Indigenous Shifting Cultivation and the New Amazonia:A Piaroa Example of Economic Articulation

Germán N. Freire

Published online: 13 August 2007# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007

Abstract This article argues against the idea that indige-nous cultural change and knowledge loss are inevitablybonded to one another, with particular reference to agro-productive transformations. This view has not only ignoredthe potential of these productive systems—well docu-mented in recent decades—but has often threatened themby promoting development policies based on mistakenpremises. It is suggested here that some indigenouspeoples’ productive responses to market integration mayin fact offer alternatives to the paradoxes of development inseemingly fragile tropical environments. This articlereports, in particular, on the strategies developed by thePiaroa, from southern Venezuela. Contemporary large andpermanent Piaroa communities, which resulted from theirinvolvement in aspects of national society, have been able tosustain the forests on which they depend while satisfyingtheir food and market necessities. This has been possible dueto a series of market strategies based on their agroforestaltradition, which have emphasised the commercialization ofsecondary forest products. The article proposes that thesestrategies have been underestimated due to the marketconditions in which Piaroa farmers are immersed, and fromwhich they have learnt the very principles of “capitalism.”Oil dependent and saturated with corruption, the Venezuelanmarket hampers their full economic integration, contributingto the idea that their agroforestry system can only produce atsubsistence levels.

Key words Shifting cultivation .Market integration .

Economic change . Piaroa . Venezuela . Amazonia

Introduction

Cultural change in lowland South America has often beingportrayed as diminishing the capability of indigenouspeoples to cope with their current social and environmentalneeds. This view a priori ignores the potential of indigenousproductive systems, and at times prompts developmentpolicies based on erroneous premises that, at best, constrainthe generation of local alternatives. Less attention has beenpaid to the indigenous peoples’ responses to, and views of,phenomena such as market production and environmentaldegradation. The idea that lowland indigenous productivesystems are only suited to small and dispersed populations—although highly contested over the past couple of decades—is at the heart of this bias.

This idea was stimulated by today’s small and dispersedindigenous populations in the area. Archaeological datahave shown, however, that Amazonia’s present populationis only a small proportion of the pre-Columbian one. Manyaspects of their current settlement and social patterns are infact the result of the dramatic population decline thatfollowed post-1492 contact (Denevan 1992; Denevan et al.1984; Heckenberger et al. 2003; Lathrap 1970; McEwan etal. 2001; Uhl et al. 1990; Zent 1992). Most authors assertnowadays that prior to European arrival Amazonianpopulation was at least ten times larger than today. Soilanalyses have shown that vast portions of the Amazonbasin were subject to human management prior to 1492.1

Black earth, terra preta, a nutrient-rich soil type attributed to

Hum Ecol (2007) 35:681–696DOI 10.1007/s10745-007-9120-y

G. N. Freire (*)Ministerio de Salud,Caracas, Venezuelae-mail: gfreire@cultures.org.uk

1 William Balée (1989) estimated in the 1980s that at least 14% ofBrazil’s forests were anthropogenic, and pointed out that these wereprecisely the forests that Native Amazonians occupy at present. Theseforests, more interestingly, did not show reduction of natural biodiversityas a result of human intervention. Brown andLugo (1990:40) re-estimatedlater that about 40% of the tropical forests in South America wereanthropogenic, and most of the remaining had had some modification inthe past. Denevan has gone further, asserting that “there are no virgintropical forests [in America], nor were there in 1492.” (1992:375).

intensive and long-term accumulation of organic waste, dueto human refuse and intense agriculture, is found widelyscattered throughout the lowlands (Hamlin and Salik 2003;Heckenberger et al. 1999, 2003; McEwan et al. 2001;Petersen et al. 2001; Smith 1980; Uhl et al. 1990). Moreover,several archaeological studies have presented evidence oflarge, sedentary social formations that occupied and managedextensive portions of the tropical lowland over a long periodof time (Heckenberger et al. 2003; Fernández and Gassón1993; Lathrap 1970; Oliver 2001; Spencer and Redmond1992; Roosevelt 1980, 1991; Smith 1980; Tarble 1993). It is,thus, increasingly clear that “modern anthropological work[in the area] has been based on peoples whose representa-tiveness of the prior social landscape is questionable”(Nugent 1998: 41).

There is also growing evidence for the capacity oflowland productive systems—especially agroforestry—tosustain populations much larger and more permanent thanpresent ones (Atran 1993, Atran et al. 2002; Balée 1993;Carneiro 1961; Carter 1969; Coomes and Burt 1997;Coomes et al. 2000; Denevan 1992; Posey and Balée1989; Rival 2006; Roosevelt 1991; Sanchez and Benites1987; Sanchez et al. 1997; Smith 1980). Continuitybetween past and present agroforestal practices in areaswith high pre-Columbian population densities has beendemonstrated in several parts of the tropical lowlands, bothin South and Central America (Atran 1993; Heckenbergeret al. 2003). Long-term research conducted among con-temporary Amazonians has shown, moreover, that current“tropical forest cultivators can produce surpluses throughshifting cultivation with a minimal amount of labourexpended, but they generally lack the necessary economicand political stimuli to do so” (Posey 1985:176).

Despite mounting archaeological and ethnobiological datasupporting these views, to date few studies have attempted todescribe the impact of market production and demographicconcentration on indigenous agroforestry and, more impor-tantly, on its ability to adapt to an increasingly globalisedenvironment (cf. Hamlin and Salik 2003; Godoy et al. 2005;Vadez et al. 2004). The received wisdom, althoughweakened, still suggests that population growth, sedentarism,and participation in aspects of national society endanger the“fragile equilibrium” that ought to exist between indigenouspeoples and the forested lowlands for shifting cultivation tobe economically and environmentally sustainable (cf.Meggers 2001). As recent archaeological and ethnobiolog-ical data show, these productive systems have gone throughchanges in population densities, mobility and economicarticulations several times over the past five centuries. Theirstudy should then be freed from the stigma of the counterfeitparadise thesis, famously synthesized by Meggers (1971).

