Zpara Leaders and Identity Construction

in Ecuador: The Complexities of Indigenous

Self-Representation
By

Maximilian Viatori
i owa state u n iver s i t y

resumen
En ste artculo, exploro las practicas de auto-representacin usadas por los lderes o
dirigentes de la Nacionalidad Zpara del Ecuador (NAZAE), uno de los grupos indgenas ms pequeos de la Amazona Ecuatoriana. stos dirigentes han utilizado sus
idiomas indgenas, especficamente zpara y kichwa, para simbolizar su autenticidad
cultural cuando interactan con individuos que no pertenecen a la nacionalidad zpara.
El nfasis de stos lideres en los idiomas zpara y kichwa, como indicadores de la legitimidad de sus comunidades, ha sido importante para crear un espacio poltico para los
indgenas zparas en el Ecuador. Sin embargo, en el proceso de comparar idiomas indgenas con autenticidad cultural, los lideres zparas tambin han parcialmente ocultado
e invalidado practicas de la historia zpara. Por ejemplo, ellos han ocultado el uso del
idioma espaol en sus comunidades cuando representan sus comunidades a personas
no zparas, y han utilizado la falta de conocimiento del idioma zpara de lideres indgenas rivales para desacreditarles. Al examinar la complejidad de las practicas de representacin de lideres indgenas en Amrica Latina, he contribuido a un proceso de
aprendizaje ms complejo y comprensivo al estudiar y ver cmo stos lideres han articulado nuevas expresiones de autoridad indgena en el proceso de auto-representacin.
palabras claves: Zpara, Ecuador, auto-representacin, identidad indgena, esencialismo.
key words: Zpara, Ecuador, self-representation, indigenous identity, essentialism.

n this article, I explore the practices of self-representation used by indigenous leaders or dirigentes (as they are often referred to in Spanish) from the Zpara
Nationality of Ecuador, one of the smallest indigenous groups in the Ecuadorian
Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 104133. ISSN 19354932, online ISSN
19254940. 2007 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permissions to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Presss Rights and Permissions
website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo/asp. DOI: 10.1525/jlaca.2007.12.1.104

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Amazon. These dirigentes have used indigenous languages, specifically Zpara

and Kichwa, to symbolize their authenticity when interacting with non-Zpara
outsiders. Zpara dirigentes emphasis on Zpara and Kichwa as indicators of their
communities legitimacy has been important for creating political space for the
Zpara in Ecuador. However, by equating indigenous languages with authenticity,
Zpara dirigentes have also partially obscured and invalidated Zpara histories and
practices. For example, they have downplayed the use of Spanish in their communities when representing them to outsiders and have highlighted rival indigenous
leaders lack of knowledge of the Zpara language to discredit them. By examining
the complexities of these dirigentes representational practices, I contribute to a
more complex understanding of how indigenous leaders in Latin America have
articulated new expressions of indigenous authority and power in their processes of
self-representation.
Much recent literature in Latin American anthropology has focused on how
indigenous groups have strategically deployed discourses of cultural essentialism
and authenticity to advance their political demands. Identity politics have been
(and continue to be) the most effective means for organizing indigenous social
movements and framing Indians calls for governmental reform in Latin American
nation-states (Warren and Jackson 2002; Brysk 2000; Yashar 2005). Throughout
Latin America, Indians have argued successfully for special rights and recognition
based on the idea that their cultures existed before, and developed outside of, EuroAmerican colonialism (Hodgson 2002; see also Nelson 1999:301307). Over the past
decade and a half, a number of Latin American states (most notably Ecuador,
Bolivia, and Colombia) have officially acknowledged the multiethnic character of
their populations or taken significant steps towards encouraging indigenous participation in national society through the limited recognition of indigenous rights
(Assies 2000; Van Cott 2000; Maybury-Lewis 2002).
Multilingual, bicultural, media conscious, and politically savvy indigenous leaders have played an important role in the advancement of identity politics in many of
Latin Americas social movements (e.g., Jackson 1991; Sawyer 2004). These leaders
have drawn from local discourses, practices of identity and ideas, and reconfigured
them to fit emerging spaces of recognition for indigenous peoples (Taylor 1994). Particularly in Amazonia, anthropologists have focused on how indigenous representatives have consciously performed and constructed their identities in ways that accord
with Western views of authentic indigenous cultures as a-historical and unaltered
by the pressures of modern capitalist society (Turner 1991; Jackson 1995; Ramos 1998;
see Clifford 1988 on authenticity). For example, many indigenous representatives
have used traditional headdresses and body paint to symbolize their exoticness
to outside audiences (Conklin 1997; Briggs 1996:445446). Indigenous leaders have
cast their identities in ways that embody romanticized Western notions of the indigenous

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Other in order to garner support from domestic and international advocates who
value such depictions of Indianness (Conklin and Graham 1995).
Indigenous leaders, however, do not function simply as cultural translators representing indigenous practices in a manner that accords with Western stereotypes of
indigenous identity or serve as bridges between indigenous and Western culture
(Karttunnen 1994:300). Rather, indigenous leaders are producers of knowledge and
interpreters of social and political information. They are actively engaged in the
process of creating and re-defining cultural difference. In their interactions with outside actors, indigenous representatives have articulated new spaces for the expression
of indigenous identity (Graham 2002; Lazzari 2003). However, in the process of
emphasizing the continuity of indigenous culture or tradition, indigenous leaders
have also extended and naturalized dominant discourses of power and essentialism
that mask the complexity of indigenous identity and practice (Turner 2002:231;
Warren 1998:26; Mallon 1995:285).As Matthew Lauer (2006) demonstrates, for example, interactions between indigenous leaders and outsiders in Venezuela have generated novel discourses of authority that have created new divisions and contradictions
within Yekwana communities in the Upper Orinoco River basin.
In this article, I draw on specific ethnographic examples of indigenous dirigentes (leaders) who represent the Zpara nationality in Amazonian Ecuador in
their interactions with outsiders, to reveal the nuanced nature of these dirigentes
practices of self-representation.1 In the process of representing themselves and their
communities as authentic, these dirigentes not only create new opportunities for
the recognition of Zpara identity, but also invalidate specific historic and contemporary expressions of hybridity in Zpara practices that do not fit within essentialist constructions of indigenousness. Specifically, I address the way in which Zpara
dirigentes have adapted their language use to portray themselves as authentic in
encounters with non-Zpara outsidersgovernment officials and press agents,
anthropologists like myself, and rival leaders from the Comuna Zparo (Zparo
municipality) who also claim Zpara identity.
I am particularly concerned with demonstrating how Zpara dirigentes have
successfully navigated, as well as reproduced, discourses of linguistic essentialism
that are predominant in Ecuadorian identity politics (and in international indigenous politics as well). I use the term linguistic essentialism to refer to the belief that
the cultural uniqueness of any group is represented first and foremost by a language
which connects the group to its primordial, pre-contact, cultural essence. Within
identity politics, indigenous languages are one of the most tangible emblems of Indians
cultural distinctiveness from non-indigenous society. Furthermore, indigenous languages are positively valued by many non-Indians as symbols of indigenous groups
perceived lack of cultural contaminationor foreign influence. Indigenous languages

