The Chácobo Indians of the Amazon

Abstract

This essay is about a life-affirming social revolution grounded in what theologians call Natural Law or the Orders of Creation, that innate universal Ground Plan within us which informs men everywhere how to live. It is about a social experiment in communicating a meta-culture of meaning and life to a dying monolingual, semi-nomadic Amazonian tribe living on the edge of extinction. As the Bolivian command culture slowly impinged on every aspect of the Chácobo lifestyle, this primitive, egalitarian, command-less, duty-based structured society, like so many other tribes before them, would eventualty disappear into the fabric of the dominant culture within a generation. The Chácobo would cease to exist as a tribal people. To prevent this, the society had to restructure itself from a defensive culture designed to reduce anxiety over existence in isolation to a pro-active culture designed to maximize human freedom within a universal moral order. Following the Plan of the Maker, Chácobo society, within a span of twenty-five years, moved from the edge of extinction to vigor and health, and from day-to-day existence to long-range planning while experiencing a five to six-fold irncrease in population growth.