Veber - Ashaninka Messianism - The Production of a Black Hole in Western Amazonian Ethnography

Asháninka Messianism: The Production of a “Black Hole” in Western Amazonian EthnographyAuthor(s): Hanne VeberReviewed work(s):Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 44, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 183-211Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for AnthropologicalResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/346028 .Accessed: 07/08/2012 10:08

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C u r r e n t A n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, Number 2, April 2003� 2003 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/2003/4402-0002$3.00

AshaninkaMessianism

The Production of a “BlackHole” in Western AmazonianEthnography1

by Hanne Veber

As a set of explanatory notions, “resistance” and “messianism”have been important in anthropology, not least when applied topopular mobilization in colonial and postcolonial settings. The“resistance” perspective has been subjected to critique fromwithin the field; “messianism” has remained curiously unchal-lenged. The notion of “messianism” evokes a certain understand-ing of actors’ motivations and perceptions and pretends to iden-tify cultural crucibles at the heart of the conjuncture betweencosmology and agency. For this reason, categorizing people, cul-tures, movements, or other phenomena as “messianic” has signif-icant interpretive implications. In their reading of historical rec-ords and narratives, anthropologists have attributed a messianicproclivity to the Ashaninka and other native populations in thePeruvian Amazon. Taking off from interpretations of the figureof Juan Santos Atahuallpa in the 1742 rebellion against the Fran-ciscan mission, many anthropologists have depicted these Ara-wakans as highly receptive to messiah figures; more recentAshaninka movements have been seen as similarly motivated. Itis argued here that the notion of Ashaninka messianism derivesits veracity more from its scholarly repetition than fromgrounded analysis; it has created a “black hole” in place of eth-nography that an approach that takes heed of practices, narrativeand structural, may begin to fill.

h a n n e v e b e r is a senior lecturer and independent researcheraffiliated with the Danish Institute for Advanced Studies in theHumanities, Copenhagen, Denmark (her mailing address: HFKalvebod 50, DK-2450 Copenhagen SV, Denmark [[email protected]]). Born in 1948, she was educated at the University ofCopenhagen (mag.scient./Ph.D., 1980/2001) and has been a lec-turer and research fellow in that university’s Institute of Anthro-pology and a research associate of the Universidad La Catolica inLima, Peru. Her research interests include Amazonian anthropol-ogy, indigenous activism, and the history of anthropology. Herpublications include “External Inducement and Non-Westerniza-tion in the Uses of the Asheninka Cushma” (Journal of MaterialCulture 1:155–82), “The Salt of the Montana: Interpreting Indige-nous Activism in the Rain Forest” (Cultural Anthropology 13:382–413), and Indigenous Leadership and Human Rights in East-ern Peru (New York: Palgrave’s, in press). The present paper wassubmitted 27 ix 01 and accepted 24 vi 02.

1. The fieldwork on which this article is based was undertaken byme and Søren Hvalkof in the Gran Pajonal over a two-year period,October 1985 to October 1987. I am grateful to the Council forDevelopment Research of the Danish International DevelopmentAgency (DANIDA) and the Danish Research Council for the Hu-

How to read native culture and cosmology from histor-ical records and adequately present the native point ofview have been the subject of recurrent debates in an-thropology. Among them, discussions such as that of theHawaiian reception of Captain Cook and of cargoism asparadigmatic in Melanesian culture have highlightedethnographic respect for cultural particularity and nativeagency (Sahlins 1981, 1983, 1985, 1995, Obeyesekere1992, McDowell 1988, Lindstrom 1993). Previous trea-tises on the issue of representation have pointed in asimilar direction (Marcus and Fischer 1986, Spencer1989, Jacobson 1991, Keesing 1987).

Discussions in the 1980s of the ways in which an-thropology produces knowledge established that ethnog-raphy is essentially about representations and their in-terpretation. This may involve a peculiar use ofterms—an interpretive use, as Dan Sperber has it. Hedefines an interpretive term as a word “intended both asa rendering by stipulation of a native category and as aclue for the proper understanding of that category” (1985:23–24). He also warns that in developing theory anthro-pologists tend to generalize ethnographic interpretations.These may be sources of inspiration, repertoires of pos-sible “meanings,” but they synthesize not empirical databut interpretations that are themselves already syn-thetic. He considers these interpretive generalizations“old-fashioned props of ethnography” that the disciplineby now should be able to do without (p. 29). JonathanSpencer continues the argument by pointing out thatanthropology’s interpretive representations omit thecontexts of their production; the ethnographer’s practiceof interpreting “meaningful action,” of turning it intoethnography, he argues, “eliminates the specificities ofthe original context” (1989:148), and this limits the pos-sibilities of assessing competing interpretations and thus

manities for providing the funds that made it possible.In May 2000 a conference on comparative Arawakan histories

was convened through the initiative of Fernando Santos Graneroof the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama, and Jon-athan Hill of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. TheWenner-Gren Foundation and the Smithsonian Tropical ResearchInstitute supported the event. The idea of identifying an “Arawakanethos” was introduced by Santos Granero and Hill in this context.This article is a revised version of a paper first presented at theconference. I am grateful to the conveners for the inspiration pro-vided throughout the conference discussions and for their usefulcomments on my paper. I owe particular gratitude to Robin M.Wright, who generously offered stimulating and constructive cri-tique as a discussant of my paper.

Job obligations prevented me from meeting the final deadline forrevision of manuscripts for publication of the conference papers asplanned by the conveners. Elmer S. Miller read an early draft of therevised paper and offered valuable insights. A brief version of theargument was presented at the annual faculty seminar at the In-stitute of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen in May2001. I am grateful to my colleagues for useful comments. Thepaper was finalized during my stay at the Danish Institute for Ad-vanced Studies in the Humanities 2001–02. In their capacity asreviewers for CA, Michael Brown and A. C. Taylor provided con-structive suggestions that greatly improved the paper. I also owethanks to Dorthe Nyland Sørensen and to two anonymous review-ers for comments that proved helpful in clarifying the argument.All remaining flaws are my responsibility.

184 F current anthropology Volume 44, Number 2, April 2003

closes the hermeneutic circle. The use of representationsas interpretive terms, in other words, involves logicalproblems of validation.

The debate took a new turn in Sahlins’s argument withObeyesekere over the apotheosis of Captain Cook, inwhich Sahlins accused Obeyesekere of a negation of cul-tural particularity and subversion of “the kind of eth-nographic respect that has long been a condition of thepossibility of a scholarly anthropology” (Sahlins 1995:9).Sahlins had advanced the proposition that the Hawaiianssaw Captain Cook as their god Lono and responded tohis untimely return by killing him, thus appropriatingCook for the mythology that inspired the action. Theproposition drew criticism in the 1980s from both withinand outside of Polynesian studies (see, e.g., Friedman1988, Bergendorff, Hasager, and Henriques 1988). Sub-sequently Obeyesekere, an outsider, contended in abook-length argument that Hawaiian natives did notmistake Cook for Lono and that their motivation forkilling him in February 1779 could be boiled down toone of “practical rationality” in the Weberian senserather than one of “mythopraxis” as Sahlins had it (Ob-eyesekere 1992:19–21). “Practical rationality” is his par-adigm for explaining Hawaiian resistance to Europeansand in particular to the “trail of violence” Captain Cookhimself left behind (pp. 8–10). In Obeyesekere’s inter-pretation of the events that preceded the captain’s death,his killing reflected the “rational pragmatics” of nativesopposing an evil stranger (pp. 89, 120).

In its own bizarre way this academic dispute had Sah-lins speaking on the side of “culture” and his critics onthe side of pragmatic interest as if one excluded the other.“Resistance”—if not “rational pragmatics”—may cap-ture crucial aspects of perturbing events in colonial orneocolonial settings, but it is not always adequate to thetask of illuminating native perceptions and the ways inwhich these inform native action; for this reason theresistance approach tends to leave the nature of the dy-namics of relations between groups, native or nonnative,poorly understood (see Brown 1991, 1996, Abu-Lughod1990). Sahlins offers similar and many other objectionsto Obeyesekere’s “practical rationality” (1995:5–14,148–77). Indeed, his concept of mythopraxis seeks to cap-ture the interconnectedness of cosmology and practicein an explicit effort to overcome the sort of dichotomyimplicit in thinking in terms of cosmology-practice orculture-history binaries (Sahlins 1981:3–8, 1983).

In another context, Sherry Ortner has critiqued theresistance discourse in anthropology for its tendency togloss over the specifics of local cultures. She has coinedthe term “ethnographic refusal” for the kind of “bizarrerefusal to know and speak and write of the lived worldsinhabited by those who resist (or do not, as the case maybe)” (1995:187–88). The problem is one of anthropology’sanalytical capacity to interpret and at the same time befaithful to the specificities of context. Analytic capacitydevelops through comparison and requires universal con-cepts as its tools, forged in an effort to understand andexplain not only local issues but cultural and social phe-nomena as historical processes in general. With this ob-

jective in mind, scholars sometimes apply con-cepts—mythopraxis, resistance, cargo cult, millenarian-ism, messianism, crisis cult—developed within one con-text to other, comparable, situations. On closer inspec-tion, however, concepts that initially seemed adequateto the task may turn out to confer misleading images onthe phenomena they describe; they may even create akind of ethnographic “black hole” in place of the local-ized practices they were meant to identify and explain.When this happens, rethinking is called for. In practicethis is not a simple matter. Arguing that an establishedconcept or ethnographic image is inadequate entails ne-gotiations of meaning and power between the subjectsobserved and the social contexts they are involved in andbetween anthropologists and the colleagues who makeup the context of their work (including people who actas scientific “gatekeepers” and people who control jour-nals and publishing outlets, hiring institutions, and fund-ing agencies). Established imagery makes stubborn com-pany: at times it appears as if a sort of conceptualflywheel mechanism provided particular representationswith a life of their own: once set in motion, they con-tinue to go around, even when they remain weakly sup-ported by ethnography. At the same time, conceptualreconsideration is not merely about developing soundanalysis. It is also a matter of exploring inadequatelycharted territory at the risk of getting hurt or lost orsimply making a fool of oneself.

Mindful of this, I offer the following genealogical cri-tique of an idea that has come to seem an established“truth” in the anthropological historiography of theWestern Amazon: the idea that a messianic proclivityover several centuries has been a prime mover of episodesof rebel activity among the Arawakan-speaking popu-lations of the region and among the Ashaninka in par-ticular. The idea is old but gained new momentum dur-ing the 1990s, especially through the works of Brownand Fernandez (1991) and Santos Granero (1991, 1992a).“Messianism” has stipulated meanings of its own, in-voking mysteries of spiritual redemption mediated by anawaited messenger. In historical studies the concept wasoriginally employed to account for meanings and moti-vations on the part of natives of whom relatively littlewas known. Its perpetuation in the face of a growing bodyof ethnographic knowledge, however, seems to me a ne-gation of cultural particularity. As a conceptual device“messianism” comes ready-made from its manufacturer,the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, with connota-tions suggestive of the contexts of this parentage. Usedas an interpretive term in Sperber’s sense, “messianism”provides not only a framework for understanding but aset of filters that lead the user to see diverse phenomenain a particular light. When applied to a completely for-eign situation, this effect may obscure rather than illu-minate the object.

The idea of Arawakan messianism currently formspart of a repertoire employed by innovative scholars at-tempting to identify an “Arawakan ethos” that is pre-sumably shared by the Arawakan-speaking groups ofeastern Peru, northwestern Amazonia, and northeastern

veber Ashaninka Messianism F 185

South America. One might assume that the Boasian her-itage and the by-now threadbare debates over the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and culture-and-personality thinkinghad done away with the idea of a common ethos in di-verse and geographically dispersed groups that are placedin the same cultural category merely by virtue of theirshared linguistic affiliation. Recycling the idea of a com-mon ethos is a bold and courageous experiment that willnot be discussed here. However, its highlighting of mes-sianism as an ethnographic truth among the Arawakangroups in eastern Peru and among the Ashaninka in par-ticular raises some questions as to the manner in whichsuch “truths” are ethnographically produced.2 For thisreason an exercise in scrutinizing the textual genealogyof Ashaninka messianism as a process of “writing cul-ture” may be of interest even beyond the narrow circleof regional specialists.

The Case

Current ethnohistorical wisdom has it that millenarianor messianic sentiments color and inform activities ofthe Arawakan-speaking populations that inhabit themontana region of eastern Peru, including their re-sponses to colonization and foreign expansion into theseAmazonian territories. The messianic disposition hasbeen marshaled by a number of anthropologists to ac-count for outbursts of native militancy, for the recep-tiveness to millenarian Christian as well as revolution-ary exhortations, and even for the subjugation topowerful mestizo patrons of some of these nativegroups.3

The Arawakan-speaking populations of the Peruvianmontana include the Piro, Yanesha, Caquinte, Nomat-siguenga, Machiguenga, and at least six major regionalsubgroups of Asheninka and Ashaninka.4 The lattergroups, previously known in the literature as “Campa,”speak closely related dialects of the same language andhave similar patterns of culture and social organization.5

The bulk of the literature promulgating the idea of mes-sianism among Arawakan populations in Peru takes theAshaninka as its major reference group. I will adopt thispractice, making excursions into Machiguenga and Yane-

2. Groups of Arawakan-speakers are found scattered around thefringes of the Amazon Basin, with a concentration in the north-western and western Amazon. Anthropologists have documentedcases that invite notions of messianism among many of the groupsin the Northwest (see in particular the works by Wright 1998 andWright and Hill 1986). I have no reason to dispute their findings.3. Reiterations of the notion of messianism in eastern Peru maybe found in Varese (1973 [1968]), Metraux (1942), Rojas (1994), San-tos Granero (1991, 1992a), Brown (1991), Brown and Fernandez(1991, 1992), Fernandez (1986), and Benavides (1986).4. These include the Ashaninka of the rivers Ene, Perene, andTambo, the Pichis Asheninka, the Pajonal Asheninka, and the Ash-eninka of the Ucayali.5. Some linguists continue to employ the word “Campa” as theformal designation of the linguistic classificatory family of Peru-vian Maipuran Arawak that includes the languages Ashaninka,Asheninka, Pajonal Asheninka, Caquinte, Nomatsiguenga, and Ma-chiguenga (Wise 1990).

sha ethnography where warranted by the argument. I willuse “Ashaninka” (the native self-denomination of onesubgroup) as a generic term that includes all of theAshaninka, Asheninka, Pajonal Asheninka, and Nomat-siguenga subgroups. These populations, today number-ing around 80,000, constitute the largest of the Arawakangroups in the western Amazon and are scattered over alarge and fragmented territory. Prior to colonization inthe 20th century, Ashaninka territories extended overapproximately 100,000 km2, from the Upper PachiteaRiver in the north to the Lower Apurimac River in thesouth (lat. 10�–14� S) and from the Chanchamayo Valleyin the west to the Tambo-Ucayali River regions in theeast (long. 72�–76� W). The Ashaninka pattern of socialorganization is based on small dispersed settlements ofself-sufficient extended families. Such settlements maybe independent or loosely associated in local groups thatinclude a number of settlements within a limited localterritory under the leadership of a local headman. I didfieldwork for two years (1985–87) with one of the re-gional subgroups, the Asheninka of the Gran Pajonal, apopulation of some 6,000–7,000 that is among the moreisolated of these Arawakan peoples.

When I first encountered the notion of messianism inAshaninka ethnography, I accepted it as a legitimate in-terpretive representation. It seemed to be consistent withinformants’ recollection of the reception of the Adventistmission in the early 20th century (Veber 1991), and Iassumed that it also offered a reasonable clue for under-standing historical incidents of native revolt that ap-peared to have been inspired by perceived divine repre-sentatives. Through the 1990s, however, as I workedwith my data on contemporary native activism and fol-lowed ongoing developments among the Pajonal Ashe-ninka, I gradually grew more and more uncomfortablewith the notion. A process of political mobilization hadstarted among the Asheninka while I was in the field,and I knew that messianism had nothing to do with it.I began to wonder if messianism had in fact been a mo-tivation in previous historical incidents of Asheninkamobilization as some writers of modern ethnohistorywould have us believe.

When I was invited to contribute a paper to a confer-ence on comparative Arawakan histories (the first Ara-wakan conference ever) to be held in Panama City inMay 2000, a reinterpretation of the historical case thathad given rise to the idea of Ashaninka messianism wasamong the topics I suggested and the one that the con-ference conveners asked me to pursue. In what followsI outline the genealogical profiles in the construction ofAshaninka messianism and offer some critical com-ments on the notion to the extent that it has been re-garded as integral to Ashaninka worldviews and formsof collective action. Drawing on my acquaintance withthe Pajonal Asheninka way of living in and acting on theworld, I offer a critical review of the history of anthro-pology’s “messianism” in the hope of clearing space fora perspective on the dynamics of Ashaninka culture andhistory that takes sociopolitical and cultural specificitiesand the contexts of their production into account. De-


veloping the details of an alternative interpretation ofthe phenomena would require a separate paper. There-fore, the following pages are limited to a textual archae-ology of the notion of Ashaninka messianism as an in-structive case of the way in which anthropologyproduces and perpetuates its own ethnographic “truth.”

