Piaroa people

the whipscorpion genus

The Piaroa people, known among themselves as the Huottüja or De'aruhua, are a pre Columbian South American indigenous ethnic group of the middle Orinoco Basin in present day Colombia and Venezuela, living in an area larger than Belgium, roughly circumscribed by the Suapure, Parguaza (north), the Ventuari (south east), the Manapiare (north east) and the right bank of the Orinoco (west). Their present day population is about 15,000 (INE 2002), with an estimated 2,500 living on the left bank of the Orinoco River, in Colombia, in several reservations between the Vichada (north) and the Guaviare (south). Since the Piaroa (Huottüja or De'aruhua) were discovered by missionaries and explorers around 1780 they have been an autonomous peaceful (pacifist) anarchy with many individual small self governed villages scattered over a very wide area. Ethnologists and linguists from the 18th century misidentified the Huottuja as three different tribes belonging to the Saliban family, the Ature, Piaroa, and Quàqua, in actuality were three different regional dialects of the same Piaroa ethnic group from the north, center and south. which includes all of their people that live in the original territory and the traditional sovereign territory. In 2020, Piaroa living on the Catañiapo River successfully and peacefully removed over 200 armed Colombian non state actors and called an assembly of indigenous jurisdiction officials.

Piaroa is a term of unknown origin (probably Latin) which became the name of the language and thus the common name (exonym) for the Huottüja De'aruhua people. The ethnic group officially refers to themselves the "Huottüja" (English spelling) some, mostly men are also known as De'aruwa or De'aruhua (masters of the forest). In their language the Uwottüja, Huottöja, or Wothuha means "knowledgeable people of the forest", usually spelled Huǫttųją (NTM spelling) and Wötʰïhä (IPA spelling), or De'atʰïhä (guardians of the forest).

Taking advantage of the special laws for the indigenous people of Venezuela introduced in 2004, the Colombian Constitution of 1991 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, the Piaroa declared their autonomy and sovereign status by creating a special legal jurisdiction and a court under their rights to self determination as indigenous peoples in 2020. The Piaroa originally occupied an area of approximately 33,000 square kilometers, an area that has been acknowledged by the Venezuelan governments since the 1990s. Under pressure by armed non state actors, illegal gold mining, and other unlawful occupation of their territory, with the lack of protection from the government or military, prompted several organizations formed by the Piaroa and other indigenous rights advocates to take steps to form a multi faceted autonomous governmental body around their special legal jurisdiction to defend their homes, families, and ecologies from invasion or abuse.

Seeing competition as spiritually evil and lauding cooperation, the Piaroa are both strongly egalitarian and supportive of individual autonomy, each community is independently led and often cooperate therebetween. The Piaroa are also strongly anti authoritarian and opposed to the hoarding of resources, which they see as giving members the power to constrain their freedom. Violent conflict erupted between the Piaroa and the Wæñæpi of the Upper Suapure and Guaviarito regions, with both tribes fighting to control the clay pits of the Guanay valley. Clay from that valley is a valuable commodity, being the best clay for making pottery in the region. Constant warfare also exists between the Huottüja and Caribs, who invaded Piaroa territory from the east in search of captives. Cocoa harvested by the Piaroa since 2008 has become world famous based on the efforts of artisan craft chocolate makers in Canada, Germany, France, the United States and Venezuela after being found by cocoa hunters like Castronovo. Nearly 25% of all the traditional Piaroa villages deep in the forests are engaged in growing organic wild grown cocoa today. It is unknown if the wild endemic heirloom variety of cocoa that was first observed by Alexander von Humboldt in 1800 still exists today. The Piaroa from village to village plant all three different cultivars Criollo, Forastero, and Trinitario which are transplanted to the wild to grow under the forest canopy or as a canuco replacement crop to fill the void in the forest that results from cultivating manioc (cassava). From the 1990 until 2010 ecotourism became a major economic factor among the Piaroa which included students, academic institutions, diplomatic officials, missionaries, non governmental organizations, researchers and a few perpetual travellers which touched their communities. The Piaroa recognized the potential of tourism in 2004 with the introduction of new laws for indigenous peoples and tourism; but lament in the current state of government affairs in Venezuela as one that does not facilitate their economy, people or tourism which was down 98% in 2015 from 10 years previously. Because the Piaroa language is a phonetic one, mostly unwritten until the 1930s and phonetically incompatible with Spanish or English sounds, their official alphabet was based on biblical translations developed by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in the 1950s, the Huottüja themselves have since developed their own alphabet based on the accepted Latin Language codes ISO 639 3 PID guidelines of the institute, an elementary dictionary and a number of grade school curriculum readers.