“Ese dia que se va el patron an hecho fiesta”.* Historicities of successful resistance against hacienda bosses among the Kukama (Peru, 1933-1945)

This paper analyzes two cases of resistance by Kukama workers within the debt slavery system of habilitación in the Peruvian Amazon during the first half of the twentieth century. It discusses the similarities and differences between the two cases, and positions the workers and their accounts of events and agency within the historical, social and cosmological framework of the time and region. Through the examples studied here, the hierarchies, power dynamics, spirituality, lifestyles, traditions, and cultural changes that shaped Kukama communities at the time become visible from an emic perspective. The paper places special emphasis on how historical events are interpreted through oral transmission within a specific cultural context.