Timber Industry,Cosmopolitics,and Ontology of Trees in Peruvian Amazon

Introduction

The Yaminawa of the Comunidad Nativa de Raya, on the Mapuya River (Department of Ucayali, Peruvian Amazon) have been involved in the timber industry since they were first contacted in 1964. This activity had been developed in the region comprising Lower Urubamba and Upper Ucayali since the mid-twentieth century, following the decline of the rubber industry and a brief period of retraction to a subsistence economy (d'Ans 1982: 189–90; García Hierro, Hvalkof, and Gray 1998). Logging activities have marked the lives of the Yaminawa in several ways and have implied a significant change in their conception of trees and their relationship with nonhumans associated with them. Certainly, they have always cut down trees, mainly to make their gardens, as they practice slash-and-burn agriculture, typical of indigenous rainforest populations. However, in their accounts of the period when they decided to make contact with nonindigenous people, the elders described to me their amazement at seeing nonindigenous people cutting down trees, intensively and endlessly. This was something completely alien to the way they used to interact with the forest. Their main motivation for agreeing to be involved in logging was to gain access to white man's coveted commodities, especially metal tools. However, over the next decades, working for loggers changed from a means of accessing commodities to a way of life.

This text is based on several periods of ethnographic fieldwork, conducted between 2000 and 2023. In it, I analyze the Yaminawa's relationship with the forest in two ways. First, I describe and examine the impact of the logging industry on their lives, taking into account socioeconomic aspects, territoriality, and interaction with state institutions. Secondly, I consider cosmopolitics, focusing on their relationship with plants. Although this is not the case with all tree species, Yaminawa consider some to be nonhumans, with intentionality and a high level of predatory agency. I am interested in the nature of the relationships established with these kinds of large trees and I suggest that the predatory character of timber activities should be examined in parallel with the predatory features of large trees. As is the case with hunting, predatory agency involving trees is not a fixed position: depending on the situation, humans and nonhuman trees shift between prey and predator, and the context of timber activities seems to have exacerbated the predatory capacity of humans. The possibility of revenge by trees frames logging in indigenous cosmology.

Finally, I will consider an entity called Chullachaki, which is part of a wider Peruvian Amazonian cosmology, but which plays a major role in the Yaminawa's narratives of their experience with the forest beings. Chullachaki's increasing prominence in Yaminawa narratives is linked to the fact that logging became an important aspect of their way of life. Involvement in logging changed their relationship with the forest to some extent and was reflected also in their cosmology. What is interesting about Chullachaki is that, on the one hand, there is a clear continuity between him and the predatory agencies of the big trees, which seems to correspond to a conceptualization that predates the Yaminawa's involvement in logging. On the other hand, he introduces new nuances in the relationship between the Yaminawa and their territory, as I will explain at the end of this article.

Searching for Metal Tools

On several occasions, I have heard Yaminawa men say that they are loggers. When I began my fieldwork, more than 20 years ago, I was troubled by this assertion because it seemed, I confess, quite removed from the ideas I had about Amazonian indigenous people. Nevertheless, this kind of statement needs to be nuanced and contextualized by considering their experience of contact and their values in relation to being a moral person. I return to this last point at the end of the text, when considering Yaminawa's critique of timber extractivism.

As I mentioned earlier, definitive contact was established and consolidated in the 1960s. However, the Yaminawa had interacted with nonindigenous people, particularly with rubber workers, much earlier, probably since around the first quarter of the twentieth century. The latter had tried, on several occasions, to involve the Yaminawa in rubber extraction, but without success. In fact, the Yaminawa remained voluntarily isolated from nonindigenous people for decades, and, to do so, were forced into a life of flight, which implied scattered distribution of families, minimal agriculture, and constant movement. They describe this period as one of suffering, as they were obliged to limit their subsistence activities and had no access to commodities such as metal tools. They were “poor,” they often told me (Pérez Gil 2011). This “poverty” was always explicitly linked to the use of stone axes, because, as they explained, cutting trees with these tools was extremely hard. Since the arrival of nonindigenous people in the territory they inhabited, the Yaminawa used to take metal tools from the camps.

Although the Catholic missionaries claim to have been the first to find the Yaminawa “savages” and persuade them to leave the forest (Soria and Álvarez Lobo 1965), the Yaminawa version is that they wanted to obtain metal tools and decided to seek a peaceful interaction with people who could supply them. They first tried to obtain some from the Ashaninka, but they were also “poor.” Instead, the Ashaninka told them to go to the Mapuya River, where there were loggers working, which they did (Pérez Gil 2011). It is worth noting that the central motivation in the Yaminawa narratives about the process that led to the establishment of close relations with regional society is metal tools, mainly used in agricultural activities that involve cutting down trees.

