Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
And yet the conditions of post-contact life also prevented the closure
of such horizons and threatened the integrity of the new kinds of humans
Ayoreo believers ideally imagined themselves to be. There was a pervasive
sense that
ayipie
were particularly vulnerable and at risk in
Cojñone-Gari
.
During my fieldwork, it was a matter of daily concern whether someone's
ayipie
had been taken out, left behind or recovered, moved by God or Sa-
tan, diminished or grown, gone in this or that direction. Someone's
ayipie
could be dominated by another (
yui
), leaving its original owner senseless
or dumb. Even worse, one's
ayipie
could die (
toi
) from fear, weakness, or
extreme emotions of sadness and anger, processes that
chejna dayipie
,
overwhelmed one's
ayipie
.
In
Cojñone-Gari
, remembering the past was a potentially dangerous
activity, capable of causing infection or illness. If one's
ayipie chicaji te
,
or goes in an opposite direction from the group, it could return to the
cucha bajade
, or past practices, opposed to modern life (
ayipie echaji cucha
bajade; ayipie chajesa daquigade
). This threatened to unravel the seat of
moral humanity in the present. That was why many Ayoreo said it was
important to keep one's
ayipie
focused on the future,
payipie chicaji piquei
.
Thus, the proper moral human no longer had any
ayipie
for the past,
ijnoguipise yocayipie ome cuchabajade iji Cojñone-Gari
. Yet the space of the
present was marked by existential contradictions that prevented the full
realization of the new moral human.
Some younger Ayoreo people did not even aspire to become true be-
lievers. As my young friend and assistant Yakayabi put it, “The people of
my generation are between the old things and the Word of God. We don't
do what God's Word tells us to do, but we don't know anything about
the old things and no one will teach us. We respect what the older people
or the missionaries tell us but then we forget it.” Rather than threaten-
ing apocalyptic horizons, this dangerous lack could be interpreted as a
necessary catalyst for individuals to cycle out and back into narratives
of impending crisis and loss, of life beyond humanity. And this ability
to reborder the human and the inhuman as a viable space of life—how-
ever constricted and fraught with despair—was what made apocalyptic
futurism an appealing state of being and form of intelligibility for many
Ayoreo-speaking people.
Life within the Labor of the Negative
In such ways, apocalypticism illuminated a set of emerging ontological
sensibilities that escaped the confines of either tradition or Christianity.
