Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
E I G H T
The Politics of Isolation
Isolation: describes the situation of an indigenous people or part of one that oc-
curs when this group has not developed sustained social relations with the other
members of national society, or that, having done so, has opted to discontinue
them.
A r t i c l e 2 , P e r u v i A n l A w n u m b e r 2 8 . 7 3 6
Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it
always is its result.
H A n n A H A r e n d t
In northern Paraguay, the few Totobiegosode holdouts hid-
den in the forest are palpably present. Teenage soldiers warn
travelers to take care; the savages are everywhere. “They
aren't like you and me,” a park ranger near the Bolivian
border told me in 2007. “They can be anywhere, we cannot
know.” During my fieldwork, two ranch hands told me they
often went about their work armed. “You never know when
a savage Indian might attack you, no?” Pale men in SUVs
traveled the backroads inquiring after tracks and sightings.
One rancher told me he could always tell when the savages
were near, because the dogs acted up like they smelled a
wildcat or a storm. The concealed Ayoreo lurked just out of
sight, on the edges of wasted pastures, where the dust from
the heavy trucks drifted and rolled. The last wild Indians
of the Chaco, they assumed the same “nowhere-tangible,
all-pervasive, ghostly presence” of the sacrificial violence
destroying their homelands.
1
They are just as real as they are fantastic. There are at least
two Ayoreo bands and several lone individuals roaming the
shrinking forests. One band, of unknown size and origins
(most likely a remnant Tunupegosode population), moves
