Tobacco
Tobacco is a product prepared from the leaves of the tobacco plant by curing them. The plant is part of the genus Nicotiana and of the Solanaceae family. While more than 70 species of tobacco are known, the chief commercial crop is N. tabacum. The more potent variant N. rustica is used around the world. Tobacco contains the alkaloid nicotine, a stimulant, harmala alkaloids. Dried tobacco leaves are used for smoking in cigarettes, pipe tobacco, flavored shisha tobacco, they can be consumed as snuff, chewing tobacco, dipping tobacco and snus. Tobacco use is a risk factor for many diseases. In 2008, the World Health Organization named tobacco as the world's single greatest preventable cause of death; the English word "tobacco" originates from the Spanish and Portuguese word "tabaco". The precise origin of this word is disputed, but it is thought to have derived at least in part, from Taino, the Arawakan language of the Caribbean. In Taino, it was said to mean either a roll of tobacco leaves or to tabago, a kind of L-shaped pipe used for sniffing tobacco smoke.
However coincidentally, similar words in Spanish and Italian were used from 1410 to define medicinal herbs believed to have originated from the Arabic طُبّاق ṭubbāq, a word dating to the 9th century, as a name for various herbs. Tobacco has long been used in the Americas, with some cultivation sites in Mexico dating back to 1400–1000 BC. Many Native American tribes have traditionally used tobacco. Eastern North American tribes carried tobacco in pouches as a accepted trade item, as well as smoking it, both and ceremonially, such as to seal a peace treaty or trade agreement. In some populations, tobacco is seen as a gift from the Creator, with the ceremonial tobacco smoke carrying one's thoughts and prayers to the Creator. Following the arrival of the Europeans to the Americas, tobacco became popular as a trade item. Hernández de Boncalo, Spanish chronicler of the Indies, was the first European to bring tobacco seeds to the Old World in 1559 following orders of King Philip II of Spain; these seeds were planted in the outskirts of Toledo, more in an area known as "Los Cigarrales" named after the continuous plagues of cicadas.
Before the development of the lighter Virginia and white burley strains of tobacco, the smoke was too harsh to be inhaled. Small quantities were smoked at a time, using a pipe like the midwakh or kiseru or smoking newly invented waterpipes such as the bong or the hookah. Tobacco became so popular that the English colony of Jamestown used it as currency and began exporting it as a cash crop; the alleged benefits of tobacco account for its considerable success. The astronomer Thomas Harriot, who accompanied Sir Richard Grenville on his 1585 expedition to Roanoke Island, explains that the plant "openeth all the pores and passages of the body" so that the natives’ "bodies are notably preserved in health, know not many grievous diseases, wherewithal we in England are times afflicted." Tobacco smoking and snuffing became a major industry in Europe and its colonies by 1700. Tobacco has been a major cash crop in Cuba and in other parts of the Caribbean since the 18th century. Cuban cigars are world-famous.
In the late 19th century, cigarettes became popular. James Bonsack created a machine that automated cigarette production; this increase in production allowed tremendous growth in the tobacco industry until the health revelations of the late-20th century. Following the scientific revelations of the mid-20th century, tobacco became condemned as a health hazard, became encompassed as a cause for cancer, as well as other respiratory and circulatory diseases. In the United States, this led to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, which settled the lawsuit in exchange for a combination of yearly payments to the states and voluntary restrictions on advertising and marketing of tobacco products. In the 1970s, Brown & Williamson cross-bred a strain of tobacco to produce Y1; this strain of tobacco contained an unusually high amount of nicotine, nearly doubling its content from 3.2-3.5% to 6.5%. In the 1990s, this prompted the Food and Drug Administration to use this strain as evidence that tobacco companies were intentionally manipulating the nicotine content of cigarettes.
