Chiriguano
The Chiriguano or Avá guaraní are an indigenous people of South America . Most of them live in northern Argentina (provinces Salta , Formosa and Chaco ) as well as in southern Paraguay and Bolivia . The number of people currently still belonging to the Chiriguano people is estimated at around 100,000, although the number could be significantly higher, as many Chiriguanos pose as mestizos because of the discrimination . In addition, Chiriguano is actually a pejorative name that was given by the highland Quechua people and means something like "cold dung".
The Chiriguano belong to the Guaraní and usually call themselves that way. They belong to one of the largest language families in South America, the Tupí-Guaraní languages . In his travelogue about the so-called East Bolivian highlands from 1926, Oskar Schmieder characterized the people as follows:
- Live in small villages or scattered in the woods
- The houses have only one larger space and are made of stakes horizontally interwoven with reeds and branches, the cracks being smeared with clay.
- Women wear baggy, sleeveless tipoi , men wear European clothing, cattle herders wear special leather clothing that protects against the thorn bushes
- The custom of painting the face at festivals with the red of the annatto bush was retained despite extensive Christianization
- More curious, more alert and more open-minded than Indians from the nearby highlands
- handcrafted
- Appreciate idleness, are difficult to induce into regular work
- Love the water bath
- Corn and Algarrobo beer ( chicha ) are among the main interests of men
- Due to illnesses and emigration towards Jujuy , the population decreased.
The formerly Arawak-speaking Chané , who were defeated by the immigrant Guaraní in pre-colonial times and treated as servants, have merged into the Chiriguano and the Guarani-speaking population of Paraguay. Some sources therefore see the Chiriguano explicitly as a mixture of the Guaraní with the Chané, as they have characteristics of both ethnic groups. It was common among the Chiriguano to wear lip plugs.
Web links
- Description of the Chiriguano dialect (Spanish)
- Literature about the Chiriguano in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin
Individual evidence
- ↑ MELIA, Bartomeu: Ñande Reko - Nuestro Modo de Ser. La Paz: Cipca, 1988. pp. 24-26