I'm off!

Having just arrived in Iquitos yesterday afternoon, this afternoon I will embark on the Gilmer V bound for Santa Rita de Castilla, a Catholic parish on the Marañón River.  From there I will join Fathers Miguel Angel Cadenas and Manuel Berjón on their trip to the Urituyacu River, spending two weeks with them visiting each of over a dozen communities.  Individuals who reportedly speak some Omurano, the language I will be studying, live in various of those communities, but following Miguel and Manuel's departure downriver I will remain principally in San Luis, until approximately July 10, when I will return to the greater Iquitos area to carry out sociolinguistic and historical work on Omagua and its speakers.  In addition to gathering linguistic data on Omurano, I will also aim to collect a large number of narratives in Spanish regarding the recent history of the Omurano, their cultural practices, movements and obsolescence, as well as basic sociolinguistic information on the Kokama and Urarina communities of the Urituyacu River.  The latter is also an important undertaking, since some authors (e.g., Olawsky 2006) have reported that ethnic Urarinas on the Urituyacu River no longer speak Urarina.

This morning I met with the Augustinian Superior in Iquitos, Father Miguel Fuertes Prieto, in order to gain permission to access sacramental records held by the Vicariato Apostólico de Iquitos.  In combination with additional Spanish oral narratives I plan to gather in San Joaquín de Omaguas (and hopefully neighboring communities) in late July, I am attempting to reconstruct something of the recent history of the Omagua of the Peruvian Amazon River (mainly from the onset of the Rubber Boom in approximately 1880 through 1930).  I am also hoping that trips to neighboring communities, in which Omagua is known to have formerly been spoken, will reveal additional elderly speakers.

I will report in likely some time in mid-July!

References:
Olawsky, Knut. 2006. A Grammar of Urarina. Mouton de Gruyter.