In 2003, in response to growth of tobacco use in developing countries, the World Health Organization rallied 168 countries to sign the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The convention is designed to push for effective legislation and its enforcement in all countries to reduce the harmful effects of tobacco; this led to the development of tobacco cessation products. Many species of tobacco are in the genus of herbs Nicotiana, it is part of the nightshade family indigenous to North and South America, south west Africa, the South Pacific. Most nightshades contain varying amounts of a powerful neurotoxin to insects. However, tobaccos tend to contain a much higher concentration of nicotine than the others. Unlike many other Solanaceae species, they do not contain tropane alkaloids, which are poisonous to humans and other animals. Despite containing enough nicotine and other compounds such as germacrene and anabasine and other piperidine alkaloids to deter most herbivores, a number of such animals have evolved
Wayana
The Wayana are a Carib-speaking people located in the south-eastern part of the Guiana highlands, a region divided between Brazil and French Guiana. In 1980, when the last census took place, the Wayana numbered some 1,500 individuals, of which 150 in Brazil, among the Apalai, 400 in Surinam, 1,000 in French Guiana, along the Maroni River. About half of them still speak their original language. According to both oral tradition and descriptions by 20th century European explorers, the Wayana emerged recently as a distinctive group. In the eighteenth century, the ancestors of the Wayana lived along the Paru and Jari rivers in contemporary Brazil, along the upper tributaries of the Oyapock river, which nowadays forms the border between French Guiana and Brazil. By the late 18th century, the ancestors of the Wayana were involved in an continuous military struggle with Tupi peoples such as the Wayampi, which drove them across the Tumuk Humak Mountains to the upper tributaries of the Litani river. Around the same time, the Aluku maroons, who had fled plantations in Suriname, were driven up the Litani river by Dutch colonial forces aided by Ndyuka maroons, who had settled for peace with the colonial authorities in return for military assistance against "incursions" from new maroon groups.
From that moment on, an intensive trade relationship developed between the Aluku. Over time, the Wayana migrated with the Aluku further downstream the Litani and Lawa rivers to end up in their contemporary position. In 1865, the Ndyuka granman Alabi invited a Wayana group still living along the Paru river in Brazil to join them along the Tapanahony river in Suriname inspired by the arrangement with the Wayana that the Aluku had; this particular group still lives in villages along the Palumeu rivers. Wayana society is characterized by a rather low degree of social stratification. Villages comprise not more than one extended family and are rather loosely linked to their neighbouring villages by kinship ties, marital exchanges, shared rituals and trade. Missionaries and representatives of the state have only succeeded to group the Wayana together in larger settlements, despite the fact that the Wayana are not as nomadic as before, villages are by no means permanent, are abandoned after the death of a leader.
Villages are led by a shaman or pïyai, who mediate Wayana contact with the world of spirits and deities, act as healers, who are consulted in matters concerning hunting and fishing. Many Wayana villages still feature tukusipan. Coming of age was for a long time associated with a ritual called ëputop or maraké, in which a wicker frame full of stinging ants or wasps was applied to the bodies of adolescent boys and girls, who emerged from the ceremony as adult men and women. While older Wayana still to a degree define their Wayanahood by the number of ëputop they underwent during their lifetime, many younger Wayana reject the necessity of undergoing ëputop to become a valued member of society; as a result, few ëputop ceremonies occur today. One of the more recent ëputop ceremonies took place in 2004 in the village of Talhuwen, organized by Aïmawale Opoya, grandson of Wayana leader Janomalë, in consultation with French film director Jean-Philippe Isel, who made a documentary about the ritual. In spite of its demise, ëputop was listed on the inventory of intangible cultural heritage drawn up by the French Ministry of Culture in 2011.
Before contact with missionaries and state representatives, the Wayana did not recognise a form of leadership that transcended the village level. The Surinamese and Brazilian states preferred to centralise their dealings with the Wayana and for this purpose installed captains, head captains and granman among the Wayana leaders; as the concept of a paramount chief goes against Wayana ideas of political organisation, the authority of these chiefs beyond their own villages is limited. In Suriname, Kananoe Apetina was made "head captain" of the Wayana on the Tapanahony river in 1937, while Janomalë was made "head captain" of the Wayana on the Lawa and Litani rivers in 1938. After the death of Janomalë in 1958, Anapaikë was installed as his successor, served as the leader of the Wayana on the Surinamese side of the Lawa river until he passed away in 2003. Kananu Apetina died in 1975 and was succeeded by Aptuk Noewahe, recognised by the Surinamese government as the granman of all Wayana in Suriname.
