Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
control access, lack of water in this drought-stricken region, and the fail-
ure to properly install piping.)
Maybe it was the sight of so many brown bodies together, or some-
thing about the way people would avoid eye contact that spurred them
to it, but even the best
Cojñone
, decent people, acted in a way that can be
described in the most generous terms as violent. Totobiegosode people
were continually being lectured to by this rotating and impermanent cast
of characters for being dirty, for not washing their bodies or their hair or
their children, for not picking up trash, for living in such close proximity
to one another, for not making food properly, for sleeping close together,
for how they cared for their children. Not too many were convinced by
any one of these outside plans imposed on them, but over time it was
glaringly obvious that no matter what the
Cojñone
found the Ayoreo to
be insufficient. They were too cultural or too modern, too Christian or
too pagan, too primitive or not primitive enough.
One morning, I woke to find Dejai—a proud man who by 2006 had
triumphed over his aging rival Jochade to become the principal leader of
the Totobiegosode—on his hands and knees in the dust, where he had
been working for hours to pick up the tiniest scraps of twigs and plastic.
