Until the period of peaceful contacts with the Peruvian society in the late 1960s and early 1970s,
in which in the recent past all members of one group were usually located.
In the following decades, the tradition of constructing maloca among the Matsés was almost completely lost.
Today, most Peruvian Matsés are concentrated in villages with a scattered layout and live in huts designed to house individual families.
This maloca, one of the last communal houses, stands on the banks of the small river Loboyacu, left tributary of Galves, left tributary of Javari.
A steep climb leads from the river to the maloca.
After rain, there is a lot of water, so people laid a wooden bridge here.
In the collective memory of Matsés,
a special attitude is still maintained towards the maloca as a construction type and
space that marks their ethnic and cultural identity.
Maloca stands on a high hill.
The traditional Matsés maloca is built entirely of natural materials
and has the shape of an elongated hexagon (at the “end” peaks of which are two oppositely oriented entrances),
with a roof going down to the ground.
Dimensions of the maloca: 20 × 10 × 6 meters.
In form and interior, the Matsés maloca is identical to the communal dwelling of the marubo,
their closest pano-speaking neighbors, living in Brazil in the Curuçá – Itui interfluve, in the upper reaches of the rivers.
in the upper reaches of the rivers.
The rich ethnographic materials
collected by anthropologists over several decades
indicate the most important place of the maloca in the system of traditional sociocultural relations
between indigenous of the Western and North-Western Amazonia.
The maloca is not only a house for cohabitation of a group of people,
but also a center of religious and mythological representations.
Oriented relative to the cardinal points,
the location of the maloca on the terrain,
the structural elements and the interior of this home - everything has its own symbolism.
In the 1970s, anthropologists who visited the Matsés
reported a very large house at Peruvian Matsés.
The length of this maloca was 35 and a height of 10 meters, 100 people lived in it.
This building had two additional entrances, located on the long sides communal housing.
Most likely, the four entrances to maloca were an exception,
they were auxiliary, did not carry any religious and mythological load,
but had a utilitarian value associated with the convenience of moving a large number of people.
However, a traditional maloca with four entrances -
one in the center of each wall - is built by Matis, the pano-speaking relatives of the Matsés,
who live in Brazil between the rivers Itui-Branco, in the middle reaches of the rivers.
Then the corridor between the entrances on the long sides home is considered male,
perpendicular to it - designed for passage women and children.
At night, the entrances to the maloca are closed.
The maloca is surrounded by a chagra - this is the name in the Peruvian Amazonian plantation
cultivated by the method of slash-and-burn agriculture.
On the other side of the hill was an old plantation, which almost brought no harvest.
The new plantation was good maintained.
Every morning, Matsés women go to the chagra to dig up manioc tubers.
There are two types of manioc: bitter and sweet. Bitter manioc contains toxins that are dangerous to human health,
which are removed during a long processing.
Residents of maloca often eat sweet manioc, which is simple enough to boil.
Matsés also cultivate platano,
papaya,
cocona and other fruits and root crops.
A prestigious Matsés male occupation is hunting.
The bamboo arrowhead is sharpened with a sharp aguti tooth.
They hunt not only with bows and arrows,
but also with guns.
They also make various hunting traps.
Dogs help people on hunting.
Before hunting, dogs are not fed so that they actively pursue prey.
