Affliction and the Limits of Becoming - Behold the Black Caiman - page 153

or “like you are Rambo.” Like alcoholics or coqueros , Ayoreo people said
those who become addicted to ore ojare have a vicio , a vice.
The vice of the glue sniffers was considered relatively benign com-
pared with the affliction of those known as Puyedie . These were a fluid
group of some two dozen Ayoreo who lived hidden in the tall grass of an
abandoned lot behind the train station where they supported themselves
with sex work of the most marginal kinds. The grass was their only shelter
when it rained, the only source of privacy when they were with a client.
It was a scene of winding paths, tattered blankets, sunken cheeks, swollen
limbs, plastic bags. Their clients were from the poorest stratum of cambas ,
or non-Indigenous residents of Santa Cruz. Sometimes the Puyedie earned
up to three dollars per client, but some paid in drugs. Others, includ-
ing police officers, did not pay at all. The group included a rotating cast
of men, who shared the earnings of the women and might intervene if
someone was beaten or raped. “We earn well,” one Puye said in a series of
remarkable interviews with Irene Roca Ortiz, a Bolivian anthropologist
who directed the first Ayoreo public health project in 2010-2012. 1 “But
it is only enough for the coca paste.”
Puyedie were largely defined by their addiction to smoking coca paste,
an unrefined mash of coca leaves, sulphuric acid, and kerosene, gasoline,