The current head captain on the Lawa river is Ipomadi Pelenapïn, installed in August 2005. The current granman of the Wayana in French Guiana is Amaipotï, son of first granman Twenkë, who resides in the village of Kulumuli. Alì, Maurizio & Ailincai, Rodica.. “Learning and Growing in indigenous Amazonia. The Education System of French Guyana Wayana-Apalai communities”. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 106: 1742-1752. ISSN 1877-0428. Doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.12.196 Boven, Karin M.. Overleven in een Grensgebied: Veranderingsprocessen bij de Wayana in Suriname en Frans-Guyana. Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers. Duin, Renzo Sebastiaan. Wayana Socio-political Landscapes: Multi-scalar Regionality and Temporality in Guiana. University of Florida. Fleury, Marie. "Les Wayana de Guyane française sur les traces de leur histoire". Revue d’ethnoécologie. 9. Doi:10.4000/ethnoecologie.2711. Heemskerk, Marieke. Wayana Baseline Study: A sustainable livelih
Society of Suriname
The Society of Suriname was a Dutch private company, modelled on the ideas of Jean-Baptiste Colbert and set up on 21 May 1683 to profit from the management and defence of the Dutch Republic's colony of Suriname. It had three participants, with equal shares in the benefits of the society. Only through mutual consent could these shareholders withdraw from the society. Although the organization and administration was of the colony was limited to these three shareholders, all citizens of the Dutch Republic were free to trade with Suriname; the planters were consulted in a Council of Police, a unique feature among the colonies of Guyana. Its governors included Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck, Johan van Scharphuizen, Paulus van der Veen; the Society was nationalized by the Batavian Republic in November 1795, as the Patriottentijd deemed the governing of colonies by chartered companies a thing of the past. List of trading companies Society of Berbice List of colonial heads of Suriname Jeronimo Clifford Aa, A.
J. Beknopt Aardrijkskundig Woordenboek der Nederlanden, Gorinchem 1851-'54. Winter, P. J. van De Westindische Compagnie ter kamer Stad en Lande, p. 201-4, 217. "Shipped to Suriname, 1683". International Institute of Social History. 20 July 2015
Hunting
Hunting is the practice of killing or trapping animals, or pursuing or tracking them with the intent of doing so. Hunting wildlife or feral animals is most done by humans for food, recreation, to remove predators that can be dangerous to humans or domestic animals, or for trade. Lawful hunting is distinguished from poaching, the illegal killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species; the species that are hunted are referred to as game or prey and are mammals and birds. Hunting has long been a practice used to procure meat for human consumption; the meat from a healthy wild animal that has lived its life and on a natural diet of plants has a higher nutritional quality than that of a domestic animal, raised in an unnatural way. Hunting an animal for its meat can be seen as a more natural way to obtain animal protein since regulated hunting does not cause the same environmental issues as raising domestic animals for meat on factory farms. Hunting can be a means of pest control. Hunting advocates state that hunting can be a necessary component of modern wildlife management, for example, to help maintain a population of healthy animals within an environment's ecological carrying capacity when natural checks such as predators are absent or rare.
However, excessive hunting has heavily contributed to the endangerment and extinction of many animals. The pursuit and release, or capture for food of fish is called fishing, not categorised as a form of hunting, it is not considered hunting to pursue animals without intent to kill them, as in wildlife photography, birdwatching, or scientific research activities which involve tranquilizing or tagging of animals or birds. The practice of foraging or gathering materials from plants and mushrooms is considered separate from hunting. Skillful tracking and acquisition of an elusive target has caused the word hunt to be used in the vernacular as a metaphor, as in treasure hunting, "bargain hunting", "hunting down" corruption and waste. Animal rights activists argue that hunting is cruel and unethical; the word hunt serves as a verb. The noun has been dated to the early 12th century, "act of chasing game," from the verb hunt. Old English had huntung, huntoþ; the meaning of "a body of persons associated for the purpose of hunting with a pack of hounds" is first recorded in the 1570s.