The Genealogy of Ashaninka “Messianism”

The idea of messianism among the Ashaninka originatedin Franciscan descriptions of a particular incident in18th-century colonial Peru. As taken from the historicalrecords, the incident in this: In 1742, an acculturatedmestizo or Quechua Indian by the name of Juan Santosappeared among the Asheninka of the Gran Pajonal inPeru’s central montana. He quickly succeeded in con-vincing the natives of the entire region, Ashaninka aswell as others, that they needed to rid themselves of theFranciscan mission that had been establishing itself inthe area since the 1730s. He subsequently became theleader of a revolt that drove the missionaries out andprevented the Spanish colonial empire from ever takingcontrol of this part of Amazonia (Valcarcel 1946:47–69;Ortiz 1978:61; Amich 1975:155–75).

The story was delivered to anthropology by Alfred Me-traux, one of Julian Steward’s collaborators in compilingmaterial for the epochal Handbook of South AmericanIndians during World War II (Steward 1963 [1946–59]).Metraux nourished a keen interest in magic and religionamong the Indians of South America and had carried outstudies on rebellions among the Guaranı in the earlycolonial period, movements that he saw as messianic(Metraux 1928, 1948, 1967). In 1942 he published a briefpaper entitled “A Quechua Messiah in Eastern Peru” inwhich the idea of Juan Santos as a messiah was explicitlyformulated in an anthropological context for the firsttime. Juan Santos appears to have presented himself asa descendant of the Inca Atahuallpa, who had been killedby Pizarro and his men in 1533. He had taken the nameof Atahuallpa and had even added Apu Inca, “son of theInca (Sun),” to signal his claim to the Inca throne. (Me-traux did not reveal his sources, but the information maybe found in an 18th-century chronicle by the Franciscanhistorian Jose Amich [1975 (1854):155–56].) Metrauxtook the acceptance by the native Amazonians of thepolitical leadership of an Andean mestizo as a sign ofthe “undimmed prestige of the Inca civilization” (1942:722). He also evoked a picture of tranquil mission life’shaving developed, after an initial friendly welcome ofthe Franciscan fathers by the montana natives in 1635,to the point that by the early 1740s the Franciscan mis-sions extended all the way to the Ucayali and the fatherswere satisfied that the Christian faith was headed for amajor triumph in the Amazon lowlands. Then, over-night, Santos managed to rekindle memories of a van-ished empire, and the Ashaninka were the first to rise,in 1742, to the call of the new leader.

Steward summarized this story for his chapter on thetribes of the montana in volume 3 of the Handbook of

South American Indians (1963 [1948]:511–12).6 Of theFranciscan mission and the consequences of the revolthe said:

At the peak of their success, 1742, when theyclaimed 10,000 converts in 10 missions, the insur-rection led by Santos Atahuallpa brought a serioussetback to their work. . . . The uprising of 1742, ledby a remarkable messiah, swept the missions fromthe area and brought death to 70 or 80 Fathers. . . .Pretending to have the wisdom of Solomon and theability to make mountains fall, he [Santos] declaredthat God had sent him to restore His kingdom.

In these texts, Juan Santos is clearly the instigator of therevolt, the charismatic figure who by virtue of a divinegift of leadership made things happen that would nototherwise have taken place.

In the early 1990s the idea of messianism as centralto the Ashaninka mode of relating to strangers found newand eloquent expression when the anthropologists Mi-chael Brown and Eduardo Fernandez undertook a de-tailed investigation of Ashaninka involvement with agroup of Marxist revolutionaries in the Satipo Provincein 1965. They prefaced their very readable study withthe question “Was it possible that . . . the Ashaninkapeople had maintained a tradition of militant messia-nism for more than 250 years?” and gave the conclusiveanswer: “Above all, Ashaninkas hold tenaciously to adream of spiritual deliverance” (Brown and Fernandez1991:xii–xiii).

This notion of Ashaninka messianism has been en-dorsed more recently in South America (Salomon andSchwartz 1999) in the Cambridge History of the NativePeoples of the Americas series. In its chapter 17 (pp.188–256) on the impact of imperial expansion, “TheWestern Margins of Amazonia from the Early Sixteenthto the Early Nineteenth Century,” we read that “a half-caste from the Andes,” Juan Santos Atahuallpa, arrivedamong the Ashaninka in 1742 and sparked a major re-bellion as he “rapidly fanned the flames of messianicsentiments already latent among the Arawak” (Taylor1999:221, italics added). Here the author, an outstandingscholar on the Ecuadorian Achuar (not an Arawakan pop-ulation) and well-read in the region’s ethnohistory, issummarizing interpretations of historical events madeby other researchers and reproducing their understand-ings of the major motivations and causes of said rebel-lion,7 and her contribution may be taken as the definitiverepresentation of contemporary anthropological wisdom

6. Steward’s bibliography includes Father Jose Amich’s Compendiohistorico (1975 [1854]), written in 1771 and published in Paris in1854, and Father Bernardino Izaguirre’s monumental Historia delas misiones franciscanas (1922–29), a 14-volume collection of ac-counts and letters by Franciscan missionaries published in Lima.These volumes are the sources most often cited on the events andthe parts played by various actors in the rebellion.7. Taylor’s bibliography includes, among others, the works of Me-traux, Steward, Brown and Fernandez, Santos Granero, and Renard-Casewits. Publications by the latter remain in French, and I havenot been able to include them in this study.


on the historical significance of Ashaninka messianism.Publications of this format carry authority, and there-fore the interpretations they offer are particularly note-worthy.

We observe that now, 57 years after Metraux firstcalled attention to the role of Juan Santos in the 1742rebellion, messianic sentiments are ascribed to theAshaninka not as a response to the presence of a figurewho claims to be a messiah but as sentiments alreadylatent among them. Santos is no longer the source ofmessianism; the Ashaninka themselves are. In thecourse of its epistemological slide from history to an-thropology, the idea of a messianic inclination has beentransformed into an innate cultural characteristic of theAshaninka that goes back at least four centuries. “As-haninka messianism” has achieved the status of a canonin Amazonian anthropology and beyond.8 Researchers donot agree among themselves on the details of this mes-sianic or millennial proclivity, but its having been reit-erated in ethnographic texts appears to have bestowedon it a life of its own.

As used in Ashaninka ethnography, “messianism” re-fers to visions of a new social order mediated by theintervention of a godly representative. Descriptions ofmessianic movements elsewhere usually include rituals,special taboos, forms of prayer, or other kinds of actiondesigned to promote the messianic goal (see Worsley1970, Skar 1987, Mooney 1965 [1896], Stewart 1977,Bloch 1992, Wright and Hill 1986). Inspired by forecastsof a radical upheaval of existing orders, such ritualizedforms of behavior, violent action included, are generalcharacteristics of messianic movements and warranttheir categorization as such. In the Ashaninka case weshould expect to find similar forms of behavior, providedthat the phenomena categorized as Ashaninka messia-nism are truly comparable to messianism elsewhere andthat their labeling as messianic is borne out by the formand the nature of actual acts and events. What is inter-esting is that we have practically no evidence of anyritualized or cataclysmic action on the part of theAshaninka. Did they leave their homes, destroy theircrops, build shrines, engage in particular forms of ritual,wear special garments, or perform special and recurringacts of other sorts in order to align themselves with theout-of-the-ordinary transformation to come? No evi-dence has been brought forward so far that the Amazo-nian natives involved in the 1742 rebellion or any sub-sequent revolts initiated any such practices, except ofcourse for that of armed violence, which was hardly newor unusual among them. In itself, armed violence hardlywarrants the construction of a rebellion as “messianic.”The forest natives may have engaged in messianic prac-

8. Over the years the story of the 1742 Amazonian rebellion andits messianic leader Juan Santos Atahuallpa has found its way intoseveral general studies of protest rebellions and politico-religiousmovements (Lanternari 1963:151–53), including handbook articleson religion (see Schwartz 1987). Santos is famous in fields such asthe history of religions and colonial history, where he is seen as aprototypical prophet or messianic leader of a native liberationmovement (Valcarcel 1946).

tices of many kinds; the point here is that we do notknow anything about this.

The historical records contain little direct informationon Ashaninka perceptions of Juan Santos or of any ritualsor other performances he may or may not have inspiredamong them. Indeed, the messianic interpretation of the18th-century rebellion appears to hinge entirely on hisself-description as a messiah as reported by the Francis-can chroniclers. All of the information available on therebellion, on Santos’s role in it, and on the man himselfderives from records made by Franciscan missionar-ies—representatives of the organization that suffered aserious setback because of the rebellion that Santos al-legedly inspired. Very little of this information comesfrom firsthand notes and observations by witnesses whoactually met Santos and talked to him or to the Asha-ninka and other natives of his following. Most recordsappear to be based on secondhand interpretations of ru-mors and hearsay recorded at the time of the revolt orlater. Indeed, the history of the rebellion and of Santos’spart in it was not written until many years after it tran-spired. The mission records obviously represent a Fran-ciscan interpretation of the events—an interpretationthat is hardly unbiased or impartial. Nevertheless, thishistory has persuaded posterity that messianism was themotive force behind the rebellion. Many anthropologistsand historians have bought the Franciscan narrativewholesale; the idea of messianism derived from it hassubsequently been elaborated on through reference tovarious odd occurrences two centuries later that justmight be taken as messianism-inspired.

To clarify the basis on which messianism has beenpromoted as a characterization of Ashaninka motiva-tions and forms of activism, we shall take a closer lookat the studies that have supported the idea.

The Textual Life of Ashaninka “Messianism”

In 1942, when Metraux’s paper on Juan Santos Ata-huallpa, the messiah, was published, Ashaninka ethnog-raphy was rudimentary. No fieldwork-based studies hadyet been undertaken on any Arawakan-speaking groupin the Peruvian montana. Apart from the colonial rec-ords, what was available came as scattered, brief, andimpressionistic reports by missionaries, explorers, andtravelers. The history of the 1742 rebellion delivered toanthropology by Metraux and Steward is more or less thestory that the Franciscan chroniclers relate, and the storyis bizarre indeed. That Metraux thought so may be sur-mised from his attempt to rationalize the events de-scribed. He pointed to something that for obvious rea-sons had been depreciated by the Franciscans: that theAshaninka had longed to rid themselves of the tyrannyand the work regimes designed to benefit the missionsystem. He cited one reference indicating that enthusi-astic crowds of Indians gathered around Santos and “con-gratulated one another because they had found a remedyfor their sufferings” (1942:724). In this way Santos ap-pears, indeed, as the agent of native liberation from for-


eign domination. As Metraux saw it, the hope of liber-ation explained the willingness of the forest Indians toaccept his leadership. Santos promised the Amazonians,he reported, not merely deliverance from the oppressionof the missions, from personal service to the mission-aries, and from drudgery in the mission fields and handmills but also a reinstitution of cherished values andpractices such as the chewing of coca leaves, the drinkingof masato, and the taking of plural wives—practices thatthe Franciscan fathers had prohibited.

The two lines of interpretation—messianism and re-sistance—adopted by Metraux and to various degreespicked up by subsequent scholars indicate an awarenessthat the rebellion may have been sociopolitical and ec-onomic as well as religious. The twofold explication con-verges on the notions of crisis cults or social-religiousmovements developed by authors such as Worsley (1970),Lanternari (1963), La Barre (1972), and many others inthe 1960s. Social-religious movements as they areknown from all parts of the world are typified by labelssuch as “nativistic,” prophetic,” “messianic,” or “mil-lenarian,” and their general characteristics include lead-ership by a charismatic figure and collective action di-rected at the creation of some form of utopiancommunity, whether based on ideas of past traditions orhopes for new futures. They appear in periods of crisisand appeal to troubled peoples because of their abilityto engender, in the words of Schwartz, “fantasies of in-vulnerability and escape, which are transformed by char-ismatic individuals who are often members of displacedelites” (1987:527). Scholars usually go to some lengthsto explain the social conditions of such movements aswell as their resonance with existing native cosmologiesand cultural orders. (Examples are legion: see Skar 1987,Wright 1998, Wright and Hill 1986, Comaroff 1985,among others.) Yet scholars have had difficulty identi-fying the Ashaninka motivations for engaging in the1742 rebellion. In his book on the religions of the op-pressed, Lanternari, building on two four-page articles byMetraux, states that Juan Santos, an alien among theforest natives, “built his prestige upon political authorityand upon the great tradition of the Incas” (1973:151).This is despite the historical fact that Inca rule neverextended to the western Amazon or to Ashaninka ter-ritory and the ethnographic fact that the Ashaninka havenever been known to accept centralized authority of anysort.

Lack of ethnographic information initially inhibitedidentification of probable resonance between Ashaninkacultural cosmology and Juan Santos’s messianic self-pre-sentation, and the scholars who followed in Metraux’sfootsteps remained satisfied with stating that messia-nism was a cultural characteristic of the Ashaninkarather than demonstrating it in terms of practices orforms of belief. Metraux’s word apparently carried suchauthority that once he had classified Santos’s revolt as

“messianic” the classification was taken as self-evidentby succeeding generations of researchers.9

When ethnographic studies based on fieldwork beganto appear in the 1960s, they expressed reservations aboutthe notion of Juan Santos as a messiah to the Ashaninka.In their Ph.D. dissertations the American anthropolo-gists Elick (1970) and Bodley (1971) mentioned Santosonly in passing and then in terms of his military ratherthan his religious or spiritual significance. Bodley (1972:226) remarked that even if messiah figures were iden-tified with a traditional divinity by the Ashaninka, thereis nothing to suggest that there was ever a tradition thatthat divinity might return to transform the world. Bythis time, however, the story of Juan Santos had longsince been incorporated into the indigenist and neo-In-dianist (see de la Cadena 1996) ideologies in vogue amongsections of the country’s intellectual elite. Here JuanSantos fitted in as a national hero, a freedom fighter, anda visionary foreshadowing a quest for decolonization andnational independence that would come into being lessthan a century later (see Valcarcel 1946). Against thisbackground it was no coincidence that a young Peruviananthropologist, Stefano Varese, who became the first topublish a monograph on the Ashaninka, would pay spe-cific attention to the Juan Santos incident.

For a long time the most readable study on the Asha-ninka, Varese’s La sal de los cerros (1973 [1968]) waspartly ethnohistorical and partly based on the insightsinto Asheninka perceptions and ways of life gained dur-ing the three summers (1963, 1964, 1976) that he spentin Oventeni, a settler colony in the center of the GranPajonal, the territory of the Pajonal Asheninka—thenand now considered more “traditional” than other Asha-ninka groups. Varese became a major contributor to theidea of Ashaninka messianism. Apparently inspired bythe neo-Indianist interpretations of the Franciscan rec-ords of the Peruvian historian Valcarcel and others, Va-rese elaborated Metraux’s original argument in an effortto clarify the incentive for the Ashaninka’s acceptanceof Juan Santos. From his readings of manuscripts inPeru’s National Library and the historical texts pub-lished by Amich (1975 [1845]) and Izaguirre (1922–29),he added many more details to the story than had beenincluded in Metraux’s brief outline.

Yet, Varese was also an avid reader of the works ofMircea Eliade and other scholars in the history of reli-gion, and on the basis of what appears to be substantialinspiration by Eliade’s ideas he developed the notion thatthe rebellion of Juan Santos was profoundly reli-gious—indeed, he argued that everything Asheninka wasprofoundly religious, from their system of barter andexchange to the ritualized dialogues of trading partnersand even the wars that they engaged in (Varese 1973[1968]:86, 304). Thus equipped, he suggested an answer

9. Incidentally, Metraux’s interpretation of the Guaranı movementsas “messianic” has been challenged by Helene Clastres, who ad-vocates a more complex understanding that involves internal po-litical struggle between native leaders and shamans (see Caravaglia1999).


to the question left open by Metraux—how one mancould have caused thousands of fiercely independent for-est Indians to follow his instructions and even createdan alliance of natives from many different linguisticgroups. What could possibly have persuaded them of hisidentity as a messiah? Varese argued that the Asheninkauniverse was saturated with holiness and therefore therewould have been a natural convergence between Santos’smessianic aspirations and Asheninka cultural spiritual-ity; the Asheninka readily accepted Santos’s charismaticleadership because of this spontaneous and semiauto-matic “fit” between the two parties.

Varese did not, however, present historical or ethno-graphic documentation that substantiated this idea. Hedid offer circumstantial evidence, but his argument op-erated, in a sense, in reverse. Drawing on his own eth-nographic knowledge of Asheninka social organization,he pointed out that under normal circumstances noleader would have been able to institute centralized au-thority over hundreds or thousands of montana Indians,much less forge an alliance of natives from different lin-guistic groups as Santos did in recruiting neighboringYanesha, Piro, Shipibo, and Conibo to his cause.10 Analliance of this sort, he argued, presupposed consciousfaith in a messianic prediction. He found a mystical in-spiration on the part of Santos that guided his action andoriented his behavior toward horizons “that in a certainsense partake of the mythical conception of time andaction” (p. 183, my translation).11 According to Varese,Santos based the rebellion entirely on religious senti-ments. The Ashaninka, whose social and mental orderhad been disrupted by Franciscan missionizing and col-onization, came to perceive him as the savior who wouldensure that the world was remade—and made right. Inother words, Varese saw the 1742 rebellion as a nativ-istic, messianic, and religiously based movement—a pan-Indian phenomenon that was previously unheard of anddemanded an unusual explanation. From his reading ofthe records Juan Santos emerges as a saint whose actionswere aimed at a return to the order that had been over-turned with the coming of the Spanish—an orientationhe shared with the Ashaninka who became his followers.In other words, the movement that rallied around Santoswas a perfect exemplification of “the myth of the eternalreturn” that, according to prominent mid-20th-centuryscholars in comparative religion, was found in “archaic”societies worldwide (Eliade 1965).

