EXTERNAL INDUCEMENT

AND NON-WESTERNIZATION
IN THE USES OF THE
⧫

ASHENINKA CUSHMA
⧫ HANNE VEBER

Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts

Abstract
The cushma is a cotton tunic worn by the Pajonal Ashéninka and other
montaña Indians in the Peruvian Amazon. The cushma constitutes an impor-
tant article of dress and cultural identity. Its continued use points to the per-
sistence of shared Ashéninka values and practices in the face of prolonged
colonization efforts in the area. An influx of industrial goods into the
Ashéninka trading system has boosted the circulation of traditional exchange
items. Recent political organizing has further strengthened Ashéninka iden-
tity. Ashéninka leaders who have started to wear Western-style clothes now
don the cushma to display Ashéninka-ness to influential outsiders. No longer
may we assume that its use merely testifies to the cultural purity of its wearer.
Its use may also be an indication of his or her sophisticated acknowledgment
that the timely display of indigenous identity may well be rewarded. This
adds a new layer of meaning to the Ashéninka cushma.

Key Words ⧫ Amazon ⧫ Ashéninka ⧫ dress ⧫ identity ⧫ trade

A reorientation in anthropology has gained momentum over the recent

decade and well-versed conceptual dualities such as meaning vs struc-
ture or (objective) system vs (subjective) practice have become redun-
dant. As part of this ongoing revision of the discipline material culture
and consumption have come into vogue as fields for study that snugly
surmount some of the disowned dualisms and capture the dynamics by
which people create their worlds. Obviously, archaeologists have long

Journal of Material Culture

0 1996 SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol. 1 (2J 1996: 155-182. 155

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 read entire social systems and cultural practices from artifacts or rem-
nants thereof (cf. Hodder, 1989). But now even anthropologists have dis-
covered that significant clues to cultural and social processes are lodged
in material culture and its uses.
Among the subcategories of material culture cloth and clothing make
important avenues for this renewed study. Cloth may serve as a means
of exchange or as a device for embellishment or protection of the body
from human gaze or adverse effects of the climate. But cloth and cloth-
ing are also crucial to the construction of gender, social identity, status
and modernization (see Weiner and Schneider, 1989; Schevill et al., 1991;
Price, 1984; for a non-inclusive review of the literature see Schneider,
1987). Despite this interest, studies of the communicative properties of
clothing in non-Western societies have been few and far between even to
the extent of leading one museum curator to note that: ’One of the most
striking non-events of the last twenty years is the degree to which anthro-
pologists have ignored costume as a system of communication’
(Myers, 199 1).
Art historian Janet Berlo has diagnosed the problem as one related to
the division of labor among, on the one hand, textile scholars whose focus
has primarily been on technology, taxonomy and classification of regional
differences in dress and, on the other, anthropologists and historians who
have tended to devote little attention to the production and uses of tex-
tiles, this domain being considered a female sphere and, hence, less
important than other, i.e. non-female, domains. Even though textile pro-
duction in some parts of the world is clearly a men’s domain, the gender
bias on the part of anthropologists may have pulled attention towards
other types of social dynamics than the ones related to the production
and use of textiles (see Berlo, 1991). Apart from the feminist critique, and
perhaps equally significant, is the fact that with the current efforts at re-
examining the relationships between the West and the ’rest’, anthro-
pologists have become aware of the extent to which uses of material
culture may in fact provide clues to the ways ’the rest’ define their own
identity space in terms of a variety of expressive, social, cultural and
political dimensions. Works along these lines have dealt with the use of
’traditional’ clothing in processes of revitalization of perishing or defunct
cultural traditions, or inventing new ones as part of an assertion of new
nationalities (Hendrickson, 1991). Studies of the usage of swadeshi cloth
in the fomentation of an Indian national identity in opposition to British
colonial rule as it was cleverly thought out and put to practice by
Mahatma Gandhi follow this trend (Bean, 1989; Bayly, 1986).
Few studies, however, have considered the use of clothing in the com-
munication of functioning, established identities or have stopped to ask
not how new ’traditions’ are invented but, rather, how old traditions are
recycled and infused with new and additional meaning as they are
,
.

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adapting to changing social environments or becoming tied into strategies
of what, for lack of better words, have been termed (postmodern) iden-
tity politics (Brown, 1993; Friedman, 1992a, 1992b).
With the surge over the recent years of studies in cultural and ethnic
identity has come a general recognition of the highly politicized nature
of these questions (cf. Veber and Wsehle, 1993). Within anthropology an
epistemological cleavage has been emerging between researchers viewing
indigenous practices of identity in terms of a Western-inspired ’invention
of tradition’ on the one hand and, on the other, researchers who ponder
at different forms of authentically indigenous creativity in contexts of the
’awkward propensity of historical capitalism to arouse resistant forms of
subjectivity, critical representations and political activity in its exploited
victims’ (turner, 1992: 15; see also Hendricks, 1991 on Shuar counter-
hegemonic rhetoric), or what Jonathan Friedman has conceptualized as
’the liberation of formerly encompassed potential identities’, where the
’dehegemonization of the Western dominated world system is simul-
taneously its dehomogenization’ (Friedman, 1992b: 837). A few com-
ments on this issue may be appropriate considering that traditional
clothing as well as industrial commodities form crucial elements in the
particular forms indigenous identity construction takes in particular con-
texts of articulation between the West and ’the rest’.
Studies of assertions of identity by indigenous and minority groups
often suggest that ’traditions’ are being recycled as mere ’inventions’ for
demonstration purposes and that this more often than not reflects
projected Western images of ’the other’ rather than an ’authentic’
(supposedly culturally ’un-contaminated’) indigenous creation of self
(Hobsbawm, 1983; Abercrombie, 1991; Jackson, 1991, 1995). The idea of
’invented tradition’ was launched in 1983 by the historians Hobsbawm
and Ranger, and at the time it answered well to a need felt by many
scholars for vocabulary that would grasp the realization that culture is
always and continuously a process of social construction whether being
brandished as ’tradition’ or not. The concept, however, is cast within the
idioms of modernity and asserts a cleavage between ’custom’ and
’invented tradition’, the former being ’naturally grown’ while the latter
representing ’an exercise in social engineering’ (Hobsbawm, 1983). As
’custom’ is understood to dominate so-called ’traditional’ societies and
the ’invented tradition’ is an outcome of modernization (Hobsbawm,
1983), there is a danger of an ahistorical dualism between precolonial and
colonial (or postcolonial) societies and a brandishing of implied continu-
ity between present and past cultural forms as ’inauthentic’. Moreover,
the concept has tended to take on meanings that suggest inventions in
terms of (hegemonic) Western rather than (oppositional) native discourse,
as Terence Ranger has pointed out in his recent retraction of the concept
he himself helped father (Ranger, 1994). Obviously, the fact that

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 indigenous people sometimes make use of images of the indigenous sub-
scribed to by the ’other’ only needs to deny the ’authenticity’ of indigen-
ous representations of themselves to the extent that such a division of the

world, itself ideological, into ’real’ vs ’represented’ spaces is upheld.

