Wichí


The Wichí are an indigenous people of South America. They are a large group of tribes ranging about the headwaters of the Bermejo River and the Pilcomayo River, in Argentina and Bolivia.

Population

At present, a number of Wichí groups can be found in Argentina and Bolivia, distributed as follows:
Wichi are the most widely spoken languages of the Matacoan language family, and include three languages:
The total number of speakers can only be estimated; no reliable figures exist. Comparing several sources, the most probable number is from 40 to 50,000 individuals. The Argentine National Institute of Statistics and Censuses gives a figure of 36,135 for Argentina only.
In Rosario, the third biggest city of Argentina, there's a community of about 10,000 wichi people, all of them fluent in whichi, and some native speakers. There are even a couple of bilingual primary schools.
For Bolivia, Alvarsson estimated between 1,700 and 2,000 speakers in 1988; a census reported 1,912, and Diez Astete & Riester estimated between 2,300 and 2,600 Weenhayek in sixteen communities.
According to Najlis and Gordon, three main dialects can be distinguished in the Wichí group: southwestern or Vejós, northeastern or Güisnay and northwestern or Nocten. Tovar and other authors claim the existence of only two dialects, while Braunstein identifies eleven ethnical subgroups.
The Wichí language is predominantly suffixing and polysynthetic; verbal words have between 2 and 15 morphemes. Alienable and inalienable possession is distinguished. The phonological inventory is large, with simple, glottalized and aspirated stops and sonorants. The number of vowels varies with dialect.

History

Much of the information available about the history of the Wichí comes from Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries. The first mission came in 1690, but it was unsuccessful. In 1771 the Franciscan Mission of Zenta found a better reception. However, with the decline of the Spanish power these missions also fell into decay.
The Wichí territory does seem to have changed since the 18th century, when the first precise information on their existence and location were known. Their neighbors in the Pilcomayo River area were the Toba, and their lands on the Bermejo River extended from the current town of Embarcación, Salta, to a region north of current town of Castelli in the Chaco Province.
According to Father Alejandro Corrado, a Franciscan of Tarija, the Wichí were nomadic; their houses were light structures scattered in the jungle. Corrado claims the Wichí lived chiefly upon fish and algarroba, that is, the fruit of the local algarrobo tree, as well as honey-locust, but "they ate anything that was not poisonous, even rats and grasshoppers". From the algarroba they were said to prepare an intoxicating liquor. The ripening of the algarroba was celebrated by a ceremony.
Also in Corrado's words, among the Wichí "everything is in common". He claimed that there was a division of tasks, the men occupying themselves with fishing or occasional hunting with bow or club, and the women doing practically all the other work.
As for religious belief, Corrado wrote that the Wichí medicine men fight off disease "with singing and rattle", that the Wichí believe in a good spirit and a bad spirit, and that the soul of the deceased is reincarnated in an animal.
The Pentecostal Church of Sweden started working within the Wichí community in the early parts of the last century which resulted in that a vast majority of the Weenhayek's are Christians. The fact that the terms of possessions and ownership does not exist within the community has made this conversion quite easy. Everyone owns everything together just as the Bible talks about was the case with the first churches as well. There are other facts that has helped the contextualisation of the gospel, like the Weenhayek being fishermen just as some of the deciples of the bible. These facts has made it possible for the Weenhayek to maintain their unique cultural identity and traditions in spite of also embracing faith in Christianity.

Current threats

Wichí have traditionally lived from hunting, fishing and basic agriculture. Since the beginning of the 20th century, significant portions of their traditional land have been taken over by outsiders, and what was once a grassland became desertified by deforestation, introduction of cattle and, more recently, by the introduction of alien crops. A study made in 1998 by a graduate student from Clark University, Worcester, MA based on satellite photo surveys showed that between 1984 and 1996 20% of the forest has been lost.
The Wichí were affected by the recession that lasted from 1999 to 2002, but their relative economic self-sufficiency, their physical isolation and the lack of recognition on the part of the authorities largely diminished the impact of the crisis, which was circumscribed on inflation in the price of certain goods they cannot produce and on problems with the supply of medicines and healthcare.
For many years, the Wichí have been struggling to get legal titles to the land they traditionally own, constantly seized and fenced by non-indigenous cattlers and farmers. Their main claims are centered in two large public land areas in eastern Salta, known as Lote 55 and Lote 14. The Wichí rights to that land have been recognised by law, but no practical enforcement actions have been taken by the Salta provincial government.
At the beginning of 2004, the government of Salta decided to lift the protected status of the General Pizarro Natural Reserve, an area of 250 km² in the Anta Department inhabited by about 100 Wichí, and sell part of the land to two private companies, Everest SA and Initium Aferro SA, to be deforested and planted with soybean. After months of complaints, legal struggle, and a campaign sponsored by Greenpeace, on 29 September 2005 a group of Argentine artists, actors, musicians, models, environmental groups and Wichí representatives arranged a hearing with Chief of Cabinet Alberto Fernández, Director of the National Parks Administration Héctor Espina and President Néstor Kirchner himself. The national government promised to discuss the matter with Salta governor Juan Carlos Romero.
On 14 October 2005 the National Parks Administration and the government of Salta signed an agreement to create a new national protected area in General Pizarro. Of the approximately 213 km² comprised by the new reserve, the Wichí will have the right of use of 22 km², and they will own 8 km².
El Chaco, where Wichí also live, is the largest subtropical dry broadleaf forest of the earth. Currently, the Wichí and other indigenous groups are in danger of losing their land and livelihood to agrobusinesses. Soy and cotton farmers want to cut the trees in order to expand cultivation. The Chaco forest is being cut down six times faster than the Amazon jungle. The greatest profiteers are logging companies. Additionally, soy cultivation has accelerated deforestation. In a lot of cases this also means, that the indigenous communities lose their land to agrobusinesses and suffer under the intense use of fertilizers and pesticides, that poisons the water they depend on. Since 2008, many indigenous people are organised in the “Movimiento Nacional Campesino Indígena” and fight for the legal right to their land.

Wichí society

Wichí, as other hunter-gatherer peoples, were semi-nomadic. Even today and despite transculturation, there is a fairly large number of montaraces communities or clans. Each Wichí village has its own territory, but usually a few communities share the use of the overlapping areas. Each community consists of one or more clans. Wichi society is matrilocal, i.e., people belong to their mothers' clans; upon marriage, men move to their wives' villages. Individuals and families of some of the neighboring peoples like the Iyojwaja, Nivaklé, Qomlek and Tapy'y often live amongst the Wichí, sometimes marrying into their society.
They build small mud houses with roofs made of leaves and branches, well adapted to the high temperatures of summer that can reach 50 °C. During the dry season they depend on fishing in the Bermejo and Pilcomayo rivers, and cultivate corn, pumpkins, beans and watermelons during summer. Throughout the year the Wichí hunt deers like "guasuncho" and "corzuela roja", armadillos, rabbits, several types of iguana and peccaries ; search for wild honey and gather fruits. For centuries they have used the strong fibers of chaguar for weaving nets, purses and other textile objects; some communities base a substantial part of their economy in selling chaguar handicrafts.
The most popular game among the Wichí is a team sport called `yaj ha`lä, which resembles lacrosse. Games usually last from dawn to dusk without interruption, and are agreed between clans. The magical significance of the game is lost, but it is still a subject of heavy gambling: rival clans bet animals, clothes, seeds and horses on the outcome of the game.