Colombia: The People of Anaconda - Barasana

In the northwest Amazon of Colombia, live a group of people called Barasana who believe they came up the Vaupes River; the western affluent of Rio Negro, a principal tributary of the Amazon River; in canoes dragged by sacred anaconda or from its belly but later to be disgorged onto different parts of the river banks of Amazon, settled with their own languages. Therefore, to avoid incest, people only marry those who speak different language. From this perspective, their world is divided into "brothers" and "marriageables".

Cognitively these people cannot differentiate the colour green from the colour blue, because the canopy of the forests is equated as sky. However, together with other Amazonian tribes, their ability to distinguish plants is exceptional.

They live in communal houses, or called malocas, with drawings on the walls. The front door is for the men while the back door for women. The border between the shaman and lay person in Barasana is not clearly defined as most adult men have the abilities and know many myths. The Barasana conceive the menstruation of women as a periodic rejuvenation process which the men are lack of. In replacing this, they need to perform ritually 'He' or 'Jurupari' ceremony, which is normally carried out in the front of maloca separated from the women by a screen. Ayahuasca, a hallucinogen, is usually consumed during rituals in order to reach the trance-like state.

A considerable part of Barasana diet comes from insects, these are often roasted while most Barasana food is smoked or boiled.

Barasana is considered as expert basket makers. In recent years Barasana also cannot avoid from the lure of consumer goods such as guns, cooking pots, fishing hooks or such likes that can make their lives in forests more convenient. Some of them need to grow coca for cocaine industry in order to obtain these things that they believe are infused with 'ewa', an irresistable attraction which affects their good judgment.

This brought up an issue as whether the way of Barasana living is by their preferable choice or by their limited choice. The inner urge to possess these modern convenience is so great that, according to Stephen Hugh-Jones, they can go the extra length of doing what they are warned to be bad, like growing coca (although coca is indeed a great nutritional food in this region), to squeezing out a pretension of liking the whites which in fact they feel otherwise. Balancing between pleasure and pain is the basic human nature, what constitutes pleasure and what constitutes pain are highly subjective to interpretation, it is this interpretation that differentiates us in thousand ways, mold a thousand worlds.

References:
i. Wade Davis
ii. Stephen Hugh-Jones
iii. Janet M Chernela

Photo by Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff 1968