Alternatively, indigenous practices involving appropriation of
Western technology, ideas and styles of costume may also be seen as
reflections of complex dynamics of differential self-representation in par-
ticular contexts - examples are the usage of video by the Kayapo as
described by Terence Turner (1992), the Piro adoption of the image of the
’civilized’ as depicted by Peter Gow (1991), or the usage of French
designer suits by the Congolese ’sapeur’ as seen by Jonathan Friedman
(1992a) (see also Veber, 1992). In this latter sense - and oppositional to a
simplified view of Westernization of ’the other’ implied by the ’invention
of tradition’ - the presentational uses of material culture by indigenous
peoples need neither reflect a craving on their part to become either like
or conspicuously unlike the Westerner (which is really two versions of
the same thing) but may simply be their particular expression of identity
in the sense of a ’bounded space of selfhood’ (Friedman, 1992b). Inquiry
into the ways in which particular articles of traditional clothing consti-
tute crucial elements in indigenous identity practices may even provide
new insights into the surprising ways in which Western commodities are
&dquo;

being incorporated into indigenous systems of meaning and put to uses

outrageously subversive of any prospect of ’acculturation’ or Western-
ization. There are no ’pure products going crazy’ here but, more likely,
reassertions of difference not immediately comprehensible insofar as
°

they reflect what Clifford has termed ’an unresolved set of challenges to
Western visions of modernity’ (Clifford, 1988: 7).
What follows is an inquiry into the dynamics of the uses of traditional
clothing by an indigenous Amazonian group. The approach developed as
the author’s provoked reaction to a variety of expressions of disbelief or
disinterest on the part of colleagues when confronted with my experi-
I
ences from fieldwork among Pajonal Asheninka in the Peruvian Amazon.’

Assuming that the whole world had already been turned into one single
’global ecumene’ (Hannerz, 1989) and that the true natives had long since
vanished or become endangered species, and lacking field experience that
would contradict these assumptions, it seemed hard to believe that the
native Amazonians emerging from my accounts from the field could be
anything but delinquent relics or romantic projections of Western
nostalgia, and, in any case, if they were really ’authentic’ (the precondi-
tion of which was [understood to be] isolation from the surrounding
world) they were also totally irrelevant to the study of the turn-of-the-
century human condition haunted by its own problems of ongoing dislo-
cation, fragmentation and social breakdown. At best, the study of such
natives was deemed to belong with the antiquated ’butterfly-collecting’

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anthropology of previous decades. Through negotiating these initial
obstacles to fitting the study of contemporary natives into current
anthropological thought, I have come to believe that the Pajonal
Asheninka, along with Amazonians such as the Kayapo, the Piro and
many others, are among the more spectacular representatives and artic-
ulators of not a modern but, rather, a postmodern condition. After all,
these peoples in each their own way take advantage of items of modern
imagery and technology for the construction and/or affirmation of their
functioning indigenous identities. As such, the study of their self-presen-
tations and the conditions under which they come to life may not be
entirely irrelevant.
The particular item of traditional clothing considered here, i.e. the
cushma, is a long, sleeveless cotton tunic commonly used by native
peoples of the montana part of Amazonia, i.e. the region where dense rain
forest reaches on to the easternmost foothills of the Andes. The native
populations of the montana include a number of different ethno-linguistic
groups with each their own particular version of the cushma. The cushma
and its uses as described here is the one practiced today by the Asheninka
of the Gran Pajonal in the central montana of Peru.
The Gran Pajonal Asheninka form part of the large Arawak-speaking
ethno-linguistic group known as Campa in the ethnographic literature,
but today more often identified by their auto-denomination, Ashaninka
or Ashéninka, depending on the particular dialect spoken. The
Campa/Ashaninka are estimated to count altogether some 65,000, and
thus make up one of the largest surviving ethno-linguistic groups of the
Amazon today. Of these the Asheninka living in the Gran Pajonal area
make up some 5 000.
Among Pajonal Asheninka the cushma2 is indisputably the standard
article of dress, usually supplemented by accoutrements such as feath-
ers, carved bones, shoulder bags and babyslings that make up the local
dressing inventory. With the exception of some few individuals all Pajonal
Asheninka wear a cushma. In the Ene, Tambo, lower Perene and Ucayali
river regions men tend to wear Western clothes (pants and T-shirts) while
women continue to stick to the cushma. Ashaninka in the more heavily
colonized upper Perene valley and in parts of the Pangoa and Pichis
regions tend to wear Western clothes rather than the cushma for every-
day use, but keep a cushma for use during leisure time in their own
homes.
Neighboring peoples such as the Amuesha in Chanchamayo,
Asheninka on the backwaters of the upper Ucayali River, Shipibo and
Conibo of the lower Ucayali and the Machiguenga and Piro of the
Urubamba have all been using or are to some extent still using cushmas
(Myers, 1991). Apparently the groups more heavily under pressure from
missionization or colonization or more intensively involved in trading

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 relations with outsiders have been more likely to change from traditional
to Western-style clothing than groups less directly affected by a perma-
nent presence of non-natives. Where such a change has occurred men
rather than women tend to be the ones who lay away the cushma, a fact
that reflects the greater intensity of men’s contacts with non-Indians and
the combined racial and gender biases of the latter, which attach conno-
tations of inferiority - ’primitiveness’ and ’unmanliness’ - to native dress.

GLIMPSES OF CUSHMA HISTORY

Bits and scraps of archaeological and historical evidence indicate that

cotton tunics in the form of cushmas were used prior to conquest in the
Andean as well as the coastal and the Amazonian regions of what is today
Peru. No systematic study of the history of the cushma, however, has yet
been undertaken. Museum curators and researchers have generally con-
sidered the cushma a ’pre-columbian relic’ that disappeared from the
Andes and the coast regions after conquest.3Yet L.A. Meisch describes
the contemporary use of cushmas by Saraguro men in highland Ecuador
(Meisch, 1991 ) , and its use has certainly continued in parts of the Amazon
into the 20th century (Myers, 1991).
According to the earliest historical sources documenting entry by an
unauthorized Jesuit expedition into what appears to be Campa/Ashaninka
territory in 1595, the natives who - after having made sure that he was
neither searching for ’gold, silver or slaves’ - welcomed the Jesuit father
Joan Font were clad in only a ’long colored shirt’, apparently a cushma
(cf. Varese, 1973: 115-20).4 Colonial sources confirm that cotton tunics
were used by the Campa and other Indians of the montana regions during

the century of energetic Franciscan penetration in the area prior to 1742,

when a major rebellion under the leadership of Juan Santos Atahualpa
’cleansed’ the montana of Spanish missions and outposts for more than
a century. It is worth noting that during this uprising the cushma was
seen as a symbol of anti-Spanish sentiments and a means of distinguish-

ing the rebels from sympathizers of the Spanish. Insurrectionists from

the central montana, i.e. Campa/Ashaninka and other montana Indians,
as well as highlanders and renegade Spanish soldiers, who joined their

forces, were all known and feared by the colonial authorities as ’los
cushmas’ with this garment used and taken as an indication of their politi-
cal allegiance.55
Spanish explorers of the 17th century have left drawings of what
appear to be Campa/Ashaninka wearing striped cushmas exactly like the
ones used in the Gran Pajonal today. Black and white photos dating from
the 1930s show a similar picture. There are no indications that the cushma
has changed substantially over the past three or four centuries. This
would be well in accordance with the equally strong continuity in dress

