Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T13:44:48.800Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Evolution of the Amazon Peasantry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Extract

The empirical validity of traditional perspectives on poverty and under-development has been seriously challenged over the past decade. In contrast to emphasis on what were said to be disfunctional characteristics of the poor themselves, attention has been redirected towards economic and ecological factors which reveal much of the cultural repertoire of peasants and urban and rural poor to be a positive or adaptive response to limits imposed on them by the political economy of capitalism.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Harris, Marvin, Culture, People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology (New York, 1975), pp. 461–90;Google ScholarLeeds, Anthony, ‘The Concept of the “Culture of Poverty”: Conceptual, Logical, and Empirical Problems, with Perspectives from Brazil and Peru’, in Leacock, Eleanor Burke (ed.), The Culture of Poverty: A Critique (New York, 1971), pp. 226–84;Google Scholar and Gross, Daniel and Underwood, Barbara, ‘Technological Change and Caloric Costs: Sisal Agriculture in Northeastern Brazil’, American Anthropologist, 73 (06 1971), pp. 725–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Lúcio de Castro Soares, Excursion Guidebook No. 8-Amazonia, trans. Momsen, Richard JrInternational Geographical Union, Brazilian National Committee (Rio, 1956).Google Scholar

3 Meggers, Betty J., ‘Caboclo Life in the Mouth of the Amazon’, The Anthropological Quarterly, 23 (1950), p. 15.Google Scholar

4 Wagley, Charles, Amazon Town; A Study of Man in the Tropics (New York, 1964), pp. 3940.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 61; Castro Soares, Excursion Guidebook, p. 6.

6 Ibid., p. 157.

7 Meggers, ‘Caboclo Life’, p. 27. Higbee describes the commercial relationships in 1943 through which ‘a $1 machete became worth in some cases from $13.50 to $t18.00 in rubber’. He adds that ‘few Amazon traders are interested in any merchandise which does not involve 50 to 100 per cent profit’, and, between Belém and the Upper Amazon, many trading transactions occurred. Higbee, E. C., ‘The River is the Plow’, The Scientific Monthly, No. 60 (06 1945), pp. 405–16.Google Scholar

8 Wolf, Eric and Hansen, Edward, The Human Condition in Latin America (New York, 1972), p. 133.Google Scholar

9 Soares, Castro, Excursion Guidebook, p. 185.Google Scholar

10 Ross, Eric, ‘The Achuara Jívaro: Cultural Adaptation in the Upper Amazon’, unpublished doctoral thesis. Columbia University, 1976, pp. 133–42.Google Scholar

11 Meggers, Betty J., Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise (New York, 1971), p. 93;Google ScholarSoares, Castro, Excursion Guidebook, p. 60.Google Scholar

12 James, Preston, Brazil (New York, 1962), p. 226.Google Scholar

13 Roosevelt, Anna, ‘History of Aboriginal Subsistence in a Floodplain Region of Northern Amazonia’, unpublished manuscript, 1977, p. 2.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 2.

15 Carneiro, Robert, ‘Shifting Cultivation among the Amahuaca of Eastern Peru’, in Becher, Hans (ed.), Beiträge zur Völkerkunde Südamerikas (Hanover, 1964), pp. 918.Google Scholar

16 Bolian, Charles, ‘Manioc Cultivation in Periodically Flooded Areas’, unpublished manuscript, 1971, p. 4;Google ScholarHigbee, ‘The River’, p. 410.Google Scholar

17 Denevan, William, ‘The Aboriginal Population of Western Amazonia in Relation to Habitat and Subsistence’, Revista Geográfica, No. 72 (06 1970), p. 78.Google Scholar

18 Meggers, Amazonia, pp. 34, 139; Meggers, Betty J., ‘Enviroiment and Culture’, in Wagley, Charles (ed.), Man in the Amazon (Gainesville, 1974), pp. 95–7;Google ScholarSmith, Herbert, Brazil, the Amazons and the Coast (New York, 1879), p. 10.Google Scholar

19 Bolian, ‘Manioc Cultivation’, pp. 5–6.

20 Roosevelt, ‘Aborigina Subsistence’, p. 3.

21 Jones, William, Manioc in Africa (Stanford, 1959), p. 16.Google Scholar

22 Bolian, ‘Manioc Cultivation’, p. 7.

23 de Carvajal, Gaspar, The Discovery of the Amazon. Heaton, H. C. (ed.), trans. Lee, Bertram (New York, 1934), p. 192.Google Scholar

24 Roosevelt, ‘Aborignal Subsistence’, p. 4.

25 Meggers, Amazonia, p. 141.

26 Wagley, Amazon Town, p. 4; see also Meggers, Amazonia, pp. 151.

27 Higbee, ‘The River’, p. 410.

28 Herndon, William, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon (Washington, D.C., 1853), p. 303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Bates, Henry W., The Naturalist on the River Amazons (Berkeley, 1962), p. 162.Google Scholar

