Will We Be Able to Kill Again

Discover the first session of the 2026‑2027 Americanist Anthropology Seminar: "“Will We Be Able to Kill Again?” The Art of Latent Rivalry among the Awajún of the Upper Marañón (Peruvian Amazon) ".

"Ethnographer and linguist Robert Priest, who conducted fieldwork in the Upper Marañón during the 1970s, paid particular attention to the emotional contradictions experienced by the first Awajún men and women converted to Christianity. According to Priest (2003, p. 95), feelings of guilt occupied a central place both in Indigenous narratives of conversion and in everyday social relations, whether with close kin or with the invisible spirits that animated their dreams. This sense of guilt encompassed a range of emotions: remorse for having broken with traditional bonds and sorrow at being unable to grant peace to a deceased relative’s soul through an act of revenge and the killing of the person responsible for their death. Indeed, this unease stemmed from the enduring desire to take the life of the perpetrator of a crime or illness, often identified as a sorcerer. Such suffering was further intensified by the forced distancing of Christian Awajún, particularly bilingual teachers and emerging community leaders, from their former ritual practices, including the use of hallucinogenic plants and intercommunity or interethnic warfare, all of which were strongly condemned by evangelical missions.

Taking the analysis a step further, it is particularly illuminating to examine how, a few years later, the next generation of bilingual teachers, who openly aspired to positions of political prestige and authority within their communities as emerging Indigenous leaders, faced the challenge of overcoming this dilemma. They did so by reconfiguring the entire Aents Chicham warrior ritual system, including the use of hallucinogens and the concept of the necessary circulation of arutam wakaní between the ajutap, the visionary warrior, and his victim (Taylor, 2007; Rubenstein, 2012). By the late 1970s, prominent new Awajún leaders such as Evaristo Nugkuag redefined the figure of the “visionary warrior,” redirecting it toward a framework of legal disputes, subtle strategic maneuvering, and challenges directed at a close adversary, a kind of alter ego. In doing so, Indigenous leadership consolidated a new ritual dimension of conflict, no longer conceived as overt violence or the physical elimination of an opponent, but rather as a form of perpetual and latent tension, a stimulating contest and competition between two rivals (between two alter egos), in which each actor sought to establish personal prestige and authority through a series of exemplary actions, most notably through the performative staging of violence."

• Silvia Romio – Università Cà Foscari Venezia, Marie Curie Fellow
• Discussant: Grégory Deshoullière– Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale (LAS)