This article intends to show that, while it is true that thetransition from subsistence economy to market production

largely depends on the context of the process, indigenousagricultural transformations might offer clues to thechallenges of development in seemingly fragile environ-ments. These matters are discussed with particular referenceto the Piaroa, shifting cultivators of the Orinoco, who haveexperienced rapid cultural change over the past forty years.This article is based on fieldwork carried out in the middleOrinoco, especially in the Cataniapo basin, since 1996,which included about a year of permanent residence (1999–2000) and several visits before and after. My fieldworkamong the Piaroa has integrated standard ethnographicsurveys with remote sensing, which in this article is used toapprise land use changes over a 30-year period2 (AerialPhotographs from 1970 and Landsat TM images from 1989and 1998).

The Piaroa

Despite having been contacted by Jesuit missionaries morethan 300 years ago, the Piaroa remained relatively isolatedfrom western influence until well into the XX century.Escaping the violence of the colonial period, they soughtshelter in the secluded forested mountains of the MiddleOrinoco (between the Cuao, Marieta and Autana basins; seeFig. 1), where they lived in small, scattered, and highlymobile communities until recently, keeping their relationswith non-Piaroa to a minimum (Mansutti 1990; Zent 1992).In the centuries that followed their first contact, they movedback and forth between the mountains and the varzea zonedepending on the violence of their indigenous and non-indigenous neighbours (Mansutti 1990). Their aversion tonon-Piaroa, and especially to westerners, made themfamous in the ethnographic literature as an elusive andfearful people (Chaffanjon 1986 [1889]; Monod 1970;Overing 1975; Wilbert 1958). This attitude also helpedthem to outlive many of their neighbours, who owing totheir proximity to European colonists were more exposed toepidemic diseases they brought with them.

2 Information for ground-truthing was mainly collected between 1999and 2000, and included folk classifications of vegetal composition,landscape categories, plot-histories, and family histories of samplesfrom all the productive units in San Pedro de Cataniapo (about 22households divided into four –labour sharing– factions) and a sampleof 20 households (out of 46), belonging to different factions, fromGavilán and its surroundings (Merey, Sardi, la Primavera and FundoPérez-Pérez). The data included here also comes from censuses of thetwo communities (2000); observations and participation in severalhunting and foraging expeditions; and cartographic reconstruction ofthe territory with community leaders (see Freire 2003). I also recordedinformation of products sold and bought in the market (prices, units,etc) in the upper Cataniapo (1999–2000) and in Betaña de Topocho(1997). Most data, however, come from observations made throughparticipant observation and involvement in many aspects of commu-nity life in these and other communities.

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Things started to change rapidly by the middle of the XXcentury, due to a series of epidemic outbreaks that forcedmuch of their population to seek assistance outside theirisolated heartland (Baumgartner 1954; Velez-Boza andBaumgartner 1962; Wilbert 1958). These pandemics coin-cided with a period of peaceful relations with the Creolepopulation, which had stimulated the colonization of theirsurrounding lowlands and an increase in their exchangeswith other peoples, including the Creole. At the same time,the proselytising work of evangelical missionaries, who hadstarted operating in Piaroa territory in the 1940s, prompteda radical change of attitude toward outsiders by interferingwith their medico–religious–political system (Zent 1993).Later, oil-backed government investment in the state,especially from the 1970s onwards, accelerated the Piaroa’sprocess of mass migration toward sources of westernservices—mainly biomedicine—and goods on the periph-ery of their traditional territory. These migrations involvedmore than 90% of their population in the short period of 40years (currently estimated at about 14,500 people), leavingtheir heartland scarcely populated (see Fig. 1).

Nevertheless, the Piaroa’s rapprochement to nationalsociety was conditioned by their strong attachment to forestenvironments, which were, and still are, central to theirsocial identity. Besides Piaroa, a term of unknown origin,they call themselves /dearua/ or /wothïha/, terms thatdescribe them as ‘owners’ or ‘lords’ (-rua) of the forest(dea), in the first case, and ‘knowledgeable people,’ in thesecond, implying that they hold the knowledge to controlits elements (Anduze 1974; Zent 1992). Their mythologyalso explains much of their distinctiveness as a ‘knowl-edgeable’ people by means of their close relationship withthe forest. They actually look down on many of theirsavannah neighbours (such as the Hiwi and the Creole)because of their poor skills in dealing with forest environ-ments. The forest is also an essential part of their socialmemory. Piaroa people can easily identify secondaryforests, their owners, and the history of their communitiesthrough its composition (material or symbolic), even if theydo not normally show interest in human genealogies. Forthe Piaroa human health and well-being are, in fact, largelydependent on the recognition of the close relationshipbetween a portion of the forest and the spirits of theancestors who lived in it. People who fail to identify thisrelationship suffer from many misfortunes, including poorharvests, bad luck in hunting, and a variety of illnesses,some of which make them feel ill at ease in theircommunities and drive them to ‘walk like mad’ throughthe forest; e.g., dea ituna, suripa china (Freire and Zent2007).

In traditional Piaroa communities, moreover, settlementand land use patterns were directly related to one another(Overing 1975; Zent 1992). Gardens were cleared in the

surroundings of the community, but as the settlement gotolder and its surroundings exhausted, new gardens wereopened farther from the community centre. Huts were thenbuilt in more distant gardens and these were used asseasonal houses, mostly due to the intensive labourdemands of cassava processing. A single settlement wouldthen have various houses at any one time and, eventually,as the distance between the new gardens and the villagegrew, one of these seasonal residences was chosen as thepermanent house (isode) and the social life of the villagereorganized around it. This dispersed and multisite land usepattern was part and parcel of their defensive strategies,allowing them to abandon an area at the first sign ofoutsiders without severely affecting their productive capa-bilities. This was essential owing to their renownedrejection of physical violence (Mansutti 2003).

Nevertheless, the Piaroa rarely abandoned a field as anextractive zone. Secondary harvest, hunting, and thecollection of wild and feral species continued until thesecondary forest was cleared again for cultivation. Thiscycle was and still is at the heart of the Piaroa’sunderstanding of land rights. Contemporary Piaroa familieswho have migrated to the vicinity of Creole towns continueto engage in lengthy hunting and gathering expeditions totheir old secondary forests, their tabotihamina resaba(fallows of the ancestors) to reassert their rights over theseterritories. These old secondary forests are believed to bethe best lands for agriculture. Since the woody vegetation issofter to cut there than primary forest, gardening in one’stabotihamina resaba is also a labor-saving strategy.Stanford Zent estimated the entire cycle, from clearing tofallowing and re-clearing, as about 20 years in the UpperCuao—one of the few areas consistent with pre-1970descriptions of Piaroa society (Zent 1992).