.... &dquo;&dquo;
,,

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and ornamentation of the Conibo from the time of contact and well into
the 20th century as noted by Thomas P. Myers (1991). Myers has scruti-
nized the fairly extensive historic literature concerning the central and
upper Ucayali river regions inhabited by the Conibo, Shipibo and Piro
(i.e. north and east of Campa/Ashaninka territory). Circumstantial evi-
dence gleaned from the history of this neighboring region may allow a
few inferences concerning the antiquity of the Asheninka cushma.
According to Myers, Conibo men were using cushmas in the 1680s.
Sources report ’that the Conibo did not make their own clothing but wore
what they stole from other tribes, particularly the Campa’ (Myers,
1991: 4). At the time of first contact on the Ucayali in 1557 sources
describe merely ’cotton clothing’ worn by Cocama, Conibo and Piro, but
do not indicate whether this clothing had the form of cushmas (Myers,
1991: 3). Myers suggests that the cushma may have been introduced on
the Amazon river proper by the Piro, from whom it was adopted by the
Conibo and, later, the Cocama and Omagua living further downstream.
The Arawak-speaking Piro, however, shared the use of the cushma with
the Campa/Ashaninka upstream to the south and west of the Ucayali. But
while the cushmas worn by the Piro and by the Pano-speaking Shipibo
and Conibo apparently changed over time in terms of decorative patterns
and style, there are no indications of a similar development or change in
the Campa or Asheninka cushma. Certainly, the latter never came to share
the painted designs characteristic of Piro, Shipibo and Conibo textiles. In
fact these groups considered the designs of the Asheninka, Machiguenga
and Amahuaca ’ugly’ (Gow, 1990). Moreover, users of cushmas include
other Arawakan groups living on the headwaters of the Ucayali-Amazon
river system who wore barkcloth cushmas, something Panoans (such as
the Conibo and Shipibo) living in similar environments have not been
known to do (Myers, 1991: 20).
Barkcloth cushmas are known among the Asheninka to have been
produced at times or in areas where cotton has been scarce. John Elick
reports having seen children in the hills east of the Nevati river wearing
rough cushmas of barkcloth in the 1950s (Elick, 1970: 126-7). An infor-
mant of his prepared several pieces of barkcloth from a species of Ficus
(identified by Pajonal Asheninka informants as a large tree called ’llan-
chama’ [Olmedia aspera, fam. Moracea]). Some Ashéninka interviewed by
Soren Hvalkof in the 1980s knew how to make bark cushmas. These are
said to lose their shape if wet; hence the cotton cushma is certainly pre-
ferred.6
Even if these hints of historical and circumstantial evidence do not
allow for a conclusion as to a montana origin of the cushma, they cer-
tainly indicate a continuous use of the cushma in the central montana
dating back to the early historic and most likely also prehistoric times.
Campa/Ashaninka involvement in trading with the Andean populations

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 and with other Amazonian Indians dates back into prehistory and a
generalized use of the cushma as dress in the montana as well as in the
Andes in preconquest times seems to be indicated. The native inter-
regional trade continued for some time into the colonial period; indeed,
the early (17th century) mission posts in the montana were set up around
native trade centers not only in order to take advantage of the presence
of many native people who came to trade but also in order to assume
control over the trade routes. The trade involved interregional exchanges
of locally produced items but further scrutiny of the sources is required
to make it clear to what extent textiles were part of these exchanges.

THE PAJONAL ASHE NINKA AND THEIR CUSHMAS

The Pajonal Asheninka live in small, dispersed settlements scattered

widely over 3600 sq km of rain forest dotted by small islands of grass-
land, i.e. pajonal, and hence the name of the area, the Gran Pajonal. This
interfluvial uphill region of east central Peru appears to have been occu-
pied by Campa/Ashaninka as long back into time as reliable historical
sources go, i.e. the 16th century, and probably even long before that. The
Asheninka of today make their living from slash-and-burn horticulture
supplemented by hunting and gathering. Since 1935 the Gran Pajonal has
been colonized by settlers from the Andean regions. By 1987 about a
hundred settler families were living in the Oventeni colonization in the
center of the Gran Pajonal. Settler economy is based on coffee and cattle
ranching and has survived through outright exploitation of the Asheninka
as labor.7Settlers recruit their labor by advancing industrial goods to
Asheninka individuals, who agree to work for the settler to pay for what
he (or in rare cases, she) has received. In this way settlers manage to keep
some Asheninka in perpetual debt, thus ensuring that a supply of cheap
labor is always at their disposal - hypothetically if not in actual fact.
Asheninka cannot avoid working for settlers from whom they have
received ’advance payment’ but they have numerous subtle ways of non-
compliance. The Asheninka have resented being pressured and have con-
tinually objected to the piecemeal appropriation of their territory by
settlers; but they have also come to depend on maintaining working
relations with settlers, as settlers are the Asheninka’s main source of
goods, such as machetes, metal axes, shotguns and ammunition, alu-
minum pots, cotton cloth and other items they need for reproducing their
society.
Relations between settlers and Asheninka are characterized by highly
mixed feelings of mutual dependence, fear and resentment. Settlers have
by and large held the upper hand in intergroup rivalries as they have had
the backing of the resources and the political and armed support of sur-
rounding national society. Until very recently Asheninka (the majority

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being illiterate and monolingual or with only a rudimentary command of
Spanish) have had no similar access to external support from which they
might benefit in order to more efficaciously resist and counterbalance
settler dominance and manipulation.
But from the early 1980s onwards things began to change. The Pajonal
Asheninka started to organize and, with some active support from mis-
sionaries of the Summer Institute of Linguistics as well as from other con-
cerned outsiders (anthropologists and non-governmental organizations
[NGOs]) they managed to secure land titles to the major part of the Gran
Pajonal that had not yet been occupied by settlers (see Hvalkof, 1989;
Veber, 1993). This initiated a reassertion of Asheninka self-reliance
accompanied by a process of change in settler-Ash6ninka relations.
Asheninka had increasingly found themselves in dire straits through the
previous 50 years of settler intrusion, and the achievement of land titles
and a fledgling political organization certainly boosted Asheninka self-
consciousness.8 These changes are reflected in subtle variations in the
contemporary uses and non-uses of the cushma. But, more importantly,
the cushma appears to be not only a piece of dressing apparel with built-
in symbolic qualities for ethnic identification; indeed, the cushma is also
crucial to inter-Ash6ninka transactions and negotiations of traditional
positions of power and notions of identity. These transactions have been
boosted by the availability of industrial goods, but at the same time they
are systematically subverting the ’Westernizing’ influence of these goods

by (mis)directing their use from consumption (as use value) to one of

being used as exchangeables (signifiers) in a traditional circulation of
meanings and signs of Asheninka supremacy. If the cushma constitutes
the fabric of Asheninka identity historically and contemporarily, indus-
trial goods acquired through labor for settlers make part of the warp of
this fabric.