Varese argued that, given the paucity of rituals or otherexplicit manifestations of a structured religious system,outsiders had had difficulty understanding Ashaninkaspiritual life, and this difficulty had prevented a thoroughunderstanding of the profoundly religious nature of the

10. In the 17th and 18th centuries the Piro appear to have beenliving in the Tambo and the Conibo in the Upper Ucayali Riverregion, much closer to the Selva Central than the areas where theyare found today (Zarzar 1983).11. “Se percibe en el una inspiracion mıstica que se sobrepone alplano de la actuacion operativa concreta y que orienta sus actoshacia niveles que, en cierto sentido, participan de la concepcionmıtica del tiempo y de las acciones.”

1742 rebellion (1973 [1968]:86–92). He compensated forthe empirical lack of explicit expression of Ashaninkamessianism by borrowing from Eliade’s work whatseemed to be appropriate ideas for ordering an “archaic”world such as that of the Ashaninka.12 Eliade’s ideas reap-pear in Varese’s text as ethnographic interpretations ofthe Ashaninka worldview and eventually become theAshaninka worldview, at least in the eyes of theanthropologist.

Varese assumed that a corollary of the perception ofthe universe as saturated with spirituality or holinesswas a disposition toward centralized leadership. Whythis should have been so in the Ashaninka case and notin a great number of other cases in which peoples’ uni-verses were immensely spiritual he did not explain.13 Inother words, even if the Ashaninka did perceive JuanSantos as a divine representative or a son of the Sun(Inka), their willingness to accept his direction still needsto be accounted for; it cannot be assumed to follow au-tomatically.14 Varese’s interpretation of the role of SantosAtahuallpa is in accordance with the reading prevalentamong nationalist Peruvian scholars, according to whomthe Ashaninka were impressed by the special powers ofthe self-proclaimed Inca and more than willing to be histools (Valcarcel 1946).

Seriously disputing this idea, the historian Jay Leh-nertz (1972:116) argued that the rebellion was not anAshaninka or Amazonian Indian event at all and thatJuan Santos’s project was liberating not the Amazon butthe Andean highlands from foreign rule, the forest In-dians being merely a means to this end. According toLehnertz, Santos did call himself an emissary sent byGod to reconstitute the Inca empire. Having no interestin restoring the Inca empire, however, the forest nativeshardly played an active role in the revolt. Santos’s fol-lowing consisted mainly of displaced highland Indians

12. Gerald Weiss’s study (1975) of Ashaninka cosmology had notbeen published when Varese developed his thesis. Weiss’s namedoes not appear in the list of references given in the original (1968)version of La sal de los cerros. The second edition (1973) includesa supplementary bibliography that lists Weiss’s then unpublishedPh.D. dissertation and his brief 1972 article “Campa Cosmology.”The works of Weiss, however, do not appear to have influencedVarese’s conclusions.13. Examples that spring to mind here would be the Plains Sioux(Mooney 1965 [1896]), the Navajo (Aberle 1966), and the Yaqui (Spi-cer 1980), to mention just a few conspicuous cases from the NewWorld in which “transformative” movements of different sorts arewell documented.14. In a separate paper comparing utopian movements in nativeAmazonia, Michael Brown (1991) argues that millenarian or mes-sianic enthusiasm allows otherwise egalitarian indigenous peoplesmoments of flirtation with chiefly politics and that these momentsreflect long-term cyclical processes of working out tensions be-tween hierarchical and egalitarian tendencies internal to these Am-azonian societies. The outsider status of leaders and prophets allowsthem to “overcome the limitations of social units and achieve ahigher level of political integration.” The argument offers inspiringlines of thought that might be worth pursuing, but as it stands itis an interesting hypothesis rather than substantiated ethnohisto-riography. Robin Wright, in his survey of the argument in the in-troduction to his own Baniwa monograph (1998:6–7), expresses sim-ilar reservations.


and black runaway slaves who had served under the mis-sion. Against this historian’s position, Brown and Fer-nandez (1992:182–83) point out that it is hard to see howthere could have been a revolt at all without the activeparticipation of substantial numbers of forest natives.They undoubtedly have a point here. Yet, the historian’sskepticism about the foregrounding of the forest Indiansis worth noting. To the extent that Ashaninka and otherAmazonian natives did participate in the rebellion theymay have been itinerant raiding parties involved mainlyfor the killings and the spoils. In any case, we have fewmeans of establishing what really happened in 18th-cen-tury eastern Peru. It all remains a question of qualifiedguesswork. Fortunately, ethnographic studies based onfieldwork now allow testing of the notion of Ashaninkamessianism against what is known of native cosmologyand practices of leadership.

Ashaninka Ideas of Divinity

Studies based on participant observation in the field fromthe 1950s on indicate a native view of the world in whichhuman (earthly) forms and spirit forms coexist in a man-ner that allows for (relatively) easy communication andtransmutation between them (cf. Weiss 1975; Varese1973 [1968]; Narby 1989:236; studies by Søren Hvalkofand myself among the Pajonal Asheninka bear this out).John Elick, an Adventist missionary turned anthropol-ogist who lived with Asheninka in the Pichis for someeight years in the 1950s, observes: “The ‘real’ world, forthe Campa, comprises in one space-time continuumthose phenomena we designate as natural and supernat-ural. The ‘other’ world is not ‘other,’ then, but merelyoutside man’s present-day diminished perception. . . .[The shamanic experience] permits the Campa to ‘passthrough’ the veil . . . [and] experience the satisfaction offellowship with beings superior to man in power andwisdom” (Elick 1970:xv). This observation does notamount to demonstrating the existence of a distinctivemessianic proclivity; it does mean that the divine maymanifest itself in the experiential world. Elick does notdiscuss the idea of Ashaninka messianism at all and seeslittle connection between the rebellion of Juan SantosAtahuallpa, a “self-styled Apu-Inca,” and the Asheninkaof the Pichis Valley (1970:11–12). To Elick it seems thatthe Pichis Asheninka took little or no part in the 1742rebellion. He does mention, however, that men with thespiritual virtues required of shamans are often also menwith outstanding qualities of leadership, attributes thatare seen as both innate and acquired through their su-pernatural experiences (p. xv). If this diagnosis of a re-lation between leadership and the ability to communi-cate with the supernatural is correct (and I believe it is)and if we assume that it holds for Ashaninka views ofthe world as of more than 200 years ago, it may help toexplain the acceptance by the Ashaninka and other Am-azonian natives of Juan Santos’s leadership in the revolt.

Other ethnography corroborates this. According toWeiss, whose fieldwork among the Ashaninka of the

Tambo River region in the 1960s was devoted to an in-vestigation of native cosmology, friendly spirits (ama-cenka) are normally invisible to the human eye but onoccasion may appear in human form (Weiss 1975:258,263). The Sun, also known as Kacirinkaiteri or Pava (Fa-ther), belongs to a category of powerful spirits (tasorenci)that also include the Moon, Kashiri, the culture heroInka, and the owners of ayahuasca, peccaries, deer, andother species of game. A supreme being, Tasorenci, some-times appears as a divinity separate from the category oftasorenci.15 According to Weiss (1975:281–82 n. 60),

One plantation operator in the Perene region has soimpressed a number of Campas with his largessethat they call him tasorenci (others have no suchhigh opinion of him). In large part this is because heparceled out land to them free of charge, actually inaccordance with existing statutes respecting Indianland rights. . . . Of course, given the Campas’s com-prehension of human limitations, they can only pre-sume that such artifacts as airplanes, which they seein the possession of the Caucasians, were conceivedand manufactured by some tasorenci. Although theetymology of the term is quite specific, tasorenci isused to indicate any being with unnaturally greatpowers.

Weiss notes that “the category of tasorenci is alwaysopen to new membership and is in no way restricted tothe old, familiar gods” (p. 273). Similarly, Gerhard Baerrecords that among the Machiguenga taso’rintsi desig-nates a class of gods, tricksters, or culture heroes. Inancient times human beings were transformed into gameanimals through their intervention (Baer 1979:106). Thecategory includes the Moon, Ka’shiri, and certain otherheavenly bodies. In Machiguenga usage all taso’rintsi areaddressed respectfully as pa’va (father), and many areconsidered “owners” or “masters” of animals and plants(p. 107).

Among the Ashaninka the term pava appears to beapplied only to the Sun, who is first among all the spirit-gods. Here the Sun, also referred to as Tasorenci, is all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing, and very good (Elick1970:194; Weiss 1975:267). Long ago Tasorenci lived onearth, as did the Moon, Inka, and all the other spirit-gods. They are all Ashaninka and all amacenka, “ourfellow tribesmen.” Weiss acknowledges the radical eth-nocentrism in this thinking, and my own readings ofmyths and tales collected among Pajonal Asheninka con-firm that they identify almost anything of importanceto them, including spiritual and living beings as well asinanimate objects, as Ashaninka/Asheninka (see alsoHvalkof n.d.). The distance between humans and spiritbeings is not conceived of as overwhelming; indeed, na-tive shamans regularly meet or communicate with spir-its and are likely to visit them in their extraterrestrialabodes.

Spirits visit on earth in the form of sacred birds of

15. In the Pajonal Asheninka dialect tahorentse is the rendering ofthe word.


various species. More rarely they may take on humancorporeality. Spirit appearances on earth are not neces-sarily objects of veneration and respect. As any Asha-ninka knows and as numerous myths and tales attest,not only good spirits but demons or evil spirits (mankoiteor camari) may materialize before the human eye, andthese may cause harm to people. If a powerful shaman(sheripiari) is suspected of ill will, he risks being killedby other Ashaninka on this account (see Weiss 1975:263;Fernandez 1986:63–76; Veber 1991; Stahl 1932). In anycase, the presence of spirit beings on earth is not con-sidered unlikely, and when or if it occurs or is believedto occur it creates excitement but certainly not unre-served veneration.

Again, assuming that the same cosmology was extantamong 18th-century Ashaninka, it may be a fair guessthat Juan Santos’s self-presentation as a son of the Sun(Inca) could momentarily have helped persuade theAshaninka to accept him as an extraordinarily gifted per-son or even a divine or semidivine figure. This would becongruent with the entries in the records informing usthat in May 1742 the Ashaninka converts left the Perenemissions in great numbers and congregated at Quiso-pango by the Shima River on the southern fringe of theGran Pajonal, where an alleged “son of the Sun” hadarrived and summoned the natives to hear his message(Amich 1975 [1854]:156). Having inquired about theserumors, the Franciscan fathers had sent reporters of theirown to meet with Juan Santos and find out what he wasup to. These in turn had brought back the news of hisclaim to be a descendant of the Inca Atahuallpa and hisintention to restore his kingdom. Yet, there is definitelymore to Ashaninka militancy than native notions of im-manent divinity. These notions are part of everyday life,but particular sorts of circumstances may augment theirsignificance.

Interpreting the Historical Contexts ofAshaninka Mobilization

Years ago Fredrik Barth warned against the search for acomprehensive logic believed to be lodged in a matrix ofcosmology abstracted from the contexts of practice. Headvised us to avoid such unproductive framing of thequestions and seek insights in the wider field of socialprocesses (1989:131–33). It is not a question of choosinga perspective involving strategic interests or resistanceto the exclusion of cosmology—or messianism, as thecase may be—but one of showing how one informs theother. Scholars who have examined Ashaninka cultureand history have aimed to do this (see Varese 1973 [1968];Brown and Fernandez 1991; Santos Granero 1988, 1992a).In his interpretation of culture and history in the Pacific,Sahlins, as we have seen, adopts a similar strategy.Searching the historical records for information onevents as they happened and for actors’ points of viewis difficult, however. Once put into words, made intotexts, authors’ perceptions tend to take on the aura of

“facts,” and anthropologists may have tended to be onlytoo willing to accept them as such. Recognizing this,Taylor’s bibliographic essay in her chapter in the Cam-bridge History volume includes the assertion that “mostof the ethnohistorical research on specific groups of themontana has until very recently been conducted by an-thropologists, sometimes with scant training in criticalsource reading” (1999:254).

As the bulk of historical information on the 1742 re-bellion derives from Franciscan records, an obvious ques-tion is to what extent the interpretation of Juan Santosas its ringleader is colored by Franciscan perceptions ofthe nature of leadership. An overall attribution of mes-sianic dispositions to the Ashaninka as posited by Me-traux, Varese, Brown and Fernandez, and others certainlyaccords nicely with the Franciscan allegation that Santoswas the instigator of the rebellion, the implication ofthis being that had it not been for him it might neverhave happened. Indeed, if the Franciscans are right inpointing to Santos as the driving force, the Ashaninkain some sense remain “innocent and ignorant savages”misled and abused by a mischievous outsider in pursuitof goals entirely his own. This interpretation relieves theAshaninka of blame and preserves them as nature’s un-enlightened children, easily recruited into schemes notin their own best interest. As far as the future of theFranciscan mission was concerned, it must have beencrucial in the 18th and 19th centuries to hang onto theidea of the Amazonian natives as unwitting souls forsaving, targets of renewed Christian missionizing whena new opportunity presented itself. Also, as Santos Gra-nero has pointed out, the Franciscan historians, im-mersed in centralized hierarchical structures of theirown, tended to perceive the foreign (acephalous) struc-ture of the indigenous social systems along the lines fa-miliar to them; hence, the rebellious Indians had to beunder the orders of one leader, in this case Juan SantosAtahuallpa (Santos Granero 1992a:13).

Granting high priority to the motives and intentionsof Juan Santos and to his leadership directs the focusaway from the Ashaninka and the reasons or motivesthey may have had for participating in the rebellion. In-deed, there may have been incentives for it that had littleto do with Santos or his ideas. Some of these incentivesmay be read from the contexts of the rebellion and notleast from the fact that it was not without precedent.Missions had been looted and burned and friars and con-verts killed in the Selva Central ever since the Francis-cans had first tried to establish their presence there inthe early 1630s. Indeed, persistent native resistance hadput a virtual end to the mission effort by the 1690s(Amich 1975 [1854]:116–17).

The missionaries continued their work in the regiononly after a major reorganization of the mission in 1709supported by the establishment in 1724 of the Conventoy Colegio de Santa Rosa de Santa Marıa de Ocopa. Lo-cated in the valley of Jauja not very far from Huancayo,a major highland town and regional center, this facilitywas within easy communication with Lima and provideda central port of access to the field of mission work


among the forest Indians. It offered a place of safety, rest,and recovery for missionaries temporarily withdrawingfrom the field (Amich 1975 [1854]:481–83). The resump-tion of mission work was, however, followed by newFranciscan martyrdoms and burnings of missions. Anincomplete list of the revolts in the early 18th centuryalone would include those in the Eneno mission in 1712,the Pichana mission in the Perene in 1718 and 1721, theJesus Marıa mission in Pangoa in 1724, and the missionsSonomoro in Pangoa and Catalipango in the Ene in 1737(Amich 1975 [1854], Tibesar 1952, Ortiz 1961, Valcarcel1946).

The latest of these (in 1737) had taken place only afew years prior to Juan Santos’s arrival. As reported bythe Franciscans, this revolt had been caused by a localheadman known in Spanish as Ignacio Torote who re-fused to abide by Franciscan instructions to accept a liferegularized by mission bells and Christian values aban-doning the “indolences of the forest,” including polyg-yny, masato drinking, and native medical practices(Amich 1975 [1854]:144). In another well-known case animportant headman and longtime ally of the mission hadturned against the Franciscans out of anger over the hu-miliating corporal punishment that they administered tothe disobedient (Lehnertz 1972:117). Weary of the Fran-ciscan presence, many Ashaninka reacted not with de-pression but with anger. For this reason the Franciscansretained armed guards for the missions’ defense and forthe maintenance of order and discipline (Tibesar 1952:33). Indeed, armed force had become an integral aspectof the Franciscan strategy of mission building in the Am-azon by the early 18th century, and mission stations suchas Quimiri, Eneno, and Sonomoro contained small mil-itary garrisons equipped with cannon and muskets. Tosustain their defenses demographically, the Franciscansalso stimulated settlement by Spanish and Andean mes-tizos and peasants, who set up farms and haciendas inthe vicinity of the mission posts. Santos Granero findsevidence in the historical records that these establish-ments included workshops operated with Indian laborillegally recruited from within as well as outside of themissions. Hard labor and abuses in these facilities maybe considered contributing circumstances to the 1742rebellion as well as to the localized unrest during thedecades preceding it (Santos Granero 1992a).

Brown and Fernandez and, to some extent, Varese rec-ognize the circumstances of planned culture change asa factor in the recurrent revolts prior to 1742; these con-texts, however, are overlooked in their explanation ofthe 1742 rebellion. As did Varese before them, Brownand Fernandez assume that it was motivated by utopianvisions. Following the historian J. L. Phelan, they spec-ulate that millenarian thinking may have filtered intoAshaninka cosmology through the particular form ofapocalyptic mysticism that characterized the Franciscanorder in the New World (Brown and Fernandez 1991:46–47). In addition, they say, if the notion of Inka as aculture hero was present in 18th-century Ashaninkathought, it might account for the native acceptance ofJuan Santos as “son of the Sun.” We do not, however,

know that this was the case. As found today in nativemyth, the notion may be a recent import (see also Weiss1986).

