The Tsimane’ number about 8,000 people and live in about 100 villages along rivers and logging roads, mostly in the Department of Beni, at the foothills of the Andes, in the Bolivian Amazon. Tsimane’ villages are small, with an average of about 24 households linked by bonds of marriage and blood. Tsimane subsistence centers on farming, hunting, fishing, and gathering. Like other native Amazonian societies, the Tsimane’ still practice cross-cousin marriage.
Until the late 1940s, the Tsimane’ lived like many other pre-contact Amazonian societies. They hunted, fished, gathered wild plants, and practiced slash-and-burn agriculture. They married their cross-cousins, listened to their shamans, drew on myths to explain the universe, and relied on local knowledge to manage their environment. All this changed with the arrival of Protestant missionaries in the early 1950s. Soon after arriving, missionaries started to convert Tsimane’ to the Protestant faith. Protestant missionaries continue to play a role in Tsimane’ life and society; they continue training
Tsimane’ teachers and producing instructional materials used in classrooms
Language skills and earnings: Evidence from a pre-industrial economy in the Bolivian Amazon.
Owing to the recent history of continuous contact with Westerners, the Tsimane’ only lately started to trade with Westerners in a continuous way. Since the 1970s, the Tsimane’ have faced growing pressure from encroachers, such as colonist farmers, logging firms, cattle ranchers, and oil companies
The role of tenure and private time preference in Neotropical deforestation.
At present the Tsimane’ connect with the market economy through wage labor and the sale of goods.
Some work in cattle ranches, logging camps, and in the farms of colonist farmers. To get the jobs, Tsimane’
must speak some Spanish. Besides working for loggers and cattle ranchers, Tsimane’
with schooling and Spanish fluency also work for the government as teachers in village schools, and as professionals for organizations
working in the Tsimane’ territory. Those without schooling or Spanish fluency enter the market economy by selling thatch palm from the
forest or by selling rice and other crops from their farms; those occupations do not require Spanish fluency, a diploma, or academic skills.
The main market town for the Tsimane’ in our research site, San Borja, has a population of 19,000 people, lies along the river Maniqui, and
is 18 hours away by bus from La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. A local airline has round-trip flights between San Borja and La Paz
(via Trinidad or Rurrenabaque). San Borja has access to telephones and internet connections, and a public hospital. Tsimane’ villages
vary in their distance from San Borja; some are only a couple of hours away walking, but others take days to reach by road or rivers.
The umbrella government for the Tsimane’, the Gran Consejo Tsimane’, has its office in San Borja. In San Borja TAPS has a house
with a telephone and an internet connection, computers, and two classrooms used for training. Convenient summaries of the setting
and the people can be found in
chapter 3 of the Ph.D. dissertations of Victoria Reyes-García or Elizabeth Byron.
The airport in San Borja has weather records going back to 1943 and the TAPS team has used that data to assess the effects of weather during gestation and early childhood on current height
The effect of rainfall during gestation and early childhood on adult height in a foraging and horticultural society of the Bolivian Amazon.