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function as important tools for indigenous leaders to index their authenticity when
interacting with outsiders. When speaking indigenous languages, however, indigenous leaders are limited in their ability to convey their messages to outside audiences
who rarely speak these languages. While indigenous languages index a speakers
authenticity as an Indian, the use of Spanish by dirigentes can index the corruption
of timeless indigenous culture to outsiders. When indigenous leaders use Spanish,
they may not claim the authenticity that indigenous languages bring them and risk
having their legitimacy questioned (Graham 2002).
Zpara dirigentes have employed the Zpara language as a core symbol of their
authenticity before outside audiences. Because none of these dirigentes is fluent in
Zpara, however, they have bundled their limited knowledge of Zpara with other
markers of indigenousnessthe use of the Kichwa (another indigenous language),
traditional clothing, and narratives of indigenous cultural purity, for example
to demonstrate their authenticity. Zpara dirigentes have blended these linguistic
and extralinguistic indices of authenticity to communicate Zpara political
demands to outside audiences in order to carve out a political opening for an
emerging Zpara identity in Ecuador. Furthermore, these dirigentes have expanded
the acceptable boundaries of language use and indigenous identity in public
encounters between Indians and non-Indians. Zpara dirigentes, however, also have
enforced the reified boundary between pure indigenous culture and corrupt
Western practices when acting as translators between community members and
outsiders, and in their criticisms of other indigenous leaders whom most Zpara
regard as corrupt. They have done so in order to maintain their position as authentic interpreters of Zpara identity. In the process, they have undermined practices
of bilingualism and cultural hybridity in their communities.

Zpara Language, History and Identity

As one component of my dissertation research on the recent re-emergence of
Zpara identity in Ecuador (Viatori 2005), I actively engaged with 16 Zpara male
and female dirigentes during their routine day-to-day activities over the course of
14 months in Ecuador between March 2001 and September 2004. I observed these
dirigentes in their interactions with other indigenous representatives, at press conferences, in meetings with government officials, and as they related with the community members they represent. Additionally, I conducted formal and informal
interviews with these dirigentes throughout the course of my research. All of the
dirigentes I observed were employed in the Zpara nationalitys organization, which
has an office in Puyo, the capital of Pastaza province. Each had a specific position in

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Figure 1 Zpara dirigentes meeting in their office in Puyo to discuss organizational strategies.
Photo by Maximilian Viatori.

the organization (either in the overall administration as a president or vicepresident, or as the head of one of the organizations programs such as education or
tourism) for which he or she received a small stipend.
When I first began my research in Ecuador, the name of the Zparas organization was the Asociacin de la Nacionalidad Zpara de la Provincia de Pastaza (the
Association of the Zpara Nationality of Pastaza Province, ANAZPPA), which
changed in 2002 to the Organizacin de la Nacionalidad Zpara del Ecuador (Organization of the Zpara Nationality of Ecuador, ONZAE), and in 2003 became the
Nacionalidad Zpara del Ecuador (the Zpara Nationality of Ecuador, NAZAE). The
Zpara organization initially represented the communities of Llanchamacocha,
Jandiayacu, Mazaramu, and one family in Cuyacocha. It now also represents the
communities of Shiona, Pindoyacu, Balsaura and San Jos del Curaray (Bilhaut
2005:11). These communities are located along the Conambo, Pindoyacu, and
Curaray Rivers (all of which eventually flow into the Amazon River in Peru) in the
central and eastern portions of Pastaza, Ecuadors largest Amazonian province.
Each community has between 25 to 60 residents who engage primarily in subsistence hunting and farming in Ecuadors primary tropical rainforest, but who also
make frequent trips outside their communities to sell their handicrafts, work, attend
school, or serve in the military.
The Zpara constitute one of the smallest indigenous nationalities in Ecuador,
with approximately two hundred members living in eastern Ecuador (Andrade Pallares 2001:12). For these individuals the Zpara language has become the primary
symbol of their identity as Zpara. However, only a few Zparaelders who are all

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Figure 2 Location of the Conambo and Pindoyacu Rivers in eastern Pastaza Province.
Map by Maximilian Viatori.

over 60 years of agestill speak the Zpara language, which is a member of the
Zaparoan language family (Peeke 1962, 1991; Stark 1981:1213; Whitten 1981:138; Wise
1999:312). Prior to European contact, Zpara speakers were numerous in eastern
Ecuador and northeastern Peru (Rivet 1930:5; Steward and Metraux 1948:629). In
1846, the Italian traveler Gaetano Osculati estimated that the Zpara still numbered
20 thousand in the area between the Napo, Pastaza, and Curaray Rivers (2001:139).
By the early 20th century, however, the Zpara had almost disappeared, despite having been a large and prosperous tribe (Loch 1938:52). In 1930, the German anthropologist, Gnter Tessman, estimated that only a few hundred Zpara still remained
in Ecuador in small settlements along the Curaray, Villano and Cononaco Rivers.
The drastic decline of Zpara in Amazonian Ecuador was the result of death
from disease, forced migrations, and enslavement (Sweet 1969:103; Reeve
1988b:2223; Muratorio 1991:7293; Descola 1994:17). Many Zpara were also
absorbed and acculturated by neighboring indigenous groups (Whitten 1976:16).
The Canelos Kichwa or Pastaza Runa, for example, emerged out of a process of
ethnogenesis in which Quijos, Zpara, and Achuar intermarried (Whitten 1976:78;
Obrerem 1974:347; Hudelson 1985:69; Reeve 1988a:8788; Descola 1994:22). 2 The
mediating language of these multilinguistic unions was the regional lingua franca,
Kichwa (also spelled Quichua) (Steward 1948:512; Orr and Wrisley 1965; Whitten
1981:125128). As the result of death and acculturation, by the 20th century the
Zpara Leaders and Identity Construction in Ecuador

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Zpara language had virtually vanished from eastern Ecuador, having been largely
replaced by Kichwa (Jouanen 1941:442448; Rival 2002:35; Peeke 1962:125; Whitten
1981:139). By the beginning of the 20th century, almost all Zpara spoke Kichwa as
their first language.
This is certainly the case in the Zpara communities I studied, where Kichwa is
the first language of almost all the community members. The use of Kichwa firmly
situates the Zpara as authentically indigenous within the context of indigenous
identity and politics in the Ecuadorian Amazon. However, Kichwa does not function as an effective symbol for Zpara identity, because it is not particular to the
Zpara. Kichwa is the most-spoken indigenous language in Ecuador, and the language of identity for the Kichwa nationality in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
In addition to Kichwa, Spanish also became a regular part of Zpara linguistic
practice in the 20th century. Beginning in the 1940s, Zpara men left their communities to work for the Shell Oil Company as well as on plantations in the Puyo
area. Currently, most Zpara men leave their communities (for periods of time
ranging from several months to several years) to earn cash working for construction companies on the Ecuadorian coast or enlist in the military. The result of this
pattern of migration is that most Zpara men are conversationally competent in
Spanish. In addition to leaving their communities for work, both men and women
(as well as children) have regularly left the communities over the last two decades
to attend Spanish-language high schools and trade schools in Puyo and Quito,
Ecuadors national capital. Although Kichwa remains the first language of almost
all Zpara (with a minute number who learned Zpara or Achuar as their mother
tongues), Spanish is an important second language for many of them and it has
become a communication tool in Zpara dirigentes interactions with non-Zpara
(including other indigenous leaders who do not speal Kichwa). Within the context
of contemporary identity politics in Pastaza, however, indigenous leaders who
speak Spanish too fluently are still viewed with skepticism by Indians and nonIndians alike. In her work on the Shuar in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Janet Hendricks
notes that as a result of this skepticism, Shuar leaders sometimes deny their knowledge of Spanish (1991:63).
The reality that most Zpara speak Kichwa and Spanish presented a problem for
the Zpara communities when they decided to politically organize as a nationality
in the 1990s. Over the last three decades, Ecuadors Amazonian Indians have increasingly organized and identified themselves and other ethnic groups in Ecuador as
nationalities. They have had some success since Ecuador is now recognized as a
multi-ethnic state (Lucero 2003). Nationality divides Amazonian Indians along linguistic lines into autonomous ethnic groups. Although a portion of each nationality
is bilingual (which is encouraged by indigenous-administered, government-funded

