Maloca

A maloca is a large communal house built by Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, especially in Colombia and Brazil. It is the classic dwelling of the Eastern Tukanoan peoples of the Vaupés region, including the Barasana, Makuna, Tanimuka, Taiwano and Desana, along the Vaupés, Papurí, Pirá-Paraná and Apaporis rivers.

Social space

Several related families live together in one maloca, each with its own compartment and hearth, and the house is linked to a patrilineal descent group. The headman's family lives nearest the back wall. Malocas traditionally have two entrances, one used mainly by men and one by women. During festivals and ceremonies, including men's dances, the interior is rearranged and the centre of the house becomes the main dancing ground.

Each maloca is traditionally surrounded by two gardens: an inner kitchen garden with bananas, papaya, mango and pineapple, and an outer field of manioc.

Thatch

Maloca roofs are thatched with palm leaves. In the Colombian Amazon one of the most valued thatches comes from the small palm Lepidocaryum tenue, whose leaves are braided along split stems of the stilt palm Socratea exorrhiza. A 2020 study by Jaime Navarro López, Rodrigo Bernal and Gloria Galeano, carried out with five Indigenous communities north of Leticia, estimated that thatching a house of 48 m² (517 sq ft) needs the Socratea from about 1 ha (2.5 acres) of forest and the Lepidocaryum from about 0.81 ha (2 acres). Traditional harvesting takes all but the three youngest leaves of each Lepidocaryum plant, allowing it to recover, but the authors found overexploitation near settlements.

Influence

The Jesuit mission churches of Chiquitos in Bolivia are thought to have been partly inspired by Indigenous architecture.