THE CUSHMA

Asheninka cushmas are made from cotton (gossypium arborea) - termed

in Asheninka ampee - grown in Asheninka gardens along with the sub-
sistence crops (yucca, maize, bananas, pineapple, etc.). The plant is a
perennial and grows to make fairly tall tree-like bushes. Women are sup-
posed to acquire the skills of spinning cotton and weaving when young.
Some, however, never develop a taste for this type of work and do not
wish to be bothered with it. Many Pajonal Asheninka complain that they
lack enough cotton. Others grow and spin sufficient cotton to be able to
weave minor articles such as bands and small pieces of textile suitable
for making children’s cushmas and boys’ or men’s shoulderbags. Few
manage to produce full-size cushmas.
Cotton is spun by means of a small hand-spindle made from the hard

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 FIGURE 1 Asheninka woman starting a new weaving using her own handspun
cotton yarn, Gran Pajonal
Photo Soren Hvalkof 1986

chonta palm with a whorl of stone or sun-dried clay attached to the lower
end of the shaft. Spinning sufficient amounts of yarn for a cushma takes
many months of work. An industrious and hard-working woman may
seek to devote herself to spinning for any period of time not taken up by
other productive work. Obviously, a woman who has a family to feed
,
may only find time for spinning very early in the morning or late in the
afternoon when her various other tasks are completed. G. Weiss reported
in the 1970s that among Ashaninka in the Tambo region young girls were
expected to spend most of their time spinning cotton (Weiss, 1974).
Whether this ideal were actually met by Tambo Ashaninka women at the
time is not clear. A similar ideal did not prevail among the Asheninka of
the Gran Pajonal in the 1980s. This may reflect regional differences with
a permanent condition of lower production of cotton and cushmas in the
Gran Pajonal rather than a real historical decline in cushma production
in this area.
When a sufficient amount of yarn has been produced, the woman
will set up her weaving. The warp is measured out by means of a number
of sticks stuck into the ground. The warp threads are carefully wound
between these sticks one at a time as the woman walks back and forth
along the row of sticks as many times as it takes her to get at the number
of warp threads necessary for the breadth of fabric she wants. Asheninka
cushmas always have colored (dyed) stripes. These are carefully laid in
the warp as so many colored threads alternating with the natural beige
uncolored cotton threads. Colors are acquired by dyeing some of the
homespun cotton yarn with either native vegetable dyes or aniline dyes

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acquired from settlers. The vegetable dyes render a range of colors from
brown to olive and dark orange, most of which decolorate gradually. As
a rare alternative, Asheninka women may acquire brightly colored, indus-

trially made yarn from the settlers. This of course is a rather expensive
solution. Either way, the dominant color of any new cushma is always
the natural beige of the homespun cotton.
For weaving a standard back-strap loom is employed (Figure 1). The
technique is a simple one-over, one-under ’plain weave’. The fabric pro-
duced is, not unexpectedly, ’warp-faced’ (i.e. the warp dominates the
surface of the fabric). The warp threads are more closely spaced than the
weft elements. The thread counts undertaken by the author showed
between 15 and 26 warp threads to 7 or 8 weft threads per centimeter,
with most cushmas examined tending towards the more coarse (i.e. lower
thread count) end with some 15 to 17 warp threads per centimeter. The
finer (higher thread count) weave is found less frequently; cushmas of
such fine quality are highly valued and coveted by the Asheninka.
The finished product consists of a length of cloth at least 4 or 5 meters
long. It is removed from the loom and after being cut in half the ends are
sewn to prevent raveling of the loose threads. An adult-size cushma

requires two lengths of fabric 50-60 cm wide and 220-50 cm long. The
two pieces are sewn together lengthwise and partly sidewise, leaving
openings for the arms and the neck at specific places depending on
whether the cushma will be worn by a man or a woman (Figure 2). Men’s
cushmas are made so that, when worn, the colored stripes are vertical;
for women’s cushmas the stripes run horizontally. Accordingly, for a
man’s cushma an opening for his head is simply left in the seam that runs
down the middle of his cushma; and similar openings for his arms are
left on the seams on each side. A woman’s cushma, of course, will have

FIGURE 2 Woman’s cushma (left), with horizontal bands, and man’scushma

(right) with vertical stripes

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 the seamrunning horizontally where the two lengths of cloth are sewn
together. The woman’s cushma is sewn together over the shoulders
leaving three openings on the upwards end for her arms and head. The
method makes it very easy to convert a woman’s cushma into a man’s
and vice versa. It is simply a question of sewing up the openings not
needed and opening a few others in another seam. One of the armholes,
obviously, will remain unchanged as it will always be right no matter
what the sex of the cushma’s bearer. For a woman of child-bearing age
the head opening is made wide enough to allow her to nurse her baby
without removing the cushma.
Cushmas are identified as ’white’ (i.e. ’natural’ undyed) color as
opposed to the ’red’ (i.e. used and dyed cushmas). Through daily use ’new’
cushmas soon lose the brightness of their original colors. The look of the
cushma is then changed by treating it with dye extracted from a specific
type of bark yielding a bright orange color. This color, however, is not fast
and through repeated dying the cushma acquires a reddish brown shade.
Asheninka virtually ’live in’ their cushmas. The size of the cushma,
being comfortably wide and reaching well below the knees, allows its
wearer to draw his or her arms and legs inside for protection from the
cold when sleeping. Women frequently tuck their babies safely inside

FIGURE 3 Men’s handwoven cushmas, Oventini, Gran Pajonal. The cushma

worn by the person on the left has been dyed: the other two are ’white’. The
two men on the right are settlers
Photo Soren Hvalkof 1986

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their cushma close to the warmth of the mother’s body, securing the baby
with the baby-sling worn across one shoulder and over the cushma. A
similar method is also used by women for transporting small objects
inside their cushma.

THE TRADE IN CUSHMAS

New or only-little-used cushmas that have not yet lost the light beige
natural color of the cotton are valuable objects of trade among the
Asheninka. Exchanges are made over long and short distances between
established trading partners /ayompari) in a system of ’deferred exchange’
(see Bodley, 1973; Schafer, 1988). The objects traded range from ’tra-
ditional’ items, such as cushmas, men’s shoulderbags (that) baby-slings
(tombirontze), feathered hoods, arrow reeds, medicinal herbs, love-magic
(widely known in the region as pusanga), tree-resin for fletching arrows,
chamairo (a vine used with chewing coca leaves) and other locally pro-
duced necessities, to machetes, axes, knives, shotgun shells, batteries, alu-
minum pots, battery-run record-players and other non-native goods. Long
distance trading is done by men. Women find their exchange partners
among other women in the immediate neighborhood of their own settle-
ment. Most trading, indeed, is carried out by men. There are no limits to
the number of trading partners an individual may have. The man who
seeks trade brings along whatever items he wishes to exchange. Some of
these he may have acquired specifically for his ayompari, who on a pre-
vious occasion has asked for this particular article. Other things he simply
expects will prove attractive to particular trading partners from whom he
may then acquire objects specifically sought by himself.
Most of this trading is done on the basis of a delayed exchange. As
one object passes from a man to his trading partner, the latter does not
reciprocate right away by giving another object of equal value in return.
Instead he commits himself to procuring one or more particular items
explicitly desired by the partner, who will then have to come back on a
later date to pick it up unless his ayompari delivers it on a future return
visit to his own settlement. The promise to deliver a specified item some
time in the future in itself constitutes an exchangeable ’good’ that may
be pledged against other goods or promises in another exchange. For
example: A gets a cushma from B; in return A promises to bring B a case
of shotgun shells at some later date, which may end up being anywhere
between half a year or two years or even longer into the future. But once
the pledge has been made, B is in a position where he may ask, say,
another cushma from C in return for a promise to deliver a case of shotgun
shells with the understanding that B will deliver the shells to C once A
has delivered them to B. Asheninka individuals are usually tied into series
of such mutual and interdependent exchanges, promises and obligations

