Aché (ethnicity)

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The Aché are an indigenous group who live in eastern Paraguay and who, due to their way of life , can be counted among the hunters and gatherers . About 1500 people belong to it. During the 1970s, they were expelled from their homeland in the Alto Paraná region under the dictator Alfredo Stroessner . Due to a lack of medical care, around 38% of the Aché are said to have died of illnesses during the expulsion and resettlement. Around the year 2000 they settled back in their old homeland.

General

The Aché, formerly known as Guayaki or Guayakí, now live in eastern Paraguay in the central Paraguayan mountainous region between the catchment areas of the Río Paraná and Río Paraguay . The area is 80% covered by tropical rainforest and rises between 100 and 300 m above sea level. The rainfall is around 1800 mm and the average temperatures are around 35 ° C in January and 10 ° C in July.

They belong to the Tupí language family . Their culture is shaped by hunting and nomadism in the forests. There are still four Aché groups (the Ñacunday, the northern group, the Ypeti and the Yvytyruzu), some of which live in the five reserves Perto Barra, Ypetymi, Cerro Moroti, Chupa Pou and Arroyo Bandera. The Aché, formerly known as the southern group, only existed until the first half of the 20th century. In 1970 550 Aché were counted, in 1983 under 1000 and in 1989 there were 685 Aché in the reserves.

history

It is believed that the Aché, like most of the Tupi-speaking family, used to be farmers, but were displaced into the forests by the Guaraní. This changed their economic basis and the Aché became nomads. The hunter culture developed as it still partially exists today. The earliest records of the Aché come from chronicles of the Jesuit missionaries from the 17th and 18th centuries. They are summaries of expeditions according to which the Aché were located west of the Paraná. The first contact between Aché and the missionary Padre José de Insuarralde at Acaray took place in the 30s and 40s of the 17th century. In the period that followed, there were repeated violent attacks, proselytizing and enslavement.

Reports about the Aché end after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay in 1768. The Aché are only mentioned again during the “ Triple Alliance War ” against Paraguay in the 19th century. Due to the depopulation of the Guarani, the areas of the Aché are expanding again for the first time. Encounters between Aché and colonists during this time were by no means peaceful. A period of peaceful encounter followed in the 20th century. Jesus Manuel Pereira contacted the Aché and tried to protect them in the forerunners of the reservations. Many Aché died from infectious diseases and the southern group was absorbed in the population, died or returned to the forests.

Contact was made with all four remaining groups since the 1930s. The first reserves were created in the 1950s, some of which the Aché still live in today. Scientists have been visiting the reserves since the 1960s in particular, and a number of publications on the Aché have emerged.

Social, political and economic organization

Settlement system

The settlement system is adapted to the Aché's way of life. As with most hunter-gatherer cultures, they roam their territory in search of prey and something to eat. Therefore they only build simple huts that they only use for a few days. The Aché also have a rotation system according to which they only hunt certain sections to ensure regeneration of the other sections.

The Aché travel in small groups of 20 to a maximum of 100 people. On average, 9 adults live in a camp they call "enda", which means the camp site and the group wandering together. In 1971 the northern Aché lived in ten to fifteen camps over an area of ​​approximately 20,000 km².

Social organization

TV presenter Simon Reeve with Aché children

The Aché's close relatives include the parents, children and mostly the siblings of the parents and their children. They all belong to the "enda". There are no fixed rules of residence, but the men usually move to the women (uxoril locality) or the couple looks for a new camp site (neolocality).

The Aché have a complex alliance system. Marriage between close relatives and with the "Jary" is prohibited. The "Jary" are the godparents of a child. There are three "Jary" who are responsible for delivering the child, washing and looking after the mother, as well as caring for the newborn. The "Jary" play a ritual role in the life of the child and the parents for a lifetime. They accompany the children in all phases of their development and in the rituals.

Otherwise, the choice of a partner is not subject to any fixed rules, even if the older men have certain privileges in choosing the mostly young girls. Women marry on average at the age of 15 and often divorce several times, so that they usually have offspring with two to five men. Rarely do women divorce after the age of 25, but stay with their husbands.

