The Tsimane

For the majority of Tsimane, access to modern health care and social services is extremely limited.  Health care expenses are covered by the Bolivian government for pregnant women and infants, but the journey to the San Borja hospital often requires many days of travel and is impractical for most.  Recently, immunization teams have begun traversing the rivers in an attempt to vaccinate all children against the most common tropical infectious diseases.  These efforts appear to be having an appreciable impact, as Tsimane mortality rates for infants and the elderly have dropped in the last decade.  The infant mortality rate remains nearly one and a half times that of the greater Bolivian population, however, and nearly 12 times as high as the United States rate (CIA 2004).

 

Like many indigenous populations, the Tsimane find themselves caught between two worlds, both offering unique facets of security, comforts and hopes.  Although the Tsimane have maintained their cultural identity and succeeded in preventing the total outright usurpation of their native territory, the direction of the recent trend has clearly been towards greater acculturation, something the Tsimane greet with great ambivalence.  The first cultural elements to be adopted by indigenous populations are most often the most technologically pragmatic—machetes, shotguns, metal pots.  Many of the Tsimane, however, particularly the younger men, have begun adopting Western articles that have no practical utility, only the ability to display status.  These items include radios, bright shoes and clothing, watches whose owners may or may not be able to read them, glasses of random prescription, and many others.  The fact that the Tsimane youth are looking to Bolivian nationals and Western culture to define status may point to changing attitudes and values, perhaps brought on by ever improving and available technology, or more frequent and immersive contact with the colonizing population.  Fortunately for the Tsimane, they have had a long enough history of interaction and cultural resistance to have already established the appropriate political and economic infrastructures to ensure the continuation of their culture, their social identity, and their way of life for some time to come.

There are approximately 7,000 Tsimane residing in the lowland rain forests and savannas that extend from the foothills of the Andes to the savannas of Moxos (VAIPO 1998).  Throughout this riverine environment, the Tsimane make a living through swidden agriculture, hunting, fishing, gathering, and occasional wage labor.  Their population is organized into communities generally ranging from 8 to 100 households (30 to 450 individuals) that vary considerably in river access, surrounding game densities and access to market goods.  There also exists great variation in the extent of integration into the larger Bolivian society and economy among the Tsimane, continuously increasing with proximity to towns.  Most Tsimane are still monolingual in their native tongue, although up to 30 villages now house schools where students learn to read and write in both Tsimane and Spanish.  The Tsimane are tentatively making small steps towards acculturation but appear hesitant due to a desire to maintain a social identity and an omnipresent mistrust of Bolivian nationals.

 

HISTORY

The Tsimane were first encountered by Westerners as early as the 16^th century, as Spanish Conquistadors explored the area; Jesuit missionaries followed shortly thereafter.  By 1744, there existed 26 Jesuit missions in the area surrounding the Tsimane territory (Chicchón 1992).  The sixth of these to be settled was San Francisco de Borja in 1693, which at the time of its inception, housed more than 3,000 Tsimane.  This mission would later become the city of San Borja, the largest town in the area and the main market center for modern Tsimane.  Despite these successes, the Jesuits encountered great  difficulties  in  their  attempt  to

permanently settle the Tsimane and were ultimately expelled from the region in 1767.  Some have argued that those original Tsimane who did decide to settle with the Jesuits eventually developed into a closely related but distinct group now known as the Mosetene (Aldazábal 1988).  Two other Catholic missions were later established, but were abandoned in the 19^th century due to a smallpox epidemic and the murder of a priest (Ellis and Gonzalo 1998).

 

The next establishment to have a large impact on the lives of the Tsimane was that of the Misión Fatima in 1953 (originally located near San Borja, but relocated further upriver in 1955 to the Río Chimanes tributary) (Reyes-Garcia 2001). Today, the only lasting impact remains in the village of Misión Fatima along the Río Chimanes, where community members tend large communal fields of rice, look over a small herd of cattle, and attend mass every Sunday in a seemingly out-of-place church adorned with stained glass windows.

 

The evangelical New Tribes Mission has also been working with the Tsimane since the 1950’s, perhaps with greater success.  Today, they operate from a center called Horeb, located 3 kilometers from San Borja, where they broadcast Christian radio programs in Tsimane and provide much needed  medical services.  They also organize the training of the local Tsimane school teachers, allowing the mission to simultaneously impart seminary instruction.  Despite the growing presence of the missionaries, most Tsimane appear to view Christianity with some casualness, evidenced by the frequent low attendance at sermons, rare discussion of the topic, and widespread acceptance of polygyny.

 

Perhaps the greatest impact of the New Tribes Mission resulted from the assistance they offered in the establishment of the Gran Consejo Chiman in 1989 (Ellis and Gonzalo 1998).  The Gran Consejo acts as the Tsimane population’s governing body, enforcing rules, settling disputes, organizing cooperative enterprises, and dealing directly with the Bolivian government and logging groups.

 

HABITAT AND SUBSISTANCE

The majority of the Tsimane reside in the subtropical rainforests and savannas along the Maniqui River System.  Seasonality is most notably marked by precipitation, with the rainy season lasting from December to March and the dry season from June to September (CIDDEBENI 1990).  The average annual temperature is 26° Celsius (78.8° Fahrenheit).  The forests are crossed by many rivers and creeks containing numerous species of fish that can reach sizes of 30 kg.  The forests themselves house a wide variety of flora and fauna as well as relatively fertile soils along the rivers.

