Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
a cognitive process aimed at dominating reason. This was not necessarily
the primary plane of belief and contact among Totobiegosode.
Many Ayoreo-speaking people said that touching, -
isa
, is a particularly
significant and violent act. Rather than only a tactile exchange, it also in-
volved gaining possession of another being's willpower. When hunting,
the person who touched an animal first rather than the person who de-
livered the fatal blow was the one who “killed” it. According to the terms
of traditional warfare, a warrior could take a member of the enemy group
captive by touching that person. The touched ones,
isagode
, were incor-
porated into the family structure of their touchers,
isasorone
, as servants,
subordinates, or slaves.
13
Many
isagode
intentionally starved themselves
to death, but I am not aware of any cases in which an individual, once
touched, attempted to escape.
The first Direquednejnaigosode-Ayoreo groups contacted in Bolivia in
the late 1940s interpreted the relationships established in contact with
missionaries as a form of touching, in which contacted groups became
the
isagode
and the missionaries unwittingly became the
isasorone.
This
idea was extended by converted Guidaigosode-Ayoreo (directed by mis-
sionaries who, by that time, had learned the potency of the concept)
to apply to the Totobiegosode groups they captured in 1979 and 1986
and brought back to the mission of Campo Loro, where the families of
the newly contacted were divided up among the touchers. In 2004, the
Totobiegosode who were touched in the human hunt of 1986 added
another layer to this term by applying it to close relatives. Thus, the
Areguede'urasade became the
isagode
possessions of their own relatives.
Touching became a key idiom by which Ayoreo-speaking people
made conversion to Christianity intelligible. During my fieldwork, many
Ayoreo people used the same term,
isagode
, to refer to individuals hired
as wage laborers. Each mode of touching—being captured by an enemy,
contacted by missionaries, hired by a boss, and converted to Christianity
(touched by God)—caused a process of fundamental change, of
chinon-
ingase
, the internal transformation implied by becoming subordinate to
another willful being. In the case of conversion, I was told, the phrase
meant that “God grabs everything that is inside and it then belongs to
Him.” The concept can refer to the complete destruction or alteration of
an object (i.e.,
yinoningase yasore
,
“I turned my spear into a tent pole”),
the effects of a terminal illness (i.e.,
uajedie chinoningase yu
,
“
my cough
has destroyed me”), or the process of adoption into a clan (
Pukoi'date
chinoningase yu enga chiquenoi uyu
,
“Pukoi'date transformed me into her
clan and now I am Chiquenoi”). God was also said to
checae
the convert,