It is not surprising, then, that in their approach tonational society the Piaroa sought ways to balance theirneed for access to western services and goods on the onehand, and their need to remain within the forests thatsupport many of their social and economic dynamics on theother. Their responses to these opposing forces have beenheterogeneous and creative, and suggest that some views ofsociocultural change should be revised (cf. Henrich 1997).What follows will exemplify this process through the recenthistory of the Cataniapo basin, a tributary of the MiddleOrinoco. This is one of the fastest growing areas in theirterritory, located about 30 km from the state capital, PuertoAyacucho.

Cataniapo

Cataniapo has been a historic borderland between theCreole and Piaroa worlds for more than a 150 years

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(Mansutti 1990). The middle Orinoco was colonized by thelate XVIII and early XIX centuries, when permanentmissions were established along the riverbanks (cf. Dreyfus1983–1984: 51). This was the point at which metal toolsentered the regional system of exchange, imposing for thefirst time a vertical organization of exchange between

communities according to their access to limited sources,and not just to the status of the trader. Creole goods reachedPiaroa territory through communities located around theMissions, on the rim of their heartland. These exchangesled to intermittent interactions with the missionaries andeventually with Creole colonisers. Cataniapo communities

Fig. 1 Location of Piaroa com-munities in the Middle Orinoco.Based on Zent (2007) andCenso Indígena de Venezuela1992 (OCEI 1993). Taken fromFreire 2003:354.

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were at the forefront of this system of interconnectionsbecause of their proximity to the Atures rapids, which blockthe Orinoco River and require land transportation for about50 km. Cataniapo communities served then as a hub ofexchange with the Piaroa hinterland, with Creole goodspassing in one direction and Piaroa and natural products inthe other.

Cataniapo started to change in 1962, when the regionalgovernment of Amazonas opened a road to facilitate theexpansion of the agricultural frontier into what wasbelieved to be uninhabited forestland. The road stretched30 km from Puerto Ayacucho into the Cataniapo basin.Eighteen families from other parts of the country, mostlyCreole farmers from the northern savannahs, were broughtto the middle basin, where they built homes and loggedabout 150 ha of forest for cultivation. The new communitywas called Gavilán, an experimental palm oil producingsettlement, and the government built a primary school, aninfirmary, and provided the farmers with loans and shootsto grow African palm (Elaeis guineensis). Technicalsupport and help for processing and commercialising thepalm oil never arrived, though, and unable to cope with theforest the Creole families soon abandoned the area. Whenthis occurred several small Piaroa communities startedcolonising the project’s lands.

The project’s massive clearing had in fact been openedon Piaroa fallow lands and not, as government agentsbelieved, on primary forest. The Piaroa had abandoned thearea some 20 years earlier due to an outbreak of malaria,during which time they referred to it as kwoso, area ofillness. With the arrival of the Creole, and especially withthe arrival of a Creole nurse, the Piaroa felt encouraged toreturn to their lands. As the Creole farmers left the area theybegan to regain control over the territory.

At first, Gavilán was occupied by several smalltraditional communities, known as isodæ (pl.) that totalledfewer than 40 people. However, it soon became a centre ofattraction for Piaroa from remoter regions in the hinterland

due to its easy access to Creole markets and medical care.In 1979, the National Agrarian Institute granted thecommunity a provisional land title in which Gavilán wasrecognised as an indigenous community for the first time.Two years later, the government built western-style houses(cement walls and corrugated iron roofs) and relocated thefamilies 70 m to the roadside, which would facilitate their‘integration’ to national life. At this time, Gavilán wasalready one of the largest and fastest growing communitiesin Piaroa territory. In 1986 it was inhabited by some 150people (Zent 1986, unpublished census), and only fourteenyears later, at the time of my fieldwork, it had about 210people which together with some 59 people living inseveral smaller satellite settlements (Sardi, Merey, LaPrimavera, and Pérez-Pérez) made of it one of the largestPiaroa communities in the territory (see Figs. 2 and 3).

Gavilán was not an isolated case. During the last 20years, Cataniapo kept attracting other indigenous andCreole farmers due to its proximity to Puerto Ayacucho,which is the main centre of government investment in thestate (Puerto Ayacucho alone concentrates about 74% of thestate’s health budget, for example; Toro 1997). Hence,Gavilán is currently located on the frontier between thiscolonisation front and the Piaroa hinterland, and it nowshares the upper basin with two other large Piaroacommunities—San Pedro and San Pablo—with 118 and182 people respectively, both at 2 to 5 h by boat fromGavilán (depending on the season). The road connectingGavilán with the state’s capital is now paved, and the trip tothe city takes about 30 min by car. There is daily publictransport to the city market, where most people goregularly, and on an average Friday and Saturday morning,days of the indigenous street-market in Puerto Ayacucho,about one fifth of the upper basin population goes to thecity. Cataniapo is, in fact, one of the most important sourcesof local food products for Puerto Ayacucho, now home tomore than 50,000 people, and all Piaroa communities alongthe river are well-versed in market transactions.

Fig. 2 Approximate boundariesof the Cataniapo basin, insouthern Venezuela. The imageshows the ecological transitionfrom savannah/gallery forest onthe bank of the Orinoco River,left, to the closed semi-deciduous forests that covermost of the Cataniapo basin,right. Landsat TM, 1998(path 4, row 56), false-colourcomposite of infrared bands,assigned to red (5), green (4),and blue (3) to provide theappearance of naturalvegetation.

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Paradoxically, the booming population growth generatedby the government’s investment in Cataniapo was per-ceived by the same authorities as a problem for develop-ment. Once ‘sedentarised,’ indigenous people werecategorised as rural poor and therefore believed to be inneed of externally planned development. This view wasshared, and probably fuelled, by most anthropologists atthat time (cf. Boglar and Caballero 1982; Overing andKaplan 1988). Hence, government programmes such as theconstruction of corrugated-iron houses, schools and infir-maries, were generally accompanied by agricultural devel-opment programmes. The technology attached to theseprogrammes did not change much, in principle, from thekind of programmes that led to the foundation of Gavilán inthe first place. Most of these programmes emphasised theneed to “modernise” their productive system, “adapting” itto the new market conditions of the region. Althoughmostly unsuccessful, these programmes have shaped manyof the agricultural dynamics of the region, so the followingsection will summarise some of their principles, and theway these have connected to local indigenous communities.

