Book Review: The Ecology of the Barí

This book springs from more than 100 field trips by two ethnographers to a little-known indigenous society of the Caribbean rim from the 1960s to the 1980s. It also covers their work in archives and libraries in reconstructing the more distant past of that society. The authors, Stephen Beckerman and the late Roberto Lizarralde, render to us the first treatise in English on the Barí of the Maracaibo Basin in Venezuela, drawing on the long-term collaboration of both. The work treats a singularly interesting group that simultaneously speaks to their past, present, and, I believe, potential future. The authors cover important issues in the ecological anthropology of lowland South America in additional ways.

The book oscillates between indigenous life histories and documentation of the etic sort—aerial photography from the past; archival and newspaper documentation from the past; measurements of house sizes, field sizes, catchment zone sizes, and so forth; returns on fishing and hunting per person per hour—both of past and present. In addition, it includes censuses and birth and death records over about a 50-year period. The broad methodology involves participant-observation and collection of quantifiable data. These data feature number of live births per woman past childbearing age interviewed and the number of children who survived infancy if they had a secondary father (i.e., a lover of their mother apart from her husband, who is recognized as such before their birthdate, either at conception or during gestation of their mother). The methodology also encompasses the historical record, reconstructed from interviews, documents, and first-hand observation dating from 1961 when Robert Lizarralde first visited a newly contacted group of Bari. All this yields, in the aggregate, significant insights that the authors divide into three principal chapters (specifically, chs. 4, 5, and 6 of a seven-chapter book), called, sequentially, “production,” “protection,” and “reproduction.”

The authors seek to answer big questions, some applicable to all societies, others more limited to lowland South America, and still some only focused on the one human group at the center of the ethnography. They are careful about how they pose these questions and admirably willing to admit when they are wrong, as regarding previously reported details of Bari society and culture. The authors focus on issues deriving from evolutionary ecology and reproductive biology, yet they are sensitive to both quantitative and qualitative limits on the reliability of data taken from a single society over a relatively short (for human reproductive purposes) time frame. Life histories and the personal observations of Bari individuals enrich whatever gaps might lie in the middle of the grander project of coming to grips with ecology—or, more to the point, with human adaptation of the Bari in tropical moist forest. In the end, these findings will stand the test of time for a number of reasons, the most important of which is the way the data were collected and reported: namely, with care. Ethnography goes on, while paradigms, however dogged, typically fall eventually on the battlefield of ideas; this is no more transparent than in the world of Amazonianist ethnology.

The book contains a solid overview of the geography, landforms, and wildlife pertinent to the Bari. Of note is the discussion of big longhouses and the elliptical fields that tend to surround them. I demur here on this: “The natural environment of the central Barí homeland was for the most part unchanged by human presence . . . To survive and reproduce, the Barí needed to adapt to the plants and animals that made up the rain forest” (p. 3). I don’t see that proposition proven herein, and I think the book would not have suffered any of its precision were those two sentences to have been omitted. The Barí are horticulturalists, and even if not possessing a large inventory of domesticates nor exceptionally large clearings for their crops (p. 216), the effects of agriculture over the long term sometimes change forest composition. The issue is not significant in the context of the authors’ focus, which mostly regards how the Barí have survived the societal impacts of contact with different groups through time, including Spanish conquistadores and slave raiders, Capuchin missionaries, oil companies, and homesteaders, some of whom sought to remove them from their lands by any means possible (including murder and mayhem, epidemics, and depopulation). Indeed, they are survivors of a lengthy and intense, if intermittent, contact situation. The volume nevertheless substantiates their retention of traditional lowland South American traits, including marriage patterns (as in the avunculate, sororal polygyny, and the original concept—proferred herein—of partible paternity); an interesting clearcut division of society (from any one person’s perspective) into consanguines and affines; the language (of the Chibchan family); the agricultural system, even if some crops have been lost; the technology and knowledge associated with hunting and fishing; their continuance in upriver localities far from foci of permanent contact. In conclusion, the book is a solid and well-written contribution most appropriate for assignment to courses in ecological anthropology and South American ethnology.