30 Soares, Castro, Excursion Guidebook, p. 106.Google Scholar

31 Wagley, Charles, ‘The Brazilian Amazon: The Case of an Under-Developed Area’, in Wagley, Charles et al. (eds.), Four Papers Presented in the Institute for Brazilian Studies (Nashville, 1951), p. 27.Google Scholar

32 Wagley, Amazon Town, p. 72. More recently, Wagley has modified his position, observing that ‘the failures of the postcontact Amazonian ecosystem cannot be charged mainly to the maladaptation of old World technology to the region or to the limitations of physical environment. The major disruption of the Amazon ecological scene can be charged to a special brand of the European economic system, namely a predatory, extractive, and “colonial” commerce.’ Wagley, Charles, ‘Introduction’, in Wagley, (ed.), Man in the Amazon, p. 14.Google Scholar

33 Soares, Castro, Excursion Guidebook, p. 6;Google Scholar see also Gourou, Pierre, The Tropical World: Its Social and Economic Conditions and its Future Status (London, 1958), p. 118.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., p. 118.

35 Smith, T. Lynn, Brazil: People and Institutions (Baton Rouge, 1963), p. 54;Google ScholarKiemen, Mathias, The Indian Policy of Portugal in the Amazon Basin, 1614–1693 (Washington D.C., 1954), pp. 8, 22–4;Google ScholarMarchant, Alexander, From Barter to Slavery: The Economic Relations of Portuguese and Indians in the Settlement of Brazil, 1500–1580 (Baltimore, 1942), pp. 108–9, 119, 125, 135.Google Scholar

36 Frank, Andre Gunder, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil (New York, 1969), p. 153.Google Scholar

37 Cady, John, Southeast Asia: Its Historical Development (New York, 1964), p. 197.Google Scholar

38 Kiemen, The Indian Policy, p. 73.

39 Fritz, Samuel, Journal of the Travels and Labours of Father Samuel Fritz in the River of the Amazons between 1686 and 1723, ed. and trans., Edmundson, George (London, 1922), p. 64.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., pp. 74–5.

41 Ibid., p. 60.

42 de Heriarte, Mauricio, ‘The Province of the Tapajós’, appendix to Curt Nimuendaju, ‘The Tapajó’, ed. and trans. Rowe, John in The Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, No. 6 (1952), p. 16.Google Scholar

43 Colson, Audrey, ‘Comparative Studies of the Social Structure of Guiana Indians and the Problem of Acculturation’, in Saizano, Francisco (ed.), The Ongoing Evolution of Latin American Populations (Springfield, 1971), p. 68.Google Scholar

44 Soares, Castro, Excursion Guidebook, pp 71–2;Google ScholarBoxer, C. R., The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695–1750: The Growing Pains of a Colonial Society (Berkeley, 1962), pp. 290–91.Google Scholar

45 Volf, Eric, Sons of the Shaking Earth (Chicago, 1959), p. 196;Google ScholarAshburn, P. M., The Ranks of Death: A Medical History of the Conquest of America (New York, 1947), p. 86.Google Scholar

46 Marcoy, Paul, Travels in South America from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean (4 vols., New York, 1875), II, 361;Google ScholarMétraux, Alfred, ‘Tribes of the Middle and Upper Amazon River’, in Steward, Julian (ed.), Handbook of South American Indians (6 vols., Washington, D.C., 1948), III, 690;Google ScholarSteward, Julian, ‘Tribes of the Montaña and Bolivian East Andes’, in Steward, (ed.), Handbook, 3, 512.Google Scholar

47 James, Brazil, p. 220.

48 Boxer, The Golden Age, pp. 290–91.

49 Kiemen, The Indian Policy, pp. 180–81.

50 Nimuendaju, ‘The Tapajó’, p. 5; Smith, H., Brazil, p. 232.Google Scholar

51 Quoted in Hanson, Earl, South From the Spanish Main (New York, 1967), p. 279.Google Scholar

52 Ross, Eric, ‘The State of Nature and the Nature of the State: An Anthropological Perspective on the Ethnology of Development’. Unpublished manuscript, 1977, pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

53 Fritz, journal, p. 100; Wagley, Amazon Town, pp. 36–7; Bates, The Naturalist, pp. 342–3.

54 Boxer, The Golden Age, pp. 281–6.

55 Marcoy, , Travels, 2, 336;Google Scholar Boxer, The Golden Age, p. 285; Wagley, Amazon Town, pp. 37–8.

56 Marcoy, , Travels, 2, 356, 370.Google Scholar

57 Nimuendaju, ‘The Tapajó’, p. 5; de Acuña, Cristoval, ‘A New Discovery of the Great River of the Amazons’, in Markham, Clements (ed.), Expeditions into the Valley of the Amazons, 1539, 1540, 1639 (London, 1859), p. 126.Google Scholar

58 Smith, H., Brazil, p. 132.Google Scholar

59 Nimuendaju, ‘The Tapajó’, p. 5.

60 Ibid., p. 5.

61 Smith, H., Brazil, p. 133.Google Scholar

62 Rippy, Fred and Nelson, Jean Thomas, Crusaders of the lungle (Chapel Hill, 1936), p. 366;Google Scholar Wagley, Amazon Town, p. 37.

