Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Is it any surprise, then, that the new moral human evoked through
sound during those bygone days was ultimately illusory? That it was
an ideal impossible to realize, one constantly interrupted by blunt-force
trauma and a more insidious hermeneutic violence that measured such
creative and disordered Ayoreo projects of becoming against a colonial
fantasy of order to which they were already illegitimate, spurious, di-
minished? Like radio sound itself, the new moral self was fractured and
ambiguous. As quick as it could be conjured, it dissipated back into the
ether, just out of reach of us all.
On my last visit to Chaidi and Arocojnadi in 2013, it was clear that radio
technology was on the way out. Cheap cell phones had replaced it like
radio had replaced cassettes. Everyone had one. They said the phones
were better because they were beautiful and more private and you could
call anyone you pleased and no one else could listen. They said the two-
way radio was only for old people.
Arocojnadi was one of the few villages without cell signal. For the time
being, the young people climbed a tall quebracho tree in the evenings
to catch a single bar or walked a couple of miles to a nearby ranch house
equipped with a microwave relay. Even the New People had phones, with
a constantly shifting set of numbers and very few incoming calls.
Jochade, however, couldn't seem to break his daily habit of checking
on the radio. The last time we turned it on to the main Ayoreo channel,
we sat side by side in the evening dusk listening as the radio buzzed and
crackled with the sound of empty static.