Meaning "the act of searching for someone or something" is from about 1600. The verb, Old English huntian "to chase game" developed from hunta "hunter," is related to hentan "to seize," from Proto-Germanic huntojan, of uncertain origin; the general sense of "search diligently" is first recorded c. 1200. Hunting has a long history, it pre-dates the emergence of Homo sapiens and may predate genus Homo. The oldest undisputed evidence for hunting dates to the Early Pleistocene, consistent with the emergence and early dispersal of Homo erectus, about 1.7 million years ago. While it is undisputed that Homo erectus were hunters, the importance of this for the emergence of Homo erectus from its australopithecine ancestors, including the production of stone tools and the control of fire, is emphasised in the so-called "hunting hypothesis" and de-emphasised in scenarios that stress omnivory and social interaction. There is no direct evidence for hunting predating Homo erectus, in either Homo habilis or in Australopithecus.
The early hominid ancestors of humans were frugivores or omnivores, with a carnivore diet from scavenging rather than hunting. Evidence for australopithecine meat consumption was presented in the 1990s, it has often been assumed that at least occasional hunting behavior may have been present well before the emergence of Homo. This can be argued on the basis of comparison with chimpanzees, the closest extant relatives of humans, who engage in hunting, indicating that the behavioral trait may have been present in the Chimpanzee–human last common ancestor as early as 5 million years ago; the common chimpanzee engages in troop predation behaviour where bands of beta males are led by an alpha male. Bonobos have been observed to engage in group hunting, although more than Pan troglodytes subsisting on a frugivorous diet. Indirect evidence for Oldowan era hunting, by early Homo or late Australopithecus, has been presented in a 2009 study based on an Oldowan site in southwestern Kenya. Louis Binford criticised the idea that early humans were hunters.
On the basis of the analysis of the skeletal remains of the consumed animals, he concluded that hominids and early humans were scavengers, not hunters, Blumenschine proposed the idea of confrontational scavenging, which involves challenging and scaring off other predators after they have made a kill, which he suggests could have been the leading method of obtaining protein-rich meat by early humans. Stone spearheads dated as early as 500,000 years ago were found in South Africa. Wood does not preserve well and Craig Stanford, a primatologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California, has suggested that the discovery of spear use by chimpanzees means that early humans used wooden spears as well five million years ago; the earliest dated find of surviving wooden hunting spears dates to the end of the Lower Paleolithic, just before 300,000 years ago. The Schöningen spears, found in 1976 in Germany, are
Surinamese Interior War
The Surinamese Interior War was a civil war waged in the remote interior region of Suriname between 1986 and 1991. The war was fought between the Jungle Commando led by Ronnie Brunswijk, whose members originated from the Maroon ethnic group, the National Army led by then-army chief and de facto head of state Dési Bouterse. Suriname has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in South America, with people of ethnic Indian, Chinese, Amerindian and multiracial origin; the Maroons' ancestors were African slaves who escaped from coastal Suriname between the mid-seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries to form independent settlements in the interior. They settled in interior parts of Suriname, gained independence by signing a peace treaty with the Dutch in the 1760s; the Dutch agreed to allow them autonomy within their territory. In 1975 Suriname gained full independence from the Netherlands. Dési Bouterse participated in building a national army. Five years in 1980, he and fifteen other army sergeants led a bloody coup against the country's Government.
