Sent to friends on the Summer Solstice, June 21 2009.
Dear star-catchers and chameleons,
Happy summer solstice.
I wrote this letter to you in dusty Carmelo Peralta, a strange and sleepy town in Alto Paraguay, where roosters bark all night like dogs, and parrots leave blue and green feather explosions in the garbage by the river's edge. The little town's foundations seem to sink into the muck over time, and the walls are slowly buried by dust and grime. I have the impression that the eels slithering in the Paraguay River will eventually slide out and make these old colonial homes their own. I am staying temporarily in a run-down old monastery with three Salesian monks, who have been very kind to me, especially when I was sick with fever. I will soon embark on a two-day bumpy journey back to the capital city, Asuncion.
This is the last leg of a month-long whirl-wind journey visiting indigenous communities in remote parts of Paraguay. I have been working as a field assistant / anthropologist on a National Geographic “Enduring Voices” expedition, documenting the endangered languages of Paraguay. It has been an amazing and intense experience. I spent the first few weeks here with four other people: two linguists, K. David Harrison & Greg Anderson; and two photographers: Chris Rainier and Alejandro Chaskielberg. We spent our time going from place to place, making some of the first systematic and high-quality recordings of the many indigenous languages in this country. The other researchers left last week and I have continued to visit tribal communities on my own, in order to make contacts for future trips.
For more on the Enduring Voices Project, check out the site, http://www.
There are 17 distinct ethno-linguistic groups in Paraguay – that's a lot of variety for such a small country. If one were to picture South America as a human body, Paraguay would resemble its pancreas, a tiny but vital part of the continent, and a hotspot for biological and linguistic diversity. Many of the indigenous languages are spoken by barely documented tribal groups who live in remote areas. I met a group of Ayoreo hunter-gatherers who have remained in isolation in the thick of the Chaco forest until 2004, and it is said that a few more small groups still evade contact, but are increasingly encroached by ranchers, who sink their razor teeth into the forests.
Photo: Surreal Trees in the Gran Chaco (Alto Paraguay).
Paraguay is a small and extremely corrupt country that is still recovering from a long and cruel dictatorship that ended in the 80s. The government has never invested much into research or protection of indigenous groups, many of whom live in the Gran Chaco, an extremely inhospitable environment, a huge expanse of dense and thorny forest. The indigenous solidarity movement is still in its very embryonic stages here, and like in many colonized countries, the white Paraguayan population knows very little about the indigenous groups who are the original inhabitants of this land. As the country stumbles ahead to fend off the hungry giant that is neighboring Brazil, many economic reforms teeter into existence, then topple due to mismanagement, and everyone blames someone else.
The remote parts of Paraguay are home to some of the most strange and surreal forms of corruption and exploitation I have ever seen. Not only are black market phenomena such as illegal arms trade and narco-trafficking normal here, but rural Paraguay also runs rampant with many bizarre religious sects that seek to indoctrinate and/or enslave the indigenous people. And I am not exaggerating when I say that forms of slavery still exist here, especially on the remote ranches. Here are some notes on some of the groups I visited, and the many cultural changes they have experienced in the past couple of generations.
The Ishir Nation (aka The Chamacocos)
Shortly after we arrived in the city, our team took a small charter plane to Alto Paraguay on the border of Bolivia and Brazil, where the Ishir people live in several communities of 20 to 40 families each. They are hunter-gatherers who were contacted and missionized by American 'New Tribes' evangelical missionaries over the past fifty years. But two years ago, the missionaries all left - maybe they could no longer take the brutally hot climate. Or maybe they had become sick from the local river water that is heavily polluted by mercury dumped by Brazilian goldminers upstream. Either way, since the departure of the evangelicals who had condemned their traditional ceremonies, the Ishir people have begun slowly re-integrating their shamanic rituals into their lives. In the community of Puerto Diana, there are still 4 elderly shamans who remember all the traditional rites and still possess spiritual power that comes from rain gods, forest animals, birds and fish.
We spent a number of days getting to know people and doing recordings of the incredibly rich and complex Ishir language. Then the photographers on the team asked to see a shamanic dance, and the people of Puerto Diana accepted. Foreigners visit rarely visit this place, and the Ishir were willing to share their traditions with us as long as we paid them a fee and contribute school supplies to the community, which we did. And so the shamans embarked on a two-day ceremonial dance. They painted their bodies entirely black, with white hand prints on their chests and backs, and wore an amazing array of feathers and masks that completely hid their heads. The shamans ingested a lot of psychedelic-medicinal plants as well as alcohol and by the end of the second day, they were so high and inebriated they could barely stand. It was impressive and bewildering, I have never seen 70-year old men dance and sing for so long. Their songs are extremely loud and powerful and rhythmic, inducing deep trances. Some of the elder women in the community sing off to the side but do not enter the ritual space.
