Practices of Resistance, Practices of Care: The Role of Indigenous Women in the Peruvian Central Amazon Region in the Context of Dispossession of Territory

The ashaninka population is the largest indigenous population in the Amazon basin, with residences in Peru and in Brasil. In Peru, their communities are distributed along the central Amazon region. This is the region with the highest rates of coca production and the growth of illicit economies, which provoked abandonment and displacement of populations and communities, poverty, lack of better living opportunities, enslavement population and degraded lands. In this context, the role of women, organized in indigenous’s associations as leaders in their communities, is crucial as caregivers in domestic and in public domains. Women not only take care of their families and relatives, but also of the communities and their territories building new forms of political participation. We have been working on recovery practices after Covid-19 pandemic in an interdisciplinary research project “Voices of recovery” in three ashaninka communities (Shankivironi, San Jerónimo and Potsoteni) in Junin, Peru.

Junin is located in the central Amazon region. Among these practices of recovery, we have found the importance of women’s roles in caring practices and how they are recovering the use of plants. Based on long-term anthropological field research in these three ashaninka communities, we will argue about how caring and care practices are composed of interconnected power systems whose main actors are women. Thus, we will discuss women’s strategies of political participation that strain the traditional leaderships of men as chiefs in the local community. There are political tensions but also, as we will show, there are new forms of knowledge that emerge in these practices in which women play important leading roles.