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 to deliver. The system is based on what may briefly be stated as ’a right
to demand’ and a linked ’obligation to give’ (see Schafer, 1988). An
exchange is initiated by a demand: ’give me/sell me’ your cushma/knife/
thato/machete/etc. By ’traditional’ Asheninka norms such a demand made
by a fellow Asheninka or a more distant Ashaninka may not be refused.
But as the object demanded changes hands, it incurs an obligation on the
part of the one who made the demand that he or she pays back another
object of similar value. This ’payment’ is preferably delayed until some
later date upon which the ayompari relationship is confirmed and
renewed. Should the payment be delayed beyond a reasonable or accept-
able period of time, the creditor resorts to well-established means of col-
lecting his assets or covering his loss. Trading partners are at liberty to
take from each other whatever their eyes may covet, and any encounter
with a trading partner who may seek to collect outstanding debts may
develop into either an embarrassing or a rewarding experience.
Conspicuous, highly stylized rhetoric and gesturing surround collec-
tions of debts between ayompari. Trading partners who happen to meet
engage in lengthy, high-flown verbal interchanges standing face to face or
side by side, each with his feet widely apart waving his arms in threa-
thening gestures. Bystanders who gather to calmly observe the proceed-
ings or support their relative invariably translate the spectacle as
’conversation’. What goes on is basically one or both ayompari partners
reproaching the other for not having fulfilled a previous trading agreement
to deliver this or that particular item. Despite the high-strung rhetoric and
gesturing and the sounds of the two men slapping their own upper thighs
with the palms of their hands or stamping their feet producing the impres-
sion that a bloody war is just about to break out, the partners usually come
to an understanding that allows both of them to be satisfied.
Participating in such exchanges of ’strong words’ makes a significant
and important activity in most adult Asheninka men’s lives. Historically
it has been a means by which scarce goods and products have been dis-
tributed and acquired; but it is also an art of knowledge of traditional
Asheninka decorum and manners of behavior, and of ways to deal peace-
ably with Asheninka not part of the individual’s family and hence, by
definition, ’strangers’, i.e. an art of diplomacy, the successful practice of
which confers prestige on its practitioner. The possession of a bright new
cushma is evidence that its owner is either a master of ayompari trading
himself or is at least well connected to one who is.
Some young men today tend to claim that they do not engage in this
type of deferred ayompari relations, and that they merely carry out direct
exchanges with their partners as they hesitate to put themselves under
obligations to another man and risk being verbally abused and ridiculed
in public in case they are unable to meet their obligations. Whether this
is merely an excuse for not yet having learnt the art well enough or

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whether it is an indication that they do not intend to continue this par-
ticular cultural tradition remains to be seen.
This delayed exchange system ensures the circulation of goods, one
crucial outcome of which is supplying cushmas to the Gran Pajonal as the
quantity of cushmas produced by Pajonal Asheninka women is far from
sufficient to satisfy the demand. The majority of the cushmas worn by
Pajonal Asheninka are not manufactured in the area but are brought in
from Ashaninka cushma producers in neighboring regions. In exchange
Pajonal Asheninka supply ’traditional’ products (feathers, tree-tar, arrow-
cane, love-magic, etc.) and industrial goods acquired from the settlers. One
may speculate if prior to colonization Pajonal Asheninka were self-
supplying in cushmas. Due to the higher altitude and lower temperatures
cotton does not appear to grow as well in the Gran Pajonal as it does in
the lower-lying Ashaninka territories and, therefore, cushmas may
’always’ have been imported into the Gran Pajonal rather than being pro-
duced here in anything but small quantities. Moreover, Ashaninka women
living closer to rivers where fish are plenty do not need to spend as much
time on gathering expeditions in the forest as do Pajonal women. Hence,
Perene, Tambo or Ene Ashaninka women may simply have more time
available for weaving and spinning.
In any case the situation as of today is clearly one where perhaps the
most important item of Asheninka material culture and symbol of Pajonal
Asheninka identity, the cushma, is acquired by exchange of industrially
manufactured goods. Ironically, through the established links to the settler
economy the Asheninka social machinery is feeding Asheninka labor into
the Western system of capital accumulation and converting the results of
this process (industrial goods) into signs of Asheninka cultural identity
(cushmas).
It is hard to detect any economic ’profits’ for any of the parties
involved in ayompari exchanges. German anthropologist Manfred Schafer,
whose study of ayompari trading is the only comprehensive and system-
atic investigation of it ever carried out,9 suggests that the ’purpose’ of
ayompari exchanges is mainly one of establishing social contacts and net-
works among men (Schafer, 1988). Yet, there is clearly more to the
ayompari trading than distribution of scarce goods and social networking.
Cushmas, axes, machetes, knives, etc. are not demanded, given and
paid for by the Asheninka because of their use value plain and simple. If
this was the case, we are hard pressed to explain why many of these items
are acquired for the expressive purpose of being exchanged, or why some
items apparently never leave circulation but end up being exchanged over
and over again. One may come across items that have lost most of their
tangible use value but have retained value as exchangeables, such as cases
of old shotgun shells or a block of rock-salt nicely wrapped up in a piece
of newspaper the way it was when it first entered the ayompari system

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 F I G U R E 4 Women wearing dyed tocuyo fishing by the Nevati river
Photo Soren Hvalkof 1986

&dquo;- ~ 11
t-..’ . ,
, ~

many years ago. Moreover, ayompari exchanges involve exchanges of

objects that are only present in the form of promises, and these promises
are exchangeable in themselves: their value lies not in their potential to
be used but in their exchangeability, the fact that they can be exchanged.
As such the objects exchanged through ayompari take on the character-
istics of signs that have become emancipated from their referents (their
use value) only to reappear as ’floating signifiers’ or self-referential signs
in a world of seeming hyperreality, in the sense borrowed from Jean
Baudrillard (1988: 125, 167).
Baudrillard argues that in the era of high-tech capitalism the struc-
tural law of value has instituted the end of the classical era of the sign
and brought about a ’brothel of substitution and interchangeability’
where the representational system and the system of signs ’migrates into
the realm of simulation’ (Baudrillard, 1988: 127-8). While it may hardly
be argued that the same law of commodity value operative in the system
dominated by capital is equally potent in subsistence-oriented Asheninka
society, the suggestion of ’hyperreality’ in the ayompari trade is employed
here to point out similarities in the operation of sign activity. The objects
exchanged by Asheninka ayompari are not entirely divorced from their
practical usefulness. Unlike settlers - who value items such as refrigera-
tors, television sets or electronic typewriters, despite the fact that they
have no electricity and do not expect to ever be able to actually use any
I ,

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of these modern contraptions - the Asheninka show absolutely no inter-
est in objects for which they cannot find a practical use. Thus, industrial
goods as much as the native-manufactured trade items all have their very
specific uses to which most of them are eventually put. Despite this fact,
the exchangeability as such appears simultaneously as a crucial property
of the items. It is in this sense the trade items begin to acquire a life of
their own. They become signs (signifiers) pointing no longer simply to
their referents (what they are ’meant’ to be) but to the existence of social
relations as established in ayompari trade and, most important, to the
ability to participate and carry it out.
Before proceeding further into the inquiry into the significance of the
ayompari trade in cushmas a few remarks on the differential use of
cushmas by Asheninka women and men are necessary.

