can observe in most of them a lower figure, leading to a revised number of below 8,000 hectares of territory.

There exist a few purely ethnographic works dating back from the beginning of the 20th century (Rivet 1905; Karsten 1924, Von Hagen 1939, Santiana 1951), mostly compiled in Juncosa (1988). Alfredo Costales carried out a monograph in the mid-1950s (Costales 1956), later reviewed and completed with linguistic and historical studies (2002). In 1985, the CAAP presented an analysis of the Tsachila transition process, and in 1989, Guillermo Robalino published a demographic and ethnographic study (Robalino 1989). Montserrat Ventura has published different works since 1991, as well as a recent book on identity, cosmovision and shamanism (2009). The most important contribution from an ethno-historic point of view is the work of Frank Salomon (1980, 1986, 1997), whereas the linguistic studies of Connie S. Dickinson (2000 y 2002) have valuably increased the amount of anthropological information available.

Ethnohistory

So far there are very few certainties regarding the pre-Inca background of the Tsachila. Archaeological research (Lippi 1983 and 1986) has determined that there were some settlements and some aboriginal paths that enabled exchange and contact with other peoples from the eastern part of the Andes. Even if Cabello Balboa (1945 [1578]) referred to the extreme ethnic variety of the western jungle at the end of the 16th Century, conquistadors and their scribes usually had some difficulty in understanding such variety, generalizing everything under the concept of “Indian”. The only difference they could perceive was the one already established by the Incas between lowland and highland peoples. This difficulty for the Spanish to understand ethnic distinctions has generated some confusion regarding ethnic denominations of peoples west of the Andes, and a subsequent difficulty to establish a linear history from the Tsachila ancestors. With the help of toponymy and the vocabulary available at the time of their study (1941), Jijón and Caamaño assumed the existence of a common linguistic branch between Colorados, Cayapas, Caranquis, Campaces, and Barbacoas. More recently, thanks to research by Frank Salomon (1997) and Segundo Moreno (1983), we now know that in the first years of the colonial era, two important groups lived in the western jungle: they were identified by the current colonial administration under the names Niguas and Yumbos. The most northern members of these groups are thought to have lived in the Canzacoto area and on the current site of Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas, and they might constitute the basic unit of the Tsachila ethnic group.

Nevertheless, the first reference to an indigenous group called the Colorados places them in a Jesuit settlement in 1590 in Angamarca La Vieja, at 2,000 meters above sea level (Navas del Pozo 1990), where they might have lived well into the 18th Century. Pedro Vicente Maldonado (1950), Coleti (1771), Alcedo (1786) and Hervás (1880) refer to two groups of Colorados, one in Santo Domingo and one in Angamarca. An indigenous revolt in the latter, after Jesuit missions had left, would have seen them flee deep into the jungle and mix themselves with northern Yumbos, resulting in the current ethnic group of Tsachila of Santo Domingo, the name of a place where Dominican missions were established.

Despite the difficulty in defining the ethnic borders of human groups from the western jungle, it can be asserted that ancient Colorados occupied, at its most glorious, a huge area ranging from the basin of the Esmeraldas river up north, to Babahoyo down south, reaching the Andean highlands. Since at least the 15th Century, their economy was based on hunting, river fishing, fruit picking and itinerant farming, and they developed an intense commercial activity with highland or coastal groups, being able to set out on commercial expeditions to remote oriental parts, probably to exchange medicinal herbs. The shamanic knowledge, still important nowadays, was without a doubt another source of communication and exchange (Salomon 1997).

Although the intensity of these relationships fluctuated during the colonial era, it seemed fairly limited at the end of the 15th Century, and when the exploitation of rubber began in the area at the beginning of the 19th Century, the Tsachila were described as an isolated ethnic group. This is at least the image reported by ethnographic studies until the first half of the 20th Century, a moment which saw their social continuity being greatly affected by the construction of roads and the new controlled colonization of the area.

