Cubeo - Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. The Cubeo consider themselves a unit identified by a specific economy, social organization, and ideology. They are made up of patrilineal clans of shallow genealogical depth, from older to younger, whose members cannot establish direct genealogical links to their respective founders. Each clan is made up of one or several patrilineages, arranged in turn from larger to smaller, members recognize one another by their filiation with a living or recently deceased ancestor, a descendant in turn from the clan ancestor. Finally, the lineage is composed of nuclear or composite families. The Cubeo clans are divided into three exogamic phratries whose groups mutually call each other older and younger "brothers." Because they share the same place of origin and descent from the ancestral Anaconda, phratries consider themselves to be "the same people." Certain segments of other phratries and even of other ethnic groups are recognized as uterine relatives ("mother's sons"), since they are sons of potential wives who were or are married to units different from Ego's, affecting the customary principle of traditional sister exchange. This group, which is called a pakoma, includes "brothers" of a phratry and uterine relatives and constitutes the exogamic unit among whom marriage is forbidden.

Kinship Terminology. Cubeo kinship terminology follows the principles of the Dravidian system. Genealogical depth does not exceed five generations—the two older and two younger generations than Ego's. Alter's sex is marked with pertinent suffixes. There are referential and vocative differences in vocabulary, and individualized terms are used for each sex for certain categories of relatives. Consanguineal kin are differentiated terminologically according to the order of birth (before or after), but this is not the case with affines. Terminologically, consanguineal kin of Ego's generation are differentiated as older and younger. Besides differentiating cross and parallel cousins, a distinction is also made with regard to uterine relatives, who are called "mother's children."