 Urarina local politics are characterized by a mercurial balance of power between demes united through affinal ties and episodic political alliances, exchange relations, and disputation.Surrounded by the Jivaroan, and the Tupi–Guarani-speaking Cocama-Cocamilla indigenous peoples of the upper Amazon, the Urarina have an elaborate animistic cosmological system.It is based on ayahuasca shamanism, which is based in part on the profoundly ritualized consumption of "Brugmansia suaveolens".