Social Capital in the Indigenous Communities of the Peruvian Central Jungle: two case studies with the Ashaninka and the Nomatsigenga Peoples

The present Master thesis aims at studying the formation, dynamics and components of social capital in the Indigenous Peoples (IP) present in the Valley or the Rivers Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro (VRAEM), the territory with the largest illegal coca bush cultivation and production of cocaine in Peru. The objective of the research is to contrast the theoretical developments of social capital with the particularities of the context, characterising it for the Ashaninka and Nomatsigenga peoples of the Mazamari and Pangoa districts (Junin, Peru). In addition, the thesis seeks to give inputs to the National Commission for the Development and the Life without Drugs (DEVIDA) —Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo y la Vida sin Drogas— and the Project FID —Fortalecimiento Institucional de DEVIDA— to propose policies related to social capital in the frame of the alternative development strategy, policy centred in the promotion of licit economic activities and the replacement of the illegal coca crops. The methodology consists in an exploratory multiple case study (Yin, 2018), composed of two individual “cases” —one for the Nomatsigenga peoples and one for the Ashaninka peoples—. Five beneficiary communities of DEVIDA were examined, where semi-structured interviews were applied to 3 key informants in each one of them (15 in total) and to a representative of the local indigenous organisations . The other main sources of information were the ethnographic notes collected during the fieldwork and “gray” literature provided by the involved stakeholders. The starting point for the inquiry were the theories developed by the classic social capital scholars —Bordieu, Coleman, Putnam, Fukuyama and Burt—, which were contrasted and adapted to the local reality, following an intercultural approach. Results give a first approximation to the social capital of the Ashaninka and Nomatsigenga peoples settled in the north area of the VRAEM, detailing its constitutive elements and giving policy recommendations to the Project FID and DEVIDA, based on the identified challenges and opportunities.