The ceremony was a male initiation rite for several young Ishir men interested in shamanism. As a woman, I could only watch certain public parts of the ceremony, along with the women and children in the community. The rest of the ritual was performed deep in the thorny forest, only in the company of men, and the male members of our team were allowed to join in. One of the photographers filmed the whole thing, so I was able to watch the forest footage later, and see one the interesting highlights of the ritual – the Incident Involving the Magickal Worm. Here is what occurred:
*** Seated at the foot of a tree, the head shaman began making vomitous gestures. He rocked back and forth and made regurgitating sounds. He then choked and reached into his mouth with his hand. He slowly pulled out a long, live worm, and then dangled it in the air for the other men to see. (How that worm had lived inside him, I do not know.) He then presented it to another shaman, who slowly opened his mouth. The head shaman raised the worm above their heads and then dropped it into his companion's waiting mouth. The second shaman swallowed the magickal worm. Then the two shamans hugged each other for a long time. ***
The Ishir culture and language is extremely fascinating and I hope to return in the future to do more work with them. From what we saw, there are about 1000 Ishir people living in Alto Paraguay, and all of them seem resilient and proud of their heritage, and all generations in the communities are fluent speakers of the Ishir language. However, there are some growing concerns for Ishir leaders: the water in the river is becoming increasingly toxic with mercury, and large chunks of the surrounding forests are being cut down by Brazilian and Paraguayan cattle ranchers. Their areas for hunting, fishing and gathering are disappearing and today, many Ishir work on ranches for very low wages and in slave-like conditions, in order to earn money to buy food and survive.
Also, 300 000 hectares of Ishir ancestral land were recently purchased from the government by the religious sect known as the Moonies, the followers of the power-hungry Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon. In Paraguay, strange things like this happen. Money speaks and the government responds by giving up land. The Moonies are suspected to be involved in the illegal arms trade and are intent on world domination. People also hypothesize they play a role in the uranium business, and apparently there is a lot of uranium in the Chaco. The Moonies are currently building many huge houses and facilities near the Ishir native communities, and they call the place “The New Eden.” The Ishir people don't have the money to purchase back the lands and hope to increase the visibility of their situation so that the Moonies will one day leave. In the meantime, the Moonies attempt to show kindness to the Ishir by building them schools and roads. This situation has not been reported on in the media at all
The Toba Qom People (aka The Qom Lek)
We spent another few days living in a church near the one of the Toba Qom people's villages, south of Asuncion. I felt like I was in the 1950s. There is still active missionization going on, and the gatekeeper of the Toba Qom village is an Argentinian Catholic priest who may be slightly insane. He deals with all foreigners who wish to visit the indigenous people. Unfortunately, it turned out that the priest tells the Toba Qom people that they should mistrust all foreigners. We found out that he told them that American scientists want to do experiments on them by feeding them bread filled with harmful bacteria. With some difficulty, we arranged to meet the chief's daughter, and it was my job to talk to her. I was told that it is normal if there are long pauses in the conversation with a Toba Qom person. I met her and we had a 20 minute conversation in which I would ask a question, and would wait a few minutes, and then she would answer a few words in Spanish. It was conversational style I had not experienced before. Finally she went to get one of the community representatives, who was more used to dealing with foreigners, and we were able to do some really good vocabulary and sentence recording with him, over the course of several days.
The Mbya Guarani Occupy the Plazas
I also went to visit the Mbya Guarani, who were once nomadic hunter-gatherers who lived in the jungle of eastern Paraguay. They were moved for economic and political reasons into many scattered settlements all over the country, and are continuously battling to get their lands back. Over the past two decades, their original territory has shrunken into small pockets of protected forest, surrounded by huge expanses of soy production. It has been incredibly difficult to claim those lands back, and their documents keep mysterioulsy disappearing in bureaucratice black holes in the city. Many of the Mbya are losing their language and culture as well, but because of their financial struggles, language revitalization is last on their list of priorities. Some of the political parties in Paraguay have taken to using the Mbya as a political tool by bringing groups of them in and out of the capital city and telling them to occupy the main squares in protest against the current political regime. So right now, in June 2009, two of the main city plazas are occupied by dozens of Mbya families, many of whom don’t even know why they are there. They are given lots of black tarps to set up temporary shantytowns with, and have nowhere to go and have very little to eat until the political party who brought them in chooses to bring them back to their settlement, or gives them new lands. It is a strange and chaotic situation that seems perfectly normal to people here in Paraguay, but that I find atrocious. I met some interesting local activists in the squares who are attempting to help the Mbya claim new lands, but are stuck in crazy bureaucratic loopholes created by a government bent on development.
photo: Tent City in the Plaza Uruguaya, (Asuncion, Paraguay).
With much love and hugs,
Anna Luisa
ps: this photo was taken by Oscar Ponsoraja while I was recording Ayoreo love songs with two elders, Pehe Picanerai and Ige Carmen in the community of Cucaani, in Alto Paraguay.
*****This research, part of the 'Enduring Voices' project, was made possible by the funding from National Geographic in collaboration with the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Many thanks to K.David Harrison, Greg Anderson and Chris Rainier for accepting me to work as a field assistant on this trip.******
