Darkness in El Dorado : how scientists and journalists devastated the Amazon by Tierney Patrick

Author:Tierney, Patrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Chagnon, Napoleon A., 1938-, Chagnon, Napoleon A., 1938-, Chagnon, Napoléon A., 1938-, Chagnon, Napoléon A., 1938-, Chagnon, Napoleon A. (1938-), Yanomamo Indians, Yanomamo Indians, Indians, Treatment of, Genocide, Gold mines and mining, Anthropological ethics, Yanomami (Indiens), Yanomami (Indiens), Indiens d'Amérique, Attitudes envers les, Or, Anthropologues, Yanomamo, Uitbuiting, Etnocide, Cultureel antropologen, Beroepsethiek, Indiens, Attitudes envers les, Yanomami (Indiens), Ausrottung, Regenwald, Zerstörung
Publisher: New York : Norton
Published: 2000-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

238 ^^ DARKNESS IN EL DORADO

biosphere project, and this did not go over well with Cesar Dimanawa. They became enemies. And, perhaps by coincidence, the worst single Yanomami battle in forty years soon took place between the Ocamo Yanomami and a coalition led by Cesar Dimanawa from Mavaca. It occurred in September 1992.

In the Times Literary Supplementy Chagnon described the war:

Many of the recent killings are of men in extremely remote villages, with whom the Mission Yanomamo had no previous contact or quarrel.... Last year ... a violent man named Cesar Dimanawa, organized approximately 100 men who, with boats and motors borrowed from the mission, descended on a small village. They killed seven men and two women and gravely wounded several others. Dimanawa himself shot a woman in labour, killing her and the infant. They then abducted three young women, took them back to their mission redoubt, and systematically raped them over a week. No information about this incident reached the press. It does not differ radically in scale or brutality to what happened at Hashimo-teri, but this time the villains were Mission Yanomamo rather than garimpeiros. The above information is based on scientific research."^^

The above information was, in fact, based on two interviews conducted not by Chagnon but by Charles Brewer Carias—in Caracas and with Alberto Karakawe, Cesar Dimanawas enemy.^^ Neither Chagnon nor Brewer has been to Lechoza, which is near the Ocamo mission, to investigate.

One would not, however, need any local knowledge to realize that Brewer had elicited a distorted account of the raid. According to Karakawe's tape-recorded statements to Brewer, Cesar Dimanawa began the slaughter by trying to abduct a woman in labor, who refused to go with him: " 'Well, if you are so stingy [about having sex], I will kill you.' He shot her, 'Pah!' He shot her in the belly at close range. She died on the spot and the child then dropped from her womb and wiggled around on the ground." Chagnon added, "Brewer's transcript does not indicate if the newborn also died."^"^

Karakawe told me that Cesar Dimanawa probably did not shoot the woman in question, but he blamed the story on Father Nelson. "I didn't go near that fight. I didn't see it. It was Father Nelson who told me about it. The Padre was all alone when the houses were burning—one dead here, another one burned there." For his part. Nelson said he received five different versions of the woman's death, and Karakawe selected the most improbable one. Nel-

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