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multilingual indigenous/Spanish language education programs), each nationality

usually has its own unique language: for example, Kichwa is the language of the
Kichwa nationality, Wao is the language of the Waorani, and so on. Indigenous
nationalities in Amazonian Ecuador have asserted that their languages provide the
most tangible evidence of the continuity of indigenous cultures in the Amazon
from pre-contact societies to the present. This continuity provides a foundation for
both Indians claims of cultural distinctiveness from the Spanish-speaking Hispanic
nationalitywhich, historically, has controlled Ecuadors resourcesand their
demands for special indigenous rights.
In that context, the problem the Zpara faced was that after generations of
assimilation and intermarriage with other ethnolinguistic groups, they mostly
spoke languagesKichwa and Spanishthat were not specific or unique to them.
Indians throughout Latin America have built their claims to official recognition and
rights as Indians based on some kind of persistence in their identity through time,
despite encroachment on their territories, reduction in their populations, and cultural prostration before the state (Lazzari 2003:60). The problem that the Zpara
have faced in their return is that they were too affected by colonialism, with the
result that they did not fit the emergent standards of group identity in the Ecuadorian
Amazon given the absence of their own national language. They were caught
between what Axel Lazzari refers to as a thick past and a thin present (2003:60).
Despite their rich past as a distinct tribal entity, Ecuadorian anthropologists had
declared the Zpara extinct by the 1990s given their apparent lack of ethnographic
uniqueness (Andrade Pallares 2000:20).
In order to assert their existence as a culturally unique group, the Zpara formally organized as a nationality in 1998. Since its organization, the Zpara nationality has been concerned primarily with the documentation and preservation of the
Zpara language as an emblem of their cultural distinctivenessa process that
established the Zpara as a politically legitimate nationality in Ecuador. For example, shortly after organizing the Zpara were officially recognized by Ecuadors most
prominent Amazonian federation, the Confederacin de Nacionalidades Indgenas
de la Amazona Ecuatoriana (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador,
CONFENIAE), and largest national indigenous federation, the Confederacin de las
Nacionalidades Indgenas del Ecuador (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of
Ecuador, CONAIE). In 2001, UNESCO declared the Zpara language an Intangible Masterpiece of Humankind and promised financial support for its documentation and revitalization. Additionally, the Zpara were given a seat on the executive
board of the Consejo de Desarrollo de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos del Ecuador
(Development Council of Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador, CODENPE), a
national agency that oversees indigenous development in Ecuador.

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The Strategies of Zpara Self-Representation

The Zpara language has been an effective symbol for the Zpara to prove their
validity as Indians and, thereby, garner support from the Ecuadorian state, the
World Bank, and various international NGOs. Similarly, when speaking publicly,
Zpara dirigentes use the Zpara language in order to validate their political goals,
their identity, and the credibility of what they say as uniquely indigenous.
In her study of Brazilian indigenous leadersuse of language, Laura Graham argues
that non-indigenous, outside audiences assume a direct link between the language that
an indigenous representative speaks and his or her membership in a particular cultural
group (2002:183). Graham stresses, however, that given the multi-functionality of language it is not possible simply to say that an indigenous leaders use of an indigenous
language symbolizes authenticity to outside audiences, while his or her use of a language like Portuguese or Spanish marks him or her as illegitimate to non-Indians
(2002:189205). Language performs several different functions; in addition to symbolizing a speakers identity, language performs the all-important function of conveying
a message through particular sounds and grammatical forms. Therefore, Graham
asserts, while indigenous languages are important symbols of speakers authenticity
before non-indigenous audiences, they are limited in their ability to communicate
important messages to these audiences. Graham identifies three strategies that indigenous spokespeople use in Brazil to balance the symbolic and communicative functions
of different languages: bracketing speech in non-indigenous languages with indigenous phrases and linguistic performances, using translators, and invoking identifiably
indigenous imagery (for example, metaphors of indigenous peoples spiritual connection to nature) when speaking in Portuguese.
Zpara dirigentes use linguistic strategies similar to those outlined by Graham.
When addressing outside audiences, Zpara dirigentes use Zpara phrases in their
speech as a way to bracket their narratives in Spanish, ensuring that the content of
these narratives is perceived as indigenous. However, the Zpara language alone is
not an effective marker of these dirigentes legitimacy, because their knowledge of
the language is so limited. In order to get around this issue, Zpara dirigentes evoke
their authenticity by employing a variety of linguistic and extralinguistic, performative strategies in addition to using some Zpara. For example, they often combine
Zpara words and phrases that they know with Kichwa. When speaking in Spanish,
they also tap into discourses of indigenous environmentalism, stewardship, rights
and opposition to Western encroachment that circulate internationally, while
wearing traditional attire.
Bartolo, the president of NAZAE, has used all these strategies in his role as
the main spokesperson for the Zpara nationality. He has made repeated trips to the
United States, France, and Spain to petition for donations and support for the

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Zpara. He was interviewed by newspaper and television journalists in Ecuador and

