For the next 3 years our Yorkshire Rainforest Project will be helping Ashaninka communities based along the Ene and Tambo rivers in the Junin region – a population of over 10,000 people. The region is very remote – reached only by an 8 hour boat trip – and the Ashaninka community remained isolated from outside influences until relatively recently. 

Ashaninka communities are small, typically 50 or so families, and sited on the banks of the Amazon. There’s no electricity, potable water or road infrastructure. The latter is a good thing – roads would open up the pristine forest for logging.

The local community welcome Cristina to their village. The boat travels up the Ene river every two weeks, so villagers rely on the rainforest for their food, shelter, livelihoods and medicine.

Most Ashaninka villages have a central building, like this one at Boca Anapate, a larger community with 100 families. Here communities meet for celebrations and cultural events, and to talk about how they can work together to protect the rainforest.

The Ashaninka are a family-based community, and traditionally settlements never grew beyond a nuclear family and that of their children’s families. Communities are very young – 52% of the population are under 15 – a legacy of the violent conflict between the Shining Path and the Peruvian state in the 1980s and 90s. Typically a family will have four or five children.

Elvira leads a typical life of an Ashaninka woman. While men hunt, build and fish, women will care for their children, cook the family’s food, tend to crops and sometimes act as traditional healers.

Ashaninka rely on fish from the river and hunted meat for protein – along with fresh water molluscs, caterpillars and snails. Sometimes the whole of the community fish together. Here Salomon’s children prepare the nets.

Ruth, pictured right, is the President of CARE (Centro Ashaninka del Rio Ene) – the Rainforest Foundation UK’s partner on the ground, who are working with and helping the Ashaninka community. CARE is supporting 33 communities and over 10,000 indigenous people living along the Ene River.

Here Cristina meets Rayda, the treasurer of the Mother’s Group at the village of Pamikiari. Almost every village will have its own ‘Mother’s Group’ and women join after having their first child. The Mother’s Groups are responsible for preparing festivals and celebrations; often look after the community classroom and vegetable plot; and pass traditional craft skills from generation to generation. Rayda also looks after her family’s chakra, and runs a small provisions shop.

Iris is a trained lawyer and part of the CARE team. She’s helped the Ashaninka gain legal title to their land, and now works on cases to protect communities and rainforest from logging and petrol companies.

Each Ashaninka family will have its own ‘chakra’, a one or two acre plot which they farm for subsistence. Typically men will clear the plots and plant crops such as yucca, sesame, coffee and cocoa, and then women care for and harvest the food. Plots are used for 5 years and then left fallow for another 30. Farming is wholly dependent on manual labour, as neither animals, fertilisers or pesticides are available.

Masato is the traditional ‘manioc beer’, enjoyed at most Ashaninka gatherings. It’s made by pounding steamed manioc (a type of root vegetable), and then chewing and spitting sweet potato and achiote (a little like a cross between a turnip and beetroot) into the mixture and leaving it to ferment for several days. The resulting beverage is fizzy, bitter – and apparently very tasty.