Indigenous Ritual Action Versus the World System: Marubo Rites of Healing, Solidarity, and Resistance

Abstract

This paper examines the role of Marubo ritual and ceremonial discourse in confrontations with the world system in its politico-economic aspects. During and after the rubber boom (c. 1890-1920), the ancestral Marubo migrated from their previous locations to a new home in the headwaters of the small rivers of the Javari River, isolating themselves from participation in the rubber economy. There, they built an alliance between distinct Panoan ethnic groups. The alliance was mediated by the development of a new ceremonial system centered on healing rituals and feasts, both categories justified by an ethic of anti-violence, exchange, and mutual care, explicitly thought out as a strategy for surviving the rubber boom. Over time, the alliance became an ethnic fusion, giving rise to a new ethnic identity. At the end of the twentieth century, the Marubo faced reintegration to the world system through incorporation into the Brazilian bureaucracy. Once again they created an interethnic alliance, the indigenous organization CIVAJA. This alliance was mediated by the indigenous movement’s political meetings and its discourses on indigenous autonomy and power. The essay concludes by showing a concrete example of the use of the Marubo ceremonial system to invert power relations between indigenous peoples and national bureaucracy.