The Tsimane clear and burn fields during the dry season, usually ranging from 0.1 to 1.0 hectares in size (mean=0.350 hectares, n=49 fields), although fields often reach much larger sizes in communities that are closer to San Borja where cash-cropping is more common.  Although the Tsimane cultivate upwards of 80 species of plants (Piland 1991), the bulk of the caloric contribution can be attributed to rice, plantains, yucca and corn (yucca and corn are mostly consumed in the form of chicha, a fermented drink).  Each family maintains a number of fields in various stages of cultivation.  Rice and/or corn are usually the first to be planted, followed by yucca, plantains, and other minor cultigens.

Fish often form an important part of the Tsimane diet, although this varies with access to major rivers.  The Tsimane employ various tactics to acquire fish, including hook and line, bow and arrow, and the use of weirs and poison during communal barbasco events. 

Hunting also plays a varyingly important role, depending on the game densities surrounding each community; those near San Borja have experienced the sharpest declines.  The most important species by total biomass harvested include (in descending order) collared peccary, Brazilian tapir, grey-brocket deer, howler monkey, agouti paca, white-faced capuchin monkey, and coati (Gurven et al. 2006).  Hunting expeditions normally consist of 1 to 3 men, usually related, traveling a few kilometers in the areas surrounding their community.  Shotguns are the current weapon of choice for Tsimane hunters, although they will resort to hunting with bow and arrow if they are without a working firearm or ammunition.  Access to such weaponry is heavily dependent on trade avenues that often close in the wet season for interior villages and in the dry season for river villages.  The use of hunting dogs is also common but varies by targeted game species, availability and personal preference.

Reliance on gathered foods fluctuates throughout the year as different fruits come into season, although foraged foods rarely constitute significant proportions of daily caloric intakes.

            

Recently, dependence on market goods has significantly increased in communities that have direct access to San Borja or are frequented by roving merchants peddling their goods from canoes.  The most popular market goods include sugar, flour, salt, vegetable oil, and pasta.  Incomes are earned mostly by younger men who work for loggers and merchants for US$4 to US$5 per day.  A second important source of income is earned through the manufacture of jatata roof panels—considered to be the longest lasting and most rain-proof thatch panels in the region, and the consistent covering of many homes and buildings in San Borja and surrounding towns.  The small jatata leaves must be collected on long foraging trips and attached one-by-one to one-meter long bamboo sticks.  Each panel takes approximately 30 minutes to manufacture and nets roughly US$0.30.  Jatata production is less lucrative than wage labor, but once the leaves are gathered, the labor requires little physical effort and can be performed by individuals of all ages.

MARRIAGE & REPRODUCTION

Day-to-day life centers mainly around the household cluster, a grouping of several houses typically consisting of a single extended family.  Upon marriage, a couple will usually build their own house near the wife’s family where they will live for two to three years.  Although there is no institutionalized bride service, during this time, the husband is expected to work with affinal male relatives in typical cooperative tasks, as well as maintain fields, fish and hunt.  After a period of time, most families move closer to the relatives of the husband, although some stay with the wife’s relatives, and still others venture into new areas.  Tsimane residential patterns are driven just as much by opportunity as they are by convention.

Marriages among the Tsimane are very stable with roughly 20% of marriages ending in divorce (n=76 marriages).  The median age of marriage for men is 21 and for women 16.5 (n=77 men, 59 women).  Polygyny is widely accepted, but only 6% of men (5 of 83 men age 21 and over) were married to more than one woman at the time of our research.  Such polygyny is nearly universally sororal.  The preferred marital arrangement is with a cross cousin, although any woman of an appropriate age that is not a parallel relative is suitable.  Men also frequently pursue women for casual relations, which they refer to with the common term “wowodye”.  Pre-marital sex among the Tsimane may not be as common as it is in Western contexts, but men still report an average of 1.4 sexual partners prior to their first marriage (n=34).

Once a man finds a suitable partner, he must approach the family and engage in a courtship period that often lasts one to two weeks, during which time the suitor attempts to convince the woman and her parents of his merit.  Men court an average of just over two women before they find a match that is suitable to all parties (mean=2.14, n=37).  The Tsimane do not commemorate weddings with formal ceremonies, but consider a pair to be married when they sleep together in the same house.

 

Divorce, although rare, is most common in the first year, resulting in some confusion concerning whether such unions are formal marriages or simply failed extended courtships.  Of those who continue on, the timing of the first birth averages two years after marriage.   Within marriages, inter-birth intervals average approximately two and a half years, resulting in a total fertility rate of 6.5 for women (6.9 for men, the difference most likely being due to sample error) (Gurven, Kaplan, and Winking 2004).  Approximately four-fifths of children born live to the age of 15. 

 

CURRENT SITUATION

Today’s Tsimane population is divided between areas that have been formally protected as indigenous territories and those that have been opened to logging interests (Ellis and Gonzalo 1998).  The Tsimane territory proper (Territorio Indígena Chimane) extends from approximately 50 km north of San Borja to 100 km south of the town along the Maniqui River, encompassing over 300,000 hectares (CIDDEBENI 2001).  Parcels of comparable size have been protected to the east and west of the formal Tsimane territory (Territorio Indígena Pilon Lajas and Territorio Indígena Multiétnico), that also hold numerous Tsimane settlements as well as those of neighboring indigenous groups.

A number of Tsimane settlements are located within areas that have been ceded to logging interests.  The Tsimane have long had a tumultuous relationship with logging groups.  At first glance, the relationship may appear to be one of mere exploitation, but in actuality, it is quite complex and often characterized by mutual dependence and mutual distrust.  While most Tsimane hold negative opinions of the loggers and their presence, the industry remains one of the only constant sources of income for the Tsimane, and there is no stigma associated with working for them.