Ayoreo People
The name “Ayoreo” means “true men.” It refers to their way of life as hunters and gatherers. The Ayoreo call other hunter-gatherer peoples “other true men.” They refer to the already sedentary population, whether indigenous or non-indigenous, as cojñone, meaning “people without correct thought.” The Ayoreo language belongs to the Zamuco linguistic family, as does the language of the Chamacoco.
The last indigenous people to suffer forced contact in Paraguay
In Paraguay, a systematic process of searching for and contacting the Ayoreo took place in the 1960s, culminating in their deportation and reduction to missionary villages. The last case of contact and settlement of isolated groups in this country dates back to 2004.
Nevertheless, there are some myths regarding a possible earlier contact in the 18th century carried out by the Jesuits. It is speculated that a considerable number of Ayoreo lived in the reduction of San Ignacio Zamuco for about 20 years. The precise location of the reduction remains a matter of conjecture; it is believed it could have been located in the surroundings of Cerro León, in what is today Paraguay, perhaps in the area of Ingavi. However, no visible signs or conclusive evidence of this alleged prior contact have been found.
Current situation of the settled Ayoreo
Currently, apart from some small groups that continue to live in isolation, the majority of the Ayoreo people already live outside the forest and in permanent settlements. At the beginning of 2023, there are 31 recognized communities in Paraguay: 15 in the department of Alto Paraguay and 16 in Boquerón.
The total number of members of the ethnic group in Paraguay and Bolivia remains around 4,000 people, half of whom live in Paraguayan territory.
The settled Ayoreo, reduced to precarious settlements with no access to drinking water, currently live in a situation of extreme vulnerability. After having been stripped of their traditional territories, they have experienced abrupt changes in their way of life and have been cast into indigence, living in confinement and marginalization.
Most of the local groups of the past have disappeared. In Paraguay, only three survive today: garaygosode, totobiegosode, and guidaigosode. In today’s stable settlements, members of all the different clans are present in an intermingled way.
Ayoreo women play a fundamental role in the preservation of ancestral practices and knowledge, indispensable for the sustenance of the communities. Currently, they face the need to preserve and strengthen their own spaces in the process of adaptation to climate and social change.
Although the already settled Ayoreo have changed their material and external ways of life by living alongside the surrounding society, they maintain attitudes and stances that reflect the essence of their traditional culture in every situation of modern life. These attitudes include: a high degree of mobility; lack of material accumulation; deep trust in nature, in the world, and in themselves; a high degree of personal autonomy within collective organizational structures; and a stance of equity instead of superiority towards the world and nature, among others.
At present, the situation of contacted Ayoreo reflects an accelerated process of impoverishment and a growing loss of autonomy, which has led them to depend more and more on the lifestyle of the surrounding society. The lack of opportunities to reach a standard of living compatible with human dignity and the preservation of the environment makes their situation worrying. Many communities live near the most populated urban centers, in precarious and degraded conditions, and are forced to work in occasional and poorly paid jobs within an insecure, irrational, and exclusionary labor market. As a result, many young Ayoreo lack future prospects.
Economic sustenance
The Ayoreo economy is based on hunting animals of the Chaco forest (wild pigs, armadillos, anteaters, turtles) and on gathering (honey, forest fruits, plant fibers, and raw materials for the production of useful items). These sustenance activities are complemented by fishing in streams and lagoons, and by crops in small forest clearings, both during the rainy summer seasons.
In traditional life, there were numerous systems and mechanisms of distribution that ensured redistribution, within the family and local group, of everything one might have hunted, gathered, or harvested. In this way, those members of the group (the elderly, widows, orphans, etc.) who for various reasons could not perform a materially productive activity themselves also participated and benefited.
These distribution mechanisms remain in force today in non-traditional and sedentary life outside the forest, and are also applied to the products and profits coming from modern forms of production. The resulting non-accumulation of material goods—everything that “enters” is redistributed immediately—guarantees the Ayoreo people a high degree of personal and collective mobility to this day, as well as the natural validity of solidarity mechanisms that protect the weakest.
Social and political organization
The most important unit of social and economic organization was the jogasüi, the extended family, which also includes other friendly families. Likewise, in the time of traditional life before contact, the Ayoreo were politically organized into more than fifty local groups that divided the territory of the ethnic group and covered extensive areas of their own. Each local group enjoyed a very high degree of political autonomy and independent leadership, autonomous in relation to the other groups.
Relationships between many of these local groups, as well as relationships with other indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, were warlike. According to the needs and circumstances of a nomadic life in constant motion, local groups could divide into subgroups, separate temporarily, and rejoin later. There was no hierarchy of leadership or centralized leadership for the entire ethnic group. Coincidentally, neither the territories of the local groups nor the territory of the ethnic group in its entirety had geographic centers.
Neither the local groups nor their territories should be considered permanent. Ayoreo history regards as normal the divisions that lead to the disappearance of groups and the constitution of new ones, the unions between different groups, and name changes, all with the consequent changes and redefinitions of group territory. This political organization conveys the idea of dynamism, permanent social mobility, the absence of a hierarchical ordering principle and of centralizing principles, and a very high capacity for adaptation to the circumstances of life.
Parallel to this described political organization, the ethnic group was divided into seven clans. The names of the clan to which one belongs provide the surname to each member of the ethnic group to this day. Members of each of the seven clans share a common mythological origin and a kinship network that includes, for each clan, a series of animals, plants, meteorological states, natural phenomena in general, as well as useful objects and human artifacts. The fact of sharing belonging with all the beings of the world creates, for each Ayoreo, a felt union of closeness and solidarity with them. All the local groups as a whole thus include the totality of everything that exists, and everything that exists is in turn a relative of the Ayoreo.
The structure of relationships between local groups coexists with and overlaps the social organization of the local groups, and extends like an invisible network to the ethnic group as a whole, pre-establishing relationships of closeness and mutual support even between people who never met physically but who recognize each other as relatives (non-blood relatives) the moment they meet.
