Beyond Helplessness: Orphanhood and Leadership among the Bora of the Colombian Amazon

Abstract

This article discusses orphanhood through an ethnography of the Bora, an Indigenous people of the Caquetá- Putumayo region, with comparative incursions into other regions. It shows how orphans (and, by extension, chiefs) can reveal asymmetrical relations that in Amazonia are usually found within the domain of kinship. The article investigates adoptive filiation, the creation of bonds of affinity, and relations of feeding, protection, control, and servitude. In this way, the article questions the Euro-American notion of orphanhood and its association with irreversible helplessness. Finally, by tracing the transformations of these relationships over time, it will show how, far from occupying rigid social positions orphans constitute, with their chiefs, the poles of a relational gradient that creates, organizes, and dissolves a large number of relationships.