It is tempting to see the tales of violent action amongAshaninka natives, past or present, as cases of activatedmythopraxis in Sahlins’s sense of the term (Brown andFernandez 1991:6). Yet, Sahlins’s proposition has drawncriticism from various quarters, with some accusing himof reading European mythology into Hawaiian acts andprojecting a 19th-century ritual calendar onto 18th-cen-tury events (Obeyesekere 1992, Bergendorff, Hasager, andHenriques 1988, Friedman 1988). Short of consideringwhat may be the more plausible interpretation of Ha-waiian history, I merely note here that Sahlins’s idea isdefinitely “good to think with.” However, we do needto be careful not to find the motivation for past eventsin mythology that belongs only to the present. Besides,human action, behavior, and native social reproductionare not simply programmed by ready-made spiritual be-liefs and worldviews but as much generated from withinongoing social relationships of exchange, social repro-duction, and adaptation to changing environments. Thisis what the Sahlins-Obeyesekere argument was all about.Sahlins certainly saw the assimilation of the stranger,Cook, into Hawaiian cosmology as having inspired theevents that produced his apotheosis, but he also notedthat when actualized in a particular context any schemeof perception or system of signs is valorized in someselective sense. The actual selection, in action, pointsto an interest. This is because, as Sahlins has it, “inaction the sign is determined also as an ‘interest’, whichis its instrumental value to the acting subject” (1985:150). We may wonder, however, whether any sort of na-tive mythopraxis lurks behind the phenomena currentlylabeled “messianism,” as Brown and Fernandez suggest,and whether either “mythopraxis” or “messianism” isin fact adequate to the task of understanding the nativeinterests and perceptions at play in the 1742 rebellion.

Most important to the argument here, Sahlins does notpropose mythopraxis as a principle orienting action ingeneral. He makes a distinction between cultural ordersin which structure is inscribed in the habitus and ordersin which it is objectified as mythopoetics. The Ilongotand the Americans are examples of the former while theMaori and the Hawaiians represent the latter. The dis-tinction is between structures that are “practiced pri-marily through the individual subconscious and thosethat explicitly organize history as the metaphor of my-thetical realities” (Sahlins 1983:525). Following this lineof thinking, it seems that the egalitarian Ashaninka or-ganize their world in ways that compare with those ofthe Ilongot and the Americans, in which structure is“reproduced as travestied in the aphorisms of the hab-itus—‘we follow our hearts’—and through the unre-flected mastery of its percepts.” This is very differentfrom the sociality of the hierarchical Maori and the Ha-waiians, who are more likely to organize history as “themetaphor of mythical realities.”

Taking this lead from Sahlins, we may perhaps mo-mentarily bracket the question of messianism from the


1742 Amazonian rebellion and try to imagine what thesituation in the Peruvian montana of the early 18th cen-tury might have looked like not from a “native point ofview” (the records are too shallow here) but from thepoint of view of the structures of their social reproduc-tion. As the records show, an interest central to the Am-azonians participating in the 1742 rebellion was the re-production of the conditions of their existence—theirsocial and physical survival. This was the primary in-terest determining the sign value, whatever it may havebeen, of Juan Santos Atahuallpa. It also reflected anambiguity in the native adaptation to the Franciscan pre-sence.

Gifts of Merchandise, Horrors of Disease: TheMissionary’s Dilemma

In colonial and precolonial times the Arawakan-speakingnatives of the Peruvian montana were not merely iso-lated hunters and horticulturalists scattered in interflu-vial upland forests but also traders involved in institu-tionalized partnerships for the exchange of cotton cloth,monkeys, feathers, medical herbs, and other exotic prod-ucts for bronze tools from the Andes. The Ashaninkaand Yanesha of the central montana were one of thepoles, as Taylor (1999:199) has it, “of a vast trade networklinking the great chiefdoms of the Ucayali, the Pano in-terfluve groups, and the Urubamba Piro.” Archaeologyindicates that such trading networks long antedated theEuropean presence in the Americas (Camino 1977, Zar-zar 1983). From the historical records it is clear that theAshaninka were active participants in this trade systemin the 17th and 18th centuries, and trading and exchangehave remained important to most Ashaninka groups tothis day (Veber 1996, Schafer 1988, Bodley 1973).

A major natural resource central to this trade well intothe 20th century was the salt of Cerro de la Sal, whereveins of mineral salt are easy to get at. Located just northof the confluence of the Chanchamayo and PaucartamboRivers, the Cerro de la Sal attracted both Amazoniansand Indians from the eastern Andes. The salt was con-sidered a high-quality condiment and was far more at-tractive than the crude salt made elsewhere in Amazoniaby boiling the water from particularly salty cochas andstreams (Biedma 1979:170–71). In precolonial and colo-nial times it was mined by natives who traveled annuallyfrom far away to secure their supplies. According to thehistorian A. S. Tibesar, the local Ashaninka and Yaneshaseem to have exercised some slight control over the de-posits; he finds no indication that members of othertribes came to the Cerro itself (Tibesar 1950:106–7).Other readings of the records, however, see evidence thatArawakan-speaking Piro and Machiguenga and Pano-speaking Conibo, Shipibo, and Cashibo gathered at themountain (Santos Granero 1987:30). Cerro de la Sal wasalso a center of trade and exchange of a multitude ofother products. The Franciscan friars exploring the areain the early 1600s with a view to building a chain of

mission stations recognized its strategic importance andconcentrated their initial efforts in its vicinity with theintention of taking control of the salt deposits and,through this, of the Indians (Tibesar 1952:24–25).

The strategy by which the Franciscans managed to in-gratiate themselves with the natives was giving themgifts of iron tools. These gifts were given according tosocial status to secure the friendship of particular head-men (Biedma 1979:54, 176). They also served as a “re-ward” for Indians who let themselves be baptized, andthey were part of an effort to make sure that the Indianswho could be persuaded to move into the new missionswould be well equipped with the tools for clearing theforest and planting fields so as to become self-sustainingin food, supplying their own needs as well as those ofthe missions. A report dated 1721 from Father San Josenotes that the mission had supplied 83 axes, 39 dozenknives, more than 4,000 needles, 150 small machetes,50 machetes, a 10-lb. load of iron, and other things tomake the Indians clear the forest for the planting ofmaize and manioc (Ortiz 1978:54). The implication wasthat if the merchandise was subsequently found to havebeen bartered or traded among the Indians rather thanput to use in the fields this was not what the missionarieshad intended.

The Franciscans were keenly aware that giving awayiron tools and other merchandise represented a heavyfinancial burden on the mission organization, and as ameans of winning Indian souls for the Christian faith itdid not prove effective over the long run. With the wis-dom of hindsight, the Franciscan chronicler Jose Amichnoted in 1771 that “most of the Indians were Christiansonly in name, and they submit only through their desireof the tools given to them by the fathers who often gowithout eating in order to give them biscuits, dried beef,sugar, and other things . . . in the hope of overcomingthe hardheartedness of these barbarians with their pa-tience and forbearance” (Amich 1975 [1854]:155, mytranslation).16 The strategy, as it turned out, tended tobackfire, giving rise to sedition if and when the flow ofmerchandise was discontinued. Likewise, gifts of toolsto one headman invariably triggered demands from an-other headman that he and his group be treated similarly.Not responding to such demands angered the malcon-tents and put the missionaries’ lives at risk (Amich 1975[1854]:54–55, 152; see also Valcarcel 1946:46). Thesetools, in particular the axes, machetes, and knives, notonly became a necessity in the Ashaninka system of hor-ticultural production but found their way into the nativesystem of trade as well. If the 18th-century native tradesystem worked along lines roughly similar to those ofthe contemporary one—and I think it may be surmisedfrom the records that it did—the metal tools becameimportant input in the ayompari trading partnerships by

16. “los mas de estos indios solo eran cristianos de nombre, y so-lamente se sujetaban por la golosina de las herramientas que lesdaban los padres, quienes muchas veces dejaban de comer por darlesa ellos . . . el poco socorro de bizcochos, cecina, azucar, etc., . . .con la esperanza de vencer con su paciencia y tolerancia la durezade aquellos barbaros corazones.”


means of which men enhanced their prestige and influ-ence (Bodley 1973, Schafer 1988, Verber 1996). If this isso, it must have been absolutely crucial to headmen—infact to all Ashaninka males but to the headmen in par-ticular—to secure continuous access to this merchan-dise. This may explain the treacherous contradiction ofapparent attraction to the missions and simultaneousabhorrence of them reflected in the continuing series oflocal revolts and defections from the missions followedby new requests for them.

Another complication of mission work was the epi-demics that swept the mission stations from time totime. These were epidemics of common diseases—measles, smallpox, and various forms of flu—that provedlethal to the Indians. Epidemics sometimes killed halfor more of a local population and caused the abandon-ment of missions. Figures for the epidemics that struckthe strategically important mission of San Antonio deEneno in the Perene have been gathered by the Francis-can historian Tibesar, who reports epidemics of one kindor another in 1711, 1713, 1719, 1722, 1723, 1736, and1737. The most severe of these, the 1722–23 epidemic,caused the loss of 580 out of a population of 800, mostof whom died while the rest fled the mission. Over timethe mission population at Eneno fluctuated from 600 in1712 and more than 800 in 1722 to 152 by 1739 (Tibesar1952:36–38). Tibesar finds the epidemic to be “the worstenemy of the mission for not only did it decimate theIndian population but it also gave the medicine men anoccasion for their hostility to the missionary” (p. 37). Hedoes not pursue the question of how this hostility wasexpressed or how it grew out of the native understandingof the state of affairs.

In his studies of Yanesha history, Santos Granero(1987) has found a close correlation between epidemicsthat took the lives of many natives and local revolts inthe early 18th century. The Franciscans themselves werenot aware of the relation between their concentration ofthe natives in mission stations for more effective pros-elytizing and the spread of contagious diseases thatproved deadly to them. The native Amazonians, how-ever, clearly saw the connection and held the Franciscansresponsible. Amich notes that in 1739 the Conibo ac-cused a missionary of being the carrier of a disease thathad devastated their people (1975 [1854]:152). Althoughthe records from the Ashaninka missions have not beenexamined from this perspective, it is a fair guess thatAshaninka lines of reasoning were similar to those ofthe Yanesha and Conibo. Santos Granero (1987:35, mytranslation)17 cites a report written in 1716 by Padre Fran-cisco de San Joseph, head of the montana missions, whostates that

17. “algunos protervos Paganos y diabolicos Encantadores; o Brujospervierten esta ignorante Plebe, para que no atiendan, ni den as-senso a los Sagrados Mysterios, que les predicamos, . . . . Y paramas irritar a la vulgaridad contra nosotros los Religiosos, les inti-man, en todos sus azares les acaecen porque nos permiten en susTierras, y les predicamos que no adoren al Sol. Y que por esta causalas frequentes epidemias los consumen.”

some perverse pagans and diabolic enchanters or sor-cerers pervert these ignorant people in order thatthey not attend or give credence to the sacred mys-teries that we preach. . . . And to further stir up au-dacity against us, the religious, they let them knowthat every misfortune will happen because they al-low us in their country and we instruct them not toworship the Sun and this is why they are being ha-rassed by the frequent epidemics.

The “sorcerers” and “enchanters” alluded to would havebeen headmen and shamans who tried to make sense ofthe situation and point to remedies for its alleviation. Ifsun worship was one such remedy, the killing of mis-sionaries was another, as may be surmised from the reg-ularity with which local revolts appear to have followedlocal epidemics.18

Thus the mixed Yanesha-Ashaninka mission at Enenosaw a revolt in 1712 that left it abandoned, to be rebuiltonly in 1718 (p. 36). Likewise, the epidemic in 1736–37appears to have incited the revolt by the Ashaninka head-man Ignacio Torote and his followers, who ransacked andburned the mission and church at Catalipango on theleft bank of the Ene River, killing six people (includingtwo boys and two women) before setting off for theSonomoro mission in Pangoa. Here they killed threepriests and four other people in the convent and stolesome iron tools and some white clothing from the church(Amich 1975 [1854]:144–45). As an eyewitness to theatrocity, a boy who had been hiding under the stairs inthe convent reported the dying friar Manuel Bajo’s askingTorote why he was doing this killing. The headman hadanswered, “Because you and yours are killing us everyday with your sermons and doctrines, taking our freedomaway. Go ahead and preach then, for now we are thefathers!” The concern expressed by Torote, we may spec-ulate, may have been a concern with power, the abilityto control life and death—power associated with theFranciscans’ esoteric knowledge.

But there was more to it, it seems. Interrogated beforethey were executed by the Spanish, some of his sup-porters declared that Torote and his group had killed thepriests because they continually admonished them tolive as a good Christians, forcing them to attend Bibleschool and to kneel in church during Mass, and finallyforbade their having many wives and stealing the con-vent’s iron tools (p. 149). There was apparently more thanone reason that the natives intermittently took up armsagainst the missions and the missionaries—and messi-anism had very little to do with it. Therefore, when themassive revolt broke out in 1742, it was no sudden oc-currence brought about by the arbitrary advent of a self-proclaimed messiah but the continuation of an ongoingand dynamic—although somewhat ambiguous—nativeadaptation-opposition to the Franciscan presence in themontana. The Ashaninka did not want the Franciscans,

18. Killing missionaries who were found “guilty” of bringing dis-eases that killed people appears to resonate with contemporarypractices among the Ashaninka of summarily executing “witches”in their midst who are believed to cause deaths.


their diseases, and their bans on native modes of living,but they did want their merchandise, especially themetal tools they provided. The contradictory pattern ofacceptance and rejection of the missions by the nativepopulations characterizing the century of Franciscanovertures prior to 1742 reflects this dilemma.

In the end, the diseases may have been the decisivefactor that persuaded even headmen who for years hadremained loyal to the missions to join the ranks of therebels. One well-known case was that of the Yaneshaheadman and long-term ally of the Franciscans Mateo deAssia, curaca of the missions of Eneno and Metraro, whohad organized a militia against the followers of IgnacioTorote in 1737. In the epidemic during the same period,however, he had lost almost all of his children—threedaughters and two of his three sons, as the records care-fully note. Moreover, he had been subjected to a shame-ful flogging when he had refused an order by a Franciscanto whip an Ashaninka guilty of having more than onewife. When Juan Santos began organizing the natives inrebellion in 1742, Mateo de Assia joined him (Tibesar1952). With him was his brother-in-law, Antonio Gatica,an African slave who had married Don Mateo’s sisterand risen to become the leader, with the title of “Sar-gento Mayor,” of the African residents in all of the mon-tana missions. Both men were given important positionsin Santos’s rebel “army,” and the fact that they con-trolled the arms and cannon of the Eneno garrison provedcrucial in securing the success of the revolt in the UpperPerene (Amich 1975 [1854]:158).

Native Agency Reconsidered

The headmen of the 18th century who became allies ofJuan Santos may or may not have accepted his claims tobe a son of the Sun, the Inka. They had reasons of theirown for turning against the Franciscan missionaries, aswe have seen: as a result of Franciscan efforts to refashionAshaninka ways of living, people were dying or seekingrefuge elsewhere. Being responsible for the welfare oftheir people, the headmen time and again had turned toviolent action. By 1742 it was easy for Santos to becomethe catalyst for a comprehensive general rebellion. Theprojects pursued by Santos and by the Ashaninka, how-ever, were not identical. The former held no grudgeagainst the Franciscans and apparently did everything hecould to save their lives and ensure their safe passageout of the region. As Zarzar (1989) has demonstrated, hisproject was establishing a new kingdom forged from asyncretism of Christian and Andean ideas with himselfas the top figure. The Ashaninka rebels do not appear tohave shared this objective. What mattered to them wasthe expulsion or, more precisely, the killing of the mis-sionaries and their allies, including the Ashaninka con-verts—an act of purification to restore the physical andmental health of the people. This, in fact, was the “valuecomponent” of the movement. In a sociopolitical senseit was simultaneously a practical act of rejecting the par-ticular Franciscan version of colonization. Killing the

missionaries or forcing them to leave under threat, more-over, made the stores of goods in the Franciscan missionstations immediately available to anyone who was thereto take them. It is no wonder that Santos had little dif-ficulty finding supporters for his campaign.

There were spiritual elements to the rebellion as well.To hunters and horticulturalists whose subsistence de-pends on their maintaining ongoing communicationwith the keepers of animals and plants and with spiritbeings for all sorts of other purposes, there is no way ofnot being in a spiritual mode some, if not all, of the time.This hardly constitutes a messianic proclivity as such.Yet, if messianism was not a motivating drive behindthe rebellion, an ex post facto semideification of JuanSantos might still have developed among the subgroupson whose lives he had a particular impact. Among theYanesha and Ashaninka in the Chanchamayo, both nar-ratives and physical remains of the past point to thelikely impact of Santos and certainly the importance ofmetal tools in native culture and history.

The importance of the Amazonian revolt in the eyesof the colonial authorities lay not in the threat of lib-eration of the forest Indians but in the attempt to liberatethose of the highlands. The viceregal preference wastherefore containment. In 1756, after a series of unsuc-cessful military campaigns, the Spanish authoritiessealed off the frontier to put an end to the increasingdefections of highland Indians to the enemy and preventthe latter from entering the highlands (Lehnertz 1972;see also Santos Granero 1992a:109). To secure the clo-sure, the frontier towns were garrisoned, and forts wereset up at important points of access to cut the lines ofcommunication and intercept Andean renegades. SantosGranero (1988) has shown that this interruption of nor-mal Andean-Amazonian intercourse had an unexpectedand unprecedented side effect that also points to thetopic of utmost importance to the Amazonians prior to,during, and after the rebellion—the supply of metal tools,a crucial element in the indigenous system of social re-production.

