Yine indians

In an area about five times the size of the United Kingdom, but with a population of less than half, Peru is a country of vast cultural diversity with more than 90 distinct groups of peoples. This is only surpassed by its natural biodiversity.

The story of Peru's indiginous peoples spans many centuries and conquests, and is intimately related to the variety of terrain. This extends from the barren desert on its coastline to the plains of the north, the majestic Andes and the lush valleys of the Urubamba to the luxuriant tropical rainforest to the east - the selva.

Nowhere is the culture less understood and under greater threat than in the southern parts of the selva. It is incredible to think that in this day and age, in the thousands of square miles of still unexplored areas of Peru´s rainforest, live people who have had no contact whatsoever with the outside world.

In a corner of the southernmost part of the selva lies the Manu Biosphere Reserve. A small enclave, approximately half the size of Holland, Manu boasts one of the highest biodiversities on this planet.

It is also home to ten culturally distinct groups of peoples; the Cashinahua, the Masho-Piro, the Yora or Yaminahua, the Amahuaca, the Matsiguenka, the Amarakaeri, the Huachipaeri, the Yine or Piro, the Quechuans, and the Spanish speaking colonists.
And this does not include those peoples living undiscovered in its heart.

Of these groups, one of the most interesting has always been Manu´s Piro indians, as the Yine used to be known, both for their strong cultural identity and historical narrative.

Today the Yine number just around 400, and they live in Diamante - a community nestling on the banks of the Río Alto Madre de Dios, on the fringe of the Manu Biosphere. Several hundred more live in organized communities in the Alto Ucayali, the river Cashabatay, the lower Urubamba valley - several weeks walk away from Diamante. There is also a community in Brazil.

The Piro indians or ´Chontaquiros´ appear in the records as long ago as 1576 , as traders with the Incas in the region of the Pongo de Mañique of the lower Urubamba river. They made frequent excursions into the upper and lower Urubamba valley, bringing back parrots, macaws, clothing, cedar canoes, cacao, resins - often looting the Matsiguenka communities for their women.

These, including the women, were traded with the Incas for metalwork and tools, and later with the Spanish for items that they would exchange with other tribes lower down Pongo river.

The Piro were so well travelled that various explorers reported the existence of many who spoke Quechua, Matsiguenka, Conibo, Amahuaca, Spanish and even Portuguese. And the chronicles of Franciscan Missionaries from the 1770s describe the Piros as ´a sociable people unique in their cleanliness and almost civilised´. Many explorers found them not only welcoming but very effective trade partners with a unique knowledge of the region.

With the influx of missionaries to the region and then the start of the rubber boom (late 19th century), life for the Piros, as with so many native peoples, was to change irrevocably. In the following decades many tribes, including the Piro, found their numbers reduced and widely scattered. The Piros remaining in Manu moved further down river and mingled mainly with the Matsiguenka with whom they learned to live with.

While many cultures were permanently changed by their diminishing numbers and dispersal, the Piro somehow managed to maintain their individual identity and culture. They were accustomed to mixing with others, but, probably what helped them the best was the matriachal line of inheritance; a child born to a Piro woman, irrespective of the paternal culture, was Piro by birth. Furthermore, elder women strongly influenced, and still do, everyday decisions in the community. So while the men came and went, there remained in the communities a core of women who were able to keep the culture alive.

In the years subsequent to the rubber boom, the Piros worked in agri-haciendas that superseded the rubber planations, and this pattern continued until the 1950s. At this time, a large group of Piro moved to the mouth of the Rio Pinquen and later to the mouth of the Alto Madre de Dios, where they can be found today.

It was in the 50s that the first school was established in the Diamante community, by the evangelists. The result is that the majority of the Piro are today Christians and this has weakened the influence of shamanism. Nevertheless, their sense of identity and individuality remains strong and their traditional practices very much alive - thanks in no small way to the matriach. So much so that they decided to call themselves Yine, which means human being, and is a word that carries much weight in their culture and history.

Today the Piro of Diamante operate small chacras - farmsteads - in the floodplain of the Madre de Dios, growing yucca, bananas, beans, corn, peanuts, pumkin and cotton. Aside from fresh meat, their prinicpal diet consists of bananas, yucca and fish. Produce is sold locally, and there is seasonal employment in the recovery of valuable driftwoods. Some men are also employed in the transportation business, up and down the Madre de Dios.