Bouterse consolidated all power. In 1987 he directed the National Assembly to adopt a new constitution that allowed him to continue as head of the army, as a civilian government was established under close watch; the war began as a personal feud between Bouterse and Brunswijk, a Maroon who had served as Bouterse's former bodyguard. It assumed political dimensions. Brunswijk demanded democratic reforms, civil rights and economic development for the country's Maroon minority. In November 1986, military forces attacked home village of Brunswijk, they massacred 39 people women and children. They destroyed most of the village. More than 100 survivors fled across the border to French Guiana. On 1 June 1989 rebels captured Afobaka Dam, Suriname's main hydroelectric plant, threatened to flood the capital Paramaribo unless the government agreed to negotiations. Despite the threats, the rebels withdrew 36 hours on Brunswijk's orders. On 7 June 1989 talks were held on the island of Portal; the delegations reached an agreement on a tentative peace proposal.
The government signed the pact on 21 July 1989, approved by parliament on 7 August 1989. The accord declared the intention of both sides to end hostilities. A cease-fire was signed in June 1989. An emergency aid program to rebuild Maroon villages, an end to a state of emergency in the eastern part of the country, the return of refugees to Suriname were among the actions launched by the peace agreement; the government had proposed that the Jungle Commando troops were to be transformed into a security unit, to patrol the interior of the country. Cease-fire violations continued after the truce without escalating into a full-scale conflict, but by September 1989, at least 300 people had been killed, numerous villages were destroyed, bauxite and aluminum mining were being disrupted. An estimated 7000 maroons fled to refugee camps in French Guiana. On 19 March 1991, a meeting between representatives took place in the eastern mining town of Moengo; the government offered integration of Jungle Commando into the Suriname Army, jobs for Maroons in gold prospecting and forestry in return for complete disarmament.
On 27 March 1991, final talks were held in the town of Drietabbetje putting an end to the conflict. Despite the agreement, a number of Jungle Commando officials residing in the Netherlands denounced the conditions and vowed to continue their armed struggle. On 7 and 8 December 1982, military policemen kidnapped 15 men from their beds, most of them civilians, placed them on a bus and murdered them after conspiracy charges were lodged against them; the victims were all members of the Suriname Association for Democracy, a group critical of the Surinamese military government. The group, according to government officials, was part of a conspiracy, planning a coup d'état on Christmas Day; the state admitted of conducting inadequate investigations into the case. An investigation began in 2008. Despite accepting political responsibility, Bouterse denied direct involvement. On 29 November 1986, the military government executed more than 40 people, including women and children, burned the village of Moiwana.
Three years after the attack, a statement was issued, in which Bouterse assumed direct responsibility for the murders. As a result of an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights investigation, the Surinamese government made a public apology to the victims' families in 2006, additionally paying compensation to the survivors; the perpetrators of the crime remained unpunished. On 31 December 1987, during a counter-insurgency operation in the Atjoni region seven maroon civilians were driven off in a military vehicle on suspicion of belonging to the Jungle Commando. A few miles further, they were ordered to dig their own graves. Six of the maroons were summarily executed while the seventh died from sustained injuries while trying to escape. An IACHR investigation into the case was launched in January 1988. On 10 September 1993 the court awarded the victims' families U. S.$450,000 in damages and required Suriname to compensate the families for the expenses incurred in locating the victims' bodies. A second decision further determined the financial reparations insufficient, ordering the state to re-open the Saramaca medical dispensary and the school in the victims' village.
Vries, E. de: Suriname na de binnenlandse oorlog, Amsterdam 2005: KIT Publishers, ISBN 90-6832-499-3 Hoogbergen, W. & D. Kruijt: De oorlog van de sergeanten: Surinaamse militairen in de politiek, Amsterdam 2005: Bakker, ISB
Arawak
The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of South America and of the Caribbean. The term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to the Lokono of South America and the Taíno, who lived in the Greater Antilles and northern Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. All these groups spoke related Arawakan languages; the term Arawak was applied by Europeans to the South American group who self-identified as Arawak, Arhuaco or Lokono. Their Arawak language is the name of the overall Arawakan language family. Arawakan speakers in the Caribbean were historically known as the Taíno, a term meaning "relatives"; the Spanish assumed some islanders used this term to distinguish their group from the neighboring Island Caribs. In 1871, ethnologist Daniel Garrison Brinton proposed calling the Caribbean populace "Island Arawak" due to their cultural and linguistic similarities with the mainland Arawak. Subsequent scholars shortened this convention to "Arawak", creating confusion between the island and mainland groups.
