People of the Chaco
The whole Chaco region ("El Gran Chaco Sudamericano"), has been home to innumerable different Amerindian peoples, each with its own language and culture. At the time of the independence of these countries from Spain at the beginning of the 19th century, the greater part of the Chaco continued to be Indian territory and few were the white people who ventured there.
By the beginning of the 20th century, virtually all the Argentine Chaco along with its original inhabitants had been incorporated into the national territory and in the process a number of Indian groups had been exterminated, while others had been decimated. The Abipones, for example, a powerful and numerous people up to the middle of the 18th century, living on the eastern side of the Chaco, had ceased to exist.
By the year 2000 we are left in the Argentine Chaco with basically 2 large sociolinguistic groups: the Guycuru, occupying more the eastern side of the Chaco, and composed of 3 different peoples - Tobas, Pilagas, and Mocoví - and in total numbering around 70.000, and the Mataguayo, occupying the western side of the Chaco, also composed of 3 different peoples - Wichí, Chorote and Chulupí - and numbering in total around 50.000. Of this group, the Wichí are by far the largest, numbering over 45.000, with around 20.000 in Salta Province, where ASocIANA mostly works.
The different Chaco Indian peoples share many common features while each preserving their own distinctive language and particular cultural characteristics. In common they share a similar traditional economy based on hunting, collecting wild fruits and honey, fishing, and, in some cases, practicing basic horticulture. They tended to maintain a semi-nomadic residence pattern, moving around their traditional territory to take advantage of different resources according to the natural annual cycle.
The extended family, maybe including 6 o 7 nuclear family groups, has been the basis of social organization. And these extended family groups would tend to move around together, sharing together their food, enjoyment and trials. In the past there were specific festive moments when several groups would come together for sharing on a wider scale. These moments might have included drinking ceremonies, dancing and ritual games (for example, a fairly violent form of hockey)
The Wichí have tended to be great fishermen, using a variety of techniques with which to catch their fish - nets, harpoons and bows and arrows. To this day they dive into the muddy river waters with nets strung between poles 3 metres long and surface again several metres down river with a 10 Ib. Surubí fish in their net.
Natural resources are considered to have no human owner until they are intentionally appropriated by someone. For the Indians it is morally wrong to deny another access to the natural resources he or she may require for the survival of his or her family. So the idea of being the exclusive "owner" of a stretch of land and of all the natural resources therein appears to them as basically against nature.
The hard reality today of being part of a western society requires that they take on the concept of property and demand that their rights to their traditional lands be legally recognized. Otherwise they will be left with nothing and will end up, as many have done already, in squatter camps on the outside of white towns.
The Chaco Indians have always been admired as great adapters to their natural environment. The present reality now requires that they adapt to a whole new social environment, which places them at the bottom of the pile and imposes different laws, a different language, different customs and, above all, the demands of a market economy.
