The Machiguenga are an indigenous people of the Amazon Basin

Amazon Basin

The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...

 jungle

Jungle

A Jungle is an area of land in the tropics overgrown with dense vegetation.The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala which referred to uncultivated land. Although the Sanskrit word refers to "dry land", it has been suggested that an Anglo-Indian interpretation led to its...

 regions of southeastern Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, east of Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian 15th-century Inca site located above sea level. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru, which is northwest of Cusco and through which the Urubamba River flows. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for...

 and close to the borders of Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

 and Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

. The people are short, but stoutly built, with broad facial features, and very rarely overweight. Their culture is based around the hunter-gatherer

Hunter-gatherer

A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...

 concept, and they cultivate swidden

Slash and burn

Slash-and-burn is an agricultural technique which involves cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields. It is subsistence agriculture that typically uses little technology or other tools. It is typically part of shifting cultivation agriculture, and of transhumance livestock...

 agricultural plots. The main crop grown is cassava

Cassava

Cassava , also called yuca or manioc, a woody shrub of the Euphorbiaceae native to South America, is extensively cultivated as an annual crop in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible starchy tuberous root, a major source of carbohydrates...

, and their main protein is a small rodent

Rodent

Rodentia is an order of mammals also known as rodents, characterised by two continuously growing incisors in the upper and lower jaws which must be kept short by gnawing....

 called paca

Paca

The Lowland Paca , also known as the Spotted Paca, is a large rodent found in tropical and sub-tropical America, from East-Central Mexico to Northern Argentina...

. During the dry season, they also use fishing to supplement their dietary protein.

Family life

The average tribal woman marries around age 16, and women have an average of eight to ten pregnancies. As with many indigenous tribes, the mortality rate for infants is high. During meals, men always eat first, while the women and children divide what remains. While quite accomplished in using plants and herbs as medicine, the Machiguenga are susceptible to infectious disease

Infectious disease

Infectious diseases, also known as communicable diseases, contagious diseases or transmissible diseases comprise clinically evident illness resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual host organism...

s brought in from the outside world. Literacy rates range from 30% to 60%. The tribespeople wear a homemade tunic

Tunic

A tunic is any of several types of clothing for the body, of various lengths reaching from the shoulders to somewhere between the hips and the ankles...

, called a cushmas, with a V neck for men, and straight neck for women. Their huts are fashioned from palm tree poles as a frame, with palm leaves thatched for the roof. Each extended family group is governed by a self-appointed "headman". The Machiguenga are classified as animists

Animism

Animism refers to the belief that non-human entities are spiritual beings, or at least embody some kind of life-principle....

 in religion and believe in a variety of evil spirits.

Language

The Machiguenga language

Machiguenga language

Machiguenga is a major Arawakan language of Peru. It is close enough to Nomatsiguenga to sometimes be considered dialects of a single language, especially given that both are spoken by the Machiguenga people....

 belongs to the Campa group of Machi puceran Maipurean

Maipurean

Arawakan , also known as Maipurean , is a language family that spans from the Caribbean and Central America to every country in South America except Ecuador, Uruguay and Chile...

 (Arawakan) language family, which is spoken by approximately 12,000 people in Peru. There are two dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s of Machiguenga: Machiguenga proper and Nomatsigenga. Caquinte is also spoken, but is considered a distinctly different language.

Further reading

• The Storyteller
  The Storyteller (novel)
  The Storyteller is a novel by Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. The story tells of a man who leaves civilization and becomes a "storyteller" for the Machiguenga Indians...
  
  (1987), novel by Mario Vargas Llosa
  Mario Vargas Llosa
  Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...
  
   that includes recounting of Machiguenga myths
• Baksh, M. (1990) Time Allocation among the Machiguenga of Camana (Peru). New Haven, CT: HRAF Press.
• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Deyermenjian, G.
  Gregory Deyermenjian
  Gregory Deyermenjian is a psychologist and explorer. In 1981 he visited the ruins of Vilcabamba la Vieja at Espíritu Pampa, and then turned his attention to the northeast and north of Cusco, Peru...
  
