THE ACID TEST OF INDIGENOUS ADAPTATION TO
PROTEIN SCARCITY IN THE RIO NEGRO REGION OF THE AMAZON

RESEARCH QUESTION

How can the Curripaco indigenous population do so well in such an extremely poor and variable environment (hunger or starvation rivers and silent forests)?

BACKGROUND

1. Previous research revealed that manioc (casava) garden production could allow a population seven times higher than currently exists in the region (Clark and Uhl 1987).

2. Hypothesize that protein is the limiting factor on the carrying capacity of the environment for the indigenous population.

3. Research in nutritional and medical anthropology with anthropometric, dietary, and clinical data revealed the general health of the population, except during the stress of wet season food scarcity when illness and mortality rise markedly (Holmes 1981, 1984, 1993).

FIELD METHODS

1. Participant observation and interviewing during foraging process
2. Daily predation record for entire community for one full year

ADAPTIVE CHALLENGES

1. Oligotrophic ecosystem (peneplain demineralization)
a. low in nutrients, productivity, and diversity
b. aquatic ecosystems detrital (80% of food of fish)
2. Extreme variability of environment (seasonality)
a. wet season inundation of floodplain (varzea) with water level fluctuations of 1-4m daily and up to 7m annually
b. widespread wet season dispersal of fish and game
c. peak of wet seasons exhibits sharp decline in foraging for species diversity, productivity, success rate, number of techniques, and number of trips for fishing (wet season productivity 1/5 of dry season, success rate 2/3)

ADAPTIVE RESPONSES

1. Maintain a mixed subsistence economy of fishing, hunting, gathering, and farming, and adjust investment in each to seasonality
2. Predation emphasis is opportunistic, generalized, and solitary or pair
3. Employ wide diversity of techniques, microenvironments, and species in foraging even within a single trip (total annual predation record of 38 fish species and 29 other animal sp)
4. Foraging focuses on ecotones (edge effect), especially river/forest
5. Several overnight treks each year to camp at distance white water tributaries which are many times more productive for fishing and hunting (protein productivity 300 g/hr near village and 1,200 g/hr in distant tributary camps)
6. Highly developed ethnoecological knowledge and ethnoconservation practices including communal information sharing
7. Extract non-timber forest products (palm fiber) for cash to purchase market goods rather than intensifying foraging or farming to produce surplus for trade

OTHER FACTORS

1. in previous periods, slavery (17th century) and missionization (post-WWII) respectively led to depopulation and deculturation
2. marginal to the nation state and country, locals are at the mercy of market and price fluctuations

HYPOTHESIS

The diversity of foraging techniques is available because of the culture core that includes ethnic/linguistic exogamy which promotes multi-ethnic/multilingual communities and households. This in turn relates to the geography and history of the area, the Rio Negro connecting the Amazon and Orinoco drainage basins via the Casiquiare as a major route of indigenous trade and exchange.

CONCLUSION

Even though Curripaco are a riverine society where fishing is important, during the wet season hunting is more important with twice as many trips and four times as many hours invested in hunting compared to fishing. Hunting provided 56% of the total annual animal protein. Nevertheless, generally fishing is more important than hunting for riverine societies because:

1. fish are more efficient in conversion of food to tissue than mammals;
2. a larger percentage of fish tissue is edible than in mammals;
3. fishing success rate is higher than hunting;
4. energy expenditure and economic expenses are both lower in fishing; and
5. a wider range of personnel in terms of age and gender can engage in fishing.

CITATION

Sponsel, Leslie E., and Paula Loya, 1993.
"Rivers of Hunger? Indigenous Resource Management in the Oligotrophic Ecosystems of the Rio Negro, Venezuela," Tropical Forests, People and Food: Biocultural Interactions and Applications to Development, C.M. Hladik, et al., eds., London, UK: Parthenon Publishing Co./UNESCO-MAB, Ch. 36, pp. 435-446.