abroad, since he considers his responsibility to be the representation of the Zpara
as authentic Indians to outside audiences. As the following examples demonstrate,
Bartolo creatively combines Zpara, Kichwa, and traditional clothes to symbolize
his authenticity as an indigenous leader.
Bartolo is fluent in Spanish and Kichwa, but has a limited knowledge of Zpara,
as is the case with the other Zpara dirigentes. He begins most of his public
addresses with the phrase Kwijia ikicha Zpara anuka. He then tells his audience
that this sentence is in Zpara before translating it into Spanish as Yo soy un hombre de la selva (I am a man from the rainforest), which allows him to capitalize on
the symbolism of an indigenous grammar and phonology to underscore his
Zpara identity. This was the case in an address that Bartolo gave in Barcelona in
2001 as reported in the Spanish newspaper El Pais (Antn 2001: ltima Seccin).
Bartolo began his speech with the I am a man of the rainforest introduction. He
then switched to speaking in Spanish about indigenous rights issues such as bilingual education, health, and demands for the Ecuadorian government to aid the
Zpara in revitalizing their language. Bartolo, however, intertwined his discussion
of the Zparas political concerns with fragments of Zpara stories and with a
juxtaposition of his life in the Ecuadorian rainforest with that of urban Barcelona.
As the El Pas article goes, he commented on how odd it was to be in a place like the
city of Barcelona where he had to do something as strange as pay for something
to eat (Antn 2001: ltima Seccin). By doing so, Bartolo ensured that the content
of his narratives was received as indigenous, even if the linguistic channel was not.
In order to secure his perception by his Barcelonan audience as an authentic
Zpara, Bartolo also wore a vest made out of a bark from the llanchama tree that
Zpara historically used to fashion clothes. During my fieldwork, I observed Zpara
dirigentes similarly use material things seen as typical of their communities when
addressing outside audiences. For example, in April 2003, I went with Bartolo and
four other Zpara to protest the arrest of several indigenous activists from the community of Sarayaku outside the office of the government prosecutor in downtown
Puyo. A large crowd of Indians gathered outside the office; most were Kichwa from
Sarayaku, although indigenous leaders of other nationalities were present to show
their support. Eventually, the protestors gained entry into the office. Once inside the
small, and slightly mildewed office, indigenous leaders began to address their grievances to the prosecutor. As a local television camera crew recorded the exchanges,
each leader stepped forward and denounced the arrests of his or her fellow activists.
Bartolo was one of the last to speak, standing before the prosecutor, he was adorned
with a feathered headdress and wore a large beaded necklaceall of the Zpara in
attendance wore headdresses and necklaces, two had even brought spears. Bartolos
dress provided a striking visual contrast to the business suit of the government

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Figure 3 A Zpara dirigente, dressed in a llanchama bark vest and feather headdress,
on his way to make a public address in downtown Puyo.
Photo by Maximilian Viatori.

official as he introduced himself in Zpara and Kichwa before denouncing the

arrests in Spanish. The visual sign of his headdress and attire marked Bartolo as culturally different from the mestizo official he was addressing and increased the
authenticity of his linguistic message as indigenous.
Laura Graham has described linguistic and extralinguistic strategies like the ones
discussed above as creative adaptations typical of native Amazonians practice
through which indigenous spokespeople further their goals and causes by framing
them in terms that appeal to Western values (2002:183; see also Conklin and Graham
1995:704). However, Zpara dirigentes do not just perform their authenticity before
outside audiences, but also perpetuate, naturalize and reproduce discourses of indigenous authenticity. In their role as translators between community members and outsiders, Zpara dirigentes have contributed to the reification of the separation between
authentic Zpara culture and language, and illegitimate Western cultural practices
symbolized by the use of Spanish. Moreover, Zpara dirigentes have argued that rival
leaders from the Comuna Zparo are inauthenticbecause they have become too fluent in Spanish and have accepted Western missionary help and political support.

Translation and Reproduction

On May 19, 2003, I was present in the Zpara office in Puyo for a celebration of the
two-year anniversary of UNESCOs recognition of the Zpara language as part of
the worlds Intangible Cultural Heritage. A representative from UNESCOs Quito

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office was present along with several Ecuadorian journalists who were recording the
event for local television news. There were also approximately 20 Zpara dirigentes
and their families, many of whom were wearing llanchama bark clothing over their
button-down shirts and jeans. The small celebration began with the UNESCO representative congratulating the Zpara in Spanish on their work to preserve their language and his promise for continuing support from UNESCO. NAZAEs president,
Bartolo, responded in Spanish by thanking the UNESCO representative and speaking about the progress the Zpara were making in introducing Zpara language
education into their communities. In Kichwa, Bartolo then asked two Zpara elders who were in Puyo for the celebration to speak in Zpara on behalf of their communities. One of the elders, an older woman from one of the Conambo River
communities, sang a short song in Zpara. She was followed by the other elder, a
man from one of the Pindoyacu River communities, who gave a short greeting in
Zpara to the UNESCO representative. Both elders self-translated into Kichwa and
Bartolo then translated their words into Spanish for the UNESCO representative
and the journalists.
Zpara dirigentes often ask elders to speak at public events like the one I
described above. Alternately, the dirigentes sometimes present non-Zpara audiences
with video recordings of these elders in their home communities speaking Zpara.
In these videos, the elders are positioned by the Zpara dirigentes as the untainted
voice of the rainforest that can only be expressed through Zpara and Kichwa. To
ensure that these voices remain uncorrupted, Zpara dirigentes serve as translators for these elders, even for those who speak some Spanish. In October 2000,
Bartolo visited universities and not-for-profit organizations in California, showing
a ten-minute film about the revitalization of the Zpara language. The film focuses
on the Zpara elders in the communities of Llanchamacocha, Jandiayacu and
Mazaramu, who spoke or sung in Zpara. Although several of the elders could speak
Spanish, Bartolo functioned as the main translator in the film. He conveyed the elders concerns about the transmission of their language and Zpara mythology to
future generations in Spanish (which was subtitled in English for the North American audience). As this example shows, Zpara dirigentes use translation as a vehicle for capitalizing on the heightened symbolic power that an elder or community
member speaking only in Kichwa or Zpara creates for non-Zpara outsiders. The
result is that when the referential messages of the elders speeches are translated into
Spanish for outside audiences, there is a heightened appreciation for these messages
as distinctively indigenous because of the symbolism of the performance (Graham
2002:293).
In addition to being preoccupied with how elders speak, Zpara dirigentes are
also concerned with what these elders say when addressing outside audiences. By
assuming the role of translators Zpara dirigentes also control and edit the semantic

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Figure 4 Zpara dirigente leader poling a canoe upriver on the Conambo towards the community
of Llanchamacocha after a reunion of the Zpara nationality in Mazaramu.
Photo by Maximilian Viatori.

content of elders messages to make sure that they also index indigenous authenticity. For example, on April 25, 2003, a delegation of Zpara dirigentes attended a congress of indigenous leaders at CONFENIAEs headquarters in Union Base outside
of Puyo. At the time, the Zparas were in the process of trying to map and obtain a
title for their territory (a process which is still ongoing). During the afternoon session of the congress, the Zpara addressed the other indigenous delegates and asked
for their support. Bartolo began with a greeting in Zpara, before briefly addressing
the other leaders in Spanish. He then asked his mother, an elder who speaks Kichwa
and some Zpara, to speak on behalf of the Zpara communities. She began to
speak in Kichwa, but was gently interrupted by Bartolo who quietly said in Kichwa,
chiga mama, sapara shimi (mother, in Zpara). The elder, who is not conversant in
Zpara, decided to sing a song in Zpara about hunting and eating peccary in the
rainforest. Bartolo then followed with a loose translation of the song, speaking
about how the elder had told about the importance of nuka rpaka (our land) and
spara nkuka (the rainforest) for the survival of the Zpara language and culture.
Dirigentes often coach elders to frame their speeches within discourses of indigenous environmentalism or to reference Zpara mythology. In this manner, dirigentes ensure that the content of elders speeches matches the authenticity of the
code in which they are delivered.
In the initial stages of my fieldwork in 2002, I experienced firsthand one Zpara
dirigentes use of translation for maximizing the representation of Zpara community members authenticity when interacting with me, an outside anthropologist.