These Yaminawa narratives emphasize their own agency and choice making. However, it is important to bear in mind that this took place within a historical and structural context defined by increasing pressure and occupation of their territory by subsequent economic fronts of extraction. The first interaction with the loggers in the Mapuya River was carried out by a group of young men. After receiving gifts and being assured of the peaceful intentions of the nonindigenous people's tree-fellers, they were convinced to call and bring the other related families scattered around the forest.

Initially, the young men who took the initiative in this contact process became “bosses”: they organized the men's work, received goods as payment from the logger's boss, and distributed these items among those who had worked. This model, based on the organization of activities and the redistribution of the results of collective work, was, in fact, similar to that of the traditional chief, the xaneihu.

However, not all Yaminawa agreed with the new situation. One influential man called Yuraxidi, considered by many to be a chief, decided to return to a state of relative isolation. He and several families settled in the headwater region of the Huacapistea River, far away from the loggers, their greedy behavior, and their diseases. Later, in the 1980s, this group was attracted by the evangelical missionaries of the Summer Institute of Linguistics to the Upper Yurua River, where they founded several Comunidades Nativas that still exist today. Unlike the Mapuya and Inuya regions, where timber exploitation has been intense since the mid-twentieth century, the Yurua region has been less affected by this industry, because it is a border region and the Yurua River flows toward Brazil, making it impossible to transport timber from there to Peruvian cities.

Becoming Loggers

On the Mapuya River, the Yaminawa settlements have had close contact with loggers, who have steadily been developing their activities in the area over decades. In 1992, Raya was recognized as a Comunidad Nativa, a condition that ensures Yaminawa's legal land and forest rights.

Over the past six decades, methods and activities of timber extraction in which the Yaminawa have been involved have changed. As I mentioned earlier, immediately after contact was established, timber activities were organized collectively, following the traditional chief's model. After that, however, a more fragmented pattern based on the habilitación system was gradually adopted. This is a system based on the generation of indebtedness that keeps people subjugated, forcing them to continue extracting timber to pay for the goods that were advanced to them (Santos-Granero and Barclay 1995). Most Yaminawa men in Raya worked, when young, as laborers for indigenous and nonindigenous bosses, and afterward, as adults, they became minor bosses (patrones), habilitados, recruiting their relatives, or even people from outside the community.

In addition, timber companies have always been granted licenses by government authorities to extract timber in the areas surrounding Raya. The Yaminawa have worked for these companies, sometimes cutting down and dragging timber to the riverbank, and sometimes as materos, searching for valuable wood, mainly cedar and mahogany. Young indigenous women were also hired as “cooks” to work in the loggers’ camps. In addition to domestic labor, this term also had a sexual connotation, which points to the fact that the gendered exploitation of indigenous bodies is a characteristic of colonial and postcolonial extractivism (Whitaker 2020). The involvement of women is important, also, in order to understand the impact of logging on the lives of Yaminawa in another aspect. Some of them, mainly the daughters of the Raya chief, married indigenous and mestizo loggers, who established affinal relationships with the Raya people and, thus, had access to labor and timber in the community's territory.

In recent decades, illegal logging in the territory of the Raya community has assumed various forms. On the one hand, some loggers married to Yaminawa women took advantage of the situation with little regard for the community's interests. On the other hand, large companies mislead the Raya authorities in order to use legal logging licenses granted to the community to carry out illegal timber extractions. As a result, in 2015 OSINFOR (Peruvian Forest and Wildlife Resources Supervision Agency) initiated administrative proceedings against the Comunidad de Raya and imposed a fine, which amounted to s/689.683 (approximately € 170,000) in 2023.

Two aspects of Yaminawa's relationship with the lumber industry, in all its variations, need to be highlighted. Firstly, working for or as loggers became the only way for the Yaminawa to have access to goods that were not only desirable, but also necessary, such as salt, metal tools, shotguns, clothes, medicines, soap, and so on. As they became more integrated into regional society, even in its more peripherical areas, they became dependent on the timber industry. This does not mean that they endorse this way of life. In fact, they are harshly critical of its lack of morality. If the first bosses were described as generous and, to a certain extent, protective, the loggers are generally considered to be extremely stingy. Like other Amerindians who are victims of various extractive activities (Whitaker 2020), the Yaminawa are aware that, because of the extreme conditions, lumbering has a violent impact on their own bodies, and that they have been systematically cheated, exploited, and abused. They claim that they have dedicated all their lives to working for the loggers but have nothing left. They seldom receive payment for their work or for the timber they obtain as habilitados. Several in fact, at different points of their lives, have refused to be recruited, and have tried to collect some timber on their own, just to have some money to buy basic commodities.