A GENDERED DIVISION OF CUSHMAS

Not all cushmas are made from home-grown, homespun, handwoven

cotton. To make up for the scarcity of handwoven cloth many cushmas
are made of tocuyo, i.e. a particular factory-made cotton fabric acquired

by the Asheninka from settlers as payment in kind for their labor. In Gran
Pajonal vernacular ’tocuyo’ signifies a durable and strong weave of cotton
fabric with wide stripes of red, blue or green - the type of material used
in the Western world for making awning. Ashaninka in neighboring
regions prefer a much softer quality of tocuyo of only one color, but in

FIGURE 5 Dressing up in fine white garments: two women and one man
displaying their new, handwoven cushmas. The young woman on the left wears
a new tocuyo; the little girl in the centre wears a well-used, dyed tocuyo
Photo Soren Hvalkof 1986

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 the Gran Pajonal only the striped, strong and very durable tocuyo will do.
The tocuyo gradually loses its fresh bright colors through use and, like
the handwoven cushma, it is then dyed repeatedly and eventually
acquires a dark brown color. A tocuyo in this shape may occasionally be
painted with red achiote (the paint used for face-painting) along the seams
in order to ’freshen’ it up a bit. The tocuyo decorations made by Asheninka
women are sporadic and employed rather haphazardly. They last for only
a very short period of time and as such they are difficult to trace. These
Asheninka decorations never approach anything comparable to the elab-
orate designs for which the Shipibo and Piro are famous and hardly
amount to a visual control of the surface such as suggested by Peter Gow
for the Piro designs (Gow, 1990).
Tocuyo is only used for making women’s or children’s cushmas.
Men’s cushmas are never made from this material. A few reasons for this
need to be pointed to. The more functional and simple is the fact that
tocuyo cloth comes in a width not compatible with the dimensions of a
man’s cushma sewn according to the traditional pattern. Tocuyo cloth may
easily be cut to fit the pattern of a woman’s cushma by simply cutting it
lengthwise. The cut-off piece is then still wide enough to be sewn into a
small child’s cushma, a baby-sling, or a boy’s shoulderbag. Should two
lengths of tocuyo, hypothetically, be cut to fit the dimensions of a man’s
cushma, it would produce two long, narrow shreds suitable for no obvious
practical use. Hence, from the point of view of parsimony - certainly
characteristic of most Pajonal Asheninka - it makes sense to keep the use
of tocuyo to the making of women’s cushmas.
More significant though is the fact that the handwoven cushma pro-
vides the most spectacular evidence of practiced ayompari relationships
and hence represents a visible ’proof of manhood’,i.e. the ability to ’speak
strong words’ and make other men deliver promised goods. For an
Asheninka man to put on a tocuyo would be unthinkable; no such instance
is recorded or known to have ever occurred. A fair guess would be that
the man would probably become an object of ridicule and lose credibility
and prestige in the eyes of his peers.
Manfred Schafer has suggested that the exclusive use of tocuyo by
women is a function of the need for maintaining a basis for exchanges
between women and men: i.e. men need something that women produce,
i.e. the homewoven cushma; and women need something that men
procure, i.e. tocuyo acquired as payment in kind for labor performed for
settlers (Schafer, 1988: 270, n. 16). On the level of pure metaphor the sug-
gestion may well hold. But it certainly does not accommodate the fact that
most cushmas indeed are procured by men whether through labor (for set-
tlers) or trading with other Asheninka or Ashaninka men, and neither does
it explain why women use tocuyo as well as the homewoven cushmas and
also attach a much higher value to the ownership of the latter, as do the

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men. Men frequently present a gift of tocuyo to their wives and children.
A man may give tocuyo to a woman with whom he is having an affair or
whom he wishes to have as his wife. But the opposite, i.e. women giving
away cushmas to their men, seems never to occur. A producer of cushmas
may give a cushma to her husband in order for him to trade it for her in
exchange for other specified items coveted by her. But this hardly amounts
to her giving the cushma to the husband as a gift. The requisite favors
offered by women to men every day as part of the marriage ’contract’ are
basically gifts of prepared food. In exchange men must provide their wives
and children with meat from the hunt, cleared garden plots where the
women may grow their food staples, and basic necessities such as a house,

firewood, cooking pots, machetes and clothes (cushma or tocuyo).

Additional gifts given by men (small dried skins of colorful birds or carved
and polished pieces of bone for decorations on the cushma and
tombirontze) and women (choice items of prepared food) to each other are
gifts of love and appreciation. It follows that a well-dressed wife and family
is an indication of a man’s success in performing as the providing husband
and father or as the headman of a settlement or a local group. In cases
where the wife actually procures her own cushma, whether through her
own weaving or through exchanges with other women, the husband pre-

sumably has carried a larger than usual burden of providing food through
his hunting, fishing or gathering, thus leaving his wife the time to pursue
other activities. A husband cannot blame his wife for his own lack of a
good cushma. It is up to him to work to get one. But a woman will cer-
tainly blame her husband if she lacks a good cushma.
For women as well as men the cushma is the costume used in the
Gran Pajonal. It is the visual sign of being Pajonal Asheninka. The cushma
is evidence that there is a functioning Asheninka world, where a sexual
division of labor allows for relations of exchange between men and
women,io and where an ayompari system of deferred exchange orders
social relations between non-kin, brings valued objects in circulation and
produces a universe where Asheninka males are ’strong’. A finely woven
new kithaarentze (handmade cushma) is not merely a most valuable object
of exchange; it is also a symbol of the Asheninka perception of themselves
as in possession of their own cultural and social universe. The cushma-
clad Asheninka is the virtual embodiment of this (Figure 3, p. 166).
One may ask why the Asheninka stick to the cushma as the proper
clothing; they do have access to a market and regularly obtain tocuyo,
panties, nylon shorts and occasionally, other items of Western-style dress.
Asheninka have no reservations about taking up elements of Western
costume to the extent they may fit into or replace elements of the
Asheninka’s own manufacture. Items such as panties and nylon shorts are
conveniently worn under the cushma. Adult Asheninka of either sex are
very careful that they do not expose their private parts and industrially

