Narcotrafico

The Yanomamo Culture
Francy G Guillen
ANT 101
Gretchen Henderson
October 30, 2010

Can we associate the Yanomamo culture with our society in any form? The Yanomamo are indigenous people that live in regions of Brazil and Venezuela. The Yanomani’s are one example of environmental destruction, and violation of human rights, due to the ambition of power of the modern society.Traditionally they are an isolated people; their only contacts were other local groups. They were the last culture exposed to the modern world (A. Kittelson & A. Stafford,1997).
The Yanomami’s daily life is base in gathering, hunting, making crafts and visiting with one another. They live in small chabonos (huts), and wear minimal clothing. Their chiefs are always men, and they practice thepolygamy, their ideal marriages consisted of cross cousin marriages (A. Kittelson & A. Stafford, 1997).
The Yanomamo are characterized by been a vey aggressive culture, they have a hierarchy of increasing levels of aggression, and most duels are between individuals of different communities, they have a set of rules that has to be follow and their duels are always public, institutional, andritualized. The first one is base on speech, if it does not work; they star with the chest pounding, which is when the duel star, the chest pounding goes by taking places until one of the rivals retreats, collapse, or is injure. Most of those conflicts are base on infidelity from their wives. They perform this rituals because is one way to release their aggression and at the same time fix the problem(B. Norwak & P. Lair, 2010. Chapter 4).
When the Yanomami’s confront a fatality, meaning when one person is kill in their village, it leads to violence. They will raid other villages, and the method used for success is to pretend, they are friends with the other village, by celebrating a party, when the other village are comfortable, and their guard is down, they attack (B. Norwak & P.Lair, 2010. Chapter 4).
The religion of the Yamomamo is complex. They believe there are four layers of reality, and stars from top to bottom. They thought the uppermost layer was to be prestine and tender called duke ka misi, they believe many thinks are originated from this area, but this layer does not have much use. The third layer down, called jedu ka mis known as the sky layer. Thislayer is supposedly invisible, but they believed to be similar to the earth, these souls said to be similar to mortals because they garden, eat, and sleep. The second layer called hei ka misi. They believe that this layer was created when a chunk of hedu broke off and fell down, This layer has jungles, hills, animals, plants and people who are slightly different, variants of the Yanomamö who speak adialect of Yanomamö that is "crooked", or wrong. Finally, the firs layer called hei ta bebi. They believe that variant of the Yanomamo live here, they are ruthless cannibals, and that they send their spirits to capture the souls of children, carried down and eaten (A. Kittelson & A. Stafford,1997).
In recent years, The Yanomamo has been invading by the outside world. (B. Norwak & P. Lair,2010. Chapter 4). Since 1987, they have seen about 10% of the population die by massacres and diseases brought by invaders, thousands of miners illegally rushed into the territory after gold that was discover on their land in the 1980s (A. Kittelson & A. Stafford,1997).
The kinship system of the Yanomano culture impacts their behavior. For example, since they practiced the polygamy, theprobability of having babies with mental problems and deformations were high. It must have affected the couple’s privacy, since this culture have too many believes, they village might say or think the woman was posses by evil, and then the village punished the woman. These also could have affected the new generations. Since they did not know that when people from the same blood bond have sexual...