Voyage By Dhow by Norman Lewis

Author:Norman Lewis [Lewis, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-3335-9
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-06-12T17:41:00+00:00

MANHUNT

IN 1972, DR MARK Münzel, an anthropologist working in Paraguay, reported wholesale enslavement, torture and massacre of the Guayaki Indians, among whom he was conducting his field studies. The Guayaki, who once occupied the whole of the forests of eastern Paraguay, have in recent years been reduced to a few bands roaming an area as large, perhaps, as Wales. They are of unique ethnic interest in that in a high proportion of cases they possess fair skin—for which reason they are sometimes known as ‘white Indians’. They live as hunters and gatherers, and are notable poets, composers of epics and laments of extraordinary beauty.

Like all the forest Indians of South America the Guayaki have always suffered the persecution of settlers, ranchers and agriculturists, but until recent years they have been able to survive by withdrawing further and further into the depths of the forest. With the forest’s gradual destruction and its replacement by ranching and farmland, their position has become increasingly desperate, and their hunger greater. These lovers of nature in all its forms—who actually embrace and talk to trees—are non-aggressive, and there is no recorded instance of a Guayaki having drawn his bow against a settler without provocation, but here and there hunger, through the removal of game, has caused them to kill a cow, with instant and terrible reprisals. In 1972, then, it seemed that official policy called for their elimination, or ‘sedenterization’ by forcible removal from the forest into a small reserve; the Colonia Nacionál Guayaki.

This operation was attended by atrocious circumstances. Professional Indian-killers were employed to carry out the raids into the forest. In many cases adult Indians were simply shot on sight, and the fate of their children was to be sold as slaves to farmers all over eastern Paraguay—a fact which has been confirmed by the accounts of numerous travellers in the area. Reports reached the international press, including that of this country, that so great was the glut of child slaves that their market price had fallen as low as five dollars. Later the figure fell to $1.50. At this time Dr Münzel and his wife happened to be working on the collection and translation of Guayaki poems in the neighbourhood of Cecilio Baez, where the reservation had been established, and he was already familiar with Jesús Pereira, the camp’s administrator, an ageing manhunter with a criminal record, now transformed into a government official. Pereira still drew his gun on slight provocation, and his method of disciplining recalcitrant Guayakis at the camp was to cram them into a wooden frame called the ‘tronco’, in which the victim, unable to sit down or stand up, was left as long as necessary in full sun. He was a notorious sexual pervert, attracted to very young girls. Münzel was at the camp on one occasion when a batch of captured Indians was brought in, and he says that Pereira offered him an immature girl of about eleven, presumably to keep him quiet.

Thereafter, Dr Münzel visited the camp on several occasions.

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