In the 20th century, scholars such as Irving Rouse resumed using "Taíno" for the Caribbean group to emphasize their distinct culture and language. The Arawakan languages may have emerged in the Orinoco River valley, they subsequently spread becoming by far the most extensive language family in South America at the time of European contact, with speakers located in various areas along the Orinoco and Amazonian rivers and their tributaries. The group that self-identified as the Arawak known as the Lokono, settled the coastal areas of what is now Guyana, Grenada and parts of the islands of Trinidad and Tobago. Michael Heckenberger, an anthropologist at the University of Florida who helped found the Central Amazon Project, his team found elaborate pottery, ringed villages, raised fields, large mounds, evidence for regional trade networks that are all indicators of a complex culture. There is evidence that they modified the soil using various techniques such as deliberate burning of vegetation to transform it into black earth, which today is famed for its agricultural productivity.
According to Heckenberger and other cultural traits show these people belonged to the Arawakan language family, a group that included the Tainos, the first Native Americans Columbus encountered* It was the largest language group that existed in the pre-Columbian Americas. At some point, the Arawakan-speaking Taíno culture emerged in the Caribbean. Two major models have been presented to account for the arrival of Taíno ancestors in the islands; the Taíno were among the first American people to encounter Spanish Conquistadors when Christopher Columbus visited multiple islands and chiefdoms on his first voyage in 1492, followed in 1493 by the establishment of La Navidad on Hispaniola, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Americas. Relationships between the Spaniards and the Taino would take a sour turn; some of the lower-level chiefs of the Taino appeared to have assigned a supernatural origin to the explorers. The Taino believed that the explorers were mythical beings associated with the underworld who consumed human flesh.
Thus, the Taino would go on to kill 39 men. There is evidence as to the taking of human trophies and the ritual cannibalism of war captives among both Arawak and other Amerindian groups such as the Carib and Tupinamba. With the establishment of La Isabella, the discovery of gold deposits on the island, the Spanish settler population on Hispaniola started to grow while disease and conflict with the Spanish began to kill tens of thousands of Taíno every year. By 1504, the Spanish had overthrown the last of the Taíno cacique chiefdoms on Hispaniola, established the supreme authority of the Spanish colonists over the now-subjugated Taíno. Over the next decade, the Spanish Colonists presided over a genocide of the remaining Taíno on Hispaniola, who suffered enslavement, massacres, or exposure to diseases; the population of Hispaniola at the point of first European contact is estimated at between several hundred thousand to over a million people, but by 1514, it had dropped to a mere 35,000. By 1509, the Spanish had conquered Puerto Rico and subjugated the 30,000 Taíno inhabitants.
By 1530 there were 1148 Taíno left alive in Puerto Rico. Taíno influence has survived until today, though, as can be seen in the religions and music of Caribbean cultures; the Lokono and other South American groups resisted colonization for a longer period, the Spanish remained unable to subdue them throughout the 16th century. In the early 17th century, they allied with the Spanish against the neighboring Kalina, who allied with the English and Dutch; the Lokono benefited from trade with European powers into the early 19th century, but suffered thereafter from economic and social changes in their region, including the end of the plantation economy. Their population declined until the 20th century. Most of the Arawak of the Antilles intermarried after the Spanish conquest. In South America, Arawakan-speaking groups are widespread, from southwest Brazil to the Guianas in the north, representing a wide range of cultures, they are found in the tropical forest areas north of the Amazon. As with all Amazonian native peoples, contact with white settlement has led to culture change and depopulation among these groups.
The Spaniards who arrived in the Bahamas and Hispaniola in
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