Economy and ecology

The Tsachila traditional economic system, as recorded through oral tradition and described by ethnographic studies at the beginning of the 20th Century, is based on hunting, river fishing, harvesting and horticulture. According to Rivet, in 1905, the plots of land (wita) provided them with bananas, sugar cane, nuts, corn, pepper, manioc, garlic, citrus fruits and non-food products such as barbasco and medicinal plants. While in those days products such as rubber were grown to be sold, by the middle of the 20th Century a proper integration to market economy was started: first with bananas, then coffee and cacao, and finally with products such as corn and achiote, leading to large-scale commercial cultivation, at the same time as poultry and livestock farming appeared.
The importance of bananas (Musa genus) in their diet, present in all meals as mashed round-shaped green bananas (ano ila), has been captured in the language, using the same word (ano) to refer to food as a whole or to bananas. However, despite the predominance of bananas, Tsachila lands -ranging from 4 to 50 hectares per family-, far from being monoculture, maintain the variety that characterizes traditional anthropogenic jungles: various species of fruit trees, medicinal plants and palm trees are carefully grown or preserved in the case of wild species, for posterior use or consumption. Among these products can be highlighted papayas, coconuts, royal palm fruits, fruits from other species of palm trees, guavas, pumpkins, and sapodilla plums. Perhaps the most culturally regarded trees of all are palm trees, especially for growing palm hearts, which the Tsachila have gained expert knowledge in exploiting. The rational use of the environment can also be found in their gathering skills.
Nature, wild or cultivated, also offers an infinity of resources or their daily life: lianas (parisili) to make baskets (tasa, tsala), bijao leaves (bakuwa) to wrap and cook food or even to use as a container, gourd trees (furin), the fruit of which is still used as a bowl, as well as some trees or plants serving as building materials such as pambil (siponpo), caña guadua (paki), bísola (bintsala) or toquilla (peso), used for thatching roofs. In this regard, we have to add that there is a notable difference in living standards, and while some communes are still relying on traditional housing, many youngsters, whenever they can afford it, opt for cement or brick houses.

Many of the plants have been used directly to serve human needs, but there are others that are also grown or preserved for animal consumption: the tangaré (lonko), the seeds of which are used to prepare medicinal ointments, is also the favorite food of lowland pacas (kuru) and is therefore used as a natural hunting trap.

Hunting of little animals (lowland paca, guatusa, armadillo, anteater, cuchucho, squirrel) as well as various species of increasingly rarer birds, still constitutes a source of nutrition for the Tsachila. Fishing, however, has become the most accessible resource, especially for easy prey like Campeche, bocachico and beardfish. The traditional method implies fishing with barbasco, a fish poison extracted from different roots or lianas (silibun), or through the use of small fishing nets (atarrayas) that can be locally hand woven or else bought on markets. The perfect time to fish with batán (sere), a trap prepared in less than three hours and which can last until the dry season (about two months later), is toward the end of the winter, when the water level is low. Such a trap, elaborated by the whole family thanks to lianas and reeds, allows them to catch fish after having altered the flow of rivers with stones. The use of dynamite was recently introduced during periods of poor fishing, a situation occurring more and more often with the increase of population within areas surrounding the communes.

Although hunting is a male function, no rules prevent women from performing it, especially when heads of household are women (widow or abandoned), who would therefore exert their hunting skills with the help of hunting dogs. Fishing, however, is an activity undertaken by both sexes, and all members of the family, both nuclear and extended, take part in it. In the case of the occasional fishing expeditions with distinct members of the community, no matter who participated, the fish will be shared according to the number of households, where the fish will be subsequently dried up and salted before being equally shared among all the relatives according to the rule of reciprocity.

With regard to the activities related to the jungle (jelen) or to the land (wita), males generally tackle large-scale activities such as burning, felling and clearing of vegetation, whereas sowing, when it is not carried out over large superficies, is shared with women who are thought to be more adequate than men for this task. Regarding domestic work, women generally deal with housework, cooking, wood cutting, gardening and animal feeding.

