Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
his children told him, “papa, the grave is ready.” When he had entered the grave, his
son said to him, “father, don't hurt those of us who are still living after you go in.”
When they had finished putting the soil over him, the earth trembled. And trembled.
“father, don't hurt us. You are the one who asked to be buried!” After he had died, the
men who wanted to kill him arrived. They said, “There is a grave here! someone has
recently died.” And again the earth began to tremble. An
uitaque
seer among them
told his companions, “Let's go right now because his
pujopie
still exists and can hurt
us.” suddenly, a strong wind arose. It made a noise like
uuuuwaah
when it blew. The
warriors were frightened and they went away. The son of Ajnisidai said, “I want to be
like my father.” he knew that his father had a heavy soul, he had power, and that is
why his son wanted to be like him.
I discovered that—alongside memories of peace and unity—Echoi also
articulated this darker story of violence for many of my elder Ayoreo
teachers. Death, in the form of murder and massacre, converged around
Echoi in the first half of the twentieth century. Precise testimonies of
these events do not exist. Witnesses often could not put such violence
into the confines of narrative or words. For many Ayoreo-speaking peo-
ple, the violence of the past was tangible. It did not take the form of
firsthand reports but rather secondhand stories, rumors, and bodily dis-
positions. The residues of violence eluded categorization. They refused
to become history.
Most of the violence against Ayoreo-speaking people, and that which
occurred at Echoi in particular, was impossible to piece together. It was
reported, for instance, that Bolivian soldiers at Fortin Esteros in the late
1920s regularly hunted Ayoreo-speaking women near Echoi, who were
taken back to the fort and sexually abused until they died. We do not
know the names or numbers of these victims.
36
In 2002, Ayoreo elders
pointed out to me more than a dozen middle-aged people who “once
were Ayoreo.” These people had been captured by slave raiders as chil-
dren, sold and raised as domestic and sexual servants. They often did not
remember or acknowledge that they had been Ayoreo. We do not know
the scale of this slavery, but it was pervasive and minimally involved
hundreds of Ayoreo captives.
The few archival residues of violence against Ayoreo were incidental,
footnotes to other projects. Some, like the account of an Ayoreo man
murdered in Roboré Bolivia, were simply filed away and forgotten. Oth-
ers registered as traces of effective knowledge. Missionaries often noted
a local “hunger” for Ayoreo slaves in the towns of eastern Bolivia. Mis-
sionary Joe Moreno recorded one of two firsthand descriptions of an
Ayoreo captive in 1944 (“They couldn't keep clothes on this woman, she