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In 2002, I returned to the Zpara community along the upper reaches of the
Conambo River where I had worked the year before, and traveled to two other
communities farther down river, which I had not visited yet. My objective was to
begin field research for my dissertation project on the role of language in the
Zparas political organization and identity. In 2001 and part of 2002, I had conducted research on the Zpara language in collaboration with the Zpara nationalitys education program, recording and analyzing the speech of several remaining
Zpara speakers for the creation of pedagogical Zpara materials. In my role as a linguist working on the Zpara language, I had acquired the status of an authority
on the language; my linguistic knowledge of the language (although not at the level
of a fluent speaker) became an asset for the Zpara nationality. When working in
Puyo, I was asked to help provide Zpara names for children, to help with the creation of a Zpara grammar, and even to write a speech in Zpara for the nationalitys contestant in the Princesa Indgena beauty contest annually organized by the
Direccin de Educacin Biling de Pastaza as part of the week-long festival celebrating Puyos official founding in 1899 by Dominican friars. On my first return
visit to one of the Zpara communities, I was asked by community members to
check the pronunciations and translations in a Zpara dictionary that had been
compiled by an Ecuadorian linguist, Carlos Andrade, shortly after I had left Ecuador
in 2001. In the Zpara organization and in the community where I had worked, my
initial role as an anthropologist was viewed within the context of my work as a student and recorder of the Zpara language. This role was further reinforced and
extended by the dirigente, who I will call Maria, who traveled with me on my first
trip to several Zpara communities in 2002. As a condition of entering these communities to conduct research, the Zpara organization required that a dirigente
accompany me. Maria, who speaks Kichwa but not Zpara, volunteered to function
as a translator for me and began to set up opportunities to do audio-recorded interviews with community members, especially the few remaining Zpara speakers.
Although I have never been fluent in Kichwa, I could understand much of what people were saying when they spoke it. Additionally, many of the community members
with whom I worked spoke Spanish. In short, I did not feel the need for a translator, but Maria insisted to serve in that capacity, so I agreed.
It became apparent to me rather quickly, however, that Marias role as my translator had less to do with my linguistic abilities than with my role as a potential documenter of the authenticity of the Zpara communities. She set up several
interviews for me with Zpara elders and community members and often asked that
I record these on the small digital recorder that I had brought with me. Often in
these interviews, individuals who would normally speak to me in Spanish were
directed by Maria to switch to Kichwa (or Zpara for the few who spoke it) once the
interview had started. The presence of Maria as a translator, therefore, meant that

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none of the community members interviewed would use Spanish when speaking
(even those who would be joking and conversing with me in Spanish before the
interview). Marias insistence to act as a translator/interview director meant that she
could reinforce these interviewees position (and beyond them the Zpara communities as a whole) as purely indigenous. In this case, transferring a message accurately from one language to another was not as important as maintaining an
imagined and reified separation between Zpara or Kichwa on one side and Spanish
on the other.
Preserving this distinction, however, became difficult for Maria when we interviewed an elder whom I will call Carlos. Carlos is one of the few remaining Zpara
speakers. As a young man, he spent more than a decade outside the Zpara communities, during which he worked for the Royal Dutch Shell oil company. He is one
of the most fluent speakers of Spanish in the communities that I visited. He is also
the most competent speaker of Zpara I met, and is also fluent in Kichwa. I had the
opportunity to interview Carlos over the period of several weeks. We talked mostly
about Zpara history, usually conversing in Spanish. He occasionally wanted to tell
me a story in Zpara, and on these occasions he asked me to record him. It was tiring for him to produce Zpara, which he has had few opportunities to speak over
the past decades. After telling me a story or history in Zpara, he would then selftranslate into Spanish.
Working with Carlos made Maria uneasy. She cautioned me several times about
working with him and told me that it would be better for me to spend more time
working with other elders who had spent less time outside the communities. She
criticized him for leaving the communities and living and working in Quito and
Puyo. Additionally, she also criticized Carlos for being the only one (in her estimation) who spoke Spanish well in the communities (although most Zpara men
speak some Spanish). She, however, also told me on several occasions that he was
the best of the remaining Zpara speakers and that I should have worked with him
as much as possible.
Maria was present for a series of interviews I conducted with Carlos and often
tried to direct the form and content of his speech. She asked him to tell us some
Zpara histories, which he agreed to do. He began the first, about the 1941 to 1942
border war between Ecuador and Peru, in Spanish.3 After only a few sentences,
Maria interrupted Carlos and told him in Kichwa to tell the story in sapara shimi
(Zpara language in Kichwa). By telling the story in Spanish, Carlos had chosen a
grammatical code that did not index Zpara-ness or Indian-ness. On that particular day, Carlos was feeling tired as he had recently been ill and told Maria that he did
not have enough energy to speak in Zpara. Maria accepted Carloss denial to speak
in Zpara. However, she said that he should tell a story that was unique to the
Zpara, not a historia mestiza (a mestizo story) which was her characterization of

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his history of the border war. She complained that it was more about Ecuador in
general, and not specifically about the Zpara. She wanted him, for instance, to tell
a story about Tsitsano, a creation figure that appears to be unique to Zpara oral literature (Andrade Pallares 2001:123125).
Carlos consented to Marias request, but instead of talking about Tsitsano he
began a story in Spanish about a mythological blood-sucking monster that had terrorized the Zpara people. He introduced the story by saying in Spanish,Antes que
haba, no s, un diablo. Creo que era un diablo (Long ago there was, I dont know,
a devil. I think thats what it was). Maria quickly interjected and corrected him, saying in Spanish, Un espritu malo! Espritu malo! (An evil spirit! Evil spirit!). Carlos
looked at Maria annoyed, repeated espritu malo, and then continued his story in
Spanish without further interruption from Maria.
Afterwards, Maria told me that the word diablo (devil) is a word that was
introduced into the vocabularies of Amazonian Indians in Ecuador during the
20th century by missionaries. The concept of a devil, she explained, is not an
indigenous one, but a Western idea. She corrected Carlos and told him to use
espritu malo because, as she explained to me, she thought that it better reflected
the fact that the Zpara had not had extensive contact with Western missionary
ideas.
Later on the same day, Carlos told Maria and me several stories primarily in
Zpara, a feat that few of the remaining speakers can match. One of these stories was
about how the Zpara had been the founders of the now-Kichwa community of
Sarayaku. He told this story in Zpara and then self-translated it into Spanish. This
story was about how the Zpara lost their territory and language due to the aggression of mestizos and other local indigenous groups, and why they must therefore
fight for an official territory in order to prevent further incursions. Stories like this
one pleased Maria much more than those Carlos told in Spanish. However, Carloss
ability and insistence on self-translating his Zpara stories into Spanish upset
Marias intention to be the linguistic interpreter of the Zpara communities for outside audiences.
The fact that one of the most fluent speakers of Zpara also happens to be one
of the most fluent speakers of Spanish in the Zpara communities posed a problem
for Marias representation of the communities as culturally pure, and this was so
for two reasons. First, while Carloss fluency in Zpara established him (and, by
extension, his community) as authentic, his fluency in Spanish potentially undermined this legitimacy. Second, the fact that Carlos could speak directly to an outsider in Spanish meant that Maria was less able to edit the content of what Carlos said.
The result was that Carlos could speak about things that Maria did not consider
authentically Zpara like the Devil or Ecuadors border war, further imperiling his
legitimacy.

