Cultural Sustainability on the Rio Aguarico

Bethany Hoye & Andrew Glover

June 2006

Both native populations are actively striving to maintain their cultural heritage through formal bilingual cultural education, despite having had their population disturbed by rubber exploitation in the 1950s, wars between Peru and Ecuador over ownership of the area, petroleum exploitation in the 1960’s and 70’s, which in turn opened up the land to the extensive palm plantations, logging and the agricultural invasion of colonists present today.

Colonists seem not to build, let alone convey any cultural heritage. There is no ongoing education of where they came from, or why they moved. If these issues were spoken of, that may stimulate reflective thought, and hence future planning to avoid making the same mistakes. Neither of these processes appear to be occurring in the majority of colonist communities.

All of the populations are reproducing at a rate that is unsustainable in the current size of the community. The native populations and Fuerzas Unidas were the only ones to talk of less than five children per family (La Merced spoke of commonly 10 or 12) , despite none of them having particularly high mortality rates. Given this, and that all communities talked of women reproducing from the age of fourteen, all communities look to be facing a population explosion of at least six-fold in the next 30 years.