Tacana

The Tacana are an Indigenous people of northwestern Bolivian Amazonia, centered on Ixiamas, Tumupasa and San Buenaventura in Iturralde province of La Paz department, with dispersed communities along the Beni, Madre de Dios and Orthon rivers in Beni and Pando. They give their name to the Tacanan language family; while more than 18,000 people identified as Tacana in the 2012 census, only a few hundred still speak the language natively, and revitalization is a community concern.

Franciscan missions founded from the early 1700s reshaped Tacana settlement and left lasting institutions in their villages. During the rubber boom of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many families were displaced or drawn into debt labor on the northern rivers. Today household economies rest on farming rice, maize, plantain and cassava, along with hunting, fishing, forest products and crafts such as woven marico bags; shamanic tradition remains influential.

Organized in councils such as CIPTA and its women's counterpart CIMTA, the Tacana hold titled communal territories near Madidi National Park and are widely cited for community forestry and wildlife management, while facing pressure from sugarcane expansion, logging, gold mining and road projects.