Twenty young Kichwas from Sarayaku navigated the rivers of the Amazon and arrived at a gathering of indigenous peoples in the Peruvian jungle

A group of young people from the Kichwa people, originally from Sarayaku, embarked on an expedition – following in the footsteps of their grandparents in search of salt – along the great rivers of the Amazon, but this time to participate in the Together Forward Meeting, with the youth of the Shipibo Conibo people of the Shambo Porvenir community, in the Peruvian jungle. José Santi, from the Sarayaku Communications Team, tells this story.

Three hours before the trip, around three o’clock in the morning of August 11, we participated in the Guayusa Upina with the president, leaders and wise men of the Sarayaku people, José begins.

The Guayusa Upina is an ancestral ceremony practiced in the early morning before fishing, hunting or agricultural work, activities typical of Amazonian communities; However, the ceremony that morning was intended to fill them with energy for a dangerous 21-day journey.

While we drank guayusa – José continues – the elders gave great messages to the young: they told us that when our grandparents went looking for salt, they did it without documents, because there were no borders. They also traveled because they had family in Peru. That the grandparents were very strong because it took them six months to complete that route. Some did not return because they died, others stayed because they got married, while some did not return because they learned shamanism and about the jungle. That there were great dangers and that we had to overcome them on this journey. They said that when they finally returned, they were waiting for them with tears and laughter.

When the song of the chañawi – a bird that imitates other animals – announced the dawn, we walked to the bank of the Bobonaza to board the canoes.

The mist had settled like a gray blanket on the treetops and on the river. In that threatening environment, the expedition consisting of twenty Kichwas started the journey to the Juntos Adelante Meeting, in the Shambo Porvenir community, in the neighboring Republic of Peru.

Logistics:

We carried three twenty-liter buckets of chicha in each canoe and something light like cookies for a snack. We also brought water with us, because further on the river gets bigger and we didn’t know if we would find a tributary with clean, unpolluted water. We had no meat or fish with us as we planned to go downstream as that area is open for fishing and hunting. There are immense lagoons where the inhabitants fish for bocachico, paiche, guanchiche, carachama…

The provisions were divided into the three canoes so that they could eat on board and not waste time. We only stopped briefly for biological needs. When the day was over, we cooked something hot to eat.

To brighten up the trip we drank chicha, shared experiences, knowledge, told anecdotes… The only thing that ruined it was the weather, it was too hot, it was unbearable.

Trip:

The guide is our cousin, Jaime Gualinga, 34 years old. He knows the route because he has traveled to Andoas, so he organized and coordinated us for accommodation at the points he considered safe. During the journey through Ecuadorian rivers we stayed in indigenous communities, when we arrived in the cities of Peru we slept in hotels.

After three days of sailing we reached the town of Andoas, on the border between Ecuador and Peru, there is a military checkpoint and we had no papers (identity card, passport).

-Paper? – said the soldier.

“We don’t have one,” I replied.

-What are you doing? Where are you going? – the soldier insisted.

“We are going to a meeting with the Shipibo Conibo people of the Shambo Porvenir community in Peru,” I said, “as the soldier looked on suspiciously.

The soldier’s eyes traveled over every inch of our canoes and finally:

“Go on,” he said, “pointing with his arm the path of the river.”

Three days later we arrived in San Lorenzo, a Peruvian town the size of Puyo, Ecuador, where we left the canoes.

The next day, at four in the morning, we boarded a larger canoe, they called it a glider, it was huge, it carried more than a hundred passengers. We arrived in Yurimaguas almost noon. From there we took two vans that took us to Tarapotó, where we rested for a night.

When the sun rose we set out again by canoe for twenty hours until we reached Pucalpa. We were very tired and decided to stay for a day to recover. The next day we resumed the march and within two hours we ended the journey in the Shambo Porvenir community of the Shipibo brothers, which was the location of the Together Forward Meeting.

The outward journey took us seven days, seven of us at the meeting and seven on the way back. We navigate the Bobonaza, Pastaza, Marañón and Waliaga rivers. The journey took 21 days, while our grandparents took six months, because there were no motorized fiber canoes, they traveled with an oar or, as we say, with a lever.

Meeting:

Our brothers welcomed us with great emotion, they hugged us, they made us inhale the juice of a medicinal plant through our noses, we called it black tobacco. This was on their agenda, but we had ours too and we shared guayusa, chicha and our dark tobacco. We were there for seven days.

During the meeting we shared the experience of our struggle with the Sarayaku people to protect our home – the jungle and the rivers – from the threat of oil, mining and logging companies. We tell them about the regulations, the life plans that we implement. Our experience was a novelty for the young people there.

They, our brothers, who make up about 90,000 indigenous people of Shipibo, told us that they have less and less nature and less jungle, because of the social impact of the rice and palm companies.

Eimy Cisneros, member of the youth group, said that her experience during this long journey is that she began to appreciate her culture and customs because her ancestors also took this route to get salt and at that time there were no borders with her. brothers from Peru…

Conibo gained a lot of experience in the meeting with the Shipibo brothers. He has shared ideas, customs, cultures, knowledge and thoughts, and as part of the youth he understood that the struggle as indigenous peoples is the same: for the territory, for the sumac kawsay, by Kawsak Sacha.

He says he realized that Sarayaku is a nation recognized nationally and internationally, so young people should be more involved in the struggle to let other indigenous communities know that great things can be done and that they can help them too work so that culture and customs are not affected. lost.

Another young man from the community, José Santi, also took part in the expedition and says that the journey through major rivers was very important because he appreciated the efforts of his ancestors who had navigated the same rivers. It was very important to go to the meeting because young people are the future of indigenous peoples and we need to be integrated to be leaders in the struggle.

At the end of the meeting there was a farewell. As brother peoples who visited them after our grandparents, it was very sincere, there were lamentations and tears. The young people were so excited that they loudly asked for these meetings to be maintained, that they would not end, that they would open spaces and that they would ask the States to create a new policy to promote these meetings between peoples without need for documents, that the controls They are fine, but without so much bureaucracy, that you can travel even if you do not have a passport, that these things should not be required of indigenous peoples. We gave each other our last hugs and with that energy we left on our return journey, concludes José Santi.