Recently, some people in Raya have begun to cultivate cocoa, as this can be sold for a good price in Atalaya, the nearest urban center, and they can engage in this activity autonomously, avoiding dependence on other people's capital. Cacao farming opens up the possibility of avoiding the logging industry, at least in part, given that the Raya's community's territory is surrounded by concessions granted to large companies.

Plants’ Agency and Their Relational Qualities

Relationality is an aspect of Amazonian ontologies and socio-logics that has gained increasing attention in recent ethnographical literature. It draws inspiration from Strathern's analysis of Melanesian ethnography (1988, 1995) and Haraway's thoughts on interspecific relationships (2003, 2016). However, in the South American Lowlands, relationality has specific nuances associated with perspectival cosmology (Viveiros de Castro 2002b) and with body-centered sociology and ontogeny (Seeger, Da Matta, and Viveiros de Castro 1979). The Amazonian cosmosocial universe is inhabited by a multiplicity of human and nonhuman subjects, which interact and communicate constantly. In fact, existence relies on these interactions, which can be predatory—insofar as social reproduction and individual production depend on the capture and incorporation of alterity (Fausto 1999; Viveiros de Castro 2002a)—or convivial, (Overing 2000), depending on the social sphere under consideration. Human bodies are, in fact, the outcome of successive interactions, with both humans and nonhumans, and of processes through which people acquire social and productive capacities. Far from given, kinship and humanity are instable conditions and must be produced daily (McCallum 2016; Vilaça 2005). Therefore, each person emerges from the agency of others and contributes, reciprocally, to the fabrication of others’ bodies, through nurturing, caring, teaching, producing emotions, and transmitting corporeal substances, names, adornments, and so forth. Regarding relationality, people are, on the one hand, not only entangled with other humans, mostly kin and neighbors, in a network of relationships based on mutuality, but also formed by these relationships (Bacchiddu 2022; Kelly 2022). On the other hand, nonhumans, as agencies incorporated or familiarized, also play an important role in the constitution of human subjects, which are conceived as composite and multiple (Fausto and Costa 2022). Bodies are, thus, the effect of the cumulation of different kinds of relationship that materialize or are evinced as corporeal substances, induced emotions, physical and gendered qualities, adornments, shamanic agency, or warrior skills, among other possibilities (McCallum 2016; Taylor and Viveiros de Castro 2006; Tola 2009).

Yaminawa cosmology, like other Amerindian ones, can be defined as perspectival (Viveiros de Castro 2002b). In general, it could be said that humans and nonhumans have human-like souls and ways of life similar to those of humans, but it is necessary to make some distinctions between different nonhumans, as different ontologies imply diverse ways of relating.

Many orthodox mythological narratives, those known as shedipabo (ancestors’) tales, tell stories of encounters between humans and animals. Despite the first impression, or perception, the animal turns out to be human and often, after dropping the leaf juice of a plant on his/her eyes, the hero or heroine is able to see the world as this animal-that-turns-out-to-be-human does. Several myths narrate marriages between humans and these animal persons, marriages that prosper until physical differences emerge, usually in the form of disgusting or inappropriate eating habits (Calavia 2006). Sometimes, the end of the marriage is the human's fault because he/she has offended his/her partner or has been indiscreet about his/her special powers. Nevertheless, these relationships are frequently productive for humans: most important cultural items and habits, such as fire, crops, ayahuasca, and knowledge of how to have sexual relations or bear children without dying, were gifts or teachings from animals. It is important not to lose sight of the fact that animals are former human beings who have undergone a bodily transformation. This shared past is the condition of the ontological continuity between humans and animals and is, in general, a major difference in relation to plants. However, there are cases, such as de Jotï people of Venezuelan Guayana, in which humanity is an original condition shared not only by humans and animals but also by plants (Zent 2009, 18).

In contrast to the many myths about animal persons that have been recounted to me or to other anthropologists who have worked with Yaminawa or culturally related groups, I have only once heard a story, narrated by Reteho, a Txitonawa man who lived in Raya, about a time when trees and ears of corn spoke and communicated with human beings. This story describes a time when people did not need to cut down trees when they wanted to make a garden; they just talked with the trees, which then moved away, leaving space for agricultural activities. Similarly, it was not necessary to cut them down to access their fruit. They themself made the fruit—their children—fall; similarly, withered trees fell themselves to provide people with firewood. The trees stopped talking and moving because human beings made them feel ashamed.

