It is a community that lives between the Pastaza river and the Morona
river, and are characterized by their ability to navigate the water
and to produce blowguns.
For a long time, they exchanged products through the Shuar, indirectly
with the Andes and the world. Their traditional drink is chicha made
from yucca or chonta. There are around 2,500 Achuar people that live
from hunting and what they grow and from agriculture less so than
the Shuar. This has helped their environment to be maintained in a
better state than the Shuar territory.
Quichuas of the Amazon
They also maintain the quichua language and are spread through
various provinces in the oriente, Napo, Orellana, Pastaza and Sucumbios.
They try to maintain their traditional way of life. However, now some
work in the oil companies and have left their economy of subsistence
hunting and farming for a Western market economy.
The Shuar
They live on the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains. They
mainly settled in the provinces of Morona Santiago and Zamora Chinchipe.
They live from the cattle introduced in the decades of the sixties
and seventies, cultivate yucca as their main product and produce textiles
of high quality. It is their custom to build houses where they live
for six or seven years or until the leader of the family died, then
they move to look for new frontiers. They are also part of the linguistic
group of the jivaros.
