Macuna
The Macuna are a
Except of spoken accounts of a violent past with the southern neighbors, especially the Yauna and Tanimuka Indians, little is known about the early history of the Macuna. Their first mention are in the Portuguese accounts of the 18th century; as the commercial exploitation of rubber began in the Colombian Amazon in the late 19th century, contact with outsiders occurred more frequently, and with a negative effect. Men were taken away with force to work for the rubber patrons, a situation that lasted into the 1940s. The first Catholic mission was established in the area in the 1960s, though intermittent contact with missionaries has existed at least since the 18th century.
The late 1970s and early 1980s brought a new boom into the region, with the growing of
Despite this, the Macuna essentially subsist on
In the 1990s the Colombian government created two Indian reservation encompassing most of the Macuna land, which provided them with enhanced control over their territory.
References
- Levinson, David (1994). South America. Encyclopedia of World Cultures. Vol. 7. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-8161-1813-2.