Although it can be assumed that all plants, potentially, have some kind of general spiritual component, in most cases this has no implications on everyday life. Apart from the story I just mentioned, I have never heard any example of crops having any agency, intentionality or kinship condition, as has been, reported among other Amazonian indigenous peoples (Bonilla 2022; Descola 1986; Lenaerts 2004; Lima 2017; Maizza 2014).

In the case of nondomesticated plants, I have never heard any story or comment about them appearing anthropomorphically, apart from some large trees, which I will discuss below in the key part of this text. What we might call the agency or spiritual attribute of these plants is something diffuse and not easy to define and grasp. Rival (2012) and Shepard and Daly (2022) have pointed out the need to make the concept of agency more complex and multifaceted in the case of plants. The spiritual attributes of plants are manifested in different ways and do not always imply intentionality or an anthropomorphic appearance. Their condition as living beings, with an inherent power to grow, or their ability to modify human's bodies, provide skills, restore health, or induce behaviors, are manifestations of this agency, but not in the sense of conscious intentionality. In his discussion of material agency in Amazonian worlds, Fausto (2020: 10–2) also points to the need to nuance and deflate this concept. In many situations, the social and cosmopolitical interactions between humans and nonhumans can be considered without presupposing agency in the strongest sense of the term, but just as a manifestation of the relational quality of Amerindian ontologies. There is no doubt that plants and human beings have relationships; what we need to detail is their character and modalities.

Like many other Amazonian people, the Yaminawa use a wide range of plants for different purposes. Apart from medicinal treatments, plants are used to purge oneself, in order to eliminate of laziness or to be efficient in hunting, to seduce someone or to separate from a partner, to make children learn to walk quickly, and so on. The properties of plants, such as shape of leaves, colors, smells, tastes, having or not having sap, or being associated with certain insects, are linked to their particular potency (Pérez Gil 2006). This efficacy derives from their chemosensory properties, as highlighted by Daly and Shepard (2019). Only in some contexts, a more specific notion of intentional agency is mentioned and evinced, mainly in certain cases when a plant harms someone by causing illness.

Special consideration must be given to plants associated with shamanic practice, as pointed out by Daly and Shepard (2019). In this case, their agency is more concrete and clearly intentional. The Yaminawa know several such species, even if their use has decreased in recent years. The most prominent are ayahuasca and tobacco. One of the contexts in which their agency is more evident is in shamanic apprenticeship when the spirits of these plants become masters, teaching healing songs and communicating with neophytes. This agency gradually accumulates in their bodies, leading to their transformation and the development of the ability to provoke changes in the world and in the bodies of others through shamanic practice (Pérez Gil 2023). The production of a shamanic body requires a careful management of the substances that compose it, accumulating some, especially those that have bitter and pungent qualities, and avoiding or expelling others, thought dietary and sexual control, or the consumption of emetics. Considering the corporeal management of these plant agencies and substances, one could apply what Shepard and Daly (2022: 88) stated for Matsigenka and Makushi: “shamans might be described as part plant.”

In a more general sense, the control of entry and expulsion of substances is a general principle of how a person is fabricated among the Yaminawa, as in the Amazon in general (Santos-Granero 2012; Zent 2009), and it implies the management of subjectivities that contribute to compose people (Pérez Gil 2010). At different moments in life, certain substances, relationships, and foods are considered appropriate, and the use of plants always plays an important role.

In this regard, it is not an exaggeration to speak of a kind of mutuality (Sahlins 2013) to define relations between human beings and plants. If plants contribute to endow human beings with social and ethical valued capacities, the actions of Amerindian human beings are also important for the ways plants construct the Amazonian world (Balée 2013). Taking this into account, one could think in terms of coevolution (Haraway 2003) or involution (Hustak and Myers 2012), notions that emphasize not only the biosocial aspects of co-production between beings, but also the affectivities involved. An example of this in the Yaminawa context is the diligent gathering and collection of the piri piri plants (Cyperecaceae), which are cultivated with care, especially by women, in the courtyard near their homes, and used not only to treat minor ailments in children, but also for protection and, above all, to harmonize behavior and emotions between close relatives. Nevertheless, here I would like to point out another aspect of the humans–plants relationship from a Yaminawa perspective: the predatory one.