  (1988) Land Rights, Cultural Survival and Innovation among Indigenous Peoples of the Western Amazon Basin: The Case of the Machiguenga. Master's Thesis, Clark University, International Development Dept.
• Henrich J et al. (2005) " 'Economic man' in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies", Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28:795-+
• Ohl, J. 2004. The economy of the Matsigenka – ecotourism as a chance for sustainable development?, Ph.D. thesis, University of Greifswald, Greifswald.
• Ohl, J. 2004, El eco-turismo como oportunidad para un desarrollo sostenible? Eschborn, Germany, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH.
• Ohl, J., A. Wezel, G. H. Shepard Jr., and D. W. Yu. 2007. "Swidden agriculture in a human-inhabited protected area: The Matsigenka native communities of Manu National Park, Peru," in Environment, Development, and Sustainability
• Ohl-Schacherer, J., G. H. Shepard Jr., H. Kaplan, C. A. Peres, T. Levi, and D. W. Yu. 2007. "The sustainability of subsistence hunting by Matsigenka native communities in Manu National Park, Peru", Conservation Biology 21:1174–1185.
• Ohl-Schacherer, J., E. Mannigel, C. Kirkby, G. H. Shepard Jr, and D. W. Yu. 2008. "Indigenous ecotourism in the Amazon: A case study of “Casa Matsiguenka” in Manu National Park, Peru", Environmental Conservation.
• Solís Fonseca, Gustavo. (2003). Lenguas en la amazonía peruana, Lima: edición por demanda.
• Pancorbo, Luis: Río de América, Laertes. Barcelona, 2003.
• Shepard GH (1997) "Noun classification and ethnozoological classification in Machiguenga, an Arawakan language of the Peruvian Amazon", The Journal of Amazonian Languages 1:20–57
• Shepard G (1997) "Monkey hunting with the Machiguenga: medicine, magic, ecology and mythology", paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Meetings
• Shepard GH (1998) "Psychoactive plants and ethnopsychiatric medicines of the Matsigenka", Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 30:321-332
• Shepard GH (1999) "Resource use and ecology of the Matsigenka of the eastern slopes of the Cordillera Vilcabamba", In: Schulenberg TS (ed) A Rapid Biological Assessment of the Northern Cordillera Vilcabamba, Peru, vol RAP Working Papers No. 11. Conservation International, Washington, DC
• Shepard GH (1999) Pharmacognosy and the Senses in two Amazonian Societies. In: Department of Anthropology. University of California, Berkeley
• Shepard GH (1999) "Shamanism and diversity: A Matsigenka perspective", In: Posey DA (ed) Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity, vol U.N.E.P. Global Biodiversity Assessment, Vol 2. United Nations Environmental Programme and Intermediate Technology Publications, London, pp 93–95
• Shepard GH, Rummenhoeller K (2000) "Paraiso para quem? Populções indígenas e o Parque Nacional do Manu (Peru)". In: XXII Reunião Brasileira de Antropologia. Fórum de Pesquisa 3: “Conflitos Socioambientais e Unidades de Conservação”, Brasília, Brasil
• Shepard GH, Yu DW, Lizarralde M, Italiano M (2001) "Rain forest habitat classification among the Matsigenka of the Peruvian Amazon", Journal of Ethnobiology 21:1–38
• Shepard GH, Yu DW (2001) "Verificación etnobotánica de imágenes de satélite: La intersección de conocimientos tradicionales y cientifícos", Debate Agrario 33:19–24
• Shepard GH, Chicchón A (2001) "Resource use and ecology of the Matsigenka of the eastern slopes of the Cordillera Vilcabamba", In: Alonso LEea (ed) Social and Biological Assessments of the Cordillera de Vilcabamba, Peru. Conservation International, Washington, DC, pp 164–174
• Shepard GH (2002) Primates in Matsigenka subsistence and worldview. In: Fuentes A, Wolfe L (eds) Primates face to face. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 101–136
• Shepard GH, Yu DW (2002) "Vanishing Cultures" (Comment). New York Review of Books 50:92
• Shepard GH, Yu DW, Nelson B, Lizarralde M, Italiano M (2004) "Ethnobotanical Ground-Truthing and Forest Diversity in the Western Amazon", In: Maffi L, Carlson T, López-Zent E (eds) Ethnobotany and conservation of biocultural diversity, New York Botanical Gardens (Advances in Economic Botany), New York
• Shepard GH (August 1998.) "Uncontacted native groups and petrochemical exploration in the Peruvian Amazon", In: International Society for Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (ICAES) Conference, Williamsburg, VA
• Shepard GH, Rummenhoeller K, Ohl J, Yu DW (in press) "Trouble in paradise: indigenous populations, anthropological policies, and biodiversity conservation in Manu National Park, Peru", Journal of Sustainable Forestry
• Yu DW, Shepard GH (1998) "Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?", Nature 396:321-322
• Yu DW, Shepard GH (1999) "The mystery of female beauty", Nature 399:216
• Yu DW, Proulx SM, Shepard GH (2008) "Masculinity, marriage, and the paradox of the lek", In: Swami V, Furnham A (eds) The Body Beautiful, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp 88–107

External links

• Machiguenga at Native Planet
• Machiguenga at Shinai
• Living With the Machigenga