With the missionaries driven off and access to tradewith the Andean peoples blocked by Spanish militaryposts, the problem of maintaining the supply of iron toolswas taken care of in a new way. The Amazonians andthe serranos and mestizos who had joined their ranksrehabilitated the mission forges and turned to producingiron tools of their own, taking advantage of the iron oredeposits in the Chanchamayo. Prior to the rebellion toolsand bulk iron had been imported by the missionariesfrom the Andean towns, and mission blacksmiths hadprimarily been limited to repair work. The new situationcalled for the development of local supplies not only oftools but of the metal from which they could be made(Santos Granero 1988). A hundred years later, when thefrontier was reopened, explorers and military expeditionsto the Selva Central found 12 forges, 10 of them still inoperation. According to Santos Granero, native oral tra-dition mentions another 9 such locales of tool production(pp. 10–14). Native converts had been taught ironwork-ing by Spanish and mestizo blacksmiths employed by


the Franciscans for mission services, and when theyjoined the rebels in the 1740s they helped turn Juan San-tos’s promises of goods into actual delivery. We do notknow to what extent this local production met the de-mand for tools. Zarzar (1989:35) observes that by 1766Piro Indians were requesting the presence of mission-aries, whom they then attacked in order to carry off thegoods they brought; this may indicate that supplies werefar from sufficient. Likewise, we have no way of ascer-taining the quality of the tools produced in the nativeforges; Santos Granero (1988:9) cites evidence to the ef-fect that it may have been rather low.

During the military campaigns to establish Peruviancontrol of the central montana in the latter part of the19th century, the forges were destroyed. Supplying metaltools to the Amazonians from then on fell to the non-native settlers, patrons, and hacendados who were de-scending on the montana in ever-increasing numbers.The scenario is very succinctly summarized in the Inkamyth recorded by Weiss (1975:419–25) in the Tambo re-gion, a myth not merely contemplating what may hap-pen but explaining what has already happened, turninghistorical into mythical realities rather than the otherway round.19 According to the myth, in ancient times,in a great flood, Inka went downriver to River’s End,where the whites took him captive. He is the one whomakes shotguns, gunpowder, trade beads, everything.The soldiers keep him from returning to his fellow tribes-men (Ashaninka) to make the Indians poor so that theywill work for them.

Examining the legends with an eye to the specificityof the impact of mission work on Ashaninka social re-production has brought out structural contexts and in-terpretations of Ashaninka worldviews that render themessianic hypothesis somewhat superfluous. The rebel-lion sparked by Juan Santos emerged not from a beliefin divine intervention but from a dialogue between vi-olent native self-confidence—“We are the masters/fa-thers/gods” (consider Torote’s words to the dyingfriar)—and the historical dynamics of social and physicalreproduction of native society. As a description of thissetting “messianic” seems a misnomer. As far as weknow, there are no messiahs or messiah-like figures inAshaninka mythology. To the extent that divinities ortrickster figures possess powers of transforming theworld,20 the outcome is never a millenarian or ideal orderbut a world as it is currently known. This is accom-plished through pragmatic, clever, or deceitful action ofthe sort expected of Ashaninka actors—headmen, sha-mans, or others—sometimes aided by their symbolic ac-cess to spiritual or extraterrestrial sources of power. Suchaccess may invigorate Ashaninka leadership but hardlymotivates it or constitutes its basis.

19. I am grateful to Robin Wright for pointing to this translationof history into myth in his comments on the first version of mypaper.20. According to Ashaninka mythology the great transformer Avı-reri fashioned the present world by deviously turning people intoanimals, plants, rocks, celestial bodies, etc. (Weiss 1975; see alsoHvalkof n.d.).

Ashaninka leadership as known from 20th-centuryfieldwork reflects an order in which small, autonomous,and widely dispersed settlements form the basic units ofsocial reproduction. A settlement is roughly the equiv-alent of an extended family, with the male head of thesenior household as its leader.21 Settlements united byties of kinship and marriage and localized within a lim-ited territory may form a loosely organized association,a local group, whose leader will be the head of one ofthe larger families and a man considered more gifted andmore powerful than others, a primus inter pares; his au-thority will be recognized only as long as he is capableof appearing “strong.” He is expected to provide for “his”people by ensuring their access to vital productive re-sources and overseeing peaceful interaction within thegroup and to represent the group vis-a-vis outsiders. Heleads through persuasion and influence. This form ofleadership is fragile and consensus-oriented. Over timethis political order oscillates between a pattern of local-ized convergence around relatively few strong and pow-erful leaders, on the one hand, and a total diffusion ofleadership devolving onto practically each individualhead of family, on the other. Local groups provide theorganizational matrix through which the Ashaninka actfor self-defense and change.

Assuming that leadership among 18th-century Asha-ninka was of this kind, acceptance of Juan Santos’s lead-ership would have depended on his ability to offer re-sources or expertise that might attract the allegiance ofor could compare favorably with those of local groupleaders or headmen. Apart from any claims to divinity,his knowledge of mission infrastructure, Spanish mili-tary strategy, and the possibility of setting up forges mayhave been resources he could draw upon, but these re-sources were nondurable. Once the Franciscan missionwas gone, the Ashaninka had little use for him. Whetherthe forges in the Upper Perene owed their existence en-tirely to renegade mission blacksmiths or to Santos’sorganizing skills or both we have no way of knowing. Inany case, if Santos rose to become a superstar in the eyesof these forest natives, he hardly remained one for verylong. His military and political influence waned as thefrontier was sealed off, and his divine status faded ac-cordingly. Franciscan records lose track of him after1752,22 the occasion of a major attack on the Andeantown of Andamarca—the last attack mounted by the re-bels (Varese 1973 [1968]:203; Lehnertz 1972:122–23).

So much for the 1742 rebellion. If this were the onlyinstance of perceived “messianism” among the Asha-ninka, Yanesha, and neighboring groups in the UpperAmazon, the story would end here. Some writers, how-ever, find evidence of messianism in past and presentAshaninka narratives some of which recall Juan SantosAtahuallpa.

21. Ethnographic descriptions of Ashaninka leadership may befound in Bodley (1971), Elick (1970), Rojas (1994), and Veber (1996,1998).22. According to the Handbook of South American Indians (Stew-ard 1963 [1946–59], vol. 2:385), Juan Santos Atahuallpa disappearedfrom Spanish view after 1750.


Continuing Mythologies

Contributing to the persistence of the idea of Ashaninkamessianism is the fact that Juan Santos’s reputation ap-pears to have survived in myth among the native groupsin the Upper Perene. According to Rojas (1994) and San-tos Granero (1991), Juan Santos is known among Asha-ninka in the Pichis and Perene as “Sacaramentaro,” theAshaninka rendition of “Jesus Sacramentado,” the namehe applied to himself.23 Likewise, Juan Santos figures inYanesha mythology as Yompor Santo (Santos Granero1991:80–84). Considering the spectacular reality of thenative forges, it is little wonder that the events surround-ing their establishment are reflected in native mythol-ogy. Moreover, Santos Granero has established that theforges were associated with Yanesha temples, and he seesin this a clear link to a symbolic semideification of JuanSantos among these native populations.

In the Gran Pajonal, in contrast, recollections of JuanSantos appear to be absent. That this should be so couldbe related to the fact that he spent only a little timeamong the Pajonal Asheninka. When he first appearedin the Selva Central in 1742, he was made welcome inQuisopango on the Upper Shima River in Gran Pajonalterritory. This was where he first called a meeting andwhere he was contacted by emissaries of the Franciscanmission. Only a few months later, however, he movedhis headquarters up the Perene Valley and establishedhimself in the region of Metraro, a religious center forthe Yanesha in a mixed Yanesha and Ashaninka area.Apparently this is where he spent the remainder of hislife. Years later the missionaries picked up rumors thatSantos had been killed by the Indians among whom helived. Some Ashaninka who claimed to have been hiscaptains were interviewed by a Franciscan friar duringhis brief stay in 1766 with the Conibo in the Ucayali.They told him that Juan Santos had been given poisonto drink and that he had died at the old mission stationof Metraro in the Perene, “vanishing in a cloud ofsmoke” (Ortiz 1974:174; Varese 1973 [1968]:205). Ac-cording to other hearsay conveyed a century later by oneCarranza, president of the Center of Geography inTarma, he had been fatally hit by a rock hurled at himduring a mock battle (Ortiz 1974:175; Metraux 1942:724).

Alfred Metraux relates a rumor that Juan Santos’s re-mains had been buried under the ruins of a Christianchapel and for more than 150 years the Ashaninka hadworshipped his memory by annually renewing a tuniclaid over his tomb in a vain hope of his resurrection(1942:725). He does not indicate his sources. Santos Gra-nero has traced this rumor to the reports of two late-19th-century travelers, La Combe and Carranza, andfinds it confirmed in Yanesha oral tradition (personalcommunication, April 2000). A. Wertheman, engaged inan armed expedition to the Ucayali in 1876, heard it said

23. Santos Granero has collected a myth on Sacalamentaro (a slightvariation on “Sacramentado”) from an Asheninka informant fromthe Pichis River (personal communication, April 2000).

that Juan Santos’s memory was celebrated among theAsheninka in an annual ceremony in the Gran Pajonalduring which his sword was carried about in procession.Moreover, objects from the church that had been set upby the mission were being carefully kept by the descen-dant of the long-gone sacristan (Wertheman 1878:139–40; Varese 1973 [1968]:237). In The Power of LoveSantos Granero identifies the latter rumor as derivingfrom the Yanesha myth of Yompor Santo, alias the his-torical figure of Juan Santos Atahuallpa. In this mythol-ogy, a sorcerer, Shellmem, kills Yompor Santo, his clas-sificatory brother (1991:82–83). Obviously, if Juan Santoswas a divine figure, it would have taken a man with thespecial powers of a sorcerer to kill him. Myths and ru-mors of this sort may be interpreted in several differentways.

Native myths form a specific sort of collective under-standing of historical processes. Historical conscious-ness is, however, a selective identification rather thanan objective rendering of “facts” (Hill 1988:7). Oral tra-dition and myth reveal how contemporary Ashaninkaand Yanesha understand and categorize the past, but theyhardly tell us how Juan Santos was perceived by the Am-azonians more than 200 years ago. As Hill has pointedout, the historical “accuracy” of indigenous formula-tions of history “is not separable from the specific so-ciocultural and linguistic traditions . . . in terms of whichsuch interpretations are created” (p. 3). In this case, Yane-sha and to a lesser extent Perene Ashaninka mythologyconfirms that Juan Santos played a dramatic role in thehistory of the particular regional groups with whom helived for almost a decade, a role important enough toallow him to migrate into native mythology and becomea godly savior. Obviously, this is the perception of himafter the event, and it is a perception found only amonga minority of Peruvian Arawakan-speakers. It is hardlythe equivalent of a native perception of Juan Santos priorto and motivating the rebellion in 1742.

In support of the messianic thesis, some writers havemarshaled native mythology focusing on materialwealth. The argument suggests that Juan Santos gainedthe allegiance of the Ashaninka through his promise tobring them great things—many tools and all the treas-ures of the Spanish—once he had been installed as Incaheir and rightful master of it all (Amich 1975 [1854]:156).Brown and Fernandez invoke the myth of Inkarrı to ex-plain Ashaninka allegiance to Juan Santos. This myth,widely shared by Andean Indians, is a myth of loss andreturn, destruction and renewal, and contains elementsof anticipation of the good life to come. Brown and Fer-nandez see it as a bridge by which Andean millenarianthinking could have filtered into Amazonian cosmology.Indeed, they find it to be “woven into the history ofAshaninka responses to the ever-increasing power of Eu-ropeans,” and they hypothesize that, “although Juan San-tos is now specifically remembered by few Ashaninkas,his uprising was instrumental in bringing the myth ofInkarrı to life and tethering it to concrete acts of resis-tance” (1991:53). We have no way of knowing if notionsof Inkarrı were part of Ashaninka mythology in 1742.


We do know, however, that the Ashaninka eagerly de-manded iron tools and other goods that the missionariessupplied. Juan Santos promised to make these goodsavailable in the future, and he was acquainted with theways of the Spanish and with the realm from which thegoods came;24 there was no further need to tolerate theFranciscans.

Weiss relates a comparable myth collected among theTambo Ashaninka in which Inka is a technological gen-ius being held captive by the whites to make them rich.This Inka had originally been an important man, a sheri-piari, among the Ashaninka, and the myth anticipateshis restoration someday to his rightful place (Weiss 1972:197). According to Weiss, the Inka in Ashaninka mythis not a reflection of past Inca glory but an Ashaninkawith extraordinary powers. He argues that the Inkarrımyth as told among the Ashaninka represents a trans-formation of their elaborate Avıreri myth cycle, in whichthe transformer deity remains trapped at River’s End,kept busy holding up the world (Weiss 1986).

Features reminiscent of a cargo cult may of course beseen in this transformation. Varese has related the Asha-ninka desire for things to ideas represented in Asha-ninka myths of the Pachakamaite (Asheninka plural ofPachacama). According to this myth, as recorded by Va-rese, Pachacama is a son of the Sun. He lives downriver,at River’s End (the world’s end), and he makes everythingworth having—machetes, axes, guns, metal pots, gun-powder, etc. The whites keep all this to themselves, butit may eventually be restored to the Ashaninka, its right-ful owners (Varese 1973 [1968]:309–23).25 Varese sees inthis myth an expression of spirituality that holds out thepromise of the coming of a divine savior who will in-tervene directly in earthly life and restore primordial jus-tice and order. The native shamans to some extent fillthis prophetic role, but every now and then a hero ap-pears and turns hope into action, even war—holy war,as Varese sees it (p. 312). As the myth reads, the Asha-ninka appear to have lost the knowledge that once al-lowed them to reach out to Pachacama and obtain hisgifts. According to Varese, the whites have created toomany obstacles for the Asheninka to do this on their own—hence their need for a savior (p. 317).

I have some difficulty with this interpretation. I do notsee where he finds the savior-to-come in the myth. Pa-chacama himself is hardly likely to start moving, andthere is no mention in the myth of a son of his or of anyother being who might serve as a messenger to earth.There are indeed obstacles that the Ashaninka need toovercome in order to reach him—obstacles created by

24. Some of the sources report Juan Santos as being fluent inQuechua, Spanish, and Latin and as having traveled in Europe andAfrica in the service of the Jesuit mission and well aware of inter-national politics, including the dormant conflict between Britainand Spain. Unverified rumors had it that he had hoped to enlistBritish support for his revolution (Valcarcel 1946:50–52; Varese1973 [1968]:179; Brown and Fernandez 1991:43).25. An identical version of this myth was recorded by Søren Hvalkofin the same region 20 years later (fieldnotes in the possession ofSøren Hvalkof and Hanne Veber).

whites, who have thrown so many sticks into the riverthat passage has been blocked. Yet, the myth also en-visions a quest for knowledge by which intrepid Asha-ninka, such as shamans, sheripiari (“users of tobacco”),may succeed in overcoming the obstacles to reach Pa-chacama. Enrique Rojas presents a version of the mythrecorded in the Perene in 1986 that lays out in detail thetravels of the sheripiari en route to Pachacama (Rojas1994:71–75). If this myth is about the coming of a savior,to my reading that savior looks very much like anAshaninka. Salvation is not in a messiah/messenger butin the message: that it is up to the Ashaninka themselvesto overcome the obstacles. The sheripiari and the presentlocal headmen and political leaders are the ones histor-ically—and currently—engaged in this effort.

Weiss observes that Pachacama does not figure prom-inently in Ashaninka mythology. As a hero or god hemay be derived from Pachacamac, an ancient deity for-merly worshipped on the Peruvian coast and only a re-cent import from the highlands into the montana (Weiss1975:492). Benavides (1986), in contrast, suggests that themyth of the technological genius was important in shap-ing the articulation of native-Franciscan relations basedon the delivery by the missionaries of goods that, as faras the latter were concerned, had been rightfully madefor the Ashaninka.

To corroborate the thesis of Ashaninka messianism,Brown and Fernandez have searched the records for ev-idence of any sort. They cite a passage from the diary ofFather Gabriel Sala, who headed an expedition across theGran Pajonal in 1897, the first undertaken by nonnativesthrough that area since the revolt of the 1740s. Accordingto his entry dated March 10, Sala had heard it said by anAshaninka “that in Chanchamayo the Campas and thewhites are fighting, and that there has appeared againthe Amachegua, descended from heaven, to help us inthe combat” (quoted in Brown and Fernandez 1991:60–61). One such amacenka or amachegua is subse-quently identified as the infamous Carlos Fermin Fitz-carraldo. Weiss explains that at the time amacenkaappears to have meant not “friendly spirits” (as it doestoday) but “our tribesmen,” “good friends” (1975:258):“It is possible that formerly the word amacenka didmean among the Campas what ashaninka means today,but that missionary influence, taking the form of a mis-understanding of the catechism as it was translated, gavethe word a strictly supernatural significance” (pp. 274–75n. 4). Sala himself may have contributed to this shift inthe meaning of the term; when he was told that theamachegua had descended from heaven to aid the na-tives in combat, he replied that the only true amacheguawas Jesus, the Son of God, and that the amachegua whoprovoked them to fight in the Pangoa and Chanchamayowas some rogue who wanted to exploit them (Sala 1925(1897):533).26

Brown and Fernandez construct Sala’s reference toamachegua as an example of Ashaninka messianism

26. Weiss takes Sala’s reference to the Amachegua as documentaryproof of the present meaning of the term, “friendly spirits.”