The Predatory Ontology of Trees

In Amerindian perspectival ontologies, the predator/prey relationship is a central one and refers to a relational mode in which the ontological consumption of the other and, thus, the incorporation of alterity, is a condition for social reproduction (Fausto 1999; Viveiros de Castro 2002a). In this metaphysics, the predatory point of view is usually assumed by large animals, such as the jaguar or the anaconda, or by supernatural beings, described, for example, as cannibal divinities (Lagrou 2007; Viveiros de Castro 1986). Nevertheless, there are some cases in which the predatory agency is attributed to plants, such as the cannibalistic maniocs of the Achuar (Descola 1986) or the ijniaeene beings associated with trees among the Urarina, who use to capture people to turn them into forced laborers in the oppressive arboreal cities (Fabiano 2023). But there is another more compelling case. Among the Jamamadi, plants play the central role in cosmology and shamanism that animals play in other contexts. Shiratori (2019) points out that, in this case, the prototype of the Other is not the animal, as Viveiros de Castro alleges in his formulation of Amerindian perspectivism, but plants. Although, according to Jamamadi, not all plants have predatory tendencies, violence is a prominent part of their mode of existence, as they live in constant war (Maizza 2014; Shiratori 2019). Yaminawa narratives and personal experiences of cannibalistic beings associated with some large trees reinforce the assertion that plants, along with animals, are predatory agents in Amazonian sociocosmologies.

Not all trees have a subjectivity that can manifest itself with an anthropomorphic appearance. When I discussed this matter with Tonoma and Txixëya, a Yaminawa couple of elders, they reduced the number to six: shono (Ceiba pentandra), huxix (Copaifera officinalis), iwisi (which includes several species of the genus Ficus, called renaco in the local Spanish), kuma (cumaru, Dipteryx micrantha), ishkanate (mahogany, Swietenia macrophylla) and kuxa (cedar, Cedrela angustifolia). All these trees are characterized by their large size and the hardness of their wood. Two of them, ishkanate and kuxa, have been exploited intensively by the timber industry. In fact, the Yaminawa call the loggers kuxa ihu (masters of Cedrela) or dawa kuxai (people of Cedrela).

What distinguishes these trees from others is that they have a dii bëxu. It is not conceptualized as a human person (yura), but as a diawaa. The use of the term “diawaa” in this context requires some explanation as, I suspect, it evinces an ongoing transformation of ideas about nonhuman beings among the Yaminawa. When I spoke to older people in my initial fieldwork, they referred to the trees’ subjectivities as iwi yuxin, or trees’ yuxin. Yuxin is a Panoan concept that typically refers to a general spiritual agency present in all beings, animate or inanimate, and, also, to the anthropomorphic and intentional subjectivities of human beings, some animals, and some trees. In Spanish this word is usually translated as “alma.” As I mentioned earlier, nonhuman agentivity is not a homogeneous property of beings and can vary from a diffuse capacity to affect others unintentionally to an anthropomorphic, conscious, and fully intentional manifestation of a specific nonhuman. Yuxin may refer to both cases. Human beings have two main spiritual components: the wëro yuxin (or yuxin of eyes) and the diawaa, or shadow. When a person dies, their wëro yuxin joins the souls of their relatives, who live together in a village situated in the land of the dead, and becomes a wëro mëxë dawa. Diawaa, on the contrary, stays near the places where the body was buried and where he spent his life. Diawaa is translated into local Spanish as diablo or tunchi, which means something like “demon.” Both wëro mëxë dawa and diawaa are dangerous to living people, especially because they want to carry their relatives away with them. Diawaa continues to exist until the flesh of the deceased has disappeared. As graves are often located near or in the space of the village, is not unusual to experience nuisances or event attacks from the diawaa.

This is the general sense of the term diawaa, but over time, it has become a broader category designating and encompassing beings dangerous to humans, especially, those living in the inner forest. When they use the term diawaa in this categorical sense, what is being emphasized is its cannibal nature. In the same way that human beings are diawaa for maize, as Reteho commented when he told me the above myth, dii bëxu are diawaa for humans: they can eat us (no pitiru), they insisted. “If they find you alone in the forest, they make you sleep and eat you. They leave us clean, empty of blood,” Xawaxta, a Yaminawa adult man, explained to me.

Dii bëxu designates anthropomorphic entities of some trees, mainly those mentioned above, although the list may not be complete. Dii bëxu grows and becomes more powerful and dangerous as the tree gets larger. They are said to be the yuxin or the ihu (owner, master) of the trees, but it must not be forgotten that they are the trees themselves. When they show themselves to people, they can look like a human being (yura keskara) or a spider monkey. Some people say that they are, in fact, the masters of the spider monkeys, but this relationship is more that of a chief and his followers, than that of a game master (Fausto 2008). Another of the peculiarities of the dii bëxu is that they beat trunks, making noises like small explosions.

Txixëya told me about an encounter she had with a dii bëxu when she was a child. She went fishing with her mother. While her mother was pounding the fishing poison to be thrown into the stream, she saw a figure standing near a Ceiba tree, staring at them. She asked her mother who it may be, and her mother, realizing this was a dii bëxu, urged her to run. They both ran away, for they could have been eaten.

