The Bolivian People 85With its hot, fl at surface, the Chaco seems to offer little
of the geographic awe of the rest of Bolivia. But within its
vast territory, giant armadillos roam and wild peanuts grow
in a rich ecosystem. Fauna once endemic to the region was
fi rst identifi ed in the Guaraní language. As a consequence,
Guaraní words were adapted into Western languages, such
as jaguar, tapir and piranha. The Guaraní language comes
from the vast Arawak family of languages.
For nearly a century and a half, some Guaranís lived in
controversial Jesuit reductions, a system rather similar to the
California missions. On the one hand, the Jesuit absolute
rule benefi tted from the indigenous labour. On the other
hand, the reductions served as protection against slavery.
Some indigenous inhabitants in the Bolivian missions, in
the Chiquitos region, ended up as baroque composers and
painters whose mestizo work is known today.
Some Guaraní communities gain autonomy using unique
methods. Chaco Captain Bonifacio Barrientos was a leader
of the Izozog Guaraní community of 5,000 that proposed to
make its homeland a protected area. These Guaraní spend
most of the year in subsistence economic activities; fruit
gathering, hunting wild boar (its meat for consumption and
its skin for clothing) and occasional fi shing when the rivers
are high enough. They travel to work on plantations during
the Santa Cruz prime harvest season.
The Izozog inhabitants are very much aware of concepts of
ecology and biodiversity. When threatened with an invasion
of rats and mice in the early 1980s, the community medicine
men decided to prohibit hunting of all natural predators of
the rodents, including felines, owls and snakes. The problem
was solved within a short period of time.
Alarmed about the encroachment of cattle ranchers,
community leader Barrientos and his people published a
brochure requesting the creation of a national park to protect
their region, a tropical dry-forest. Some environmentalists
believe that dry-forests are even more threatened as habitats
than rainforests.
During the cowboys vs Indians period of Bolivian history,
the army, protecting the interests of cattle ranchers, killed