(1991:61–62). They cite Weiss as an authority on the(contemporary) meaning of amacenka but disregard hisexplication of the term as including all sorts of spiritbeings capable of taking on different visible forms. Theytake it that the amachegua in Sala’s report is a “divineemissary” to the Ashaninka rather than simply “a goodfriend,” although perhaps in spirit form, the importantif subtle difference being the type of authority the ama-cenka may command. If the term is taken to refer to adivine emissary, it supposedly carries the weight of le-gitimate obedience or respect. Considering Brown andFernandez’s stated intention, “to underscore the waysIndians have responded dynamically, often with greatsuccess, to the challenge of colonialism” (p. xiii), we mayask whether the historical incidents of Ashaninka mil-itancy are best explained as the inspired effects of thepresence of a messiah—of a “messianism” latent in na-tive cosmology—or, alternatively, as mobilization toconfront crises of one sort or another. Ashaninka re-sponses have been dynamic indeed. They treat perceived“sons of the Father” pretty much as they please, even tothe point of killing them, and they do not hesitate tooverwrite the projects of such “prophets” with quite dif-ferent projects of their own.

In contrast to Brown and Fernandez, I do not take Sah-lins’s notion of “mythopraxis” as a recipe for Ashaninkamessianism. Reading messianism—whether mediatedby Juan Santos, by European merchandise, or by a com-bination of the two—into the Ashaninka’s responses tocolonization represents them as enacting structures of acosmology that may not even be their own. This is com-parable to the sort of “symbolic violence done to othertimes and other customs” that Sahlins finds in Obeye-sekere’s ascription of Western-style “practical rational-ity” to the Hawaiians (Sahlins 1995:14). Although someAshaninka may at times have been inclined to followbizarre self-proclaimed leaders, it is an overextension toattribute messianism to them on this basis. Clearly, theAshaninka write their own scripts. What they need andknow how to exploit is not perceived mythic messengersbut real resource persons—sources of knowledge and ac-cess to economic and political resources. These figuresmay subsequently reappear in myth (myth being a formof historical consciousness), but this hardly constitutes“messianism.”

Anthropology’s Interpretive Politics

Historical records from the 19th and 20th centuries in-form us of many cases of native violence, but they donot relate these incidents to native messianism in anyform. The correlations between militant activism andmessianic beliefs are made in anthropological readingsof selected records and narratives. With one exceptionthe works promoting the idea of Ashaninka messianismare based not on fieldwork but on the historical recordscited in Metraux’s (1942) and Steward’s (1963 [1948])cases and on the ethnohistorical studies of other re-searchers in the cases of Taylor (1999) and Brown (1991;

Brown and Fernandez 1991). Eduardo Fernandez is theonly one who has spent time in the field with Ashaninkainformants. His collaboration with Michael Brown tookoff from oral histories recorded by Fernandez in the Sa-tipo-Pangoa region in the 1980s (Fernandez 1986). Fromthese he had learned that some Ashaninka and Nomat-siguenga had joined a group of revolutionary guerrillasin 1965, and these natives allegedly regarded the leaderof the group as a “son of the Sun” (p. 28). This inspiredBrown and Fernandez to embark on more thorough re-search into the incidents of 1965.27 They contextualizedthe case in terms of the existing ethnographic and his-torical literature and asked the obvious question whetherthis was a contemporary instance of Ashaninka messi-anism. Their answer, as we have seen, was in the affir-mative, although they chose to characterize the nativedisposition as one of “millennial dreams.”

Interpretations of historical events differ depending onthe narrator and, in anthropology, the persuasiveness ofthe anthropologist. Two different renderings of the sameevents may illustrate this: In the 1920s, turbulence wascreated among the Ashaninka when the Adventist mis-sionary Fernando Stahl traveled through the montanaadvertising his (millennarian) doctrine, making converts,and setting up missions (Stahl 1932, Bodley 1972, Veber1991, Santos Granero and Barclay 1998). Many Asha-ninka who had been contracted to work for the PeruvianCorporation, Ltd., a major British-owned coffee producerin the Upper Perene Valley, were inspired by this activityto abandon the hard work on the plantation and join thenew missions. Later on some of these converts soughtnew lands in other montana regions. These migrationshave been seen by most anthropologists as resulting fromnative dispossession through the takeover of Ashaninkalands by foreign settlers (Bodley 1972, Narby 1989, San-tos Granero and Barclay 1998).

The tales recorded by Fernandez in the Satipo-Pangoaregion in the 1980s relate the same events somewhatdifferently. They tell of small groups of natives who fol-low inspired whites into marginal areas or into armedattacks on nonnative settlers, believing the instigatorsto be sons of the Father, Itomi Pava. Only when theadventure turns into disaster do they realize that theyare being deceived (Fernandez 1986:111–12, 154). Fer-nandez takes these narratives as clear evidence of a mes-sianic proclivity (p. 28). Besides Juan Santos Atahuallpa,the list of alleged messiah figures that emerges fromFernandez’s narratives includes the Movimiento de Iz-quierda Revolucionaria (MIR) guerrilla leader GuillermoLobaton, an Ashaninka shaman, and a “gringo” mission-ary.28

Fernandez’s enthusiasm, however, may have led to anoverextension of his solidarity with the narratives of hisinformants—or is it with the pervasive, if diffuse, pres-

27. Their book provides important details on the brief engagementwith and annihilation of the leftist guerillas in the Peruvian Am-azon in 1965 and is therefore an important document of Ashaninkaand Nomatsiguenga ethnohistory.28. The Spanish term gringo is used by Ashaninka to refer to personsof Caucasian ancestry.


ence of Christian imagery in the Western world?—interms of accepting the “son of the Father” idiom as ev-idence of a native belief in a messiah. For all we know,the “son of the Father” may be a Christian idiom usedby polite informants to render their exotic ideas of per-mutations between spiritual and earthly realms compre-hensible to their anthropologist friend and his tape re-corder. The tales and oral histories collected byFernandez are accounts by Ashaninka of how other As-haninka have been fooled by their own misapprehen-sions. They tell of the disastrous results of believing thewords of strangers or fellow Ashaninka who claim thatthis or that other person is spiritually endowed. Brownand Fernandez (1991:167) recognize the doubts of theinformants, but they consider them “not doubts in thereality of Itomi Pava but in the veracity of [the messen-ger—in this case an Ashaninka shaman].” To me thelessons of the tales, if any, sound more like “Don’t be-lieve everything you hear” and “Be wary of leaders.”Wariness is, of course, a form of recognition of a phe-nomenon, but if Fernandez’s tales point to messianismamong the Ashaninka they also represent an awarenessthat human claims to divine or semidivine status maymean disaster. What, in fact, is the phenomenon towhich “Itomi Pava” refers? Hardly the second comingof Christ in any form but more likely, as Varese intui-tively surmised, a notion that divinity is immanent inthe world as the Ashaninka perceive it (1973 [1968]:86,304).

Anthropologists who take an interest in native historytend to agree that indigenous narratives express percep-tions of native relations to changing environments(Hugh-Jones 1989, Turner 1988, and other papers in Hill1988). Sometimes they do this by means of idioms thatimply the easy transformation of men into gods and viceversa. Narratives may provide the terms for politicalstrategies, but basically they serve as instruments of ob-jectification; therefore the “messianism” to which Fer-nandez’s tales refer may amount to a “synoptic illusion”in Bourdieu’s sense of a sort of logical model (or in thiscase a native model) that accounts for the observed be-havior in a coherent and economical way. Such a model,Bourdieu (1990:11) warns, becomes false and dangerousif treated as the real principles of practice. Sahlins (1981)acknowledged the same when he cautioned anthropol-ogy against privileging system over worldly practice. An-thropologists should not miss this point, and whetherthe narratives are indigenous or given by Franciscan mis-sionaries we should be wary of mistaking the texts ofnarratives for historical analysis or evidence of what re-ally happened.

In a 1996 commentary on his own work, Brown ex-presses his regret that he and Fernandez in their studyof Ashaninka collaboration with MIR guerillas in 1965had “let an inspiring story of resistance distract us froma more thorough analysis of the specific content ofAshaninka prophecy.” He continues (p. 731):

The Ashaninka who inserted themselves into thisconflict were not only responding to external chal-

lenge but also advancing their own vision of existen-tial redefinition or transcendence. It is easy to pi-geonhole these aspirations by cataloging them as the“hopes of the oppressed.” . . . Although accurate,such labels cannot fully address or comprehend thespecificity of Ashaninka dreams of world transfor-mation or the internal struggles that these touchedoff within Ashaninka society itself.

I fully agree. I would only add that “messianism” is an-other pigeonhole that Brown might have added to thelist of distractions by which research sometimes fails toaddress ethnographic specifics. We are all—myself in-cluded—subject to such distractions from time to time.This is a risk of focusing: things not currently in focusbecome blurred. In working solely with historical textsand narratives as opposed to data based on observationsin the field, the risk may be particularly high: the relative“silence” of texts as opposed to the shifting “noise” ofthe practices of living men and women permit one toremain unaware that some areas are blurred.

Reading Ashaninka culture and forms of conscious-ness from historical texts appears to require a distinctionbetween the idea of messiah-inspired redemption and theontology of divinity as immanent in the world. The twoperspectives hardly amount to the same thing. Notionsthat earthly and spiritual forms coexist within a singlespace-time continuum form part of a native discourse bywhich the Ashaninka represent the world to themselvesand to others. “Translating” these representations interms of messianism mystifies native perceptions andlogics of action, particularly if this “messianism” is pro-jected through the invocation of a tendency that oncloser examination turns out to be partial and often offsetby other, more important inclinations. I do not claimthat messianism is nonexistent among Arawakan peoplein eastern Peru. I argue that even if some form of mes-sianism is found among some of these people some ofthe time, the extension of the label “messianic” to thewhole of Ashaninka culture and history contributes littleto their understanding.

Key notions in anthropology—culture, tribe, cargocult, society—sometimes pass through phases of decon-struction only to reemerge either for lack of a better termor because they capture universal perceptions that refuseto be deconstructed out of existence (Sahlins 1999, Lind-strom 1993). Lamont Lindstrom has discussed the am-biguities of Melanesian “cargoism” and reached the con-clusion that, despite serious ethnographic flaws,“cargoism” is here to stay, and at this stage anthropologyis better off with it than without it (1993:4–6, 41–52).This is so, argues Lindstrom, because although the cat-egory was coined to represent something specificallyMelanesian, “cargoism” captures expressions of humandesire that are universal and therefore illuminates ratherthan obscures Melanesian phenomena. Sahlins (1999)points to the tour de force of the “culture” concept insimilar terms. Concepts, in other words, may be not en-tirely right and still be useful. This argument hardlyworks, however, in defense of “messianism” as applied


to the Ashaninka. The concept signals attention to aform of agency centered on a prophet or savior figure,and native agency and collective action come to hingeon the existence of this figure. This perspective fails tocapture the dynamics of competition and continuity inthe complex and volatile forms of Ashaninka leadershipby which collective action and the reproduction of nativesociety are actualized and given shape.

In the end I realize that what has bothered me themost about the notion of Ashaninka “messianism” isthe risk that it may be used to label contemporary, on-going movements on the part of the Asheninka, includ-ing their armed confrontations with the infamous Sen-dero Luminoso. To Alfred Metraux and others in earlyAmazonian studies, “messianism” may have been ameans of making native acts of violence comprehensible,but times have changed. There is a new anthropologythat is developing a sensitivity to specificities of localand historical contexts and motivating a critical consid-eration of the language we use to describe the world. Theconcepts we use are not innocent scientific devices butpolysemic interventions in the real lives of people. In aworld of globalization, antiglobalization, and nationalisttension, messianic militancy in Peru as elsewhere tendsto become a matter for the courts and the military. “Mes-sianism” does not signal legitimate political claims tothe rectification of inequities—something that politi-cians might find solutions for; instead it takes us to adomain inhabited by fanatics. Besides, the metaphor ofcreativity as paternal procreation that lurks behind itdeprives its subjects of their subjectivity by placing thembeyond rational political communication. The migrationof “messianism” into Ashaninka ethnography encour-ages the reading of messianism into any and all formsof Ashaninka collective action and preempts interpretivespace that might otherwise invite analysis of the spe-cifics of Ashaninka history. In this way it ensures itsdiscursive perpetuation in Ashaninka ethnography—unless the revelatory archaeology of its production suc-ceeds in clearing the space by deconstructing itsverisimilitude.

Comments

michael f . brownDepartment of Anthropology and Sociology, WilliamsCollege, Williamstown, Mass. 01267, U.S.A.([email protected]). 4 xi 02

Veber’s provocative essay invites a reassessment ofworks that grapple with what many observers, myselfincluded, have interpreted as messianic currents inAshaninka revolts from the 1740s through the 1960s.Space limitations preclude a thorough consideration ofall of Veber’s arguments, so I can offer only a generalresponse that selectively addresses both her ethno-

graphic claims and the theoretical perspective that in-forms them.

First, however, a clarification. Although it is true thatWar of Shadows (Brown and Fernandez 1991) assessesthe history of millenarian thought in the responses ofAshaninka and Nomatsiguenga communities to thechallenge of colonization, the book’s broader aim is tosurvey the circulation of utopian and dystopian ideasamong all social actors, native and nonnative alike, oneastern Peru’s historical stage. Thus the millennialismof Franciscan theology in the 16th century and the uto-pian optimism of the MIR’s Guevarist guerrilla move-ment in 1965 interest me and my coauthor as much asthe Ashaninka’s strategic use of messianic idioms insome but by no means all of their collective acts ofresistance.

Much of Veber’s essay is taken up with a recountingof Ashaninka rebellions that predate the 1742 uprisingidentified with Juan Santos Atahuallpa. Fernandez andI, too, document those events in great detail. Neither ourbook nor the work of Varese or Bodley or any of the otherprimary or secondary sources of which I am aware sug-gests that these revolts were primarily religious move-ments. The regional rebellion that lasted from 1742 untilaround 1756, however, is different from its predecessorsin structure and scope. Its unusual features suggest theinfluence of forces beyond simple rebelliousness. Why,for instance, should Ashaninka have paid any attentionto a self-promoting apostate Jesuit novice (if indeed thatis what Juan Santos was) who probably did not speaktheir language or comprehend their religious beliefs? Oneof the reasons is that by the 1740s Ashaninka territoryhad become a cultural mosaic that included settlers andfugitives of Spanish, Andean, and African origin. Thesenewly arrived people exchanged knowledge, materialculture, and marital partners with local Arawakans.Within this creolized society new ideas, some of themmessianic, could take root and thrive. To portray the JuanSantos rebellion as a garden-variety expression ofAshaninka resistance strips it of all distinctiveness,hardly the way to advance an anthropology sensitive, asVeber puts it, “to specificities of local and historicalcontext.”

Given the ambiguities and lacunae of early sources,Veber’s skepticism about the uprising of 1742 is war-ranted. When she turns to more recent history, however,her account relentlessly reshapes anything that evenfaintly resembles messianism into an expression of prac-tical reason, tempered only by an acknowledgment that“divinity is immanent in the world as the Ashaninkaperceive it”—a formulation so diffuse that it can be ap-plied to much of humanity. Thus, for instance, the well-documented mass assembly of hundreds of Ashaninkaat the mission of the Adventist missionary FernandoStahl in the 1920s (Stahl 1932, Bodley 1972) is improb-ably explained as a simple migration away from the Pe-ruvian Corporation’s coffee plantation. Most egregiousis her rewriting—accomplished through an act of inter-pretive force majeure—of the oral histories of the 1965MIR–Ashaninka alliance collected by Eduardo Fernan-


dez (Fernandez 1986; Brown and Fernandez 1991:115–88). These accounts unambiguously identify the al-liance as motivated by a vision of world renewalencompassing both spiritual and political dimensions.Veber’s focus on the meaning of two words in the nar-ratives is a red herring that draws attention away fromother compelling textual evidence of millenarianthought. And nothing in her creative retelling of eventsaccounts for the pivotal role that charismatic outsid-ers—the MIR commander Guillermo Lobaton in 1965and, earlier in Ashaninka history, Juan Santos, Stahl, andothers—have had in mobilizing Ashaninka to action inmoments of crisis.

Moving beyond historical and ethnographic questions,Veber makes a remarkable claim: that anthropologistsshould abandon the term “messianism” on the groundsthat it reduces social actors to fanatics whose legitimategrievances are easily dismissed by politicians. If Veberwere simply challenging the application of an establishedclassificatory term to a particular ethnographic case, heranalysis would serve as a healthy corrective, but she goesfar beyond this by rejecting all categorical descriptions(“established imagery,” in her words) in favor of a neb-ulous brand of historical particularism. This she justifiespartly in theoretical terms and partly as an ethical im-perative, implying that anthropologists are now obligedto launder ethnographies of any observations that mightconceivably be misused by those in power or, worse still,challenge their understanding of social reality. If this isso, why stop with messianism? Shouldn’t we alsocleanse the record of information about the killing orbanishment of Ashaninka children accused of sorcery(see, e.g., Santos Granero 2003), which casts this Ara-wakan culture in an even more unfavorable light for pol-icy makers? After all, “sorcery,” like “messianism,” isa synthetic category that wedges a vast array of beliefsand practices into an arbitrary container.

