The World of the Cuiva Nation of Columbia

A Time of Missionaries, Expansion and Disease

May 29, 2009

Life among the missionaries in South America can be difficult. The Cuiva have been able to handle it, as well as with settlers that have been in Columbia for centuries.

The Cuiva people who live in Columbia have learned to adapt to a fast pace world, but yet keep their identity and individuality as a distinct culture. They are the ‘others’, in a rapidly shrinking ‘free world’. There were the attempts of missionaries of both past and present that have failed to totally assimilate the Cuiva. The toll of settler and native interactions have decreased the Cuiva population, due to expansion and disease.

Ethno-anthropology and the Idea of the ‘Other’

The whole idea behind ‘ethno-anthropology’ is a group of people’s classification of the ‘other’. In wife capture, which is when a man procures a wife through force or ritual capturing, the ‘other’ is seen as the women, and they see her as a rescue from an inhuman nation. There is name calling in times of war, where enemies will blame their neighbors for being less then human, and that they see the enemies or the ‘others’ as incestuous cannibals. The Cuiva regularly see settlers, and so they view settlers as stingy and inhuman, and the settlers see them as the ‘others’, and being civilized, but lazy and wild with an odd sense of clothing style.

Life Among the Missionaries

The Mission years was a crucial set of events that altered political and cultural practices of the Cuiva. It was the Spanish Jesuit order of the Catholic Church that brought Christianity to the South American frontier. Forcing the native people onto settlements held by missions would force a complete reformation of society and economy. Eventually the Cuiva would be forced to live in specifically designed Spanish organized towns. Even with some of the lessons given in both the native language and Spanish, all activities were forced to revolve around the Catholic feast days and celebrations. During border wars, the mission Indians were given weapons and ‘taught’ warfare, with their own way of fighting thought to be barbaric. When the Jesuits left, the native people went back to the forests, grasslands and obscurity. Little of the practices that were taught to the native people by the Jesuits seem to have stood the test of time. Some Spanish derived words have survived, but the memories of where they originated from have disappeared.

‘Ethno-anthropology’ is how the native people see others and how others see the native people. The impact that the missionaries made on the Cuiva was miniscule but nonetheless altering. As the native people move closer to towns, Catholic celebrations get intermixed with the celebrations of the native people. With later contact, the Cuiva adapted to the life on the fringes of the rainforest, and on the grasslands. The grassland is a man made landscape, and from time to time, the practice of burning the dry grass is done by both settlers and native people. Mortality rates within the Cuiva living and working with the settlers are high. Alcohol is also a very big problem when they live near settlers. There is little that is done to keep Western customs out of the villages, and the changes are obvious.

The copyright of the article The World of the Cuiva Nation of Columbia in Cultural Anthropology is owned by Maureen Zieber. Permission to republish The World of the Cuiva Nation of Columbia in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.