ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the planting of tobacco by Ashaninka groups in the Ene River is part of a larger reconciliatory effort in the wake of the Peruvian internal war. It explores the everyday use of cigarettes by Bajo Urubamba Ashaninka people. These groups seldom plant tobacco, instead buying it as cigarettes or in leaf bundles (mapacho) from mestizo traders. The chapter argues that the use of cigarettes cannot be understood separately from the consumption of other manufactured goods such as clothing, radios and trago (cane alcohol). Reviews of the anthropological literature on tobacco call for more critical studies on the power relations involved in the tobacco industry, in advertising and between smokers, especially when it comes to indigenous societies. Ashaninka people’s uses of tobacco as part of their pursuit of wellbeing may clash with Euro-American conceptions of the ‘good life’, but it also shows that different conceptions of humanity beget different approaches and discourses of wellbeing.
