Arnaldo Huanaquiri Tuisima (1933-2016)

Arnaldo Huanaquiri Tuisima, one of the last remaining speakers of the Omagua language, passed away in Iquitos, Loreto, Peru on December 20, 2016, aged 83. Arnaldo was born on February 7, 1933 in San Joaquín de Omaguas – a community on the left bank of the Amazon River between Nauta and Iquitos –, the son of Lizardo Huanaquiri Tamani and Amalia Tuisima Huaní. Lizardo was a Kukama man born in the 1890s in Lagunas, on the Huallaga River, the son of Antonio Huanaquiri and Marcela Tamani. (Antonio may have been born in 1870 in nearby Nauta.) Amalia was an Omagua woman born c1900 in San Joaquín de Omaguas, the daughter of José María Tuisima Ipuchima (1872-1946) and Lucía Huaní Cahuasa (1873-c1946).

In 1943 Arnaldo entered primary school in San Joaquín, where he completed three grades, learning to read and write well. He left the community in 1948 in search of work, serving time in the military, and returning to San Joaquín not until June 1965. He went on to serve as teniente gobernador of the community from October 1965 to April 1968, from May 1973 to April 1978, and from 1981 to August 1989. On September 17, 1971, Arnaldo married Celestina Marín Pizango (d. 2005), and they had 13 children: Onila, Zoila, Wellinson Arnaldo, Edinson Lizardo, Ricardo, Jaír, Lita Gertrudis, Emerson Luís, Luz Victoria, José Francisco, Sahuar, Nerci Amalia, and Pablo José.

In 2003 Arnaldo began a collaboration with Lev Michael, Christine Beier, and Catherine Clark to document on the Omagua language, which, along with its closely related sister language, Kukama, belongs to the Tupí-Guaraní language family, members of which were originally spread across much of South America, from the Atlantic coast inland to Bolivia, and in the north from the Guianas to Peru and across Amazonian Brazil. In this endeavor Arnaldo joined his first cousin Manuel Cabudivo Tuisima (1925-2010), and the first sustained linguistic work was carried out by Edinson Huamancayo Curi in 2004, followed by Brianna Grohman, then a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, in 2006. Arnaldo subsequently wrote twelve notebooks of stories in Omagua with Spanish translation, which formed the basis for a team-based research project that began in January 2009 at the University of California, Berkeley. From June to August 2010 Arnaldo furthered his language work with me, Clare Sandy, Tammy Stark, and Vivian Wauters in San Joaquín de Omaguas. This continued in 2011 with me and Clare Sandy. He participated in language work again in 2013 with me over a few-day visit to San Joaquín.

Arnaldo in his home, July 2010 (photo cred: P. Gavette)

Arnaldo resided at his home just upriver of San Joaquín proper until 2014, when he came to live with his daughter Zoila in Iquitos. He was never able to return to his home, but was fortunate to be able to visit regularly with his older sister Amelia, who lives in Iquitos. His wish was to be buried alongside his mother in the cemetery in San Joaquín, and his family was able to return his body there for burial.

Omaguas, first contacted in 1538, originally inhabited the main course of the upper Amazon River, from below the mouth of the Napo River in Peru to the Putumayo/Iça River in Brazil; two smaller groups lived on the Coca River and at the mouth of the Curaray River in the upper Napo basin. They were one of the most numerous of Amazonian societies, the result of a rapid migration up the Amazon River probably very early in the second millennium CE. From what were probably many tens of thousands of individuals, the Omagua population was severely reduced, perhaps to a few thousand, by the 1710s, following severe epidemics and decades of Portuguese attacks and enslavement. By the middle 18th-century they had regrouped into a handful of communities outside of their traditional territory upriver of the modern-day city of Iquitos. San Joaquín seems to be the last location where speakers survive, although there may be others in nearby places such as San Salvador de Omaguas, Puritania, Porvenir, and elsewhere. Omaguas born into the early 1920s largely acquired Omagua as their dominant first language, at least in early life. By the time Arnaldo was a young child in the late 1930s, however, many families had come to use Spanish increasingly in the home, and he and his sister largely associate Omagua monolingualness with their grandparents and elder aunts, i.e., those born in the 1870s through the 1890s. Arnaldo could not have been prouder of his Omagua heritage, and was the principal motivation behind the beginning of the Omagua Documentation Project. He dreamed of seeing the language taught in the local primary school, a dream that still awaits fulfillment.

Arnaldo would want you to read more about Omagua history, which you can do here. (You can read more about the Omagua Documentation Project here.) His notebooks are readable here; and his community history and personal dictionary are downloadable here. A draft of an Omagua dictionary, to which Arnaldo was a significant contributor, is available here. All of Omagua Documentation Project's materials to which Arnaldo contributed can be viewed here.

Arnaldo, ta uripupɪkatu Ikitukati 2015 ta usu uwatatara nɪkati nɪ taira ukakati. Rua nɪ amiasuka uwata, yapɨkan ɪnɪ yurakati. Yini kumɪsaka shita, ɪnɪ kumɪsa: “Ta sɪta ɪrɪwa usu makati ta kakɨrɨsuri ɨmɨnua ta wawankɨrarashi.” Rua nɪ ɪrɪwa nɪ umanukatikatu. Akiakati ta umai nuí sarɨwa nɪ ikuaikua nɪ yumuita ta kumɪsatara umawa kumɪsapupɪ. Rua ta sɨsaraisari nɪ yumuitamai.