Development and the Failure of Modern Farming

“Modern farming” in the Venezuelan context generallymeans monocropped, input-based, and labour intensiveagriculture. It has been persistently proposed in Amazonasas a solution to indigenous peoples’ integration to nationallife, and Cataniapo has been no exception. A paramountprogramme in this sense was the conuco mejorado,‘improved smallholding,’ developed by the government inthe 1970’s and applied throughout the country with littleregard to economic, cultural or environmental specificities

(Freire 2005). The programme, which was a local euphe-mism for modern farming, consisted of the introduction offoreign elements oriented to ‘speed up’ and ‘optimise’yields in the areas where smallholdings and ‘subsistenceagriculture’ were predominant. It included the incorporationof tractors and high-yielding species aimed at creatingmonocultures, and relied on fertilisers to fight the poor soilconditions created by intensive agriculture. Although it wasnot developed for the state of Amazonas (preeminentlyindigenous in composition), its implementation in the statehas been recurrent, under different names and with subtletechnological modifications.

Most of the technology associated with these kinds ofprogrammes has proved if not destructive at least nonviablefor Amazonian environments (Bunker 1985; Hecht 1992).This type of agriculture is not feasible without governmentsubsidies because of the costs of fertilising Amazonian soilsand the dramatic yield declines after a few years ofproduction (cf. Sanchez et al. 1982). These processes,more importantly, have long-term impacts that threaten thepossibility of a sustainable existence for future generations(Clark and Uhl 1984). Uhl (1983) estimated that in theforests of San Carlos de Río Negro, to the south of Piaroaterritory, for example, an area cleared with tractor wouldrequire up to 1,000 years to recover its high forest cover.Regarding profits, already in the 1980s the VenezuelanMinistry of Environment reported that, after more than adecade of modern farming in the state, modern farms didnot account for more than 0.2% of the vegetables produced(Perera 1987: 110). In more than 30 years, in fact, modernfarming programmes have not produced a single successfulresult to support their implementation. Yet they stillrepresent the paradigm of government and nongovernmentagricultural extensions in the region.

Modern farming has been tried several times inCataniapo, generally accompanied by animal raising, andPiaroa farmers have taken part in these programmes inorder to establish relations with government agents thatimprove their political opportunities within the community.This is because leadership is now dependent on the leaders’ability to demonstrate good relations with the Creole world,from where they obtain western goods, services, andsalaries that are now an essential part of their lives (Freire2004). These programmes are generally accompanied bysalaried jobs and infrastructure that reinforce the leaders’role as providers of wealth (Overing 1975), so localcommunities welcome them regardless of their opinions ofwestern agricultural technology. Additionally, Piaroa farm-ers are naturally curious about new species and manage-ment techniques, so they are always ready to experiment.

In the communities where modern farming programmeswere being implemented at the time of my fieldwork, newspecies and technologies were invariably under observation

Fig. 3 Gavilán and its satellite communities in the middle Cataniapoarea (centre of Fig. 2).

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in their traditional areas of experimentation, their housegarden (isode patha), or in small gardens opened in thevicinity of their houses. New crops were excluded from orincorporated into their productive systems only after a longtrial period. Very few crops, however, have made their wayto their gardens in the ten years I have been visitingCataniapo. Coffee (Coffea arabiga), for instance, is a plantthat most communities have been planning to grow forcommercial purposes ever since I first visited the area in1996. All Piaroa I have talked to during my visits to theregion claim that the plant grows well in their soils andassure me they could make profits from its commercialisa-tion. I do not know, however, of a single person who hasyet introduced it to their gardening areas, although somehave claimed to be ‘testing it’ for more than ten years.

Animals raised experimentally, for their part, are usuallyslaughtered or abandoned early on and their meat either soldor consumed by the family group, much to the frustration ofdevelopment agents. Although most Piaroa are keen on petsthey are not usually inclined to raise animals for consump-tion. Hunting, fishing, and gathering are seen as moreacceptable and enjoyable ways of providing meat to thefamily. A similar attitude towards cattle raising has beenreported in other parts of the tropical lowlands (cf. Rudel etal. 2002). Besides, all research on food consumption andhealth carried out in the area confirms that game and wild/feral products are abundant in Piaroa territory, even aroundperipheral communities (Hidalgo 1997a, b, 1998, 2002;Melnyk 1995; Freire 2002).

In addition, the Piaroa seem reluctant to market importedcrops, of which they have scant knowledge, and whiledevelopment plans emphasise the incorporation of externalelements, they are more inclined to privilege strategiesrooted in their agroforestal tradition. Piaroa families invari-ably prefer to rely on fallow and forest products, and theyhave enlarged and manipulated the composition of the fallowlands surrounding their communities for that purpose. Aswill be shown in the next section, the people of Gavilán havemanaged and transformed the massive clearing produced bythe government more than four decades ago into a secondaryforest that is now used, among other things, for sustainedmarket production. Piaroa resource management has in factproduced extensive landscape transformations in most of theupper Cataniapo basin, which are generally overlooked indevelopment programmes due to the gap separating the twoagricultural models.

Shifting Cultivation

Current Piaroa productive strategies are obviously con-strained by their new settlement and social patterns. Theseinclude living in larger, more permanent communities, with

a growing number of people, and in places where forestedland gets increasingly scarce. Unlike other peoples, how-ever, this process has not taken them far from theirtraditional lands, and the encounter with national societyhas not been characterised by the dramatic clash of intereststhat we have seen elsewhere (cf. Bunker 1985; Schminkand Wood 1992; Smith 1982). The Piaroa have hence beenrelatively free to move between innovation and tradition intheir adaptation to a new social and environmental context.

The Piaroa describe the cultivation cycle as a series ofinterrelated phases that follow and sometimes overlap oneanother, something common to other South Americanpeoples (cf Denevan and Padoch 1987; Posey and Balée1989; De Jong 1996). Their main distinction is betweenlabour intensive phases, known as patha, and a series ofphases described with the generic term resaba. The latterstart when labour demanding cultigens, such as cassava andmaize, are substituted with slow growing ones, such aspalms and trees, which demand little attention and producefor much longer periods. As shown in Table I, these twogeneric terms are divisible into several smaller categories,which describe the phases of evolution of the garden, itspredominant species, its owner, and so forth.