When a person is devoured, she “transforms,” becoming a dii bëxu and going to live with him. It is also said that a dii bëxu, like other monsters of the forest, can trick a person into thinking it is a relative and capture them to go and live with him. This kind of kidnapping of humans by nonhumans, by means of deception, and with illness and death as a result, is quite common in the experiences of Amazonian indigenous peoples in the interior forest (Santos-Granero 2006: 76; Viveiros de Castro 2012: 36). It is worth noting that animals can also take humans with them. As I mentioned above, there are several myths that narrate such situations, and this was the fate, for example, of a child I knew, who disappeared while bathing in a river pool. The general interpretation was that she was carried away by a dolphin. In such cases, humans marry their animal captor, and this was the case with this girl, as her brother recently explained to me. By contrast, in the case of humans captured by tree-persons, they become a sort of child or pet of the tree, but there is no marriage. If the mode of relationship that animals establish with captured humans is alliance, in the case of trees it takes the form of familiarization (Fausto 1999), implying asymmetry and hierarchy.

Although, in general, relations with big trees’ agencies are characterized as asymmetrical and predatory, there is a specific context in which these nonhumans become benefactors of humans, while retaining violent behavior: ancient shamanic initiation. Ceiba's dii bëxu have a specific identity. They are called Xuba. Apart from their predatory nature, they also play a central role in shamanism, giving power, in the form of small stones and darts, to the tsibuya. This is a category of shamanic specialist, whose power comes from the stones he has received from Xuba and the jaguars. If a man wants to receive these small stones (tsibu) from Xuba, he must, first, fast for a month. Then, he must go repeatedly to the forest, near a ceiba tree, with his body painted and wearing all his ornaments, and call out to Xuba. If Xuba decides to accept his request, he would beat the candidate hard. Not only Xuba, but also jaguars and various monkeys will introduce their tsibu into the man's body. The whole process implies an ontological transformation, as Xuba becomes tsibuya's auxiliary spirit. Along with his ability to heal and care for his people, he becomes a potential predator. Even if no tsibuya exists any longer, a kuxuitia—a shamanic practitioner, whose power is based on the consumption of ayahuasca and the intonation of blowing-songs (Pérez Gil 2023) —who wishes to perform a shamanic aggression will do so among the great buttress roots of the ceiba tree, where he will receive Xuba's help (Pérez Gil 2006).

Another tree-person that is associated with shamanism is kuma dawa, or cumaru. The sap, bark, or leaves of the cumaru were usually added to ayahuasca in order to potentiate learning and acquire some of its properties. The main characteristic of Kuma is the hardness of its wood. Hardness, or kërëx, is a highly valued body quality, associated with resistance and hard-working as social and ethical qualities. When consuming ayahuasca with cumaru, initiates do not tire and their bodies become more resistant, making them more capable of learning.

It is worth noting that the association of large tree-persons with shamanism is also marked by violence. Even if the initiation has an inherent socially productive aspect since Xuba gives power to human tsibuya, and this power can be used to restore people's health, the facet of Xuba and the associated ceiba that Yaminawa emphasize more is the aggressive one. This does not differ from other ethnographic information in Panoan groups about the subjectivities associated with trees, even if they are not abundant. In various ethnographic accounts, ceiba is usually associated with aggressive shamanism (Calavia 2006: 153; Lagrou 2007: 348–9). In myths recorded by other researchers among the Yaminawa (Calavia 2006: 442–3) and the Shipibo (Bertrand-Ricoveri 2010: 175–9), beings referred to as masters or spirits of the forest are described as cannibals that must be avoided by humans.

I suggest that this predatory nature of large tree-persons can be paralleled with the predatory logging activity in which the Yaminawa of the Mapuya River have been involved over the last six decades.

Ontology of Trees and Lumber Capitalism

When Yaminawa men talk about their experiences in the forest and their encounters with the entities that inhabit it, one of the most mentioned is Chullachaki, also known as Xapixiko. Both terms are Quechua and refer to a cosmological being who lives in the forest and tricks hunters and other people into losing their way. Chullachaki belongs to a shared and transcultural cosmology in the Peruvian Amazon, where he is considered the master of the animals, to whom hunters must ask for permission. He accepts hunting as long as he is given tobacco (the local tobacco called mapacho) and the hunters do not kill more animals than necessary. If someone shows himself to be greedy, Chullachaki punishes him (Chirif 2016: 105; Rumrrill 2013).

