The Jívaro Defensive System

The Jívaro Defensive System Against Anxiety -- by Gil Prost

The cultural script in the minds of the polygamous, head-shrinking Jívaro of the Peruvian Rainforest said: "One must build a wall around one's house against being killed by an angry "brother" (who biologically was one's parallel cousin)." For the Jívaro, their defensive system, as illustrated in the photo, was not against the powerful Incas who lived on the West, nor against the Canelos (Quechua) who lived on the North, nor against the Achuar who lived on the East, nor against the Huambisa and Aguaruna on the South, but against their own kin.

The war between fictive classificatory “brothers” and ego began when a fictive brother married ego’s ascribed wife to be. Customary law declared it to be the “ideal” marriage. However, from ego’s perspective, his fictive “brother” or parallel cousin had stolen his bride to be. The effect? Being classified by ego, his “brother,” as a potential wife stealer meant one had to protect oneself.

This the “wife stealer” did by clearing acres of jungle. In the center of the cleared area he built a longhouse. They he circled the long house with a wall.

Now how this particular defensive system against anxiety came into existence will take some explaining. It all begins with the Jívaro concept of family and their misuse of the universal Rule of Exogamy which says: "Marry out!" To "Marry Out" meant something very different to a Jívaro than it did to the tribes living on the Great Plains or to those living in villages of Northern India.

For the Jívaro bachelor, to "marry out" specifically meant: "Thou shall not marry a parallel cousin. She is your sister. Instead, thou shall marry your cross-cousin, either your mother's brother's daughter or father's sister's daughter, and no one else. She is not your sister" (M. Harner in The Jívaro).

With no exceptions to the rule combined with the practice of sororal polygny, there existed a lack of marriageable Jívaro women and an excess of bachelors who had no hope of getting married and raising a family unless they could possess what they thought legally belonged to them.

Their deviation from the Creation order produced social disorder, multiplied jealousy and envy, and added to the cultural diversity we see in the world today. Linguist Kenneth Pike classified this spiritual divergence from a Divine norm ETIC DIVERGENCE, a phenomenon rejected by materialists of every kind along with contextualizing evangelicals.

Now regardless of culture or tribe, all mankind has innate knowledge of the Rule which says: Marry out! This universal Rule of Exogamy, as anthropologist Lévi-Strauss pointed out, provides "the only means for maintaining the group as a group." Any intimate relationship with a member of one's “family” as defined by society would be classified as being a sinful incestuous act.

The Jívaro concept of family, as illustrated below, prohibited parallel cousin marriage because they were classified as siblings while requiring them to marry cross-cousins.

Now how the rule of exogamy is universally applied depends on a society's definition of family. But, the concept-innatist asks: Is the Jívaro concept of a family, one shaped and determined by SOCIAL EXISTENCE in a particular environment really valid? And does there exist a Law of the family which declares, as proposed by theologian-philosopher Dooyeweerd, "Membership is absolutely restricted to the parents and their offspring in the first degree," thereby excluding collateral relatives like uncles, aunts, and cousins.

Now if the meaning of "family" is "absolutely" fixed, unchanging, and constant and represents an Order of Creation, then applying the Rule of Exogamy to protect a form of the family which is relative would be classified as a sinful act, an act which "multiplies trespasses" (Romans 5:20).

By absolutizing the relative, the Jívaro created a society whose mission in life was to defend a law-script that produced cultural forms like, "the common practice of 'reserving' a pre-puberty girl as a future bride by giving gifts of featherwork and trade goods to her parents." This absolutizing of the relative is manifested in their behavior. According to anthropologist Michael Harner,

“the only kinswoman with whom marriage is formally sanctioned is a cross-cousin

(wahe) from either parent’s side of the family. A man does not have an alternative

of finding a marriage partner outside of his kindred, but this requires him to move

out from his home neighbor (because of the practice of temporary matrilocality) and consequently to live among strangers who may be intent on killing him for some

earlier wrong by one of his kinsmen or simply because he took one of their preferred

potential mates [a form of stealing]. Slightly over half of actual marriages are with

cross-cousins” (Italics added).

Now if, as propose here, the purpose of the Rule is to protect an Order of Creation, that is, the nuclear family and its internal structure, then the effect of applying the Rule will be positive. The Universal Rule of Exogamy exists to protect the absolute, not the relative. If, however, the Rule protects a definition of "family" which "belongs to the people," a definition which emerges from contextual social existence, then application of the Rule will increase both cultural diversity and disorder.