The selection of gardening areas in peripheral commu-nities is partly determined by the distance from the villagecentre, on the one hand, and the recognition of ancestralbonds with the land, on the other. Since the village is nowsedentary and most of the produce is still carried by foot,the expansion of the cultivated area is limited by a person’swalking capability. New gardens are opened in landsadjoining old gardens, so they tend to keep their productiveunits within the same valley or along the same microbasin.These valleys generally correspond to the land of what wastheir isode of origin; i.e. their traditional community beforejoining the cluster of family factions that now form largecommunities such as Gavilán. The incorporation of newmembers into a community by means of marriage or politicalalliances also implies their incorporation into this territorialand labour distribution system, so they will work in a familyor faction’s lands (Freire 2003). Family rights over theseterritories, as over their ancestral lands, are asserted throughcontinuous use. Figure 4 shows typical land distributionbetween factions in a large, longevous community, wherefactional lands are allocated along small creeks and adjacentto one another. Land distribution corresponds to familygroupings within the community itself, because everyPiaroa’s desire to work and live with their closest relatives(cf. Overing 1975) is also manifested in their allocationwithin the community (Fig. 4). Houses and land rights aretherefore exchanged when the political affiliations change,so the social arrangements of a community at any one timeare manifested in the layout of the community and itssurrounding gardens (Freire 2004).

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While new gardens are opened farther and farther away,the land closer to the community is managed as fallow, untilit is cleared again for gardening. Gardens and fallow landsare then concentrically arranged around their longevousvillages. Thus, shifting cultivation takes place, ideally, incircles representing different stages of development thatexpand from centre to periphery, and start again when thesecondary vegetation of the first gardens is ready forgardening once more.

Clearings are opened by groups of men, although genderroles have been relaxed in many instances. In the event oflabour shortages, for example, labour demands are satisfiedeither by men or women with few exceptions, such ashunting and magic singing, which have remained men’sactivities in all cases. Thus, it is not infrequent to find menprocessing cassava and women slashing and burning, oreven occupying leadership posts such as comisario (a postfor community–government liaison traditionally reserved tomen). Men still do all the planting of crops used or handledexclusively by them, such as tobacco (Nicotiniana taba-cum), caapi (Baanisteriopsis caapi), and other drugs andplants used for ritual purposes. Other crops are planted andlooked after by either husband or wife.3

New clearings are opened in secondary forests that rangebetween 12 and 15 years old. These fallow periods areslightly shorter than those found by Zent (1992) in theupper Cuao (see above), but long enough to span theproductive life of most palms and fruit trees. The size of afamily’s fields depends on the number of people workingthem and on the number of dependants, but most gardens inthe upper Cataniapo had between 1 and 6 ha, very similarto Zent’s description for more traditional Piaroa areas (Zent1992: 189). A large, extended family will normally havemany small gardens simultaneously, rather than a large one.

Fields are commonly planted to a cereal–cassava–palmae sequence, as in other parts of Amazonia, togetherwith around two dozen minor crops, such as cotton, papaya,pepper, and pineapple. This sequence allows weed controlwith a minimum effort due to the strategic intercropping offast growing cultigens, such as maize, which suppressweeds very effectively from the start, with slow growingones, such as cassava and palms, which are not competitiveinitially but have abundant root and leaf area to eventuallytake over. Thus, lands are kept productive over longerperiods of time without harming the forest’s regenerativecapabilities (Staver 1989; Denevan et al. 1984; Denevanand Padoch 1987).

Although the relative composition of the fields makesthem seem monocropped (or bicropped) due to the muchlarger areas used for cassava and maize during the earlysuccessions, their gardens constitute complex and diversity-based farming systems (Zent 1992). From a non-exhaustive

Table I Main Cultivation Stages

Piaroa English Period Predominant vegetation

Isaka homena/isaka sakwa Slashed forest 0 Woody, high vegetation.Dawye hoipia Felled but unburned field 0–4 months Drying veg.Isaka kwoa Burned field, period of cultivation 4–5 months Burnt veg. Collection of certain barks.Yamu patha/patha aleata Garden with maize (yamu) 5–11 months Maize (Zea mays)Ire patha Garden with cassava (ire) 1–3 (5) years Cassava (Manihot esculenta), several

minor crops.Resaba sakwa/resaba hareaba Fallow’s early stage, bushy/low vegetation;

recently abandoned cassava field3–4 years Leguminous plants, palms, fruit plants,

medicinal plants, and several drugs.Pahare resaba/nai resaba / etc. Fallow with peach palm (pahare)/fallow

with Amazon grape (nai)/name variesaccording to predominant species

>4 years Peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), Amazongrape (Pourouma cecropaeifolia), wildcacao (Theobroma grandiflorum), etc.

Tabo(saba) resaba Old secondary forest >6 years Mix of cultivated plants, feral and wild(esp. palms and fruit trees)

Tabotihamina resaba Old garden of the ancestors >25 years Wild, feral and plants associated tohuman intervention, e.g. Sclerolobiumguianense

De’a Primary forest and old secondary forest >75 years Predominantly wild and feral vegetation

3 Although for practical reasons Piaroa people and family might bepresented as rather monolithic categories in this article, age, gender,and other demographic categories are highly variable in contemporarycommunities. These patterns, which no doubt influence their marketand agroforestal strategies, are analysed elsewhere (Freire 2004).

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listing, Piaroa farmers from Cataniapo identified 15 to 30plant taxa in their gardens, plus numerous varieties.Cassava, for instance, in spite of the dominance of somefive marketable varieties, was planted in a range of 15 to 25varieties. But plant diversity is higher if all family lands areincluded within the same productive unit in the analysis.Piaroa farmers, in fact, refer to the composition of theirgardens in association with other gardens and fallow landsof their family holdings, rather than in isolation. Cropdiversity is a source of pride and status for Piaroa farmers,who constantly show off their plant knowledge andmanagement skills, so it should not be surprising that plantdiversity in Cataniapo has not diminished with marketintegration. In more traditional areas, Zent identified

between 20 and 40 different cultigens per garden andpossibly over a hundred different varieties of species (Zent1992: 197). Studies in other parts of lowland SouthAmerica have confirmed that market integration does notnecessarily reduce agricultural diversity (Godoy et al. 2005;Vadez et al. 2004).