Craftwork (i.e. basketwork and the ancient art of pottery to make clay utensils) is mainly but not exclusively performed by women, as well as by a few men who also elaborate baskets and fishing nets. Only the textile craftwork, that is, the weaving of traditional clothing (manpe tsanpa for men, tunan for women), is a specifically female task, and mythology attributes its origin to the Mother of the Stars (Tsabo Ayan).

It must be highlighted here that craftsmanship is currently disappearing, mainly due to the difficulty of finding raw materials in the receding jungle. However, fierce cultural determination to maintain some ethnic characteristics such as clothing, has led to the intervention of other ethnic groups in the manufacture of traditional clothes still broadly worn by women, to the point that the indigenous Otavaleños currently weave and sell textiles directly to the Tsachilas during commercial trips very similar to the expeditions carried out by their ancestors. The same process has been imitated by highland traders who have been regularly visiting Tsachila households to sell or exchange products. To this traditional trade has been added the visit of neighboring salesmen who offer products such as industrial clothing, toilet paper, decorating items, bread, as well as sweets and ice cream, highly praised during celebrations.

Tsachila subsistence economy resides within the nuclear family. The institutionalization of communes hasn’t changed this system, and even if land property is communal, it is being exploited through a family system. Before the modern agricultural colonization, when a couple was formed, the husband would clear a plot of land from the jungle according to his capacity and to the needs of his new family. This process is no longer possible within communes as there is no more available land, leading to a system of land transfer through patrilineal lines. However, in some cases, when women are starting a family they can also receive a small plot a land or even more if the husband does not own a sufficient extension. In this way, we can still encounter extended families becoming nuclear within a commune while conserving their economic self-sufficiency and independence.
Officially, communitarian works (minka) are still in practice among the Tsachila as it is declared compulsory by the Charter on pain of penalty payments. It is actually only related to eventual works concerning the whole community, such as the maintenance of roads or of communal areas. When it involves inter-domestic cooperation, it requires family members or neighbors to act (usually by total consent), under the rule of reciprocity.
Until around fifty years ago, inter-domestic cooperation was very common in cases of land clearing or construction. This often provided the opportunity to organize celebrations that are still vividly remembered by the elders. In times past, it was also a common practice for well-off families to receive a young Tsachila coming from a poor or very numerous family, or an orphan, to work for the household but also to share the living conditions. This role is now rarely occupied by Tsachila and has been replaced by outside workers.
These outside laborers now live separately on the land of the Tsachila family that employs them and usually come from other ethnic groups such as Chachi (Cayapas), an Afroecuadorian group from the coast, mestizos, or indigenous highlanders; even Colombian peasants are part of these new landless migrants. In the recent past, some of these workers would often try to stay in the community, arguing that they had some rights over the land that they had cared for, or else trying to seduce a young Tsachila girl in order to receive some land from her father-in-law. This situation has increased land disputes in a paradoxical way: the Tsachila, despite owning the means of production, have suffered expropriation from their own land.

We also have to pinpoint the economic inequality beset by the different quantity of hectares on which the family was working when their land was legalized and which can’t be increased today, as we have seen before; on the contrary, it is constantly being divided within family members, creating huge concern regarding its yield as well as a progressive introduction of Western production techniques. Nevertheless, this problematic reality doesn’t prevent the Tsachila from maintaining a peculiar relationship with an environment that is still offering them the basis for their cultural universe.

