Throughout history, the Jíbaro peoples - including the Awajún and Wampis - have embodied this stereotype of ‘brave Indians’ because of their warlike attitude, their capacity for organisation and their autonomy. In recent years, these peoples have not ceased to assert their political and territorial autonomy in the context of ongoing negotiations with national society. Since the promulgation of the 1974 law on native communities, and after intense demarcation and legalisation work, the Awajún and Wampis have succeeded in securing title to large territorial extensions in the form of native communities and communal reserves.

In this way, these peoples have partially halted the advance of land colonisation by peasants, generally poor, who arrived from the Peruvian highlands and coast from the 1960s onwards, and in many cases supported by the Peruvian government, which saw the jungle as a ‘land without men for men without land’. The legal recognition of Indigenous lands, in a way, put a limit to the colonists' expansion and allowed for the possibility of relatively peaceful coexistence among the region's inhabitants.

In recent years artisanal gold mining has arrived in this territory, most noticeably on the Cenepa and Santiago rivers, causing unrest and many social complications in the Indigenous society.

The dwellings the Awajun and Wampis live in are traditionally known as jíbaras. These houses stood on high ground and were surrounded by fields of crops that housed cassava and other agricultural products. The structures of the houses are elliptical in shape, with walls constructed of ‘pona’ and raised roofs are covered with palm leaves. Inside, the house was divided in two: one part related to women and the other to men. As Brown (1984) points out, rather than a division of masculine and feminine, this was a symbolic differentiation between formal and informal activities.

The female area comprised the interior space of the house, which included beds, cooking cookers, masato jars and the area where the animals circulated. In contrast, the men's section constituted the outside space of the house, intended to receive visitors, with seats and raised beds for young bachelors. The materials used in the construction of the houses are varied and can take a month to make, as Efraín tells us:

‘The materials that were used in the elaboration of the traditional house, we look for shungo, hard sticks that can last for years, also sometimes mature chontas, from that stick we cut to put beams as scissors, and then yarina leaves and other campanac, that lasts 10 years, it is better, the yarina lasts about 5 to 4 years, that's how long it lasts. When the leaves dry to make the roofs, we let them dry and then we weave them. Sometimes we do mingas to make a house, when there is food. A house can be built in a month, but if you have all the materials you can do it quickly.

‘A family with three women builds houses 15 by 8 metres, and those who don't, 4 by 2 metres. The roof is made of yarina or palmiche. Often they never used walls, but because there were tigers they had to make the wall with the bark of palm trees, like chonta. Before, they used to do mingas to make the houses, sometimes on their own. Mariluz, community of San Antonio, Cenepa river.