Peoples of the Gran Chaco

Abstract

Historians interested in Native Americans will find valuable the seven contributions by anthropologists in this book. Examining several groups of the 260,000 indigenous peoples of the Gran Chaco, most authors concentrate on developments of the 1980s and 1990s.The introduction by José Braunstein and Elmer S. Miller surveys the post-contact ethnohistory of the Chaco, now in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay. They outline its geography, ecology, and subsistence patterns. They provide new information on recent Chaco missions and on increasing contacts between indigenous peoples and dominant societies, mostly resulting from military clashes and wage labor. The environmental decline of the Chaco in the late twentieth century has coincided with new Argentine, Paraguayan, and Bolivian policies favoring indigenous autonomy.John-Åke Alvarsson explains how the ‘Weenhayek (Mataco) of Bolivia and Argentina have adapted aboriginal foraging patterns to urban life. He concludes that the pressures of modernity have strengthened the ‘Weenhayek as an ethnolinguistic group.Stephen W. Kidd shows that the Enxet (pejoratively known as Lengua), threatened by development, have resisted assimilation and retained an indigenous morality. They have struggled for the land essential “to resist the forces of globalization that threaten their culture” (p. 57), although the ethnocentric assumptions of official Paraguay are troubling.Silvia María Hirsch reveals the growing political sophistication of the Guaraní, as they identify themselves, of eastern Bolivia. They have evolved new leadership patterns that provide an opportunity for their self-determination and, encouraged by clerical and secular non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have experienced an ethnic revival.Marcela Mendoza examines family life among the western Toba, formerly hunter-gatherers now largely sedentary. Her impressive contribution summarizes Toba history, their relations with neighbors, and seasonal economic activities. She analyzes traditional male and female roles and shamanic activity. On gender differences, she shows that “girls actually engaged in physical aggression more often than boys” (p. 103), which contradicts “our traditional views about the adaptive value of males as more aggressive than females” (p. 104). She shows the survival of Toba patterns of aggression in sedentary settings.Miller analyzes ethnic consciousness among eastern Toba, whose culture he has investigated over the course of his distinguished career. Observing recent missionary activity, he concludes that many Toba accept the Pentecostal message because it is compatible “with a traditional shamanic ideology that stressed direct encounter with spiritual powers” (p. 114) and “has provided a haven” (p. 130) for Toba traditions.Pablo G. Wright sees the Toba struggle to remain Toba through the experience of Valentín Moreno, who moved from the Chaco to Buenos Aires in 1954 and with whom Wright has maintained a close relationship since 1980. The biographical approach illumines the nature of work, religion, adjustment to urban life, and a new Toba awareness of other indigenous peoples.Many contributors are unapologetic advocates for the people they study, applauding their struggles for human rights and access to land. Reassessing older assumptions, Miller concludes that anthropologists can serve “best as partners, not leaders, in this process” (p. 158).Themes common to these articles include the positive though limited impact of late-twentieth-century missions and other NGOs and the effective resistance of Chaco cultures to the pressures of assimilation. Sadly one concludes with the contributors that the possibilities for future reform are finite. To study the indigenous peoples of the Chaco today, I can recommend no better starting point than this volume. Each essay is meritorious. The contributors represent several nations and a full range of scholarly generations. The coherence of the findings testifies to the reliability of the work.