Savages by Joe Kane

Author:Joe Kane [Kane, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80991-9
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-12-27T16:00:00+00:00

IN THE MORNING Ali stayed at Moi’s house to tend the nursery he was starting for Quehueire Ono, but I waded across the river with Moi’s sister and mother and we set off down the trail to the communal hall. At home they had worn only shorts, but for the asamblea they put on clean white blouses and skirts dyed the traditional Huaorani red. Canoes bearing families were drifting down the river, and on the trail people were stacked up like commuters, carrying pots of chicha, babies, machetes. By the time we reached the center of the village, at least three hundred Huaorani were gathered there, or roughly 20 percent of the entire population. They had traveled for days and weeks, from Dayuno and Tzapino, from Garzacocha, from Toñampare, from most of the seventeen Huaorani communities then known to exist. Those who couldn’t make it, like Penti from Cononaco, had sent messages. Any notion that ONHAE was not representative of the Huaorani as a whole—the charge was raised whenever ONHAE spoke out against the Company—was disspelled by such broad participation in the congresos and asambleas. (At asambleas, which were held every few months, the Huaorani discussed issues among themselves; a congreso was called for elections, and to formally address the world outside.) The Huaorani would meet for three days, from dawn to dusk—until everyone who wished to had spoken, and until consensus had been reached. From dusk to dawn, they would dance.

Nanto and Moi and Amo had already been at the hall for hours, drawing up the final agenda for the meeting. I talked to them briefly. They were upset. Enqueri had not come, and he had not spread the word of the asamblea to all the villages, as he had said he would do. Fortunately, word had filtered out on its own—there are no secrets in Huaorani territory. But Moi and Nanto and Amo weren’t mad at Enqueri; they were mad at Samuel Caento Padilla. Word from Toñampare had it that Samuel had stopped Enqueri from doing his job, because tourism in the Huaorani territory was one of the issues the asamblea was to address and Samuel did not want his business threatened. And by then they understood what had happened at their meeting in Quito with William Hutton, the Maxus gerente. Naturally, they were upset, though they seemed more disappointed than angry. “We asked Samuel to translate what we said,” Nanto told me. “We did not ask him to speak for us.” Meanwhile, a recent copy of a Quito newspaper featured a photograph of Samuel, taken at the airport. The caption said that he was on his way to a meeting in New York to discuss “the defense of the human rights of the Huaorani.” Nanto and Moi were worried that Maxus was behind Samuel’s trip.

Moi asked for my sunglasses, and then he and Nanto ducked into the hall and called the asamblea to order.

I watched from outside, standing at the entrance to the hall. Dozens of log

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