Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
“We kept running and we did not know where to go. The
Cojñone
and
their bulldozers had destroyed the world. We sat in the darkness.”
The former Areguede'urasade each pointed to this pervasive terror of
bulldozers. They depicted their recent life in the forest as a series of encoun-
ters with bulldozers, each one more demoralizing than the last. By all ac-
counts, these were catastrophic events. In their terror and headlong flight,
people left behind their homes, possessions, food reserves, gardens, and
reliable sources of water. Often, people were separated from one another
and sometimes left behind, putting the survival of the entire band at risk.
One particularly traumatic encounter occurred sometime in the mid-
1990s near Arocojnadi. At the time, the forest Totobiegosode were living
together in a large encampment. They knew a bulldozer was working
nearby but were caught off guard when the terrible machine suddenly
appeared in the middle of their village. Siquei described this event in the
following way:
I was working to prepare my garden when the bulldozer arrived in the village. I began
to run back toward the village. But I forgot my
cobia
[feather collar for war] near my
garden. I went back and put on my
cobia
of stork feathers and went to fight the bull-
dozer. It was very loud, and it came closer and closer. It seemed like it was angry with
us, that it wanted us to go to another place so it could have our beautiful gardens. We
loved that place very much. We all ran away, the women first. Then the men organized
to return [and fight]. . . . But at that time [the elder] Areguede said, “It is acceptable if
the bulldozer pushes us out of here.” so it was finished. We [did not fight and] returned
to join the women. They had already run far away and we followed them north. We
met them and we kept running. We traveled by night. It was very dark but we left that
place. our grandfather Ugaguede followed behind but he walked slowly because he
was old. he lost our trail in the night and his daughter had to go find him the next day.
After that we suffered thirst. We almost died when we went to find water. Everyone in
the camp was very thirsty. no one had strength to move. I cut some cactus trees and
we squeezed the juice from the pieces. That was in the place called Bajoite-ajuqueode.
We were very thirsty and we almost died. We decided to go back to our old camps. We
though the
Cojñone
and the Ayoreo were still at war. We didn't know that they had
stopped looking for us to kill us. We stayed there in the place called cuguedodie. But
the bulldozers came again and again we went back to the north.
They linked a solar eclipse in 1994 with their attack on a bulldozer and as
a sign of their impending demise:
We came back to the east and we shot at the bulldozer that was bothering us. Then
we ran out of fear of the
Cojñone
. We were those who wanted to kill the
Cojñone
but