Political and social organization:  the control of this world

The Tsachila basic social unit is the nuclear family. Oral traditions as well as mythology indicate that polygyny formerly existed, probably as a privilege for chiefs (miya) and shamans (pone). However, this type of organization was first severely punished by missionaries who maintainedsporadic contact with the Colorado people since the beginning of the colonization, and then subsequently forbidden by cultural norms. Mixed marriages between members of different ethnic groups are now more and more frequent.
Even if the basic domestic unit is based on nuclear families, it is common to find residential units formed by extended, preferably patrilineal, families. These units still preserve the traditional scattered habitat with houses between 100 and 300 meters apart in order to maintain its open space and land absolutely independent and private, provided that the increasing land constraints allow such liberties. These residential units are also cooperation units and formed the foundation of the current commune system. Although some authors described communal endogamy, there is a significant number of inter-communal weddings. In the past, marital unions were decided by the parents of a very young man, and just before the union the young man was required to give presents, mainly meat, to the girl’s family. Once the engagement was accepted, the girl had to start making of her “contradon” (local type of dowry), in this case a “manpe tsanpa” (traditional male skirt) and other ornamental clothing. For the first months of the union, the couple would stay with the man’s parents, usually until the birth of the first child. During that period, the man had to work a new plot of land to feed his new family. The couple had to accept all agreements established by their parents if they didn’t want to be marginalized from the commune. The other option, that is to kidnap the girl, was and is still practiced in instances of parental disapproval regarding the union. In this case, the family could decide not to grant any land to the offenders and even to ostracize them, although these measures are now becoming much more flexible. The pregnancy of single women is another transgression that is traditionally punished, usually by offering the young mother to a widower or a single elder; nevertheless, this practice is also disappearing.
The commune is actually the formal political unit, with many activities, especially recent ones developed within its boundaries: communitarian work to repair roads, control of territorial limits to avoid frequent invasions from colonists, and assemblies to discuss problems and infractions of ethnic laws, such as the transfer of land to outsiders or mixed unions. Schools, basically operating within the communal environment, are directed by a parents’ organization, which are not always in agreement with all residents of the commune, especially concerning the incorporation of mestizo children coming from neighboring areas. Another cohesive mechanism for commune members is found within football or volleyball teams. These sports are very popular, and there are numerous competitions involving diverse communal teams.
In the past, the most important meetings between members of different settlements weretimes of celebration, especially  Easter (Kasama) celebrations, which could last for up to three days. These celebrations would involve drinking lots of “guarapo” (fermented drink made from sugar cane), and dancing to the sound of “marimba”, an instrument that has become part of Tsachila cultural elements certainly more than a century ago. Celebrations are still culminating moments of communal as well as inter-communal sociability but now this sociability usually takes place during ethnic general assemblies called by the Tsachila Governor or, more commonly, during the weekly market of Santo Domingo. The city of Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas has now become the exchange and meeting center of Tsachila communes, which after having been separated by colonists can more easily reach the town centre than other communes. A marked cultural cohesion is very apparent among ethnic members, strengthened by family ties ever present between families from diverse communes.
This ethnic cohesion, based on cultural and ethnic characteristics, was reinforced by the installation of a formal political structure as the highest ethnic authority: the Tsachila Government. As we have seen above, before the modern colonization, Tsachila families were grouped into residential units, each under the influence of a chief (Miya) or shaman (Pone), but there wasn’t a unifying authority. However, there were several important shamans, each exercising some power over a specific area. The political organization is currently headed by a Governor, the highest ethnic authority, who first got elected for life before being subject to periodic elections. The Tsachila Government is formed by a General Assembly and a Government Council constituted by communal Tenientes designated by the Governor. The political organization of the communes is the Cabildo, as established by the Ecuadorian Law of Communes. The participation of the Tsachila in Equadorian indigenous movements and federations takes place through the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Ecuadorian Coast [Confederation de Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Costa Ecuatoriana (CONAICE)], a branch of the CONAIE.

Cosmovision: control of the other world

Like most Amerindian societies, the natural, human and superhuman worlds act as a whole in the Tsachila tradition. Even if many Tsachila profess to be Catholics or even evangelists, these admissions have been differently incorporated to their cosmology, and when some youngsters refuse the beliefs of their elders, these beliefs are nevertheless implicit in some aspects of their daily life, particularly in the use of traditional medicine based on entities from the supernatural world. Accordingly, we can no longer talk of a common understanding of the other world but of individual life experiences that are put in play to create a conception of a particular world.

According to Tsachila traditions, the Earth contains many spirits (oko) . Most of them come from the natural world as we find mountain spirits (du oko) or powerful animal spirits, like the tiger spirit (kela oko). Others are immaterial, like the luban oko, omnipresent in the mythical Tsachila world, and against which there exist countless formulas. Some spirits have the power to transform themselves into human beings, a trick very often used to harm humans. In the past, shamans (pone) could similarly transform themselves into animals, a recurring feature of mythological stories.