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Figure 5 View of the interior of a Zpara house where women are preparing food.
Photo by Maximilian Viatori.

Instances such as the one I have described between Maria and Carlos do not
necessarily demonstrate how Zpara regulate authenticity within their communities, because the dynamic of these interactions were driven obviously by my presence as a non-Zpara outsider (a status that changed as my fieldwork went on).
Nevertheless, the examples I have discussed in this section detail the role that Zpara
dirigentes have played framing Zpara linguistic practices within the parameters of
essentialism for outside audiences. Furthermore, these examples show how Zpara
dirigentes have integrated internationally and nationally circulating notions of
essentialized indigenousness into local community members understandings of
Zpara identity (a similar process in the Peruvian Andes is elucidated by Shepherd
2004). In her interactions with Carlos, for instance, Maria redefined what combination of his ideas, linguistic knowledge, and life experiences counted as valid representations of Zpara tradition within discourses of authenticity that frame
indigenous practice in opposition to Western cultural contamination. In so doing,
Maria naturalized these discourses by invalidating aspects of Carlos narrative that
she felt did not fit these ideas.

Managing Authenticity
As the preceding section demonstrates, while Zpara dirigentes have created new
possibilities for the recognition of their communities by connecting them to larger
spheres of identity politics, these dirigentes have also reproduced dominant and

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essentialist discourses of identity. In this section, I further explain how they have
extended and naturalized these discourses in their interactions with leaders from
the Comuna Zparo. Zpara dirigentes have publicly and repeatedly claimed that
the Comuna Zparo leaders are illegitimate and inauthentic representatives of the
Zpara community because they do not know the Zpara language, have affiliations
with missionaries, and are of mestizo descent.
The Zpara dirigentes I studied were not the first to re-claim Zpara identity in
Ecuador. Another groupwhich I will refer to as the Comuna Zparo to avoid confusion with the Zpara dirigentes and communities I have been discussing
claimed Zpara identity in eastern Ecuador during the 1990s also. The Comuna
Zparo communities are located on the lower portion of the Conambo River close
to Ecuadors border with Peru. In 1996, individuals from these communities formed
the Unin de Centros del Territorio Zparo del Ecuador (Union of the Centers of the
Zparo Territory of Ecuador, UCTZE) with the aid of the Asociacn de Indgenas
Evanglicos de Pastaza Regin Amaznica (Association of Evangelical Indians of
Pastaza in the Amazonian Region, AIEPRA) (Bilhaut 2005:8). In 1997, UCTZE
became the Organizacin de la Nacionalidad Zparo del Ecuador (Organization of
the Zparo Nationality of Ecuador, ONAZE).
Since the creation of the Zpara nationality by communities on the upper portion of the Conambo River in 1998, there has been tension between the Zpara dirigentes and the Comuna Zparo leaders as to who could legitimately claim Zpara
identity. The advantage that the Zpara dirigentes have had was that they made
themselves synonymous with the Zpara language at the time when the idea of a
Zpara identity was first entering regional and national political spheres in
Ecuador. UNESCO recognition of the Zpara language, for example, drew attention and publicity to Zpara dirigentes, who were featured on the national evening
news and on the front page of Ecuadors largest newspaper (El Comercio 2001).
Zpara dirigentes used this moment to position themselves as the legitimate representatives of the Zpara language and identity in Ecuador. They accomplished
this by representing themselves, first and foremost, as authentic Zpara while they
portrayed the Comuna Zparo representatives, who had garnered little attention
in the public eye, as Christianized mestizos who were trying to claim Zpara identity
for personal gain.
One of the primary ways that Zpara dirigentes distinguished themselves from
the Comuna Zparo leaders was language. In an October 2002 interview, Bartolo
explained to me that the term Zpara meant people of the forest. He said that the
term Zpara is what speakers of the language use to refer to themselves and to the
language (my research on the language confirms this, as does Andrade Pallares
2001:87). Over the past five years, the Zpara dirigentes have asserted that Zpara is
the accepted term of reference for the language, and its speakers have insisted on its

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official use in press releases and government documents. Bartolo pointed out to me,
however, that Zpara is not the term that the Comuna Zparo used to refer to
themselves, but Zparothe only difference, obviously, being the final vowel).
Zparo, he said, is a type of basket.4 Bartolo explained to me that the fact that
the Comuna Zparo leaders could not, in his estimation, even get the name of their
nationality right indicated their illegitimacy as real Zparaa sentiment that was
echoed by other Zpara dirigentes throughout my field research.
In March 2003, I had a conversation with another Zpara dirigente, whom I will
call Oswaldo, about the Comuna Zparo leaders knowledge of the Zpara language.
Oswaldo has been active in the Zpara nationalitys organization since its inception,
and at the time of the interview he was directing the training of Zpara teachers in
the Zpara education program. He told me that, in his estimation, if the Comuna
Zparo leaders did not know the Zpara language, it was because they had not lived
as Zpara for a long time. He claimed that these leaders came from families and
communities that welcomed Western missionaries and their money into their communities, in addition to intermarrying with non-Indian mestizos. In contrast,
Oswaldo said that the Zpara had always resisted the missions and that this was a
sign of their cultural inegrity.5 It was for these reasons, Oswaldo explained to me,
that the Comuna Zparo leaders could not speak Zpara and why they could not,
or should not in Oswlados view, identify as Zpara.
The Zpara have used their language as a symbol of their cultural legitimacy
in combination with other indicators of authenticity such as the use of Kichwa,
traditional dress, and knowledge of Zpara mythology. Conversely, the Zpara
bundle the Comuna Zparo leaders apparent lack of mastery of Zpara with other
markers of cultural inauthenticity to prove the lack of legitimacy of the Comuna
Zparos leaders.
Oswaldo, for example, emphasized the Comuna Zparos ties to AIEPRA (Asociacin de Indgenas Evanglicos de Pastaza Regin Amaznica) to highlight a significant political distinction between them and the Zpara people. Since its creation,
he told me, unlike the former, the Zpara organization and its communities have
been recognized by and involved with indigenous organizations like the Organizacin de los Pueblos Indgenas de Pastaza (Organization of the Indigenous Peoples
of Pastaza, OPIP) and the Confederacin de Nacionalidades Indgenas de la Amazona
Ecuatoriana (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, CONFENIAE). Organizations like OPIP and CONFENIAE and their member communities
have consistently petitioned the Ecuadorian state for indigenous language education, indigenous land rights, and opposed environmentally-destructive oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Contrastingly, Oswaldo asserted, evangelical
indigenous organizations and communities have embraced capitalist development,
oil extraction, and looked forward to their integration into the national economy.

