By Christopher Herndon and William Park | Co-Founders
In 2024, after a year of holding workshops in all seventeen Matsés communities in Peru, each village completed a Plan de Vida (Plans of Life). These extraordinary documents, written by the Matsés in their own language, articulate their vision, and provide a blueprint for each community to maintain their self-determination, protect their ancestral territories, and preserve their culture for years to come. Their creation is timely in the backdrop of the many threats and challenges the Matsés communities face in their rapidly changing world.
With permission of the Matsés communities, Acaté has translated a Plan de Vida (from the community of Santa Rosa on the Chobayacu river) from Matsés into the English language. This translation can be accessed through the link here.
The project workflow for creation of the Plan de Vidas was as follows. Each Matsés community held a meeting and, depending on the population of the community, picked a number of young people with acknowledged writing skills to be the compilers of the Life Plans. The compilers worked with Acaté Matsés staff to record all the information from the community meetings. One aspect of the project that the Matsés really appreciated was the computer training that was included for the Life Plan authors. Acaté provided laptops and our experienced staff worked with the young authors to increase their computer skills. Access to computers is still extremely limited in most Matsés communities with the exception of the computer lab funded by Acaté.
Matsés communities voice the need for living in harmony in the community and within their environment. The Matsés candidly address the challenges and struggles they face. For remote indigenous communities in the Amazon and elsewhere, the insidious day to day drivers of cultural degradation and deforestation are the severe lack of economic opportunities, food security and energy challenges, chronic health care deficiencies, and the draw of city to meet the challenges of supporting their families. Within their territory, the youth are constrained by poor quality and access to education and, outside their territory, experience disillusionment with the limited economic opportunities. For any conservation intervention or support measure to have any chance of being effective it is essential to directly address these issues.
Each community Plan de Vida records the history of the community, how the people live today in present, and their aspirations for the future. Each community reports on the external support they are actually receiving (sadly a number of organizations solicit or receive funding to help the Matsés or use their images but with no real project materializing or even intended). Acaté is the only organization that has on-the-ground activities in the Matsés territory. The Matsés are also grateful for the members of the kambo community who purchase their product. The Matsés would like to involve sourcing by international practitioners from as many Matsés communities as possible with better organization to avoid disproportionate sourcing from a handful of individuals who live outside of their communities and their ancestral territory.
In 2019, building on the landmark Matsés Indigenous Mapping Initiative, Acaté leadership and the Matsés governing body launched our next major collaboration, the Governance and Leadership program to support Matsés in their self-governance and provide tools to aid the Matsés in their interactions with the outside world. Acaté set out training and capacitation for Matsés leaders in computing, accounting, and management skills - skills critical for self governance and for the Matsés to better participate in the national economy. The Matsés are predominately primary speakers of their own language. Education is limited in the territories, scholarships for college education outside cities are scarce and difficult for the Matsés to obtain. Few are well informed on the laws and intricate bureaucracies of Peru; newly proposed state reserves overlapping with Matsés ancestral lands receive little, if any, informed consultation from the communities.
In the first phase of the Governance and Leadership Initiative, the Matsés updated and translated from Spanish into Matsés language the legal bylaws of their titled territory with clear explanations of the meanings of technical phrases in Matsés such that all the community members could access and understand Peruvian law. Matsés leaders and Acaté staff then traveled, community to community, and held assemblies to present and explain the bylaw their rights or, in some cases, lack of rights for their lands. Matsés community leaders, both men and women, participated in intensive governance and leadership training workshops supported by Acaté and regional ministries.
As a direct result of this initiative, the Matsés realized United Nations recognition of the Matses Ancestral Territory as an indigenous and community conserved area (ICCA), the first such designation for an indigenous community in Peru. The Matsés safeguard a critical conservation corridor comprising over 1.5 million hectares of intact primary rainforest and shield some of the last remaining uncontacted tribal groups in isolation from unwanted encroachment from the outside world. Their ancestral lands are of global significance for biodiversity and for climate protection.
Stay tuned in the coming months for a truly exciting update on our Governance initiative including reporting on the creation of the first Matsés Women’s Association!
Completion of Life Plans for all 17 Matsés communities in Peru is an extraordinary accomplishment by the Matsés indigenous people. It is important to underscore that drafting of a Plan de Vida is not viewed by the Matsés as an end point in itself; each Plan de Vida is a working document, a guide for each community to revisit and to advance with the evolving needs of the community. Accordingly, each Plan de Vida contains a work plan for the coming year. The Plans of Life are powerful tools to strengthen the capacity and resiliency of the Matsés in maintaining unity against the external forces that threaten to degrade their unique way of life.
If you missed it, please take a look at our September 2023 Field Report on the launch of a large-scale initiative to support food security in Matsés communities!
Thank you for being a part of Acaté. We grateful for your support. For those reading this and just getting to know our work, please take a moment to learn more and consider supporting our projects. Acaté strives to be a vehicle of positive change in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. You can help can change the trajectory of a proud people struggling for their cultural survival amidst a profoundly shifting world. We operate with the highest level of transparency and impact, with minimal operating overhead.
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