Although sharing with Veber a sense of responsibilityto the peoples about whom I write, I hew to the old-fashioned belief that anthropology and indigenous rightscan best be advanced through a commitment to factualtruth, however unsettling it may sometimes be. And thepreponderance of evidence continues to support the viewthat millenarian and messianic ideas played a part inshaping Ashaninka responses to colonial oppression.

carlos faustoMuseu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio deJaneiro, Rio de Janeiro, R.J. 20940-040, Brazil([email protected]). 8 x 02

This article is a thoughtful critique of the characteri-zation of the 18th-century Arawakan uprising in the Pe-ruvian Amazonia as a messianic movement. Veber’s fas-cinating and thought-provoking discussion stimulates usto review a number of other Amerindian “messianic re-volts” against colonial rule in South America. AlthoughI tend to accept her critique, some blind spots meritcomment.

The argument is based on a distinction between col-lective political revolt and individually catalyzed reli-gious movement. Veber states that she does not want tooppose politics to religion or pragmatic action to cos-mological thought. Some of her formulations, though,seem to spring from these very oppositions. When shewrites that what the Ashaninka “need . . . is not per-ceived mythic messengers but real resource persons—sources of knowledge and access to economic and po-litical resources,” I interpret “real” against “mythic”(and myth appears in the text as an ex post facto sub-jectification of historical facts). When she states thattransformation is “accomplished through pragmatic . . .action of the sort expected of Ashaninka actors . . . some-times supported through their symbolic access to spiri-tual . . . sources of power,” I interpret it as implying twolevels of reality: the shamanic, where relations are sym-bolic, and the pragmatic, where things are real.

The same issue resurfaces whenever she talks aboutAshaninka “militancy,” “militant activism,” or “agen-cy,” expressions that seem to refer to a dimension of theirlived world fundamentally different from the one inwhich “divinity is immanent.” Still, she says that forAshaninka “there is no way of not being in a spiritualmode some, if not all, of the time.” How can we reconcilethese assertions? The answer perhaps lies in the ques-tioning of our very concepts of agency and social change.From Ashaninka’s point of view, is transformation a mat-ter of human agents’ substituting one social ordering foranother, or does it always involve the activation ofextrahuman powers of the type that shamans are partic-ularly capable of dealing with? This is a pressing ques-tion, as important to ask for contemporary Amazonianpeoples enmeshed in NGOs’ activism as for mid-18th-century Amerindians submitted to intense mission-ization.

Ethnography can be a critical tool for ethnohistory, butit requires some qualifications. Veber presents no his-torical or comparative data to support her claim thatknowing 20th-century Ashaninka allows her to under-stand 18th-century ones. Her argument depends on theassumption of a strong continuity in Ashaninka socialand cultural order despite massive transformations in thepast three centuries. This is an assumption, however,that is frequently associated with structuralist anthro-pologists, who are not as interested as she is in historicalagency, or with culturalists “recycling the idea of a com-mon ethos.” What, for her, is the status of socioculturalcontinuity and its relation to native agency?

The concept of “messianism” probably constitutes anintellectual hindrance as much as a political one, as Ve-ber says, and I am happy to abandon it. However, I amnot so sure that we can easily discard the importance ofJuan Santos and of—what shall I call it? – millenarism.Ever since the 16th century, figures like Juan Santos havebeen described as leaders of politico-religious move-ments across the continent. These leaders have oftenbeen mestizos or indigenous people with some experi-ence of the colonial society, raised in missions or familiarwith towns, who merged shamanism with Christian


practices and doctrines. Understanding these nativemovements is also about comprehending what these fig-ures stand for in these conjunctures and how they cometo be prominent personages. There is more to Juan Santosthan his “ex post facto semideification.” He was an out-sider but not Spanish; he spoke Quechua but was calledSantos; he associated himself with the Inka and the Sunbut had some proficiency in Spanish religious and ma-terial culture. True, he was part of an ongoing socialdynamic, but he was an important part of it, perhaps notonly as a political strategist but also as a shamanic-re-ligious figure. Belief was a political resource as much aspolitics was about beliefs.

Ashaninka were players in this moving field of beliefsand practices but not always as the Ashaninka as Veberseems to imply when she writes that “the Ashaninkawrite their own script.” They were part of a larger socialnetwork based on exchange relations among countlessscattered local groups, capable of entering into complexsociopolitical alliances and resisting both Inkan andSpanish expansionism. The mission system became partof this network in which missionized and nonmission-ized native people, highland Indians, runaway slaves, sol-diers, mestizos, and missionaries participated. I see noreason to reject the possibility that Franciscan millenar-ian hopes constituted an important ingredient of the1742 revolt—perhaps as important as metal tools, epi-demics, and native cosmologies. There is no necessityto postulate an Arawakan cultural preadaptation to thisdiscourse to appreciate its possible impact on Ashaninkaideas in such a situation. Veber’s argument depends notonly on continuity in time but also on a unwarrantedassumption about the impermeability of Ashaninka cos-mology that runs against both recent historicist andstructuralist depictions of Amazonian peoples.

jonathan d. hillDepartment of Anthropology, Southern IllinoisUniversity, Carbondale, Ill. 62901-4502, U.S.A.([email protected]). 28 x 02

Veber’s article does a good job of cautioning anthro-pologists and historians to be wary of the “naming ef-fects” of labels that we have inherited from previousscholarly generations and use to describe and analyzesocial phenomena. Specifically, it disputes the utilityand validity of the term “messianism.” Unfortunately,it provides neither useful alternatives to the concept ofmessianism nor guidance on how to move toward moregeneral approaches to comparative analysis of religiousmovements.

In addition to undermining the pursuit of compara-tive theorizing of Arawakan histories, the article ex-hibits a serious misunderstanding of history. Departingfrom the constructivist notion that all historicalsources are written or otherwise produced from partic-ularistic, situated perspectives, Veber comes to the con-clusion that none of the sources has any validity. Thisnaıvely empiricist, “seeing is believing” conclusion

amounts to a denial of all mediated, or secondhand,accounts of past social events and persons. This denialresults in a negation of the possibility for historicalknowledge, since by definition all historical knowledgerests on accounts of events that cannot be directly wit-nessed by people living in the present. Veber’s passionfor casting doubt on the concept of messianism causesher to miss the opportunity to explore important di-mensions of indigenous historical consciousness. Con-vergence of indigenous oral histories and written his-torical documents allows anthropologists to writeabout indigenous histories in ways that are groundedin culturally specific theories of meaning. By choosingto ignore or deny the validity of such historical inquiry,this article silences or disauthenticates indigenous andnonindigenous historical voices alike.

Having closed the door on any effort at comparativeanalysis and undermined historical inquiry at its veryroots, Veber continues her nihilistic journey into the“black hole” of Western Amazonian ethnohistory byrefusing to acknowledge that mythic narratives or othertexts have anything to do with or tell us about “whatreally happened” in history. Although she cites severalchapters in Rethinking History and Myth: IndigenousSouth American Perspectives on the Past (Hill 1988),it is hard to believe that she has read, much less com-prehended, any of its chapters, which are filled withAmazonian and Andean examples of how mythic nar-ratives and related cultural practices provide insightinto the ways in which indigenous peoples understandand construct history in culturally specific terms. Herargument that “we should be wary of mistaking thetexts of narratives for historical analysis or evidence ofwhat really happened” is a throwback to the dehisto-ricizing theoretical discourses of the 1970s, prior toRenato Rosaldo’s Ilongot Headhunting (1980), RichardPrice’s The First Time (1983), and the debates openedup by Sahlins’s works on the early contact period inHawaii (1981, 1983, 1985).

To state that “the idea of Arawakan messianism cur-rently forms part of a repertoire employed by innovativescholars attempting to identify an ‘Arawakan ethos’ ”is a misrepresentation and oversimplification. SantosGramero and I proposed in 1998 that participants in ourconference on comparative Arawakan histories (Hilland Santos-Granero 2002) focus on three kinds of in-terethnic process: (1) the emergence of new religiousmovements, (2) the consolidation of interethnic con-federations, and (3) the establishment of alliances with(neo-)colonial powers against other indigenous groups.We used the more general, descriptive phrase “new re-ligious movements” rather than more specific termssuch as “messianism” and suggested that analysis ofsuch religious movements could make a promisingpoint of departure for comparative historical study. Fail-ing to engage with our call for comparative historicalanalysis, Veber’s article transforms an important topicof anthropological and historical research into a “blackhole.”


fernando santos-graneroSmithsonian Tropical Research Institute, P.O. Box2072, Balboa, Ancon, Panama ([email protected]).29 x 02

Veber makes a good case for anthropologists’—and, Iwould add, historians’ (e.g., Alberto Flores Galindo; SteveStern)—not accepting uncritically the messianic char-acter of Juan Santos’s rebellion or the existence of analleged proclivity among Peruvian Arawakan groups toengage in messianic movements. As she herself candidlypoints out, her article will ruffle more than a few feath-ers, but her having challenged received wisdom on thesubject means that no one will in the future characterizePeruvian Arawakan movements as messianic withoutpresenting reliable evidence to support the assertion.

I agree with the gist of her arguments, but I have theuneasy feeling that she strengthens her case by over-stating those elements that support her views while dis-missing as irrelevant those that do not. Her condem-nation of Franciscan sources as being biased, dependenton secondhand interpretations, and written long after therebellion took place is one such overstatement. Doubt-less, the Franciscans depicted the insurrection to fit theirpolitical agenda, but to dismiss their writings as unre-liable is tantamount to saying that doing history is im-possible; all sources are inevitably tainted by the per-sonal or political agendas of those who produce them.Moreover, anyone who has read the documents pub-lished by the Franciscan Joseph de San Antonio in1750—scarcely eight years after uprising, while Juan San-tos was still active—would be aware that most of themwere written by missionaries who witnessed the begin-nings of the insurrection or who met Juan Santos himselfin his Metraro headquarters.

The notion that Juan Santos’s “messianism” is a Fran-ciscan fabrication “bought wholesale” by anthropolo-gists and historians is certainly another overstatement.Whether or not he was accepted as such and by whom,the fact remains that Juan Santos represented himself asa divine emissary or messiah. Alonso Zarzar (1989) hasshown—using the declarations of missionaries who in-terviewed the rebel, those of followers captured by co-lonial authorities, and those of Spanish and mestizo peo-ple who heard his proclamations—that Juan Santos’smessianic rhetoric changed between 1742 and 1752 frombeing strongly anchored in Christian doctrine to relyingincreasingly on neo-Inca millenaristic notions and im-ages. It is difficult to explain the high degree of consis-tency among these very diverse sources unless one as-sumes that Franciscan missionaries and crown officialsconspired to deceive the historians of future eras.

Veber’s assertion that there are no messiah-like figuresin Ashaninka mythology is also open to question, es-pecially since she herself challenges it by stating thatthe Perene Asheninka and the Pichis Ashaninka haveperpetuated the memory of Juan Santos through themythical figure of Sacaramentaro. This personage, whomshe leaves unexplained, is depicted by myth tellers as adivinity or divine emissary who fought against white and

mestizo peoples and died in the process. Veber dismissesthese myths, together with the equivalent Yanesha mythof Yompor Santo, as being only a “perception of JuanSantos after the event” and, moreover, as the perceptionof a minority of Peruvian Arawaks. By this she seems toimply that the Pichis Ashaninka, Perene Asheninka, andYanesha (approximately 20% of the Peruvian Arawaks)actually perceived Juan Santos as a secular paramountwar leader and later decided to portray him as a messiah-like figure. Why they would want to do this is a questionshe does not attempt to answer.

Similarly, Veber writes off as hearsay the elaborate rit-uals performed annually by Yanesha, Ashaninka, andAsheninka people at Juan Santos’s Metraro tomb. Yetthe existence of these ceremonies until the time whenthe rebel’s remains were unearthed in 1891 by order ofthe Prefect of Junın is well attested by a variety of in-dependent sources. Did the Peruvian authorities, Frenchconsuls, and Polish engineers also conspire to propagatethe fabrication of a “messianic” Juan Santos? If so, weshould include the Yanesha among the conspirators, forin the myth of Yompor Santo they mention these ritualpractices as well as the desecration of his tomb (Santos-Granero 1991:83; 1992:256b).

In brief, problematizing the supposed latent messianicsentiments of Peruvian Arawaks is necessary and justi-fied, but dismissing substantial historical and ethno-graphic evidence (Bodley 1972, Smith 1977, Fernandez1986, Rojas 1994) that shows that various Peruvian Ar-awak groups indeed held messianic beliefs and millen-aristic expectations is not. Overstatements of this naturecan only detract from the value of one’s observations.

neil l . whiteheadDepartment of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, Wis.53705 ([email protected]). 9 x 02

Veber is to be congratulated for a careful and timely cri-tique of the use of the concept of “messianism” to ex-plicate the history and current political actions ofAshaninka peoples in the western Amazon region. Sheclosely traces the development and application of thisconcept in anthropological writings to show how, whileit may aid exegesis of the archival and ethnographic ma-terial, it may not adequately represent the nature of pastand present political action and resistance by Ashaninkapeoples. This point is well made and should be the start-ing point for a reevaluation of anthropological claims asto native messianism in South America more widely.

Veber sets the context for this exercise largely by ref-erence to the now famous debate between Marshall Sah-lins (1995), Gananath Obeyesekere (1992), and othersover the death of Captain Cook at the hands of the Ha-waiians. Certainly there is much to be learned from thewider theoretical principles of ethnographic and histor-ical representation and interpretation that this debaterevealed, but it is surprising to find that Veber ignoresthe extensive literature on such topics deriving from the


region under discussion—Amazonia itself. In particular,the works of Christopher Columbus, Walter Ralegh, Jeande Lery, and Hans Staden (Greenblatt 1991, 1993; Les-tringant 1997; Whitehead 1998, 2000; Zamora 1993) haveall received close attention of the kind that Veber sug-gests is necessary—that is, with regard to their repre-sentational practices and the contexts of their produc-tion. In this sense her argument falls short of the markfor the suggestion that Amazonian ethnography and eth-nohistory have been slow to respond to such issues orindeed remain ignorant of the importance of such con-siderations. Moreover, she makes no use of one of themajor topics of debate of recent years, precisely alongthese lines, one that persistently surfaces in the worksof many of the writers mentioned above—cannibalism.

What the recent debate about cannibalism in Ama-zonia reveals is a critical aspect of the discussion of cul-tural representation and interpretation that Veber over-looks—the mutual mimetic and symbiotic production ofsuch categories both through the textual and colonialpractices of the colonizers and through the ritual andpolitical actions of the colonized (Taussig 1993, White-head 1997). In the case of cannibalism the centrality ofthis idea for native and colonial cultures alike meantthat its practice and representation were based not solelyon the fantasies of the colonizers but also on the praxisof the colonized. In short, cannibalism, whatever its pre-Columbian significance, gained new meanings in thecontext of colonial conquest. The very attempts madeto identify and suppress it gave it a charged politicalsignificance that native peoples exploited to their benefiteven as the notion was deployed by the colonizer to theirdetriment. Much the same might be said of the category“shamanism,” which also has had an ambivalent anduncertain presence in the ritual practice of native Am-azonians since it was imported to describe and comparea wide range of native spiritual practices. Likewise, theearly missionaries, including the Franciscans active inthe Ashaninka region, were the first to signal the im-portance of these spiritual practices, seeing the hand ofSatan in the ritual performance of the piaii or paje, butit was precisely this significance that also signaled sha-manistic practice to be a potent site of resistance or co-optation by the colonial states (Taussig 1986, Vidal andWhitehead n.d., Whitehead 2002).

In this light the role of Franciscan missionaries inshaping those actions that later ethnographers and eth-nohistorians have grouped together as “messianism”may not simply proceed from the violence of our rep-resentational practices with regard to the cultural au-tonomy of the Ashaninka; it may also reflect the way inwhich forms of messianic consciousness permeatedAshaninka spiritual ideas through their long contactwith Christian missionaries and the colonial-nationalstate and their more recent involvement in Maoist guer-rilla movements.

Of course, it may be that, in contrast to the case ofcannibalism or shamanism, such an influence is judgednegligible by regional specialists and therefore the cat-egory of “messianism” does indeed do more to obscure

than to illuminate Ashaninka cultural practice. How-ever, until or unless this analysis is undertaken Veber’scritique appears premature, if not misguided. A widerknowledge of the nature of current debates in Amazo-nian anthropology and consultation of previous issues ofCA in which such matters have already been substan-tively discussed (see Whitehead 1995) would certainlyhave contributed to a more nuanced discussion of theseissues. Nonetheless, the critical exercises that Veber ad-vocates are certainly fundamental to the progress of Am-azonian anthropology, and her paper is to be welcomedas a fine contribution to that process.

robin m. wrightDepartmento de Antropologia, IFCH/UNICAMP, C.P.6110, Campinas, S.P., Brazil ([email protected]).15 x 02

Veber’s paper is a welcome contribution to the historicalethnography of the Ashaninka and a valuable critique ofanthropological interpretations of messianism in SouthAmerica. She demonstrates convincingly how interpre-tive distortions have created on erroneous impression ofa supposed “messianic proclivity” among the Ashaninkaand argues that there are other ways of analyzing theprocesses at work in the movement centering on JuanSantos Atahuallpa. More generally, she argues againstthe ahistorical essentialism that associates a culturewith a certain feature. No convincing argument has yetbeen advanced that Ashaninka religiosity “predisposes”them to follow messianic leaders. Rather, from the be-ginning this impression entered the literature becausethe first observers themselves attributed religious mo-tives to the Ashaninka rebellion.

