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The Gran Pajonal (Great Scrubland or Great Savanna) is an isolated interfluvial plateau in the
Amazon Basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributary, tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries ...
of Peru. It is located in the departments of Ucayali, Pasco and Junín. The plateau is inhabited by the Asháninka or Ashéninka people along with late-twentieth century immigrants largely from the
Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...
mountains of Peru. In the 1730s,
Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent Religious institute, religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor bei ...
missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Miss ...
established missions in the Gran Pajonal, but the missions were destroyed in the 1740s by the Ashaninka under the leadership of Juan Santos Atahualpa. Beginning again in 1897, missionaries, collectors of rubber, settlers, and the government of Peru began to encroach on the Gran Pajonal. In the 1980s, the Asháninka achieved a measure of security when most of the land of the Gran Pajonal was deeded to 36 communities. The population of the Gran Pajonal in 2002 was estimated at 7,000, of which 90 percent were Asháninka.


Description

The plateau area of the Gran Pajonal as defined by different scholars is between to . The term Gran Pajonal is often applied loosely to a much larger area. The Gran Pajonal has elevations ranging from about to and is incised by the headwaters of several small rivers. The Gran Pajonal was named by the Spanish because, in a region of tropical
rain forest Rainforests are forests characterized by a closed and continuous tree Canopy (biology), canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforests can be generally classified as tropi ...
, it features patches of small grasslands amounting to about 4 percent of its total area. The Pajonal has no definite boundaries, but lies east of the Cerro de la Sal (Salt Mountain) area and is an outlier of the
Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...
. It rises above the Palcazu River on the west and the
Ucayali River The Ucayali River (, ) is the main headstream of the Amazon River. It rises about north of Lake Titicaca, in the Arequipa region of Peru and becomes the Amazon at the confluence of the Marañón river, Marañón close to Nauta city. The city of ...
on the east and is bordered on the south by the Perene and Tambo rivers. The El Sira Communal Reserve and mountains border the Pajonal on the north. The Cerro de la Sal mountain range outlines its southern boundary. Mountains around the edge of the plateau have elevations of more than . The elevation of the Gran Pajonal results in lower average temperatures than the Amazon lowlands. Average temperatures on the plateau range from to . Annual precipitation is more than with a three-month dry period (June to August). The natural vegetation is tropical rain forest except for the anthropogenic grasslands, totaling about and deriving from hundreds or thousands of years of cultivation by the indigenous people. In 2004 another of grasslands used as pasture had been created since 1975 by immigrants to the area, mostly farmers from the
Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...
.


History

The indigenous people inhabiting the Gran Pajonal at the time of its discovery by the Spanish were called Campa, Anti, or Chuncho by the Spaniards and are known to scholars and themselves as Asháninka, a widespread people of the Amazon Basin of Peru and neighboring Brazil. The Asháninka of the Gran Pajonal are sometimes called Ashéninka as their language is distinct from other divisions of the ethnic group. Like most peoples of the Amazon rainforest, they practiced
slash-and-burn Slash-and-burn agriculture is a form of shifting cultivation that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a Field (agriculture), field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody p ...
agriculture. Their principle crop was
manioc ''Manihot esculenta'', common name, commonly called cassava, manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America, from Brazil, Paraguay and parts of the Andes. Although ...
(yuka), but they also cultivated
bananas A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – berry (botany), botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa (genus), Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called pla ...
,
peanut The peanut (''Arachis hypogaea''), also known as the groundnut, goober (US), goober pea, pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics by small and large ...
s,
beans A bean is the seed of some plants in the legume family (Fabaceae) used as a vegetable for human consumption or animal feed. The seeds are often preserved through drying (a ''pulse''), but fresh beans are also sold. Dried beans are tradition ...
, and many other useful plants. The Asháninka farmer might grow as many as 50 different plants on his farm. The Gran Pajonal was difficult of access due to its elevation and lack of navigable rivers. The first Spaniard to visit was Juan Bautista de la Marca, a Franciscan missionary, in 1733. The area was immediately attractive to both missionaries and settlers due to its relatively dense population of indigenous people and more salubrious climate than the Amazon lowlands. In 1735, an armed expedition including three Franciscans began missionary work and by 1739 the Franciscans were working in 10 villages. Following the common Spanish strategy of
reductions Reductions (, also called ; ) were settlements established by Spanish rulers and Roman Catholic missionaries in Spanish America and the Spanish East Indies (the Philippines). In Portuguese-speaking Latin America, such reductions were also ...
, the Franciscans began to force the indigenous people to live in communities adjacent to the missions rather than dispersed in small groups as was their custom. The rebellion of Juan Santos Atahualpa, beginning in 1742, destroyed the missionary enterprise and left the Gran Pajonal in Asháninka control for 150 years although they suffered from periodic epidemics of European diseases and in the late 19th century from slave raids by businesses engaged in the gathering of
rubber Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Types of polyisoprene ...
. In 1896 and 1897, a Franciscan priest, Gabriel Sala, visited the Grand Pajonal along with a group of armed men. In the wake of his expedition, various plans to build roads, railroads, and establish Catholic missions in the Pajonal came to nothing until 1935 when three missions were established and in 1938 an airstrip was built in Oventeni, the largest of the mission communities. In 1965, the Peruvian army defeated a guerrilla organization, the Left Revolutionary Movement in a battle in the Pajonal and the army remained in Oventeni for 3 years. The missions were closed. In 1965, another religious organization, the Wycliffe Translators began work in the Pajonal and the majority of the missionaries became Protestants rather than Roman Catholics. The Protestant presence coincided with the growing consciousness of the Asháninka that they must organize to meet the challenges facing them from outsiders. In the 1980s, with assistance from the
World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...
and
Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...
, the Asháninka achieved legal title to land belonging to 36 communities in the Gran Pajonal. Non-Asháninka, mostly people of Andean origin, were allowed to reside and own land only in the community of Oventeni. Some of the Asháninka worked as cattle herders or coffee harvesters for the outsiders; others practiced traditional agriculture on the lands within their communities.


Administration and population

The Gran Pajonal laps over the borders of three Departments: Raimondi District in the Atalaya Province of Ucayali Department; Puerto Bermúdez District in the Oxapampa Province of Pasco Department; and a small part of Rio Tambo District of Satipo Province in Junín Department.Google Earth At the center of the Gran Pajonal is the community of Oventeni, elevation surrounded in every direction by the patches of grassland which gave the Gran Pajonal its name. The 36 communities of Asháninka had a population of about 6,500 in 2002 and the non-Asháninka numbered about 650.


References

{{reflist, 2 Natural regions of South America Geography of the Department of Ucayali Geography of the Department of Pasco Geography of the Department of Junín Upper Amazon Geography of Peru Christian missions History of Indigenous peoples of South America