Ancêtres (in)communs : rencontres rituelles d’arutam et échelles de la politique territoriale achuar en Équateur

Abstract

In this article, I aim to document the political imaginary of penker pujustin (good living), conceptualized by some Ecuadorian Achuar elders and intellectuals in the 1970s, as the “plan of life” grounding their political sovereignty. My analysis lies on a study of the relationships between the arutam ancestral power and Achuar’s territorial politics. While having remained steady along the last decades, the natematin ritual, which allows the acquisition of the arutam power, has undergone a major transformation: often described by anthropologists as a warlike authority-making ritual, the arutam power is now sought after by political leaders eager to produce commons against the rising of warlike conflicts, either by the legal recognition of a common and intangible territory, and by the stabilization of family and communal micro-territories. I stand that the arutam ritual, both political and territorial, is to be understood as a source of the Achuar process of “communing”, as well as it engenders some “incommons” arutam, as achuar contemporary history’s driving force.