The most important mythological figures shape the Tsachila cosmological geography. Most of the knowledge-holder Tsachilas, particularly the elders and shamans, agree on some prominent mythological themes: in the subterranean world lives the mother of the earth, To Ayan, only visible to shamans under different forms, such as tortoise, horse or rabbit. When To Ayan is moving, the whole earth shakes, causing earthquakes. In the subterranean world also dwells kela ayan, mother of tigers. She is an ancient woman whose children, tigers, go out at night in search of food and partners. These tigers are represented by black marks on red background, typical of Tsachila body painting. Under the earth also reside the Mimiyo, little creatures similar to the Tsachila, who hunt but only feed on smoke from cooked meat,  for which they never defecate. On the Earth, apart from human beings and other natural beings, live the oko spirits, spreading illnesses and other pathologies. Above these spirits we find the Wa Tsachila, giants living in the same way as the Tsachilas. On a higher level we have Tsabo Ayan, mother of the stars, to whom is attributed the origin of the tunan and manpe tsanpa, traditional ethnic outfits. And above them all can be found the sun (yo) and the moon, man and woman respectively, who were sacrificed and sent to us by the shamans when the tiger of obscurity ate the sun. The sea (lamari) is found imprecisely under the earth, and beyond the sea is Pipua, the world of the dead (puyan oko), where the souls of dead people restpeacefully , once the living creatures have performed the Tenka ereka ceremony, a ceremony to ensure that the souls of the dead go to their own world where they can no longer bother humans by their presence in this world. However, this ceremony is no longer in use and has been replaced by local traditional wakes.

Shamans can contact other worlds and oko spirits thanks to the use of “nepi” (ayahuasca, banisteripsis caapi). Spirits thus contacted -every shaman has one or two auxiliary spirits- help them solve problems caused directly by other spirits or through the influence of another shaman. Until recently collective rituals (mu kika) were still performed to benefit a whole group -in case of extended illnesses, lack of rain or poor fishing-, but they have now almost disappeared: the sacrifice and commitment entailed by a ritual of such important magnitude is no longer accepted by many people. However, shamans are still performing individual or family healing ceremonies (patso kika) to protect the body from posterior ailments by using body paintings made with huito (genipa americana /mali) and achiote (bixa orellana / mu).

The Tsachila also have a profound knowledge of medicinal plants for curing diseases, common heritage of an entire ethnic group. The popularization of Tsachila medicine has enabled the appearance of healers known as “vegetalists”, although only those who have followed a thorough learning process can reach the spiritual healing knowledge and power bestowed on shamans, who continue operating within communes.

Control of the other world is traditionally associated with explicit political power from the shamans, and is still a regulating mechanism of social life among the Tsachila, who faithfully turn to their shamans, even if for others there currently exists a limit between corporal order and social order to the extent of having incorporated the use of Western medicine in their healing practices.

Contemporary challenges

Tsachila communes are a clear mechanism of territory defense guaranteed by the Law of the State. The transformation from an organized society based on self-sufficiency of domestic units, scattered habitats, individual land appropriation, and unstructured political and religious power, to a self-government directed by the Gobernación Tsachila under the legal protection of the Charter and to a local organization of communes, although it hasn’t permitted the respect of traditional specificity of the Tsachila society and has created new problems, has nevertheless allowed a tempered transformation impact and the generation of a properly Tsachila cultural content.

The willingness to defend a territory is in fact the need to preserve resources in order to develop a particular way of life. The structure offered by official organizations only allows the conservation of a partial habitat in a fragmented manner. This, in addition to current economic transformations, growing influence from religious missioners, the appearance of new social and political structures, and increasingly intense contact with national and international societies, have all led to an unavoidable change in the way of life. However, Tsachila society has demonstrated over the centuries the capacity to adapt itself to new challenges and to retain its ethnic characteristics.

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