Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Touching and Time
We are very afraid of the Word of God, because the Bible says that he will come again in the near
future, and it is a sure thing that he will come. That is why we read the Bible often. It says that
he will come again, and we are very afraid. It says that he will come again and he will kill all of us
who don't believe in him. he will take only those who are very faithful with him to his village, like
norman and those that believe in him a lot, like carodi and cadui. That is what will happen when
God comes to punish the Ayoreo.
Ayoreo-speaking people converted en masse to Christianity in 1975, and
outside observers have noted their rapid adoption of evangelical Chris-
tianity with surprise. “What is suggested by the data is that the Ayoreo
conceive of their past life in the woods as extremely hard and very con-
trary to the will of God (Our ways in the woods were extremely hard.
We suffered much. God hated our ways),” wrote a Mennonite commit-
tee charged with evaluating the New Tribes Mission at El Faro Moro in
1977. “They have now, as a group, set their sights on moving toward the
civilized way.”
11
David Maybury-Lewis and James Howe also reported
an “extremely rare” 100 percent conversion rate among Guidaigosode-
Ayoreo at El Faro Moro in 1978, and even Salesian missionaries were
astonished that, by the mid-1970s, “the majority of Ayoreo are fervent
Christians.”
12
This impression of fervor was cemented by the particular form of
Ayoreo Christianity, which emphasized public professions of faith even
while imagining true faith as a difficult-to-realize ideal. Common expres-
sions such as “God hated us before” or “we were worthless and igno-
rant” emphasized that contact created a New World in which Jesus was
the ultimate arbiter of power and knowledge. This New World, called
Cojñone-Gari
, was associated with a distinct metaphysical ecology—a dis-
tinct relation between cause and effect—than that which is attributed
to the past, precontact forest world,
Erami
. In this shared recognition,
Christianity became synonymous with both modernity and an Ayoreo
morality. Believers developed a unique version of Christian faith that
both cited and exceeded missionary visions of Ayoreo humanity.
During my fieldwork, the conversion of the former Areguede'urasade
was carried out by their Totobiegosode relatives, provoked in part by Bob-
by's visits every three days. Witnessing the violent conversion of the new
group, based largely on ridicule and domination, never failed to bother
me. Siquei, the former leader, was especially targeted. I could not under-
stand why the New People did not object to it or simply leave the village to
avoid it. Part of my confusion, it seems, was that I perceived conversion as