It is impossible to reconstruct exactly how Chullachaki came to integrate the cosmology of Yaminawa people, but it was most likely through interaction with lumber workers, both indigenous and nonindigenous. Nevertheless, he is reinterpreted based on Yaminawa notion of dii bëshu. Yaminawa's ideas about Chullachaki agree in some respects and differ in others with other conceptions of this being.

I would like to point out two relevant aspects of the Yaminawa narratives about Chullachaki that differ from the regional version. The first one is that he is not primarily associated with animals, but with trees that are the object of timber industry, mainly cedar and mahogany. Although he is also considered the master of animals, he is, above all, the master of these trees. The second aspect is that he is amalgamated with dii bëshu. Some of my interlocutors said that they are the same; others said that they are not the same, but, in fact, described both as having similar qualities.

In Peruvian Amazon cosmology, Chullachaki is described as a small man, with dark skin and dissimilar feet. He is mocking and mischievous, and can take the form of a deer when not in human form (Rumrrill 2013). In Yaminawa versions, he is also described as a small man, but with white skin, and one of his feet is a deer or a wild boar's, depending on the narrator. He is portrayed as a shaman, with a large pipe, and is said to be very fond of taking ayahuasca. He is usually associated with a large ceiba tree, where he lives with many monkeys—such as Xuba—, but other people identify him mainly with cumaru. “He is the kuma tree,” Xawaxta told me, “but he shows himself to us as a person.” In any case, he is seen as the owner and protector of the cedar and mahogany trees which, I was told, are his banana and papaya plants and should not be touched without permission. In this respect, he presents some of the crucial aspects of mastery as has been described for Amazonian cosmologies (Chaumeil 2010; Fausto 2008; Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020).

Like dii bëxu, he makes noises, which sound like gunshots, by kicking trunks in the forest. These sounds can have two different purposes. Sometimes they are used to scare people away, and thus, to protect cedar and mahogany from extraction. In other situations, however, Chullachaki may kick trees to indicate their location to someone he decided to favor. This ambiguity, which has been noted in other indigenous conceptions of game masters (Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020), is an inherent aspect that, I suggest, connects him to other forest beings and points to the fact that relationships between human persons and tree persons do not have a singled, fixed mode, but are an arena of negotiation and depend on correct attitudes and modes of addressing.

Although the cannibalistic aspect is not emphasized when the Yaminawa talk about Chullachaki, he can cause illness, and even death, and he can also attack and kidnap people. This is another important difference from the general Amazonian cosmology.

Piaxaraya told me, recently, about the time he had an encounter with Chullachaki. He was working for the loggers as matero, so he was walking alone in the forest, looking for suitable wood to cut. He arrived at a clean area where there were only palm trees. Suddenly, he felt dizzy, a symptom also associated to encounters with dii bëxu. He heard strong noises, and a headwind came up. These sounds, he explained to me, were Chullachaki kicking at trees. He was trying to scare him away. Piaxaraya ran off towards the loggers’ camp. Chullachaki followed him there, and after that, several people fell ill. They started bleeding from the nose. Everybody got scared and left the camp. They went down the river in several boats, and so did Piaxaraya with one of his sons. Afterwards, he had a dream in which Chullachaki said that he should have asked for the wood instead of trying to steal it and running away. Piaxaraya replied that he did not know that because nobody had explained it to him.

Effectively, Chullachaki can show people, and therefore give them, valuable trees. To curry his favor, it is necessary to give him tobacco. He is said to be “jealous” of his trees, but he does not block their extraction. Apart from offering him tobacco, is essential to ask for his permission. In fact, no one likes it when someone else takes away—“touches,” as Yaminawa would say—one's things. So, the key is to establish relationships correctly. Another account by Xawaxta illustrates the parallelism between Yaminawa's version of Chullachaki and Xuba who, let us recall, used to beat candidates who wanted to become tsibuya. He explained that when Chullachaki decided to give wood to someone who was looking for it, he would challenge him to a fight. Chullachaki would beat and, of course, defeat the man, who would become the owner of the mahogany and cedar and, like the tsibuya, would turn out to be an ontologically ambiguous being, human and nonhuman at the same time.

Although both, Chullachaki and dii bëxu, appear to be quite similar, there are two crucial differences. The first relates to their nature as masters; the second, to the model of the adult person they reflect. In fact, both have some characteristics that define Amazonian mastery, but since dii bëxu is more of a chief-form (Fausto 2008: 334), especially in relation to monkeys, and a donor of shamanic power that can shift to an auxiliary spirit (Chaumeil 2010), Chullachaki has more the quality of control and protection (Fausto 2008) of the forest, and especially of the large trees, of which he is a kind of hyperbolic manifestation.

