Strands of Beetle-Wing Covers

ca. 1930

These earrings made of iridescent-green beetle-wing covers were collected in Pongo de Manseriche on the Marañón River in the 1930s. The Indigenous people who live in this area are the Aguaruna, linguistically related to the Shuar and the Achuar of Ecuador. When the earrings were collected, the area was still part of Ecuador, but after the signing of the Rio Protocol of 1942, which officially ended the Ecuadorian-Peruvian War, some 80,000 square miles (205,000 square kilometers) of previously disputed Amazon territory were awarded to Peru. Military conflict between the two countries continued until 1995, when a definitive peace treaty was signed. This history illustrates how Indigenous people whose ancestral homelands overlap multiple nation-states are affected by political conflicts.