Zapara

The Zapara (or Zaparos) are a tribe of South American Indians indigenous to the Amazon jungle that straddles the border of Ecuador and Peru. They once occupied some 12,000 mi² between the Napo River and the Pastaza. Early in the 20th century, there were some 200,000 Zapara. They ate palm hearts as their main vegetable and they fished the many rivers of their jungle home. Using blowguns and bamboo darts, they hunted tapirs, peccaries, wood-quail, and curassows. They did not hunt spider monkeys because they believed them to be their ancestors. The 20th century demand for rubber lead to the destruction of much of their jungle (and the animals who lived in it) and the enslavement of the people. The men were forced as slaves to cultivate rubber. The women and girls were raped and forced into sexual slavery. Their numbers dwindled precipitously to the point where there are fewer than 300 remaining and only a handful who speak their native language. Most speak Quichua, some speak a patois of Quichua and Zapara. The oldest surviving Zapara is a woman, about 70 years old, Ana Maria Santi. She refuses to drink alcoholic chicha or to eat spider monkey meat, which most Zapara now hunt and eat because they can get no other meat. To Ana Maria, this seems cannibalistic. "When we are down to eating our ancestors, what is left?" She and her family live in the hamlet of Mazaraka on the river Conambu, home to some forty people, about a seventh of what remains of their nation.

References

* [http://www.unesco.org/culture/intangible-heritage/masterpiece.php?lg=en&id=7 The Oral Heritage and Cultural Manifestations of the Zápara People.] Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, UNESCO.
* [http://ecuador.nativeweb.org/zaparo/ Zapara.] Indigenous Peoples in Ecuador.
*1911