In relation to the second aspect that I mentioned, both Chullachaki and Xuba have predatory attributes but, at the same time, encounters with them should provide important skills for the social and ethical fulfillment of a man's responsibilities: taking care of his family and relatives and providing them with what is necessary for living well. It is true that becoming a tsibuya was something exceptional, but the acquisition of general shamanic skills and knowledge was fundamental to becoming an adult man. In this way, he would be able to heal his family, when necessary; he would know how to deal with the different entities in the world; he would be successful in hunting and fishing. Since the Yaminawa became part of the regional society, the capacities a man should develop are different. Now, he must also be able to buy for his family the essential things that people need: clothes, salt, cooking utensils, working metal tools such axes and machetes, and so on. Working for loggers was the available means of doing so. However, there are significant differences between the capitalistic logic of global and regional entrepreneurs, and that of Yaminawa involvement in the timber industry. Even if they want to obtain commodities, the Yaminawa do not share the capitalist way of thinking: taking care of relatives, being generous, not accumulating and not refusing to give when someone asks for something are not just abstract ethical principles, but the way relationships are daily constructed and conducted. This statement does not seek to produce a romanticized picture of them. In fact, aggressions and conflicts are part of Yaminawa social life.

From a Yaminawa point of view, I would say, to cut down a tree is a predatory act. In fact, to avoid the revenge of its yuxin, especially in the case of large trees, one must blow on oneself the smoke from tobacco or other specific plants. That is why I have always been puzzled by the fact that working for loggers seems to have no consequences. I have never heard of anyone getting sick as a result of working with loggers. When I set out this matter to Txixëya, she explained to me that this was because loggers’ activities are always collective, and dangerous encounters with dii bëxu or Chullachaki happen when people go into the forest alone. This is, indeed, a sort of technical explanation, but not a cosmopolitical one. Nevertheless, my puzzlement stems from an ecological or humanistic problem that cannot be applied to the Yaminawa and that is not far removed from reflections on the moral dilemmas of eating meat that have been the subject of debate in ethnological literature (Erikson 1987; Hugh-Jones 1996). After all, predation is a relational mode in Amazonia that is a condition for the production of kinship and social life (Viveiros de Castro 2000), and feeling pity for animals—or trees—would have as a consequence the loss of one's own (human) point of view (Descola, Kohler, and Velden 2021).

Conclusions: Changing Modes of Relationship Toward the Forest

The relationship with large trees involves predation on both sides, but rather than looking at this fact through the lens of ecological or environmentalist thinking, it must be placed in the framework of Amerindian kinship, cosmology, and mastery modes of relationship (Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020, Hirtzel 2007). On the first point, I have already drawn attention to the fact that the involvement of the Yaminawa in timber activities is a means of producing kinship. Furthermore, the moral attitude of the Yaminawa must be distinguished from that of the loggers. The former criticize the latter for their unbridled greed, as they want to cut down all valuable trees; for being stingy with payment; and for exploiting and mistreating the people. For the Yaminawa, the problem is not the wood extraction as a form of predation per se, but greed as an amoral attitude and a denial of relationships. The predatory ontology of large trees is not an obstacle to establishing relationships, but a circumstance that needs to be taken into account in order to know what kind of relationship is possible. Working with or for loggers is a pragmatic response to a social and personal need that ultimately relates to the construction of kinship and livelihoods.

The second point is particularly evinced by the figure of Chullachaki and recent events in Raya. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, Raya is facing a huge fine due to the abusive extraction of wood from its territory, which is mainly a consequence of dishonest and misleading practices on the part of timber companies. Along with the questioning of this fact by several people in Raya, their interaction with government authorities and NGOs working on environmental issues has made the people of Raya more aware of their responsibility as protectors of their territory, including animals, trees, and fish. In fact, a solution to cancel the fine is to participate in an international program for the conservation of the forest for at least 5 years, which is already underway since July of 2023.

Besides this, due to the scarcity of resources in the downstream communities, people from abroad sometimes come to the Mapuya River to hunt, fish, or collect timber. Since SERNANP (National Service of Natural Protected Areas) recently appointed some men in Raya as guards of a Territorial Surveillance Committee, responsible for protecting the communal territory, the Yaminawa now control these activities. They do not block them outright—although this can happen—but a negotiation must be undertaken. Excesses and greedy attitudes are not allowed; some kind of reciprocity is expected if the people who come are not relatives living in other communities; and above all, they have become aware of the fact that the place where they live must be guarded and cared for. In other words, it cannot be said that the people of Raya have developed an environmentalist ideology, but they do seem to be in the process of abandoning predatory logging, and adopting a mastery mode of relationship with regard to their territory, similar to that described for Chullachaki, the effects of which should converge with environmental objectives.