Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
In fact, this place figures so prominently within the archival and histori-
cal record that it has become indistinguishable from the major move-
ments of Ayoreo history and interpretations of them. For most scholars,
however, Echoi figures only as a site of resource exploitation by mu-
tually hostile Ayoreo bands or as the scene of several brutal massacres
by enemy Ayoreo as well as
Cojñone
.
1
Fischermann, writing in the eth-
nographic present about these journeys that were discontinued in the
1960s, thus summarizes a broad consensus when he writes that “war [be-
tween Ayoreo groups] occurs when an enemy group penetrates into for-
eign territory. Bellicose actions are almost regularly produced when, in
July and August, the various local groups take the road to the Salinas. . . .
The only objective of such trips is to provide themselves with vital salt for
the following year. . . . That is why the trip to the Salinas, especially for
weaker local groups, is a risky business and could mean the extermina-
tion of the entire group. Thus, extreme caution is used on these trips to
the Salinas.”
2
When I first met the New People, I presumed that I already knew the
rough outline of their recent past. I accepted this history that others had
written for them: that precontact Ayoreo life was characterized by ex-
treme violence between the various Ayoreo subgroups, that it derived
from traditional ways of managing territory, that it found its maximum
expression at the place called Echoi and that this interethnic violence was
what ultimately led some northern Ayoreo groups to establish contacts
with missionaries in the 1940s. Such narratives were repeated so often
they were taken for granted as self-evident, even for younger genera-
tions of Ayoreo-speaking people. Many accepted descriptions like that
of anthropologist Ulf Lind, who wrote, “The most important possession
of the [Ayoreo] tribal group is communal territory . . . according to its
importance, territory is defended in the most violent form. . . . Every
unauthorized intruder is considered an enemy, and if it is possible, he
is killed. One does not enter into the territory of an unknown or enemy
group. . . . In a culture as simple as that of the Ayoreo, there could not be
a jurisprudence, each person had to defend their own rights.”
3
I only began to suspect that something was missing from this his-
tory—something that I had been seeking—because of a song I heard in
Arocojnadi in 2006. Every evening, a fire was made in front of the wattle-
and-daub shack of Jochade, the founder and leader of the village. The
three dozen inhabitants gradually drifted into their customary place in
the circle, the men holding makeshift chairs and tin cups for
tereré
, the
women spreading blankets on the ground in front of them and the chil-
dren darting quietly in and out of the circle until they collapsed near