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In Oswaldos view, evangelical organizations like AIEPRA, and organizations like

the Comuna Zparo that were associated with them, opposed true indigenous
political goalsa sign of their illegitimacy as Indians.
In April 2003, I had a conversation with Maria in which she underscored how
the Comuna Zparo leaders political views, as well as their cultural background,
made them invalid representatives of the Zpara nationality. She spent most of the
time talking with me, in the moldy confines of the Zparas office in Puyo, focusing
on the 1992 Marcha Indgena por La Vida (Indigenous March for Life). She explained
the different roles that, according to her, the Zpara dirigentes and the Comuna
Zparo leaders played in it. In April of 1992, indigenous people walked from Puyo
to Quito with the goal of pressuring the Ecuadorian government to recognize
indigenous land tenure in Pastaza province (Sawyer 1997:65; Macdonald 2002:182).
OPIP leaders were demanding that roughly 70 percent of the Pastaza province be
divided into indigenous territories (Sawyer 2004:48). Maria and two of her brothers participated in the march, walking approximately 240 kilometers from Puyo to
Quito. Before reaching Quito, however, Maria claimed that the Comuna Zparo
leaders along with other evangelical Indians from Pastaza harassed the marchers.
The Evangelicals, she told me, got together and opposed the march, they showed
up with the police, and threw rocks at us. OPIP and its constituents successfully
reached Quito, however, because according to Maria most of the Indians were with
OPIP.

Figure 6 Male and female leaders and members of the Zpara nationality participating
in a march in downtown Puyo with other indigenous nationalities and organizations.
Photo by Maximilian Viatori.

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Following OPIPs march, then-president Rodrigo Borja awarded land titles to

Indians in Pastaza province.6 However, the government granted only 55 percent
of the area demanded by OPIP, dividing it into 19 blocks, each with a communal
land title (Sawyer 1997:7273, 2004:5051). The government gave each comuna an
indigenous name which had little or nothing to do with the area to which they
referred, creating the illusion that each of the nineteen land blocks corresponded
to locally recognized social divisions (Sawyer 2004:51; Sawyer 1997:72).7 For example, Anne-Gal Bilhaut points out that the naming and creation of the Comuna
Zparo8 was an administrative creation that is Zpara in name only (2005:8). Furthermore, she noted, although several Zpara speakers live in the Bloque Zparo,
the overwhelming majority of the roughly five hundred inhabitants of the Bloque
Zparo identify as Kichwa or Achuar (Bilhaut 2005:89).
Only one of our communities [Mazaramu] was located in the Bloque
[Zparo], Maria told me. She said the rest were left out by the government and
placed in block no. 8, Comunidades del Ro Pindoyacu (the Pindoyacu River Communities). While the names and boundaries of these land blocks were arbitrary, they
have acquired their own significance over time within indigenous politics in Pastaza. As Maria pointed out to me, the fact that she and the other authentic Zpara
lived in a land block that was not officially recognized by the state as being Zpara
undermined their position as legitimate Zpara. At the same time, she reminded
me, people who were not legitimate Zpara called themselves Zpara because they
lived in a territory that the government officially dubbed as Zparo. Maria claimed
that the individuals living in the Comuna Zparo were not Zpara, but Achuar and
Kichwa. She said that several individuals, most of them from the community of
Conambo, had organized themselves as Zparas to benefit politically and economically by forming a new nationality.9
Maria described an interaction she had with the president of the Comuna
Zparo following the creation of the Bloque Zparo by the Ecuadorian government
in 1993. According to Maria, the Comuna Zparo president had taunted her by saying that he had a Zpara territory, while she did not. She replied to him saying, Do
you know what, compaero? [That] territory is not just yours. We are Zparas. We
have the right to this territory. You are not Zpara.When the Comuna Zparo president asked Maria how she was sure that he was not Zpara, she responded by saying, Your grandfather is mestizoyour great-grandfather was Zparabut youre
mestizo. Maria told me that after this exchange she had traveled to Peru to visit with
Zpara elders who live on the Tigre River, northwest of the city of Iquitos. Maria
confided that these elders told her that, the person who is criticizing you is not
Zpara. He is mestizo. His grandfather is from Iquitos. He came from Brazil, he was
with a Zpara wife, he was born there.

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In our conversation, Maria evoked discourses of authenticity as a way of discrediting the Comuna Zparo organization and its leaders. She constructed an arbitrary division based on an idealized all or nothing indigenous versus western
dichotomy, placing herself and her fellow Zpara dirigentes on the side of authentic
Indians. She highlighted particular aspects of Comuna Zparo leaders personal histories and their practices as departures from indigenous ways of doing things
the acceptance of missionaries, the opposition to legitimate indigenous politics,
land theft, and mestizo ancestry. She spoke from the position that Zpara dirigentes
are the legitimate representatives of the Zpara language and identity in Ecuador,
based on the fact that they and their families maintained their traditional culture
and language, refused missionaries and manufactured goods, and did not intermarry with mestizos.
Maria spoke in Spanish throughout most of our conversation while criticizing
other indigenous leaders for being mestizo and not speaking an indigenous language. By speaking in Spanish, Maria risked these same criticisms. In order to avoid
being perceived as too fluent in Spanish, Maria began our conversation in Kichwa,
but decided to switch to Spanish to tell me the story of the march, in her words, to
make sure that I understood everything. By initiating our conversation in Kichwa,
Maria used the authenticity of the language to index the message she was about to
deliver in Spanish as legitimately indigenous. Furthermore, in citing my presence
and language abilities as her reason for using Spanish, Maria asserted that the use of
Spanish was not her normal or preferred channel for communication. Additionally, while speaking in Spanish Maria drew on indigenous discourses of traditionalism, language preservation and cultural death and incursion to convey herself and
her message as authentic in juxtaposition to the Comuna Zparo leaders.

Conclusion
I have shown that to construct their communities as authentically indigenous in
interactions with outsiders, Zpara leaders manipulate aspects of their communities linguistic and cultural practices. These manipulations are grounded on essentialist notions of indigeneity. My research concurs with much of the recent
anthropological literature on indigenous self-representation in lowland South
America, which examines how indigenous leaders have performed authenticity to
gain political and economic support. I have also demonstrated that Zpara leaders
representation of tradition relies upon establishing seemingly close links between
contemporary identity and pre-contact authentic bearers of tradition (Briggs
1996:449; see also Briggs and Bauman 1992).

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However, in contrast with much recent literature on identity politics in Amazonia, I do not view Zpara leaders self-representations as simply performative.
Rather, as I have argued, through this process of self-representation Zpara leaders
have extended discourses of authenticity into Zapara communities and into their
interactions with the Comuna Zparo leaders. I have shown that there is a distance
(Briggs 1996:459461) between Zpara leaders representations of their identity and
on-the-ground Zpara practice and history. The most salient example of this is
probably the distance between Zpara leaders construction of community elders as
monolingual, monocultural, and unfamiliar with the world outside of their communities, and the fact that many elders are indeed bilingual, multicultural, and
experienced with Ecuadorian society. Furthermore, I have shown that these leaders
authority is grounded on their ability to mitigate this distance when referring to their
own communities while simultaneously emphasizing it when qualifying the practice of rival indigenous leaders. For example, leaders coach elders to forego the use
of Spanish in favor of Zpara and Kichwa. At the same time, they point out the
gaps between the Comuna Zparo leaders present and past practices and Zpara
traditions as a way of delegitimizing their claim to authority and power.
In a recent discussion of Clifford (2000), Hale reminds us that identity politics
are enacted on inherently contradictory terrain and enjoin us to probe these contradictions, tracing their consequences (2006:114; see also Lucero 2003:42). In this
vein, my concern in this article was not to determine who is authentic and, conversely, who is inauthentic in current discussions of Zpara identity and practice.
Rather, my intentions were to show the challenges that identity politics place on
local communities engaged in organizing and representing themselves, and to
examine the consequences they face when navigating on this contradictory terrain.
In the Zpara case, leaders have had to adopt a range of creative strategies to present a consistent and coherent identity in order to advance the goals of Zpara communities. In so doing, Zpara leaders have, however unintentionally, reinforced a
narrow definition of what counts as authentically indigenous and thereby
excluded aspects of contemporary Zpara cultural practices and of Zpara history.