Men, on the other hand, marry at around twenty after their initiation as a man and are allowed to marry several women at the same time. In the present, monogamy prevails, probably also due to Christian influence. Traditional plural marriage has almost disappeared.

The position in the Aché society is determined by age and gender. Privileges and duties are based on these principles. The social development and importance of the young Aché begins in the womb. The fetus is said to have supernatural properties, e.g. B. the ability to show the expectant mother where the prey is. After the birth, the phases vary in length depending on physical development. It can be divided into the time before, during and after puberty. The various phases are accompanied by rites and certain eating regulations. The rites serve to introduce the young Aché to the duties of society (depending on gender). The eating regulations aim to ensure that male offspring in particular are never allowed to eat what they could hunt for themselves. This is how they stay dependent until they grow up, around 25.

Homicides between different groups within this people and within their families are not uncommon. If a member of the respective group is accused, he will be killed. Children and babies are also killed in the process. It is a custom to kill children whose parents have died so that there are no orphans .

Political structure

The Aché are an acephalic culture, as no leader was formed due to the inconsistent group organization. Decisions are made within a group by the adults present. Members of the group who make a particularly high contribution to the community are weighted more heavily when making decisions.

The Aché speakers in the current reservations are also elected. However, they can be removed at any time if a group, including a minority, calls for new elections. Until now, only men have held this office, although women are not prohibited from doing so.

Economic organization

Bow and arrow hunting

78% of the Aché consume their food energy with meat. The remaining 22% is made up of honey, larvae and plants. With a per capita intake of more than 11,300 kJ (= 2,700 kcal) per day, the Aché are supplied above average.

Since the hunt is the basis of society, the bow as a hunting weapon is not only a commodity, but also has a cultural meaning. Youngsters are already practicing handling the bow. The bow is difficult to handle, which is intentional to make archery even more important. Hunting is reserved for men only, and women are not allowed to touch the bow. The same goes for the women's basket, which only they are allowed to touch. The division of labor stipulates that the men hunt, about seven hours a day, and the women gather (two hours a day) and look after the camp and, above all, the children.

The largely unconditional distribution of food among the group members is typical of an egalitarian social structure. New research in this area has shown that the Aché - especially those who still live in the forests - do this to a large extent. Even if the prey is small, over 80% of the food is shared with others. Aché hunters deposit their prey outside the village so that the group members can find it there and divide it among all heads. Likewise accommodating the Aché act in constructed economic Play : You like to give half or more of the other players, and each offer is accepted without question. There is no boasting or lust for fame among the Aché; one shares gladly and voluntarily.

As restrictive are some ethno religious founded hunting taboos that should ensure to protect the wild stocks.

religion

The traditional religion of the Aché, to which 45 percent still profess themselves according to the evangelical-fundamentalist conversion network Joshua Project , is based on a mystical unity of man with nature and its cycles.

Thereafter, the soul of the deceased reincarnates in a physical offspring. Before that, however, it returns to the forest and dissolves there. The individual components go partly into plants, partly into animals or migrate to the afterlife. In doing so, they temporarily merge with natural phenomena before they come together again in an animal, in order to then get into the future offspring when this prey animal is consumed. In this way the child absorbs the elements of nature and at the same time the souls of the ancestors. This idea has led to an ancestral cult . Important rituals are meditative songs that lead to dreams of the afterlife and the simulation of death and rebirth through voluntary torture until unconsciousness. Most cults serve to support and maintain the cycle of the soul.

Today's destruction of nature and the forced abandonment of the hunted way of life breaks the cycle of the soul. With this, the Aché lose their contact with animals and ancestors - they become faceless and nameless. This not infrequently leads to the premature death wish of the people who want to escape the "de-soulled" fate in this way.

The traditional belief assumed a "balance of heaven": Different, mutually hostile groupings among the souls of animals, plants and ancestors and higher spiritual beings on the other side constantly fight with one another. Since the advance of the Europeans and Americans, the evil forces have gained the upper hand. The Aché compare this with the victory of the predatory “blue jaguar”, a higher being that is hostile to humans, but itself arose from certain, particularly wild components of human souls. If that used to be the case, the Aché's salvation was to bow to the jaguar's victory and show off even her wildest, most inhuman features. Both the blue jaguar and the influence of the whites found their expression in the poetry of the tribe: a song tells of a terrifying vision, where whites and jaguars rule and the sun is eaten up. The soul of a dead Aché connects with the whites in this new world. Peace with the whites, however, means breaking with one's ancestors and thus losing one's identity.