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 manufactured panties and shorts obviously come in handy. There is no
desire, though, to copy or imitate the behavior or clothing of non-
Asheninka just for the sake of imitating.
To the outsider, dress codes of the Oventeni settlers clearly reflect the
fact that they form part of the lower rural strata of national Peruvian
society, whereas Asheninka with their brown cushmas and red face-paint
appear a very traditional indigenous group. The contrast between the two
populations is striking. The apparent ’traditionalism’ of the Asheninka
may indeed seem surprising considering the fact that they have been
living on the doorstep of colonization for over half a century.
To the question as to why they do not wear (Western) clothes,
Asheninka will answer: ’But we do, sometimes!’ Some Asheninka men
who own Western clothes sometimes bring these along rolled up in a
basket or a shoulderbag when they leave their own settlement for a visit
to the colonization where settlers live. At the outskirts of the colonization
they go into the bushes to change their clothing; they take off their cushma
and put on pants and a shirt. On their way home they repeat the procedure
in reverse order. By doing this they abide by the norms of appropriate
dress in both environments. There may obviously be some very good
practical reasons for doing so in contexts where inter-ethnic relations
involve not only economic and political inequality but also a stigmatizing
of the more disadvantaged ethnic group by the other. The Asheninka are
quite aware that by wearing Western clothes whenever they are dealing
with settlers they stand a better chance of striking favorable bargains than
do the Asheninka clad in cushma and bright feathers. Asheninka women
are less likely to show up in Oventeni dressed in anything but the cushma.
This reflects the fact that Asheninka women do not deal directly with set-
tlers to the extent men do and hence find less incentive to communicate
with settlers on settler terms. Similar instances of role-related costume
substitution has been widely noted by fieldworkers among Mayan and
Andean populations (Ackerman, 1991; Hansen, 1994; Femenias, 1991;
Medlin, 1991; Hendrickson, 1991). In a previous paper I have argued that
the Asheninka of the Gran Pajonal use Western clothing as an occasional
means of impression management, intended to facilitate the Asheninka
ambition of maintaining a maximum of control over their local society and
its environment (Veber, 1992). In effect, Asheninka employ the cultural
trappings of ’civilized’ society to enhance their potential for continued
existence as an autonomous enclave.

ASHENINKA-NESS REHEARSED

This pragmatic creativity found further expression in the mid-1980s as

Pajonal Asheninka began to organize to secure titles to Gran Pajonal
territory. Efforts to organize during the previous decade had been frus-

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trated and prevented by settler interference. But with a growing concern
with the fate of indigenous peoples on the part of NGOs and international
development agencies the climate was ready for the Pajonal Asheninka
to act. Towards the end of the 1980s they had formed a series of so-called
’comunidades nativas’ (native communities) as defined by Peruvian law
pertaining to the rights of the indigenous populations in the Amazon.
They further managed to secure land titles to a major part of the Gran
Pajonal. The process brought frequent visits to the area by government
officials and technicians who, for the first time ever in Gran Pajonal
history, addressed the Asheninka rather than the settlers. The successful
land-titling process could not but convey the message that being
Asheninka was eventually remunerated.
As part of the process Pajonal Asheninka leaders and headmen started
to establish contacts with political organizations representing other Ama-
zonian indigenous groups at the national and international levels.
Organizations of Ashaninka neighboring the Gran Pajonal were the ones
first and most frequently met with. Leaders of these organizations wel-
comed the addition of the Pajonal Asheninka (Pajonalinos) to the roster of
native organizations in Peru’s central jungle (selva central). In the subse-
quent process of developing its organization the Pajonal Asheninka
leadership had to define the political profile it wished to present to the
Ashaninka leaders as well as to the rest of Peru.
Being true to the ideals of male Asheninka-ness habitually expressed
by Pajonalinos as individual autonomy and the ability to speak strong
words, leaders of the new organization presented themselves to their
Ashaninka colleagues in these terms. At meetings Pajonal leaders would
make sure to ’dress up’ in fine cushmas and, possibly, traditional feath-
ered ’crowns’ (rings of bark with one or two feathers attached) such as
are worn by Asheninka men on formal occasions; even facial tattoos
would be repainted to show more clearly.
This presentation of themselves was well in accordance with images
of Pajonal Asheninka held by neighboring Ashaninka and by settlers, who
generally conceive of the Pajonal Asheninka as dangerous, warlike and
highly ’uncivilized’. This image supports a mixed attitude toward Pajonal
Asheninka of fear and disdain. Ashaninka of the Perene valley justify their
ambivalent feelings through reference to the past, when raiders are said
to have come out of the Gran Pajonal killing people and stealing women
and children to be sold off as slaves to rubber patrons on the Ucayali.
Although such raiding and warfare has long ceased, the Gran Pajonal has
continued to be seen as a dangerous stronghold of the ’truly traditional’
Asheninka. If Pajonal Asheninka were not already aware of this image of
themselves as held by others, their leadership was certainly reminded of
it once the organizational process brought them into contact with
Ashaninka leaders. In response the Pajonal leadership promoted

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 themselves in compliance with the image as original, cushma-and-feather-
clad natives who were potentially dangerous and knowledgeable of all the
secrets of traditional native life, including shamanism and management
of superior powers. In this way they aptly circumscribed any belittlement
due to their lack of experience in maneuvering on a political arena defined
by the need for dialogue with the state and with foreigners interested in
indigenous peoples. Pajonal leaders managed to mark out themselves as
worthy of respect by implicitly changing the terms of competition for
status and recognition among the leadership of the indigenous political
organizations from ones defined through reference to national society -
i.e. experience with formal organizational procedures where Pajonal
leaders were clearly at a disadvantage - to competition in terms of indigen-
ous culture. They efficiently circumscribed their being stigmatized as
uncivilized and ignorant by turning around the very same characteristics
that had been used to single them out for such labeling, and redefined
them as noble marks of a separate identity. Obviously, with ’indigenous-
ness’ being at the roots of the very logics of indigenous political organiz-
ation, indigenous leaders themselves must find it hard to blame each other,
or each other’s constituencies, for being ’too indigenous’.
The Asheninka uses of the cushma may be taken here as instructive
of the subtle ways in which an ordinary article of everyday dress may
also be a medium for communicating a specific identity. In the process,
the cushma, an embodiment of ’custom’ - habitual practices, or ’habitus’
in Bourdieu’s sense - becomes endowed with added value as a sign within
the context of interethnic communication, in this case the sign of victo-
rious Asheninka identity. John Elick (who served as a missionary to the
Ashaninka in the Pichis valley during 1951-7 and later became an anthro-
pologist) provides a similar observation related to the use of the cushma
in 1967:

In some areas of the Valley, the cushma and achiote paint have become
symbols of all that is ’Campa’ as opposed to the way of life being introduced
by the outsiders.... We noted a growing disenchantment with the way of
life introduced by the missionaries, and observed that one way of expressing
one’s concern was to wear a cushma. (Elick, 1970: 121)

Rather than leading in a direction of homogenizing ’acculturation’, the

Asheninka dialogue with outsiders - and with images of the Asheninka
subscribed to by these outsiders - has strengthened and confirmed
Asheninka separateness and difference.
Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer in their introduction to their edited
volume on nation-states and Indians in Latin America (1991)note that
one of the effects of linkage between traditional and seemingly isolated
communities and broader national and international arenas is in fact the
persistence of autochthonous forms such as language, ritual, myth and

