Shamanism, leadership and indigenous power: The tsachila case

This paper covers briefly the pre-Inca and colonial past and examines the mythology to outline the traditional political system of the indigenous group Tsachila of the Ecuadorian coast, which would have been two power figures, the political leader and the shaman, sometimes represented by a single person. Then the author analyzes in detail the contemporary political forms of this society, from the time of establishment of the communes and the Gobernación Tsachila, concluding that the current forms are partly inherited from the past and that knowledge of these is necessary to understand the place of this society in the national indigenous policy.