NATURAL ENGAGEMENTS AND ECOLOGICAL AESTHETICS ...

plantains (palanda, Musa sp. Musaceae) piled high on a leaf and boiled fish or meat in a salty
broth, is usually served around sunrise or shortly after. If there is no fish or game, a broth made
from hot peppers is served. This is often followed by a large bowl of manioc beer, the first of
many to be served throughout the day.
Women will spend a large portion of the day working in their gardens. People in Ávila
practice swidden agriculture. Men may help them, especially in the heavier tasks such as felling
trees. Generally people do not eat any lunch, although manioc beer is consumed several times a
day. Men often go out hunting again in the afternoon. The second meal is served in the late after-
noon. People will usually be sleeping by seven or seven thirty in the evening.
Such a typical day is often punctuated by other kinds of days. Some forest activities, such
as long hunts, may take a man away from home for the entire day. Alternatively, small family
fish poisoning expeditions or larger communal ones may also take people away from home for
the entire day. Sometimes families will camp out in the forest to hunt or fish in this manner.
However, social visits are what most often punctuate the typical daily rhythm that I have
described. These include a lot of beer drinking. Although women spend most of their time in the
gardens cultivating manioc, very little of this is ever eaten. Instead, almost all of it is used to
make beer (asua). In fact, women spend most of their time either growing manioc or making it
into beer.
In comparison to other Upper Amazonian communities, Ávila is distinctive in that almost
all households keep a continuous supply on hand of a fungus beer, known as ali asua (the good
or proper beer), which requires a large amount of labor to prepare. In other communities, by con-
trast, this kind of beer is usually reserved only for special celebrations. 3 This beer, and the more
concentrated extract vinillu made from it, play very important roles in Ávila social life; families
strive always to have a large batch on hand so that they will never be without it if visitors should
come by. People will often invite guests, say a compadre or a son-in-law, to drink beer.
Alternatively, people coming back from market in Loreto or just passing through may pay a visit.
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