At the foot of the lighthouse, a text by Rember Yahuarcani
VIOLENCE AND RESISTANCE
Advocating for the (over)life of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon
By Rember Yahuarcani
The history of indigenous society over the last few centuries can be summarized in two words: violence and resistance.
VIOLENCE
By violence, I mean all the social processes that have had an impact on our peoples, whether small or large. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the Hevea Brasiliensis, commonly known as the rubber tree, was envisioned as the economic miracle of a country emerging from the traumatic war in the Pacific, where Peru, allied with Bolivia, confronted Chile. But this “miracle” would also have a devastating impact on five nations of the Peruvian Amazon: the Uitotos, the Boras, the Ocainas, the Resígaro and the Andoques; this last people would disappear completely at the end of the 1930s. The rubber boom was a consequence of the strong demand of the European and North American industries, and its decline in 1914 will be due to the beginning of production of the plantations that Great Britain had established in its colonies in Southeast Asia, with seeds smuggled in from Brazil.
