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Ecologically Noble Amerindians?: Cattle Ranching and Cash Cropping among Shuar and Colonists in Ecuador

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Thomas K. Rudel ,
Diane Bates  and
Rafael Machinguiashi
Thomas K. Rudel
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
Diane Bates
Affiliation:
Sam Houston State University
Rafael Machinguiashi
Affiliation:
Federación de Centros Shuar
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Abstract

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Observers have argued that as indigenous peoples become more acculturated and their reserves more populous, they begin to exploit tropical rain forests much as colonists and other outsiders do. The history of changes in land use between 1950 and 1980 among the Shuar, an indigenous group in the Ecuadorian Amazon, would appear to support this convergence thesis. The Shuar began to clear land, plant pastures, and acquire cattle, much like their mestizo competitors for land. Using survey and remote-sensing data for a later period, from 1987 to 1997, we demonstrate that convergence has given way to divergence in land-use trends among the two groups. While mestizo smallholders throughout the region continue to rely on cattle ranching, Shuar smallholders close to roads have begun to reforest their lands and cultivate former garden crops like coffee and cacao as cash crops. These recent trends in Shuar land use suggest that even when Amerindians become more acculturated, they still maintain more biologically diverse landscapes than their mestizo neighbors.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , 2002 , pp. 144 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

This research was supported by a grant from the Geography and Regional Science Program of the National Science Foundation (SBR-96–18371). We would like to thank Walter Palacios and Luis Cáceres of the Fundación Jatun Sacha for administrative support during the field research. We also would like to thank the Federación de Centros Shuar for permission to do the research. Delores Quesada provided invaluable assistance in interviewing colonists. Caroline Phillipuk and John Hansen analyzed the remote-sensing images for us. David Hughes, George Morren, and Rodrigo Sierra made valuable comments on earlier drafts.

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