Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
me she was afraid of me too and how she later relaxed enough to share
simple jokes and baked
doidie
roots or
cuteperone
honeycombs with me. I
especially remember her dignity and frank generosity and how she spent
hours fanning one toddler while he slept through a hot afternoon. Like
all the children of the Areguede'urasade, this boy was greatly beloved. He
waddled around bedecked with necklaces and finery. Like the others, he
was always whisper-quiet. I will not forget the scene the small children
made, three or four of them playing in a tight circle, their bodies touch-
ing gently, smiling and shaking with laughter, but making absolutely no
sounds other than the rasp of tiny feet on dusty earth.
Once settled with others in the village, these children were often
beaten by the others. They were rarely comforted and frequently went
hungry. Two years later, the same young boy, then about five years old,
was periodically overcome with fits of hysterical rage when the other
children would mistreat him or his sister. The adults of the other faction
mocked him for being
sucio
and ignorant and bad, and it would drive
him mad, until his small body locked up and his face turned purple and
he would begin to howl. Once I came upon him alone in the middle of
the afternoon outside the village, crying silently and stabbing a lizard
with a stick. When he saw me, he walked away.
By 2007, the former members of the Areguede'urasade were split into
two factions, one associated with the rising evangelical leader Achingui-
rai and one with Dejai. Each group had devised ways to communicate
with one another in private, including trails that skirted any public space,
and sight lines cleared between their houses. In public they remained
silent, but in private they often summoned me to talk. Over the course of
my fieldwork, I conducted numerous interviews with five of them.
In these stories, which often unfolded at night, they emphasized that
they had decided to make contact but that they were ignorant of how
things worked among the whites. I soon learned that it was considered
off-limits for the New People to tell me that they preferred anything
about life in the forest. They were told that if they did so, the
Cojñone
would force them to leave the village and return to the forest. There were
metaphysical, as well as pragmatic, risks to violating these limits. The
New People were taught that thinking about life before would produce
an
ayipie deroco
, or a “bitter soul,” which would offend Jesus. Such a bit-
ter soul was vulnerable to weakening and amnesia, as in the expressions
chejna yayipie
(“my soul is finishing itself off”) or
ayipie yui
(“my soul has
been taken by another”). These thoughts and the corresponding feelings
of sadness were likely to produce illness.