63 Marcoy, , Travels, 2, 370, 373.Google Scholar

64 Frank, Capitalism, pp. 155–6.

65 Marcoy, , Travels, 2, 343;Google Scholar Wagley, Amazon Town, pp. 37–8.

66 Marcoy, , Travels, 2, 336;Google Scholar Bates, The Naturalist, p. 304.

67 Herndon, Exploration, pp. 256–8.

68 Marcoy, , Travels, 2, 336.Google Scholar

69 Herndon, Exploration, p. 254.

70 Maw, Henry Lister, Journal of a Passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic (London, 1829), p. 359.Google Scholar

71 Edwards, William, Voyage up the River Amazon, Including a Residence at Pará (New York, 1847), pp. 131–2.Google Scholar

72 Bates, The Naturalist, p. 313; Marcoy, , Travels, 2, 386, 389.Google Scholar

73 Herndon, Exploration, p. 254.

74 Bates, The Naturalist, pp. 312–13.

75 Ibid., pp. 18–19, 24.

76 Ibid., p. 18.

77 Ibid., p. 18.

78 Acuña, ‘A New Discovery’, pp. 75, 77.

79 Geertz, Clifford, Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia (Berkeley, 1963), p. 16.Google Scholar

80 Meggers, Arnazonia, p. 150.

81 de Santa-Anna Nery, Baron, The Lund of the Amazons, trans. Humphrey, George (New York, 1901), p. 383.Google Scholar

82 This avenue, or estrada, was the path which connected the trees which a man tapped.

83 Murphy, Robert and Steward, Julian, ‘Tappers and Trappers: Parallel Process in Acculturation’, in Cohen, Yehudi (ed.), Man in Adaptation: The Cultural Present (Chicago, 1968), p. 223.Google Scholar

84 Wagley, Amazon Town, p. 69.

85 Galvo, Eduardo, ‘The Religion of an Amazon Community: A Study in Culture Change’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 1952, p. 19.Google Scholar

86 Marcoy, Travels, II, 527.

87 Ibid., pp. 353–4.

88 Ibid., p. 411.

89 Herndon, Exploration, pp. 167–4.

90 Mendez, Eustorgio, Los Principales Mamiferos Silvestres de Panamá (Panama, 1970), P. 229.Google Scholar

91 Fittkau, Ernst, ‘The Fauna of South America’, in Fittkau, Ernst (ed:), Biogeography and Ecology in South America (The Hague, 1969), p. 651.Google Scholar

92 Bates, The Naturalist, p. 365; Marcoy, Travels, II, 428–9; Von Humboldt, Alexander, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America During the Years 1799–1804, ed. and trans. Ross, Thomasina (London, 1869), 11, 190–91.Google Scholar

93 Marcoy, , Travels, 2, 428–9.Google Scholar

94 Forman, Shepard, The Raft Fisherman: Tradition and Change in the Brazilian Peasant Economy (Bloomington, 1970), p. 10.Google Scholar

95 Meggers, Amazonia, p. 153.

96 Ross, ‘The Achuara Jívaro’, pp. 133–40; Acuña, ‘A New Discovery’, p. 72.

97 Ross, ‘The Achuara Jívaro’, pp. 139–40.

98 Hoffman, Hans, ‘Money, Ecology and Acculturation among the Shipibo of Peru’, in Goodenough, Ward (ed.), Explorations in Cultural Anthropology (New York, 1964), p. 265.Google Scholar

99 Wagley, Amazon Town, p. 73.

100 Colson, ‘Comparative Studies’, p. 77.

101 Smith, H., Brazil, p. 110;Google Scholar Bates, The Naturalist, pp. 86–7; Wagley, Amazon Town, p. 45; Fittkau, ‘The Fauna’, p. 647; Carneiro, Robert, ‘Logging and the Patron System among the Amahuaca of Eastern Peru’, in XXXV Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Actas y Memorias (Mexico, 1964), 3, 323–7.Google Scholar

102 Extraction based on terra firme products such as hardwoods could employ labor for long periods as well. Carneiro has observed among contemporary Amahuaca Indians in Peru, where men work for a lumber patron, that they ‘are away … when it is time to clear or burn or plant, and can never keep the plots well weeded.’ Ibid., p. 325.