Contrastive Applications of the Cross-cousin Marriage Rule

As tribes living in the Amazonian Rainforest, both the Chácobo and the Jívaro shared a similar family type. But there was a difference in life-ways, I discovered, the Chácobo and Jívaro applied the Rule of Exogamy differently. In addition, when one compares the Chácobo family type with the Jívaro family type, one can see their concept of what constituted a family is slightly different.

The Jívaro merged the status positions of mother and mother’s sister (aunt) and father and father’s brother (uncle). Maternal aunts become “mothers,” and paternal uncles became “fathers.” The Chácobo did not merge the two. Whereas ego was free to even marry an aunt; the Jívaro would classify such a marriage as being incesteous.

Finally, for both, the ideal marriage was to marry a kinsmen, specifically, one’s cross-cousin, that is, the daughter of one’s father’s sister or mother’s brother.

While their definitions of what constituted a “family” were almost identical, their life-ways or behavioral patterns were extremely different. The Chácobo were pacifists and lived in villages; the Jívaro were headhunters for whom village living was fraught with danger. Very few Chácobo men had two wives. In contrast to the Jívaro, the second wife was not a sister but a widow. The cultural norm for the Chácobo was monogamy.

In contrast, for the Jívaro, having more than one wife, all of whom were sisters, was the ideal. To meet this ideal, the relationship between ego and his maternal uncles, in time become closer and more important than the father-son relationship. The reason of this shift in allegiance from father to father-in-law was because one's maternal uncle is the one who supplies ego not only with his first wife, but hopefully wife two or three more.

Anthropologist Michael Harner notes: “A man normally hopes that his father-in-law eventually will give him all the latter’s daughters as wives.” While sororal polygyny was the ideal, the ideal of having more than one wife created a serious social problem. Their sororal polygny ideal created a scarcity of marriageable women. Such was not the case among the Chácobo.

In contrast, while cross-cousins marriages were preferred among the Chácobo, it was not obligatory. If a non-kinsmen married one's cross-cousin, the act was not classified as a "sin" against the individual or society. In fact, I am not aware of any cross-cousin marriages among the Chácobo.

For the Jívaro, the typical household was “one man, two wives, and seven children; or a man, one wife, and three children.” The typical household for the Chácobo was one man, one wife, his daughters and his sons-in-law, and their children whom, because they lived under the same roof, were classified as "brothers" and "sisters".

In addition, while they both shared a matrilocal residency rule, when Chácobo sons-in-law move into the households of their in-laws, their stay was not temporary. They were forbidden to leave because their ascribed function was to supply the household with food.

In contrast, the residence rule for Jívaro son's-in-law was temporary. Jívaro sons-in-law generally “remained until the birth of the wife’s first son. Thereafter, according to the norm, the son-in-law and his family dwell in a new house nearby.”

A rule which allowed Jívaro sons-in-law to set up an independent household after the birth of the first child gave their bilateral kinship system what Harner calls “a slight patrilineal tendency,” that is, “the man is formally head of the household and also informally seems generally to dominant his family.” For the Chácobo, failure of the daughter to move-out and establish a new independent household with her husband clearly suppressed the natural husband leadership role in the nuclear family from emerging.

The effect of not moving out was an egalitarian society devoid of superordinate-subordiate (S-s) structures. No Chácobo husband was the head of his family. Instead, the behavior of every son-in-law was watched, monitored, and covertly directed by his mother-in-law. One Chácobo husband described it as being a "prison."

The positive effect for the Jívaro husbands being the heads of their families were manifested whenever the tribe was threatened from the outside. On such occasions some Jívaro male would take on the role of “war chief” and unite all the neighborhoods together to resist this threat to their existence. This “ability of Jívaro to ally against outside invaders” was positive.

Such was not the case among the Chácobo. When their life-way was being threatened by incoming "outsider," no one came forward to take on the role of "war chief" to unite all the families together to resist this obvious threat to their existence. They simply retreated further into the forest.

Convictions

The cultural script of the Jívaro declared to all bachelors: You are to marry your cross-cousin because she has been classified as “your legal wife to be.” Anyone who violates the script has “sinned” against society's law-way and needs to be punished.
A primary feature of the Jívaro behavioral script inherited from their parents was that it permitted the Jívaro to manipulate their social world to satisfy personal needs and objectives. For example, the classification permitted them to say to their brothers, real and fictive. “There are no marriageable women left, and I expect you to help me administer justice on the one who illegally married my cross-cousin (real wife to be).”
While the innate Rule of Exogamy was telling the Jívaro to “marry out,” their behavior clearly suggests they failed to recognize that their definition of “family” was a misrepresentation of the Ideal.