Urarina

The Urarina are an indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon Basin (Loreto) who inhabit the valleys of the Chambira, Urituyacu, and Corrientes Rivers. According to both archaeological and historical sources, they have resided in the Chambira Basin of contemporary northeastern Peru for centuries. The Urarina refer to themselves as Kachá (lit. "person"), while ethnologists know them by the ethnonym Urarina. The local vernacular term for the Urarina is Shimaku, which is considered by the Urarina to be pejorative, as it is a Quechua term meaning "unreliable". The ethnonym "Urarina" may be from Quechua--uray meaning below, and rina referring to runa, or people. Urarina is rendered in Quechua as uray-runa or people from below or down stream people. Urarina society and culture have been given little attention in the burgeoning ethnographic literature of the region, and only sporadic references in the encyclopedic genre of Peruvian Amazonia. Accounts of the Urarina peoples are limited to the data reported by Castillo, by the German ethnologist G. Tessmann in his Die Indianer Nordost-Peru, and to the observations of missionaries and contemporary adventure seekers. The Urarina are a semi-mobile hunting and horticultural society whose population is estimated to be around 2,000. Urarina settlements are composed of multiple longhouse groups, located on high ground (restingas) or embankments along the flood-free margins of the Chambira Basin's many rivers and streams. The embankments are bounded by low-lying territories (tahuampa and bajiales) that are susceptible to flooding during the annual rainy season (roughly November–May). Urarina local politics are characterized by a mercurial balance of power between demes united through affinal ties and episodic political alliances, exchange relations, and disputation. Surrounded by the Jivaroan, and the Tupi–Guarani-speaking Cocama-Cocamilla indigenous peoples of the upper Amazon, the Urarina have an elaborate animistic cosmological system.