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clothing style (Urban and Sherzer, 1991: 1). The cultural forms retained
may be relatively recent historical creations as much as being legacies of
the past turned into symbols of resistance or victory against state
hegemony. To the extent that indigenous societies have retained their own
basic political, social and economic structures, as has been the case for a
number of lowland South American groups, their expressions of identity
and ambitions of resistance towards external domination may be ade-
quately explained in terms of these internal structures rather than by
recourse to notions of ’invented tradition’ and notions of themselves that
have been received from outsiders. Indigenous populations do not necess-
arily a priori conflate notions of ’who we are’ with needs to construct an
identity vis-a-vis ’the other’ in terms emanating from this same ’other’,
as has been suggested by scholars of the ’invented tradition’ persuasion

(Jackson, 1991,1995).
Obviously, the situatedness of even the most ’traditional’ and seem-
ingly isolated indigenous group in contexts defined by state hegemony
needs to be taken into account. Some indigenous practices and politi-
cal and cultural manifestations may indeed be responses to such
hegemony and cannot be understood apart from it. Even then, however,
the form and content of the indigenous manifestation may still be totally
embedded in indigenous structures of existence and meaning that con-
stitute specific separate realities, as the Asheninka practices related to the
cushma have illustrated. Other spectacular illustrations of similar dynam-
ics are provided by the apparently highly acculturated Piro of the lower
Urubamba who from ’the autochthonous discourses of difference at their
disposal ... fashion an image of colonial history as an aspect of their
autopoiesis’ (Gow, 1993: 343). Terence Turner has described how the
Kayapo adopted the use of video cameras for purposes of presenting
themselves to themselves as well as to ’the other’ and managed to ’actu-
ally empower themselves through the appropriation of the very Western
technologies of &dquo;gaze&dquo;, i.e. representation’ (Turner, 1992: 15). Through
constructive activity of this sort - where an indigenous group objectifies
its own culture as an ethnic identity in a form in which it can serve to
mobilize collective action - indigenous people may become subjects of
their own history as Kayapo, Asheninka, etc.’ rather than ’passive zombies
of capital’ (expression borrowed from Turner, 1992).
The question is, how do we conceptualize indigenous people who
conform to every definition of being ’traditional’ and yet use non-native
goods, technologies or public images of themselves to strengthen and
confirm their indigenous identity? Are they to be considered ’hyperreal’
-

i.e. as real as, or maybe even more real than, the public image of them 11I
-

or are they really already ’acculturated’ beyond our wildest imagina-

tion, subverting the very idea of acculturation and assuming the

embodied stance of what, for lack of better terminology, may be labeled

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 the ’postmodern native’, i.e. masters of dramatic self-representation
through continued traditional cultural forms in contemporary contexts of
interethnic confrontation? Possibly, variations in the uses of the cushma
by the Pajonal Asheninka may be helpful in shedding some light on these
questions. As Baudrillard’s ’critique of the political economy of the sign’
may have helped those ’who would attempt to grasp the strange mixture
of fantasy and desire that is unique to late-twentieth-century [Western]
culture’ (Baudrillard, 1988: 2) it may equally well inspire those who seek
to acknowledge the mixture of imagery and desire characteristic of con-
temporary Asheninka culture. After all, the Asheninka struggle for sur-
vival in a physical as well as a cultural and social sense is a very real
reality, despite its superficial appearance as hyperreality.

Notes
1. The fieldwork on which the paper is based was carried out in the Gran Pajonal
area of central Peruvian Amazonia during 1985-7. The project was financed

jointly by the Council for Development Research of the Danish International

Development Agency (DANIDA) and the Danish Research Council for the
Humanities. The fieldwork was carried out in cooperation with my colleague
Dr Søren Hvalkof.
2. The word ’cushma’, supposedly of Quechua derivation, is used in Spanish-
speaking contexts. Among themselves Ashéninka employ the word kithaar-
entze.
3. John Murra accompanies his exposition of ’Cloth and Its Function in the Inka
State’ (Murra, 1989) by a photo of a ’complex Inka tunic from the Lake Titi-
caca’ which ’may have been created early in the Spanish Colonial period’
(Murra, 1989: 284). Incaic and other pre-Columbian Andean textiles on
display in museum exhibitions frequently are sewn or woven in the shape of
what is here termed a cushma . They are generally categorized as ’pre-
Columbian dress form survivals’ by the curators and no attention is given to
the fact that tunics of similar form are currently in use in by native people
in the montaña. M. Schevill’s fine exhibition catalog Costume as Communi-
cation (1986) includes three cushma-type tunics from as widely separate
regions as Bolivia, Guatemala and Mexico.
4. ’Los indios son más altos y más vivos que los del Pirú; su vestido es sola-
...

mente una camiseta larga y colorada.’ Jimenez de la Espada 1881-97, II,

Appendice III, p. XCV.
5. Thanks to Søren Hvalkof for this piece of historical information. SH is cur-
rently reviewing historical documents as part of an ongoing research project
entitled ’Rainforest Political Ecology; An Anthropological Approach to the
Social Construction of Space, Territory, and Economy in the Gran Pajonal’.
Part of this research will appear as a chapter on the Pajonal Ashéninka in
Volume III of the Guía Etnográfica de la Alta Amazonía
, currently edited
through FLACSO in Quito, Ecuador (cf. Veber and Hvalkof, forthcoming).
6. During the fieldwork period 1985-7 Søren Hvalkof acquired a barkcloth
cushma produced in the Ene region. Native informants said that similar bark-
cloth cushmas could be found in the more remote areas between the Tambo
River and the Gran Pajonal.
7. More detailed studies of the local economy and consequences of settler

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 exploitation of the Ashéninka may be found in Hvalkof (1986, 1987, 1988,
1989, 1994).
8. Most recently, the Pajonal Ashéninka have been actively involved in a suc-
cessful effort at resisting attempts by groups of Sendero Luminoso terrorist
rebels to take over control of the ara (see Hvalkof, 1994; Benavides, 1991;
Veber, 1993).
9. John Bodley coined the term ’deferred exchange’ for the Ashéninka ayompari
trading, but his published 1973 paper did not reveal an awful lot of infor-
mation on it.
10. The dynamics of gender relations has been partially treated by the author in
a previous paper and shall not be elaborated upon here (see Veber, 1994).
11. The ’hyperreal Indian’ is more than the real Indian. He is ’the fabrication of
the perfect Indian whose virtues, sufferings and untiring stoicism have won
for him the right to be defended by the professionals of indigenous rights’
(Ramos, 1994: 161). Ramos cites Baudrillard for his definition of the simu-
lacrum that is arrived at by ’substituting signs of the real for the real itself;
that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a
metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all
the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes’ (Baudrillard,
1988: 167).

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*
Terence Ranger’s paper was originally published as a chapter in the book Legit-
imacy and the State in Twentieth Century Africa (T.O. Ranger & Megan Vaughan,
eds, London, 1993).

# H A N N E V E B E R works as a senior research associate at the Five Colleges and

the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Her publications include articles in
Ethnos and Folk and in numerous Danish academic journals. She is finalizing a
manuscript for a book about indigenous activism, cultural practices, and identity
politics based on her fieldwork among the Pajonal Asheninka in Peru. Address:
Five Colleges, Inc., 97 Spring Street, Amherst, MA 01002, USA.

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