The shift to fallow occurs after three to five years, whenweeding becomes too demanding. Studies in other parts ofAmazonia have noted that this happens in spite of adequateyields (Denevan et al. 1984; Nicholaides et al. 1984; Staver1989). This is because even though cassava and a few othergarden crops constitute the majority of the diet, fallow andforest products provide the greatest variety of food speciesfor Amazonian cultivators. In addition, the fallows consti-

Fig. 4 Distribution of lands andfactional division of San Pedro,Upper Cataniapo, 2000.Based on Freire 2003 and 2004.

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tute nutrient storage for future cropping, and an importantenvironment for hunting and gathering wild and feralspecies. In fact, 54 of the 65 plants Piaroa consumedregularly in Cataniapo were present in these environments.The most common uses of fallow plants were food (45%),construction or manufacturing (15%), medicine (10%), andfood supply for game animals (8%); although the compo-sition of fallow lands was very variable. In more traditionalcommunities the most important function was food supplyfor game animals (Zent 1995: 79).

Therefore, fishing, hunting, and gathering of wild andferal species in areas surrounding their gardens accompa-nied shifting cultivation in all peripheral communities.Most hunting and gathering in Cataniapo took place withina 15 km radius and although there was an increase in thearea due to population growth, this was not proportional tocommunity size. In San Pedro, for instance, with 116inhabitants and abundant forest in the vicinity, most huntingtrips occurred within an area of 7 to 11 km, while inGavilán and its surroundings, with 269 inhabitants, mosthunting and gathering took place within an area of 14 kmfrom the village. Longer distances were only covered forthe collection of species outside the community area, such

as seje (Jessenia bataua) abundant in northern savannahsabout 2 h away by bus.

The proportion of gardens and fallows is relativelysimilar throughout the entire basin, roughly correspondingto 0.25 ha of garden per hectare of fallow, which coincideswith the Piaroa’s own description of their productive units.Increases in the land used by a family or productive unittend to keep this proportion, unless important additions oflabour alter food needs and working capacity radically, suchas a marriage leading to an entire family’s migration. Inthese cases, more gardens are opened during the early yearsuntil the needs and labour possibilities of the family aresatisfied, at which point the land use returns to a proportionof about 0.25 gardens per fallow.4 Population growth istherefore accompanied by a proportional enlargement ofboth fallow and gardening areas, rather than by expandinggardening areas alone, which characterises most colonistmodels of land use in the area. In Gavilán, for instance,while the population grew by an impressive 280% between1986 and 2000 (Zent 1986, unpublished census; Freire2002), its gardening areas had a much more modestincrease, passing from 0.18 ha per fallow to 0.26 in thesame period. Figures 5, 6, and 7 show the recovery andreclearing of gardens and fallows in Gavilán over a 30 yearperiod. In other communities of the upper basin with moremoderate population dynamics, the proportion of gardens tofallow has been more stable, due both to their traditionalmanagement regime, which emphasises forest regeneration,and to their market choices, which have focused onmarketing fallow crops. In this way they avoid the increase

4 This, of course, does not take into account very old fallows, theirtabotihamina resaba, which might still be in use but are difficult toassess with satellite and aerial imagery. The delimitation of theseforested areas requires a detailed and systematic examination offloristic composition, such as that carried out by Zent (1992, 1995) inother parts of Piaroa land, which has not been within the scope of myresearch in Cataniapo so far.

Fig. 5 Aerial photograph showing land cover around Gavilán about8 years after Creole clearing for African palm production, centre, andtraditional Piaroa communities around it, bottom and top (ServicioAutónomo de Geografía y Cartografía Nacional, Venezuela, 1970,1:5000).

Fig. 6 Land cover around Gavilán in 1989 (6) and 1998 (7). Theimages illustrate the recovery of low-forest cover, points B and C, overa 9-year period and the recolonization of mature fallow lands (lowforest) around the community, point A. Compare with Fig. 5, points Aand D, for evolution of Creole clearing over a 36-year period. LandsatTM (path 4, row 56), 1989 and 1998, PCA, camp 1.

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in ecological stress that characterises colonial, monocrop-ped farming.

The Market

The question of how this complex system of productionconnects to the market does not have an easy answer, asmany noneconomic factors –mainly political– determinethe Piaroa’s market decisions. Practically everybody in theCataniapo basin goes to the marketplace regularly, but thegreat individual freedom that governs Piaroa social andeconomic decisions makes it difficult to generalise abouttheir trading choices. The only clear pattern is probably theflexibility of strategies that characterise both their agrofor-estry system and their market decisions. This flexibility isbased on the diversity of fallow and forest species thatcompose most of their food and market choices. Table IIshows a non-exhaustive list of the most important productssold in Puerto Ayacucho’s market in 2000, when more than80% came from fallow and forest environments.

Cassava was without doubt the staple most frequentlysold in the marketplace, either as bread or flour. However, it

Table II Most Common Products Sold in Puerto Ayacucho’s Marketplace by Cataniapo Piaroa Farmers in 2000

Common name Piaroa Scientific name Use Location

Banana Sec.(various) Paruru Musa spp. Food Forest

Sec.Big seje Bare pu’ori Jessenia bataua Food For./Sav.Birds Various Food, ornament ForestCassava Ire Manihot esculenta Food GardenChili pepper Rate Capsicum frutescens Food-spice Garden

Sec.Cucurito Wacha Atalea maripa Food ForestGame Various Food ForestMamure Kiyo wipo Heteropsis spruceana Fibre (fourniture) Forest

Sec.Manaca Menea Euterpe precatoria Food Forest

Sec.Papaya Mapaya Carica papaya Food For./Gar.

Sec.Peach palm Pahare Bactris gasipaes Food Forest

Sec.Peach tomato Nu’e Solanum sesilliflorum Food Forest

Sec.Pineapple Kana Ananas comosus Food For./Gar.

Sec.Small seje Pho pu’ori Oenocarpus bacaba Food For./Sav.Timberproducts

Various Construction,firewood,handicraft

For./Sec.For

Sec.Wild cacao Harewa Theobroma grandiflorum Food ForestYam Huare Dioscorea spp. Food Garden

Fig. 7 Land cover around Gavilán in 1989 (6) and 1998 (7). Theimages illustrate the recovery of low-forest cover, points B and C,over a 9-year period and the recolonization of mature fallow lands(low forest) around the community, point A. Compare with Fig. 5,points A and D, for evolution of Creole clearing over a 36-year period.Landsat TM (path 4, row 56), 1989 and 1998, PCA, camp 1.