Acknowledgments
Research funding for this project was provided in part by a Dissertation Research
Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. I would like to thank Jean Muteba Rahier
and three anonymous reviewers who suggested thoughtful improvements to this
article. Additionally, I am grateful to Carol Smith, Martha Macri, Stefano Varese,
and Aram Yengoyan for providing critical insights and commentary on earlier

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drafts of this article. A version of this paper was also presented at the Iowa State
Department of Anthropologys Graduate and Faculty Seminar, and this article benefited from the comments and questions participants in the seminar provided.
Finally, I am indebted to all the individuals of the Zpara nationality in Puyo and
ms a dentro who made this research possible.

Notes
1Even when speaking in Kichwa or Zpara, community members refer to these individuals with the
Spanish term dirigente. These dirigentes, while often trained in traditional leadership roles in their
communities (as shamans, for example), are different from the community kurakas (leaders in
Kichwa) or akamenos (leaders in Zpara) who take care of a series of matters within their communities. The concept of dirigentes, professional individuals that represent the Zpara to outsiders, is relatively new in the Zpara communities. There is no equivalent in Zpara or Kichwa to describe their role.
2There is some discrepancy in the ethnographic and historical literature on the subject of interethnic marriages and the formation of Kichwa or runa identity in the central Ecuadorian Amazon in regards
to which ethnic groups married which. In her discussion of the process of transculturation in the
Curaray River area, Reeve notes that the Zpara, Achuar, Kichwa and Quijos married among themselves
during the 19th century (1988a:87). However, she also notes that in a baptism registry created in 1910 in
Curaray Alto, while there are records of Napo Kichwa-Zpara and Canelos Kichwa-Achuar marriages,
there are no Achuar-Zpara unions recorded (Reeve 1988a:87). Reeve states that it appears in this area
that Achuar and Zpara did not marry directly (although marriages occurred in which the children of
an Achuar who spoke Kichwa would marry a Zpara or vice versa). Furthermore, Reeve notes that contemporary Achuar in the Pastaza, Copotaza, and Capahuari River areas never marry with people of
Zpara origin, although she does note that east of this area Achuar may marry Zpara descendents
(1988a:88). Whitten, however, argues that the Canelos Kichwa are likely to have formed from ZparaAchuar mergers (1976:7). He bases this assertion on two pieces of evidence. First, travelers, explorers, and
missionaries repeatedly encounter Canelos Quichua forming out of Zaparoan and Jivaroan marriages
and alliances, with a mediating Quichua language (1976:8). Second, marriage records kept by Dominican friars over the past two centuries in the Bobonazo River area indicate that Zparo-Jvaro (usually
Achuara) were common (1976:16, 1981:128129). In the communities along the upper Conambo River,
where I conducted most of my field research, there were Achuar individuals who married into Zpara
familiesin fact, one of the remaining Zpara speakers is married to an Achuar person. However, it was
much more common for Zpara to marry Kichwa. What these data appear to indicate, is that while
Achuar in southern and northern Pastaza province may not have married, or currently do not marry
Zpara or Zpara descendents, in central Pastaza province in the Bobonaza and Conambo River areas,
Achuar-Zpara marriages were and continue to be common occurrences.
3The war between Peru and Ecuador during 19411942 is perhaps one of the most famous (or infamous) of several clashes between the two countries disputing their shared border (the most recent was
in 1996). In 1942 the Rio Protocol gave Peru a large portion (almost half) of Ecuadors Amazonian territory, a decision that Ecuador has bitterly contested and refused to recognize until 1998. This redistribution of land and the subsequent enforcement of the new border split many indigenous communities,
who have recently begun to form bi-national organizations in order to try to rekindle regular contact
and travel that have been restricted for half a century.

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4Both Andrade (2001:87) and Whitten (1976:7), however, point out that the term for basket in Zpara
is zapro not zparo, the stress in Zpara being phonemic and making a significant difference in meaning. Zparo was, until only recently, accepted in anthropological and historical literature as well as government documents as the correct spelling of Zpara. Zparo first appears in colonial accounts of the
language and has been the customary way of referring to the language and the ethnicity (see Osculati
2001:223; Simson 1886:166). It may be that Zparo was a spelling that earlier Spanish-speaking priests,
administrators, and travelers created to make the name agree with the masculine word idioma (language), therefore el idioma Zparo. However, I have not been able to confirm this. The issue of why the
Zparo spelling exists is an interesting problem and requires further investigation.
5In several publications and testimonies, Zpara dirigentes have decried attempts by evangelicals to
missionize their communities (e.g., Hoy Digital 2003; ANAZPPA 2001; and El Comercio 2001).
6Borja, a center-left politician, was president of Ecuador from 1988 to 1992. Upon taking office, he
proclaimed Ecuadors commitment to preserving the Amazon rainforest and acknowledged the pluricultural nature of Ecuadorian society (Macdonald 2002:180). Borja also worked with CONAIE,
Ecuadors largest indigenous federation, to create the Direccin Nacional de Educacin Intercultural
Bilinge (the National Directorate of Bilingual Intercultural Education, DINEIB) in 1988 (SelverstonScher 2001:44).
7According to OPIPs proposal each nationality in PastazaWaorani, Kichwa, Achuar, Shiwiar,
Zparawould be awarded its own territory (Sawyer 2004:47). The government responded that it only
adjudicated land, not territories, and that it would only award land to ethnic groups not nationalities
(Sawyer 2004:48). It considered OPIPs framework of nationalities and territories as a subversive attempt
to create an indigenous state within the Ecuadorian nation-state (Sawyer 2004:49). Moreover, the state
maintained its right to all subterranean resources within these land blocks and made it illegal for their
inhabitants to impede oil exploration or extraction.
8Land Block No.6, also referred to as the Bloque Zparo or Zpara Block,runs approximately from the
middle of the Conambo and Pindoyacu Rivers to a point 40 kilometers away from the Peruvian border.
9Marias claims are substantiated by research that Anne-Gal Bilhaut conducted in the Comuna
Zparo. Through archival information as well as interviews, Bilhaut asserts that the individuals and communities that formed UCTZE appropriated the name Zparo as a reference to their location within the
Comuna Zparo; they were not interested in forming a Zpara nationality because they did not identify
as such (2005:9). Many individuals and communities in the Comuna Zparo opposed the formation of
ONAZE, which they claimed was motivated by a few leaders in UCTZE who wanted to form a Zpara
nationality for their own personal gain (Bilhaut 2005:9).

References Cited
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2001 Candidatura para la Proclamacin de Obras Maestras del Patrimonio Oral y
Herencia Intangible de la Humanidad. Quito, Ecuador.
Andrade Pallares, Carlos
2000 Zaparos Lost Secrets. The Courier. April: 1922.
2001 Kwatupama Sapara, Palabra Zpara. Quito: PRODEPINE.
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