Aché

The Aché (Guayakí) are foragers of the subtropical forests of eastern Paraguay. Although their language is affiliated with that of the larger Guarani population, the Aché have lived almost exclusively from hunting, fishing, and gathering in nomadic bands, eschewing the semi-permanent communities and shifting cultivation of other indigenous people of the area.

In addition, the Aché are notable for their relatively small stature and light skin, with a propensity for male baldness rare in indigenous populations.

Two scenarios have been advanced to explain the presence of this distinct population amid the larger Guarani population: The Aché could be a remnant of the Ge people, who inhabited the region before the Guarani arrived. Or they might have been a Guarani group who chose foraging over slash and burn cultivation, isolated themselves, and over time diverged in biology and culture.

Through most of the twentieth century the Aché avoided contact with European and other indigenous groups, eluding the few hunters and loggers who entered the region. Beginning in the 1960s, however, expanding cattle ranches and commercial agriculture greatly reduced the forests, destroying the game on which the Aché depended. Their population, never large, was reduced to less than 350 people. Hunger forced the last of the nomadic Aché from the forest in 1978. In the early twenty-first century, the Aché have a modicum of protection on mission stations and government reservations. With political assistance the Aché are gaining control of their lives, and with medical care their population, according to Paraguay's census of indigenous populations, has grown to more than 1,200 people.

As one of the last foraging groups to leave the forests of lowland Latin America, the Aché are important to understanding human behavioral ecology. Anthropologists have analyzed their foraging strategies, population demography, and life history, exploring factors such as marriage and menopause that affected evolution in humanity's long foraging past.

See alsoGuarani Indians; Paraguay: The Nineteenth Century; Paraguay: The Twentieth Century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clastres, Pierre. Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians. New York: Zone Books, 1998.

Hill, Kim, and A. Magdalena Hurtado. Ache Life History: The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People. New York: Aldine de Gruyter Press, 1995.

Maybury-Lewis, David, and James Howe. The Indian Peoples of Paraguay: Their Plight and Prospects. Cambridge, MA: Cultural Survival, 1980.

                                       Richard K. Reed