Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the Paraguayan implementation of relevant international standards for
indigenous peoples' rights.” The fact that several Guidaigosode Ayoreo
leaders themselves had requested the intervention against the NGO—for
reasons unrelated to the expedition—was largely ignored.
34
Paradoxi-
cally, the presumed will of the isolated subject supplanted the voices
of actual Ayoreo leaders and rendered them inaudible in the name of
self-determination.
The unquestioned reading of NGO agendas as the human right of
isolated Ayoreo subjects reveals the degree to which NGO labor has been
crucial for translating the clear universals of “isolation as legal category”
into the messy practice of everyday politics. Such institutions are the
medium by which the divergent global values of isolation may become a
single regime of authorized life.
In Paraguay, advocacy NGOs have replaced evangelical missionaries
as the arbiters of “unreached” people.
35
One of the results of the post-
dictatorship state reform project was the NGO-ization of Paraguay civil
society, and the de facto privatization of cultural difference and its pres-
ervation.
36
Until the rise of the Federación para la Autodeterminación de
los Pueblos Indígenas in the first decade of the 2000s
,
there had been no
national indigenous movement in Paraguay. And during my fieldwork
in 2006-2008, NGOs largely occupied the role filled by Indigenous fed-
erations elsewhere. It was rare to find an Indigenous community in the
Chaco not affiliated with at least one NGO. While several provided critical
services, many existed only as “briefcase NGOs” designed to capture aid
money.
37
A common joke during my fieldwork was, “You got fired from
your job and you're broke? Me too. I guess we have to open an NGO.”
Two NGOs organized themselves around defending the rights of iso-
lated Ayoreo-speaking people in Paraguay.
38
When international funders
began to view Indigenous organizations as their ideal clients in the early
2000s, each of these NGOs supported the formation of a separate Ayoreo
tribal organization that they funded, administered, and attempted to
control. Not surprisingly, these institutions were also involved in a bitter
and long-running conflict with one another. One institution—GAT—was
affiliated with the most recently contacted bands of the Totobiegosode-
Ayoreo subgroup. For GAT, the presence of isolated Ayoreo bands was
used to justify their decades-old land claim on behalf of Totobiegosode
people.
The second NGO—Iniciativa Amotocodie—successfully protested
against the London museum expedition. Run by a Cambridge-educated
European who was a former member of GAT, this NGO described how
its work created an “Ayoreo policy of recuperation and revitalization . . .