103 Smith, H., Brazil, p. 98.Google Scholar

104 Quoted in Herndon, Exploration, pp. 256–7.

105 Agassiz, Elizabeth, A Journal in Brazil (New York, 1969), pp. 135–6Google Scholar

106 Edwards, A Voyage, pp. 135–6.

107 Smith, H., Brazil, p. 312.Google Scholar

108 Edwards, A Voyage, p. 158.

109 Watson, James, ‘Way Station of Westernization: The Brazilian Caboclo’, in Watson, James et al. , Brazil: Papers Presented in the Institute for Brazilian Studies (Nashville, 1953), p. 26.Google Scholar

110 Arthur Cesar Ferreira Reis, ‘Economic History of the Brazilian Amazon’, in Wagley, Man in the Amazon, p. 38.

111 Frank, Capitalism, 152–69.

112 Bates, The Naturalist, p. 130.

113 Maúrtua, Anibal, Geografía Económica de Departamento de Loreto (Lima, 1911), p. 37.Google Scholar

114 Bates, The Naturalist, p. 132.

115 Hancock, Thomas, Personal Narrative of the Origin and Progress of the Caoutchouc or Indian-Rubber Manufacture in England (London, 1857), p. 136;Google ScholarBarker, P. W., Rubber Industry of the United States (Washington, 1939), p. 5.Google Scholar

116 Tomlinson, H. M., The Sea and the Jungle (New York, 1964), p. 175.Google Scholar

117 Soares, Castro, Excursion Guidebook, pp. 79–80;Google ScholarSmith, T., Brazil, p. 167;Google ScholarSchurz, William Lyle, ‘The Distribution of Population in the Amazon Valley’, The Geographical Review, No. 15 (04 1925), pp. 206–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

118 Church, George Earl, ‘The Acre Territory and the Caoutchouc Region of South-Western Amazonia’, The Geographical Journal, No. 23 (1904), pp. 597–8.Google Scholar

119 Tastevin, Constant, ‘The Solimões or Middle Amazonian Region (Brazil)’,Google Scholar in Office for Emergency Management, Co-ordinator for Inter-American Affairs, The Middle Amazon: Its People and Geography; Eleven Articles by Constant Tastevin (Washington, D.C., 1943), p. 118.Google Scholar

120 Bates, The Naturalist, p. 149; Office for Emergency Management, Settlements in the Amazon Valley (Washington, D.C., n.d.), p. 3.Google Scholar

121 Ross, Eric, ‘The Amazon Rubber Trade’, unpublished manuscript, 1971, pp. 56–7.Google Scholar

122 Wagley, Amazon Town, p. 93.

123 Office for Emergency Management, Food in the Amazon Valley (Washington, D.C., n.d.), p. 29.Google Scholar

124 Collier, Richard, The River that God Forgot: The Story of the Amazon Rubber Boom (New York, 1968), p. 23.Google Scholar

125 Wagley, Amazon Town, p. 49.

126 Ibid., p. 61.

127 Schurz, William Lyle, Bolivia: A Commercial and Industrial Handbook (Washington, D.C., 1921), p. 169;Google ScholarFisher, Harry, Rubber and Its Use (New York, 1941), p. 23.Google Scholar

128 Schurz, ‘The Distribution’, p. 216.

129 Frank, Capitalism, p. 150; see also Ferreira Reis, ‘Economic History’, p. 42.

130 Smith, T. Lynn, Brazil, pp. 330–35.Google Scholar

131 Soares, Castro, Excursion Guidebook, p 93;Google ScholarSchurz, William Lyle, Brazil: The Infinite Country (New York, 1961), pp. 61–2.Google Scholar

132 Wagley, Amazon Town, p. 96; Murphy and Steward, ‘Tappers and Trappers’, p. 225.

133 Soares, Castro, Excursion Guidebook, pp. 98–9;Google Scholar Schurz, Brazil, pp. 61–2.

134 Wagley, Amazon Town, pp. 300–301; see also de Rios, Marlene Dobkin, Visionary Vine: Psychedelic Healing in the Peruvian Amazon (San Francisco, 1972), pp. 5661.Google Scholar

135 Murphy and Steward, ‘Tappers and Trappers’, pp. 226–7.

136 Ribeiro, Darcy, The Americas and Civilization, trans. Barrett, Linton Lomas and Barrett, Marie McDavid (New York, 1971), p. 208.Google Scholar

137 Italo Claudio Falesi, ‘Soils of the Brazilian Amazon’, in Wagley, Man in the Amazon, p. 227.

138 Carvajal, The Discovery, p. 233.

139 Wagley, Amazon Town, p. 69.

140 Meggers, Amazonia, p. 22; Jones, Manioc, p. 16.

141 Ibid., p. 22.