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generated little or no income due to the excessive harvestproduced by most farming systems in the region (especiallyPiaroa, Curripaco, Hiwi and Creole). Cassava was, further-more, the most labour demanding crop of Piaroa gardens, dueto the complications of detoxifying and processing its roots, soit was sold periodically but in small amounts, generallycorresponding to the family surplus. Cassava was oftenmarketed to cover the cost of trips to the city for political orsocial purposes rather than for economic profit. Its commerci-alisation, however, represented a permanent and secure, thoughsmall, source of cash because it can produce continuousharvests and it can be stored ‘live’ (i.e., underground) for longperiods. It was also important in the Piaroa diet and was hencethemost prominent crop during the early years of their gardens,essential for the transition of the field to secondary forest.

Fallow and forest products, on the other hand, had the bestmarket value in terms of both labour invested and economicreturn, and they were without doubt one of the main sources ofcash in peripheral communities. The commercialization ofthese products helped economise labour because during thefallow phases there was virtually no weeding, and most fallowcrops needed little processing. Besides, most fallow cropswere harvested over short periods, depending on the species’flowering, which allowed families to get considerable amountsof cash in just a few market transactions. Fallow and forestproducts, moreover, gave Piaroa families a wider margin ofmanoeuvre regarding price fluctuations, since they did not relyon one staple only. Finally, fallow and forest productsaccounted for most of diversity in their diet, so marketproduction focussed on this stage of their productive cycleassured them, at the same time, relative food security (see alsoAtran et al. 2002; Hamlin and Salik 2003). In fact, althoughfood products bought in the market are very common inCataniapo, these correspond mostly to “luxury” products—such as alcohol, soft drinks, and sweets—and in no waysupersede traditional foods (cf. Melnyk 1995). Freshness isstill predominant in their dietary choices. Although refriger-ators had been installed in some communities with publicelectricity, such as Gavilán, these were mainly stocked withwater, which was then distributed and used as a status marker.Refrigerators have certainly had a very little impact—if any—on their preference for immediate consumption and the role offood distribution in the formation of social relations.

Regarding production, fallow plants can continue to yieldfor several years and leave abundant biomass after harvest sothat agriculture can be sustained for much longer periodsthan in monocropping systems without jeopardizing theforest’s recovery. While cassava production lasts between 3to 5 years, fallow production can last for 12 years or more,usually until nonuseful species are predominant in the plot,reducing the harvest’s profit. At this point, the plot generallyhas abundant biomass to support new gardening. In fact,studies in other parts of lowland South America have shown

that agroforestry and the extraction of non-timber forestproducts may well be the most profitable/environmentallyviable market strategies for these environments (Current etal. 1995; Hecht 1992; Mendelsohn and Balick 1995; Peterset al. 1989; Posey 1992; Sanchez and Benites 1987;Sanchez et al. 1982, 1997; Tapia 1997; Zent 2001).

The comparative advantage of a particular fallow orforest product could make an entire community concentrateits economic efforts on it. Extreme examples of fallowspecialisation were found outside the Cataniapo basin, onthe road connecting Puerto Ayacucho with the country’sheartland, to the north, in communities located in transitionforests (on the savannah–forest ecotone). One of thesecommunities is Betaña, where I carried out fieldwork in1997. At that time, Betaña had focused its market trans-actions on pineapple, which most people planted intensive-ly in the large, young fallows surrounding the community.Pineapple suppressed the aggressive weed growth of thisecotone due to its expansive and strong leaves, while theabundant vegetal residual of its harvest contributed to thegrowth of woody vegetation in secondary successions,constituting a good alternative to fight the quick advance ofthe savannah in this ecosystem. Most pineapples were soldon the side of the national road connecting PuertoAyacucho with the north of the country and, at the timeof my fieldwork, in a single harvest, from January to April,Betaña families could make almost seven times theminimum wage of Venezuela’s urban areas (about US$230 a month at that time). Communities from other regions,like Gavilán, could not benefit from pineapple productionbecause the varieties of pineapple produced in the territorywere rich in sugar and therefore difficult to commercialisedue to their quick fermentation. Besides, pineapple is tooheavy and its unit price too low to compensate the costs oftransportation to the city market, so few communities werein a position to sell it. In Betaña, however, the predomi-nance of pineapple in the composition of the fallows wassuch that in some cases it was difficult to know what wasmore intensively cultivated, the garden or the early stagesof the fallow. In this way, the people of Betaña had turned thefragility of their environment to their advantage, reinforcingsecondary growth while making considerable profits. Forestresources, on the other hand, were collected in periodic visitsto their ancestral lands, about 15 km to the west. Morerecently, the people of Betaña acquired a pulp processor andstarted a pineapple juice micro-factory, which was promotedin President Chávez’s weekly TV show, Aló Presidente!

Communities from the Cataniapo basin, for their part,settled on more traditional Piaroa areas, showed much morediversified market strategies, highly dependent on demand,availability of resources, and limitations of transportation toPuerto Ayacucho. San Pedro and San Pablo, at 2 to 5 h byboat from the nearest road, had a tendency to market forest

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resources more difficult to find in more accessible areas. Ingeneral products that had better weight/value relation for rivertransportation. Mamure (Heteropsis spruceana) and severalpalm fibres used for handicrafts only found in the upperbasin were among the most valuable forest products at thetime of my fieldwork. Sporadically, this trade also includedvaluable game, such as paca (Agouti paca), although mosthunting was reserved to satisfy the family’s requirements.