Veber’s critical rereading of historical sources and an-thropological interpretations of native socio-religiousmovements has a fine counterpart in the literature onthe so-called Land Without Evil movements among theTupi and Guarani peoples in early colonial times. Pompa(2002) has argued that of all these movements no morethan one or two can actually be attributed the featuresof “messianism” and that the majority of the others mostlikely had to do with calendric rituals of renewal cele-brated by the Tupi. As in the case of the Ashaninkamovements, Alfred Metraux was in large part responsiblefor their interpretation as messianic; others simply re-peated his interpretive error, and Egon Schaden (1976)sought to go a step farther by generalizing about the deepcauses and consequences of such “anti-acculturative”phenomena. Critical rereadings of original sources avoidclassifying or essentializing such phenomena by refer-ring each element to its context in order to discern cul-tural dynamics, functional choices, and individual andcollective strategies in different situations.

One of the striking differences between the sourcesVeber examines and the sources for Jonathan Hill’s andmy interpretations of messianic movements in theNorthwest Amazon (Wright 1981, Wright and Hill 1986,Hill and Wright 1988, Wright 1998) is the abundance in


the latter of native evidence including oral traditionsabout religious leaders many of whom were consideredmessiahs, carved wooden statues of the first Baniwa mes-siah, Kamiko, and crosses used in the ritual dances. An-other is the unanimity among written sources and eth-nographies over the past century and a half as to theexistence of traditions which may be considered “mes-sianic” or “prophetic.” There is still much more to berecorded and published about such traditions, and nativepeoples have an active interest in doing this. The veryvolume of material leaves no reason to doubt the exis-tence of Northwest Amazon messianic traditions (seeWright 2002).

Veber points to a crucial issue in Juan Santos’s move-ment that has been glossed over by previous anthropo-logical writers: the radical difference between the projectof the leader and the expectations of those whom hemobilized. The Ashaninka seem to have expected of JuanSantos the delivery of goods, control over production,and, above all, the expulsion of the Franciscans, but JuanSantos preached something altogether different: the res-toration of an empire in which the Ashaninka never hadany part. His movement is thus far from being a clearcase of prophetism or messianism, for in Ashaninka cos-mology there is no convincing evidence for their expec-tation of the return of primordial heroes or associationof Juan Santos with one of their divinities, nor is thereconvincing evidence for any belief that a return of theInca would usher in an order of justice and happiness asthey understood this. It is far more likely that he wasseen as a temporary war leader much like the Arawakanwar leader Ajuricaba, who arose in the early 1720s onthe Rio Negro to form an ad hoc association of Manaoand other Arawak-speakers to resist the advance of Car-melite missionaries and Portuguese slavers. As did Aju-ricaba, Juan Santos succeeded in mobilizing a followingfor only a brief period. In contrast to the Manao, whosemilitant resistance to Portuguese expansion seems tohave been quickly crushed, however, the Ashaninka sus-tained their rebellion for over a century.

The issue of anthropology’s interpretive politics is cer-tainly critical, since anything that we publish or produceis read and evaluated by the subjects of our research aswell as intermediaries or agents of contact. In the past,in the Northwest Amazon, the conversion movement toevangelical Christianity was attributed by Catholic mis-sionaries to “innate fanaticism”; before then, the early20th-century messiahs were scorned by the rubberbosses as “vagabonds,” and the first prophets on recordwere labeled “frauds playing on the credulity of poor,ignorant savages.” Today, however, the context is pro-pitious for “righting history” (Chernela 1988): a pan-In-dian federation unique in the history of Brazilian Indianmovements now dominates regional politics. Stories ofKamiko and numerous other prophets from throughoutthe region are emerging and being recorded and pub-lished, and the new leadership seeks to know what waswritten about these prophets in the historical records.Prophetic messages are revitalized and reworked intoguides for political action; people continue to visit the

tombs of their prophets and ask for protection. Messianicand prophetic consciousness, in short, provides a sourcefor political change. Far from being tales of a distant past,the stories of the prophets are the wisdom by whichpeople live today, and it is perhaps here that we find thegreatest difference from the Ashaninka.

Reply

hanne veberCopenhagen, Denmark. 9 xii 02

Most of the comments accept my critique of the sup-posed latent “messianic sentiments” in Ashaninka cul-ture as thought-provoking, timely, necessary and justi-fied, or even valuable. Indeed, few will object to anadmonition that anthropologists and historians be waryof the “naming effects” of labels used to describe socialphenomena. If the discussion of my paper stimulates areview of previous interpretations of Amerindian “mes-sianic revolts” as some of the comments predict, his-torical ethnography may be off towards new ways ofimagining the nature of indigenous resistance and theintercultural contexts of transformation and continuityin Amazonia.

Brown suggests that messianic ideas could havethrived in the creolized cultural mosaic that Ashaninkaterritory may have become by the 1740s. This interestinghypothesis, which certainly deserves further attention,is, however, reminiscent of Lehnertz’s (1972) argumentthat the 1742 rebellion was promoted by displaced mes-tizos, serranos, and renegade blacks, all of whom hadreasons for being discontented with the Franciscan mis-sion regime. Messianic or millenarian ideas may or maynot have circulated among these populations; the pointis that we know very little about this. I continue to beuncomfortable with the notion of Ashaninka messia-nism for the same reason. I agree with Brown that therebellion was not just any “garden-variety expression ofAshaninka resistance,” but characterizing Ashaninkamotivations for participating as “messianic” is not le-gitimate merely by virtue of messianism’s providing aconvenient explanation of its structure and scope.

Brown’s suggestion that I interpret the Adventist mis-sionary Stahl’s mass assembly in the 1920s as “a simplemigration away from the Peruvian Corporation coffeeplantation” is a misreading of my text. Many Ashaninka,some of whom were Adventist converts, relocated duringthe decades prior to World War II after their territoriesin the Perene had been appropriated by immigrant set-tlers (see Veber 1991). This process has been presentedin two different ways, one (found in native narratives)stressing inspiration by bizarre leaders, some of themforeigners, and the other (found in scholarly accounts)emphasizing dispossession and crisis. We need to rec-ognize that the same events are accounted for in differentways by different people and that we may be wise to take


both presentations into account as representations with-out privileging one or the other. An Ashaninka tale ofseeking new lands by following an inspired leader mayvery well be translatable into a rather trivial process ofrelocation rather than an instance of “messianism” asthis term is normally understood. Although charismaticoutsiders have played important roles in Ashaninka his-tory, I continue to hesitate to label them messiah fig-ures—with the possible exception of Stahl, whose com-prehensive program of conversion, including its range ofmillenarian or messianic practices and modes of thought,was adopted by a number of Ashaninka groups who sawhim as semidivine. Yet, the history of the Adventist mis-sion among particular 20th-century Ashaninka groups ishardly sufficient to warrant the projection of a latent“messianic proclivity” over 400 years of Arawakan cul-ture in eastern Peru. I am not arguing that messianismdoes not occur among the Ashaninka—it does—but thisdoes not make it legitimate to label an entire range ofcollective movements “messianic.”

Brown overextends my suggestion that anthropolo-gists show some caution in their use of terminology;obviously anthropology cannot and should not reject allcategorical descriptions. I have tried to demonstrate thatthe notion of Ashaninka messianism seems misleadingand ought to be set aside for the time being; I have notsaid or meant to imply that the concept of messianismas such should be banished from anthropologicalanalysis.

Fausto is inclined to accept my critique, but his read-ing of my text also brings out important perspectives onwhat he terms “blind spots” in my argument. I appre-ciate his drawing attention to themes that form an un-dercurrent in my argument and merit clarification if notfurther scrutiny. He points to distinctions between“mythic” and “real,” between “agency” and “divinity,”and between “collective political revolt” and “individ-ually catalyzed religious movement.” Although I do notrecognize the latter distinction as my own, the formerrepresent oppositions that I am struggling to overcome.To reconcile these distinctions Fausto suggests a ques-tioning of our very concepts of agency and social change.I cannot but agree that this may be a productive avenue;indeed, my own work has for some time been directedtowards ends of this sort (see also Veber 1998).

Fausto raises the further question of continuity in As-haninka culture and its relation to native agency. A fullclarification of this issue would require a separate study.In the paper I have allowed myself the assumption of ameasure of continuity insofar as the role of Ashaninkaleaders and shamans is concerned. This assumption maybe premature, but the Ashaninka leaders who emergefrom the historical records appear to me recognizable inroles comparable to those played by leaders today. Mis-sion records offer a bit of a view into Franciscan-Asha-ninka relations and sketch the native society the Fran-ciscans found—small and widely scattered settlements,active networks of trading relations, a taste for polygynyamong senior males, the use of cotton tunics, the desirefor iron tools and other merchandise, etc. It is very clear

that the Ashaninka had no centralized leadership andthat the Franciscans had to deal with numerous localleaders representing small localized groups for whosewelfare the leaders were responsible. In this respect thereappears to be some continuity. This is not an assumptionof impermeability of Ashaninka cosmology as Faustosuggests; obviously, it would be odd if no transforma-tions had occurred in Ashaninka society between the18th century and the present. My paper was intendednot as an explication of the details of Ashaninka culturalhistory but as an effort at a critical archaeology of thenotion of Ashaninka “messianism” and its usage in eth-nography. One need not be familiar with contemporaryAshaninka to undertake an “archaeological” tracing ofa concept through historical records and ethnographictexts; oddly, however, the fact that I am acquainted withAshaninka of the present induces Fausto to require fromme a treatise on change and continuity in Ashaninkaculture before I am permitted to challenge uncriticalreadings of the historical sources. My explication of con-temporary Ashaninka cosmology in the paper is intendedto demonstrate not historical impermeability but the dif-ference between “messianism” and Ashaninka notionsof divinity. An awareness of this difference, it seems tome, illuminates the shaky basis of the claim that mes-sianic thinking is a general and continuing feature of theAshaninka worldview and one that makes these Ama-zonians natural allies of “millenarian” fundamentalistrevolutionaries such as the Sendero Luminoso. By the1990s Ashaninka had come to see the Sendero Luminosoas “just another ‘patron’ ” (Hvalkof 1994:32) and to detestits attempts to control them (see Benavides 1992; Hval-kof 1994, 1998). Finally, I agree with Fausto that thereis a need to reach an understanding of the role of JuanSantos and other charismatic figures in the conjuncturesof Ashaninka and non-Ashaninka ideas and practicesover time. My suggestion that we get rid of “messia-nism” is an attempt to clear space for efforts towardsthis end.

Hill finds it unfortunate that I provide no useful al-ternatives to the concept of messianism and offer noguidance on how to move towards more general ap-proaches to comparative analysis of religious move-ments. I think I indicated in the paper that ambitions ofthis sort could not be accommodated within the limitedtime and space available. He goes on to accuse me ofundermining the pursuit of comparative theorizing ofArawakan histories and misunderstanding history. Thecommitment to comparative historical analysis and themapping of Arawakan diversity that he professes might,however, have led him to examine the implications forcomparative Arawakan studies of the differences be-tween Arawakan groups, cultures, and histories thatemerge when the blanket category of messianism is rec-ognized as misleading or unproductive as far as Asha-ninka historiography is concerned. I continue to believethat comparison may be a valuable strategy for illumi-nating continuities and contexts that may otherwise bedifficult to detect. Nader (1994) has pointed to the re-vitalizing potential of comparative approaches, at the


same time noting the need to avoid comparing only ourown images; indeed, she has called for a comparativeconsciousness to “calibrate the observer as an instru-ment of record” (p. 84). Reconsidering the notion of“Ashaninka messianism” seems to me an effort in thisdirection.

Santos Granero’s work has been stimulating and val-uable in my struggle with the Franciscan records, and Iam pleased that he agrees with the gist of my argument.His further comments, however, call for a few clarifi-cations. He avers that I dismiss the Franciscan writingsas unreliable. In fact, I note that the Franciscan recordsare biased; this is hardly the same thing. He himselfrecognizes that all sources are tainted by the agendas ofthose who produce them. How is it that “biased” is mis-read as “unreliable” in my text while bias in the recordsis judged trivial? Similarly, he claims that I make JuanSantos’s “messianism” a Franciscan fabrication. Obvi-ously Juan Santos did present himself as a sort of “mes-siah,” as Santos Granero points out and as I note morethan once in my paper. The problem I address is thenature of his acceptance as a divinity and as a leader bythe Ashaninka. Does his self-representation as a messiahin itself warrant a portrayal of Ashaninka sentiments as“messianic,” considering the dearth of evidence ofAshaninka practices that support such a characteriza-tion? Could there have been forces other than messianicpassions driving the Ashaninka and other Amazoniansto revolt—motivations that might have overridden if notrendered superfluous the messianic thesis? From the his-torical records it appears that there were many reasonsthat 18th-century Amazonians would have desired lib-eration from Franciscan control, and, indeed, Santos Gra-nero’s own work (1987, 1988, 1991, 1992) has been cru-cial in bringing some of this evidence to light. His maindiscomfort seems to be with my unwillingness to acceptthe notion that messianic beliefs and millenaristic ex-pectations are major ingredients of Peruvian Arawak cul-ture (whatever this may be). I do not argue that messianicbeliefs and millenaristic expectations are absent amongPeruvian Arawak groups; I do argue that the attributionto them of “messianism” as a general cultural charac-teristic is an overstatement. Santos Granero challengesme to explain why Yanesha and Ashaninka in the Perenein the centuries after the rebellion “decided” to portrayJuan Santos as a messiah-like figure. In the paper I sug-gest—perhaps in too few words—the centrality of theforges in Yanesha forms of religious devotion and in na-tive politics and economy in the Upper Perene prior tocolonization. In this sense the forges signal the link be-tween Juan Santos as mythical “Sacaramentaro” in morerecent narratives and Juan Santos as an actual personwho played an important role among the 18th-centuryYanesha and Perene Ashaninka, among whom he spentsome ten years of his life and to whom he continued tobe as important as the forges that were set to work be-cause of the successful rebellion with which his namecontinues to be associated. Here the myth appears tocelebrate a glorious past the evocation of which certainlyholds features of millenaristic beliefs. In this I have no

disagreement with Santos Granero. I see an interestingprospect for further comparative historical research inthe presence of a (millennarian-tinted) form of mythical-historical consciousness among the Yanesha and its ab-sence among the Pajonal Asheninka and, it seems, mostother Arawakan-speaking groups in neighboring regionsof the Peruvian Amazon. Research taking off from thisdifference might provide insight into the conjuncturesof structures and events that have energized transfor-mations in Arawakan cultures over time and space.

Whitehead accepts my critique but would like to haveseen included references to works discussing the repre-sentational practices of Christopher Columbus, WalterRalegh, Jean de Lery, and Hans Staden on topics derivingfrom the Amazonian region. I cannot but agree that theseworks deserve attention and that they are highly perti-nent to the discussion my paper engages. In particular,as Whitehead points out, a lead may be taken from thediscussion of cannibalism and its colonial production infantasy and in practice as a “mutual mimetic and sym-biotic” phenomenon. Such an approach might help toidentify sites of resistance or co-optation, including sha-manism and, I suppose, the “sites” that have beenglossed in Ashaninka ethnography as “messianism.”Whitehead, however, appears to turn his own argumentupside-down when he recommends the acceptance of“messianism” as a valid characterization of Ashaninkacultural practice produced through their long contactwith Christian missionaries, the colonial-national state,and Maoist guerrilla movements. Apparently he consid-ers “messianism” a corollary of “long contact” and “longcontact” an unambiguous fact of history that needs nosituational qualification. He goes on to insist that myrejection of the notion of Ashaninka messianism is in-admissible until more research has demonstrated its ab-sence, in effect arguing that, given a scarcity of research,the assumption of “messianism” is acceptable while itsopposite is not. What we know about the character andduration of contact and the diversity of involvement incontact among the various subregional Arawakan groupsin eastern Peru makes it clear that, as Bodley (1971, 1972)and Varese (1972, 1973) recognized, Ashaninka groupsvary from isolated and “traditional” to intensely in-volved with the surrounding national society (see Hval-kof 1986, 1987, 1989). Taking off from his allusion to theproductive contexts of cannibalism in other parts ofAmazonia, it seems to me that we may hypothesize that“millenarianism” will be found in groups adapted to sus-tained colonization such as the Yanesha and perhaps thePerene Ashaninka (to the extent that “millenarianism”is an appropriate label here) and absent or more infre-quent in less “acculturated,” more isolated or “tradi-tional” (less “homogenized”) groups such as the PajonalAsheninka. Exploring such a hypothesis historically aswell as in the context of contemporary indigenous ac-tivism might prove rewarding. Wright’s comment in factsupports future work along similar lines and with an eyeto the particular contexts in which the phenomena areset.

Referring to studies of historical movements among


the Tupi and Guarani, Wright points to Metraux’s er-roneous interpretation of these movements as messianic.It may be his extensive knowledge of messianic or pro-phetic traditions in the Northwest Amazon that allowshim to recognize the shallowness of the evidence for a“messianic proclivity” among the Ashaninka in generalnot only in the past but, in particular, in the present.Indeed, as he says, contemporary contexts make anthro-pology’s interpretive politics critical. There is an aware-ness among scholars and others that particular forms ofconsciousness provide sources for political change. Morethan ever this requires critical consideration of our ownwork and the development of a capacity for self-reflectiveperception of its impact beyond the narrow boundariesof our discipline.

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