Escaping from Casa Arana: The Murui-Muina Nation after the Amazon Rubber Boom

Abstract The Amazon rubber boom (1850–1930) devastated Indigenous nations that had remained for centuries at the borders of European empires and the nation-states that replaced them in South America. The arrival of the Peruvian rubber company Casa Arana to the Igaraparaná and Caraparaná Rivers in 1899 marked the conquest and colonization of the Murui-Muina nation and their ancestral lands. This essay examines the escape of Murui-Muina clans from Casa Arana and the ethnogenesis of a new kind of Murui-Muina society in the municipality of Leguízamo, in Colombian Amazonia, where they resettled. It argues that although the fleeing clans managed to escape from Casa Arana, the continued contact with rubber tappers, Capuchin missionaries, and Colombian government officials during their flight introduced fundamental changes to Murui-Muina life. However, once settled in Leguízamo, they were able to recreate Murui-Muina life and became the basis of the Indigenous communities that exist today in the municipality. The first two sections follow the fleeing clans along the Putumayo and Caquetá Rivers during the first three decades of the twentieth century; the following section considers their arrival to Leguízamo; and the final section analyzes the ethnogenesis of a new kind of Murui-Muina society in the municipality during the second half of the twentieth century.