It is difficult, however, to estimate the annual contribu-tion of Piaroa agroforestry to the local market, because ofthe great fluctuations that characterise their market partic-ipation and the big influence of political factors on theirdecisions. Community leaders can often obtain much morefrom Creole politicians than by marketing agriculturalproducts. This is particularly egregious in electoral periods,which in Venezuela have become increasingly frequentduring the last 10 years. In 1998, for example, the stategovernor seeking reelection created a series of new salariedpositions in the indigenous communities, which in somecases doubled the amount of cash received by indigenousfamilies via government wages. In an outburst of surreal-ism, the governor created the ‘Indigenous Police.’ It was ashort-lived post that most Piaroa ‘policemen’ carried outfrom 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. without the faintest idea of what theirduties were. Their lives, of course, carried on as usual –except for the black uniforms– because their patrolling areaoften coincided with the lands of their extended family. Inpast elections (2005), the politicians ability to create falseexpectations among the indigenous population virtuallyemptied the street-market of Puerto Ayacucho the monthpreceding the polls because most family leaders were busymaking public relations appearances with political candi-dates. They expected outboard motors, power plants, andother ‘donations’ in exchange for votes and politicalsupport. Each ‘donation,’ a common practice in Venezuelanpolitics, could be worth months if not years of agriculturalwork. The Piaroa’s preference for political lobbying overagricultural marketing was understandable.

The local market, for its part, circumscribed by theVenezuelan economy, oil-based and saturated with corrup-tion, has never created market conditions in which bothPiaroa and the local Creole population find it profitable toexploit agroforestry beyond local levels of consumption. In2000, for example, 20 rolls of mamure (Heteropsisspruceana, natural fibre used for furniture) were sold athalf the minimum wage. A Piaroa family from San Pedrocould easily market 20 rolls per week (most harvests wereactually bigger), and the main limitation was the distancebetween the community and the sources of mamure—14–20 km. Scarcity was never mentioned as a limiting factor,and most heads of family traded it whenever they had aclear goal in mind (such as buying a TV). Nevertheless,because mamure –and most forest valuables– are invariably

traded with Creole “trade-partners,” harvests were con-strained by their buying capacity. Trade partners, for theirpart, were either state employees (teachers, nurses, politi-cians, etc.) or middlemen trading for the local market, withvery little capital. This is not surprising considering that thecentral government is the single most important employerin the region, and the entire local economy relies on itscapacity of consumption. Piaroa families, moreover, refusedto sell forest valuables to ‘strangers’ [an attitude rooted intheir traditional ideas of exchange (see Mansutti 1986)] sothe chances of expanding the trading network were slim.

Although apparently impractical in monetary termstrade-partnerships like these have been proved highlyeffective in imperfect market conditions, such as those ofVenezuela’s Amazonia, because they minimise risk andreduce the impact of market fluctuations (cf. Granovetter1985; Plattner 1989). Through these associations Piaroafarmers receive not only a return in cash but also the greatersecurity of a family-like relationship. Creole trade-partners,for their part, use these associations to access to valuableforest resources banned for Creole farmers, and to securepolitical alliances and votes.

These variables make it difficult to foresee the long-termimpact of the Piaroa’s decisions with regard to marketinvolvement. Nonetheless, their preference for productivestrategies that reinforce food security and long-termviability is remarkable. More importantly indigenous farmslike those described here are the only sustainable produc-tive units in a state that in every other regard is totallydependent on central government spending. They are alsothe main source of local food for the more than fiftythousand people living in Puerto Ayacucho. Interestinglyenough, while Venezuelan development plans classify theirlands as poor and unproductive, and therefore dependent onexternally planned development (CODESUR 1975; PRO-DESUR 1996), Cataniapo Piaroa often describe themselvesas very fortunate people. More than forty years ofsedentarism, booming population growth, and marketproduction, have not changed their views of Cataniapo asa privileged basin because of its unique combination of‘natural’ resources, abundant secondary forests, good soils,and proximity to national services and markets.

Conclusions

As other Guianese societies, during the last three decades thePiaroa have reoriented their trade networks towards Creolesettlements—mostly in the varzea zone—after more than 200years of inland orientation (cf. Arvelo-Jiménez and Biord1994; Butt-Colson 1973; Dreyfus 1983–1984; Thomas1972). As most archaeological data suggest, the rearticulationof their trade relations around areas with high population

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densities and the settlement patterns associated with thisprocess are probably more similar to pre-1492 patterns thanthey were 40 years ago, when the now classic ethnographiesthat have shaped our ideas of Amazonian societies and theirproductive systems were written. It is therefore necessary torevise our misrepresentations about the origins and economicviability of agroforestry in light of these new ideas, and relatethese to governmental policies and current discussions aboutagroforestry and cultural change.

The Piaroa example shows, at the very least, that the impactof cultural change is not uniform. More importantly, it showsthat indigenous peoples’ responses may represent alternativesto the paradoxes of development in their traditional territories.This article has stressed that these responses are rooted in theiragroforestal tradition, supporting observations made else-where in the lowlands that indigenous societies with strongagricultural backgrounds tend to maintain land use strategiesthat minimise risks and food insecurity in their approach to themarket and national society—provided external conditionsallow them to do so (cf. Atran et al. 2002; Rudel et al. 2002;Hamlin and Salik 2003). In the Piaroa case, the relativepeace in which sociocultural change has taken place, addedto the fact that so far they have not lost control over theirlands in the process, or not in the dramatic ways describedfor other parts of Amazonia, have helped them develop theirown strategies. Land rights are at the heart of the futureviability of their decisions, as other Latin Americanexamples have shown (cf. Gray 1994; Putsche 2000).

Nevertheless, there are a number of visible threats to thePiaroa’s ability to respond to their future necessities andpreferences. III-conceived development planning imposesdevelopment formulas on the indigenous population that, ifsuccessful, become the only alternatives to problemscreated by the same agricultural packages they promote.Indigenous peoples, as we have seen, do not necessarilyadopt these programmes in response to their own needs andperceptions. Nonetheless, once adopted these challengetheir ability to produce local responses to their increasinglyglobalised environments all the same. Hence, this articlehas stressed that if we agree that ecologically sustainableand socially equitable development must emerge fromadaptation to local conditions, then we have to look at thestrategies developed by communities undergoing culturechange before ascribing to the mainstream idea that theseprocesses are always associated to knowledge loss.

Acknowledgements I thank Peter Rivière, Stanford Zent, StephenNugent, Kay Tarble, Omar Tremont, Laura Martinez, Josep Gari, andElisabeth Ssenjovu for aid and advice generously given during therealisation of this article or the thesis on which it is based (Freire2002). The satellite images used in this article were generouslyprovided by the Venezuelan Ministry of Environment, and the researchwas sponsored by the Fondo Nacional para el Avance de la Ciencia y laTecnología (Venezuela), the Overseas Research Scheme (UK), and anOxford University Overseas Bursary (UK).

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