The Aché religion has no spiritual specialists or the use of intoxicants for religious purposes.

Today many Aché have been forced to come to terms with their fate. However, the old religious beliefs are so strong that many feel completely desperate: Besides the above mentioned "voluntary" killing some Aché have of fundamentalist Protestant missionaries of millenarianism can convert from the US. With great hope they await the near end of the world, which only those who have been converted survive, while those Aché who are under the influence of the Catholic mission would all be destroyed by a star and delivered to the claws of the devil.

literature

Web links

Press on the genocide

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Aché ethnologue.com, accessed October 25, 2013.
  2. ↑ Bartomeu Melià, Luigi Miraglia, Mark Münzel, Christine Münzel: La Agonia de 10s Aché Guayaki. Historia y Cantos. Centro de Estudios Antropologicos, Universidad Catolica: Asunción 1973. Scientific treatise on the Aché (Spanish)
  3. ↑ Kim Hill, A. Magdalena Hurtado: The Aché of Paraguay. In: Richard B. Lee, Richard Daly (Eds.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. Cambridge 1999, p. 92ff.
  4. ↑ Mark Münzel: Hunted Hunters. Aché and Mbía Indians in South America. Part 1: The Aché in Eastern Paraguay, Frankfurt am Main 1983, p. 23.
  5. ^ Kim Hill, A. Magdalena Hurtado: Ache life history. The ecology and demography of a foraging people. New York 1996, pp. 49 and 56.
  6. ^ Kim Hill, A. Magdalena Hurtado: Ache life history. The ecology and demography of a foraging people, New York 1996, pp. 41-57.
  7. ↑ Ibid.
  8. ↑ Mark Münzel: Hunted Hunters. Aché and Mbía Indians in South America. Part 1: The Aché in Eastern Paraguay. , Frankfurt am Main 1983, pp. 203f and 235.
  9. ^ Kim Hill, A. Magdalena Hurtado: Ache life history. The ecology and demography of a foraging people. New York 1996, p. 94.
  10. ↑ Mark Münzel: Hunted Hunters. Aché and Mbía Indians in South America. Part 1: The Aché in Eastern Paraguay, Frankfurt am Main 1983, pp. 246–268.
  11. ↑ Yuval Noah Harar I (2015). A Brief History of Humanity, pp. 72f.
  12. ^ Hill, K .; Hurtado, AM; de Gruyter, A .: Aché Life History. The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People. Aldine Translation, New York 1996
  13. ↑ Kim Hil, A. Magdalena Hurtado: The Aché of Paraguay. In: Richard B. Lee, Richard Daly (Eds.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. Cambridge 1999, p. 94.
  14. ↑ Kim Hill / A. Magdalena Hurtado: The Aché of Paraguay. In: Richard B. Lee, Richard Daly (Eds.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. Cambridge 1999, pp. 93f.
  15. ↑ Emerich Sumser: Evolution of Ethics: The human sense of morality in the light of modern evolutionary biology. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016 ISBN 978-3-11-040811-9 . Pp. 133, 148.
  16. ↑ Heiko Feser: The Huaorani on the way into the new millennium. Ethnological Studies Vol. 35, Institute for Ethnology at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, published by LIT Verlag, Münster, 2000, ISBN 3-8258-5215-6 . Pp. 359-361.
  17. ^ Joshua Project: Paraguay . Retrieved May 7, 2020 . (Ache, Guayaki).
  18. ↑ a b c d Wolfgang Lindig u. Mark Münzel (Ed.): The Indians. Volume 2: Mark Münzel: Central and South America , 3rd revised and expanded edition of the 1st edition from 1978, dtv, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-423-04435-7 . Pp. 167-170.
  19. ↑ a b c d Evi Schüpbach: Life in the forest, environment and religion in transition among the Aché in eastern Paraguay. In: Berner Geographische Mitteilungen: Mitteilungen der Geographische Gesellschaft Bern and annual report of the Geographical Institute of the University of Bern , volume 1986. pp. 15–16.