The Memory Weavers of the Chaco

Photo Essay: The Ayoreo women turning a spiky plant into art.

Dasura Etacore, an Ayoreo elder, carries a tool used for uprooting dajudie and a bag full of the harvested plant. (All photos: Sandino Flecha & Elisa Marecos for The Paraguay Post)

As the sun rises on Campo Loro, over 300 miles from Asunción, a group of Indigenous Ayoreo women push into the depths of one of South America’s harshest forests.

Their mission: to gather dajudie, the Ayoreo term for the plant whose scientific label is Bromelia hieronymi. Commonly called caraguatá in the rest of Paraguay, it’s a tough, spiky plant which thrives in the semi-arid vegetation of the Great South American Chaco.

Fibres extracted from the plant are used to bind the recently harvested dajudie / Path to the forest / Though her bag is nearly full, Robeana Picanere continues to forage

Its fibres are used by various Chaco communities to weave textiles: satchels, bracelets, caps, and traditional slings that support the wearer when sitting on the ground. As well as day-to-day use, women often sell these handicrafts to visitors, at craft fairs, and even to art galleries: a vital source of income.

Dominga Posiño and Umarita Etacore head deeper into the forest.

But first, the dajudie needs to be fetched from the forest. Each woman carries a woven bag, suspended via a strap from their forehead, along with tailor-made tools. They select which plant to harvest carefully, striving to leave untouched younger specimens that need more time to grow. When they get separated, they whistle or shout to find each other.

Dominga Posiño supports her bag of dajudie with a woven strap stretched over her head.

The older women guide the younger ones, making their way with determination through the thorny undergrowth. The memory of life in the forest reveals itself in their movements, which are strong, agile and full of life.

This activity – foraging for dajudie – is a kind of ritual through which ancestral knowledge is passed through the generations. The Ayoreo word Eami simultaneously means both “forest” and “the world.” There is no separation between them: they are one and the same. And gathering and weaving dajudie is an act of cultural resistance in defence of Eami, the world-forest.

Robeana Picanere prepares a bundle of the plant to store in her bag / Despite the punishing temperatures, Chela Picanere carefully ties together the harvested plants / Dasura Etacore inspects a dajudie plant.

The Paraguayan Chaco is being deforested faster than nearly any other ecosystem on the planet. Around 800 hectares – or two thousand football pitches’ worth of forest – are destroyed every day, mainly for agribusiness.

The devastation profoundly alters the region’s ecological balance, and threatens Indigenous communities – including those still living among the trees. And it also makes it ever-harder to find dajudie.

The Chaco is home to around 3400 species of plants, 150 mammals, 500 birds, 297 reptiles and 186 amphibians, but many of them are endangered.

Campo Loro, around an hour’s drive from the Mennonite colony of Filadelfia, was founded over 40 years ago by the New Tribes Mission, a US evangelical church. Many of its first inhabitants were Ayoreo forcibly seized from the forest.

But several groups still live in voluntary isolation not far away. They are the Chaco’s last uncontacted people, facing a silent genocide due to the fragmentation and destruction of their home.

Despite the merciless modern-day colonialism that seeks to deny their existence, the Ayoreo are still fighting to keep their territory intact – and their traditions alive.

Dasura Etacore pauses to observe the forest.

This photo essay was supported by Periodismo Por La Acción Climática, an initiative by Agencia Global de Noticias, Emancipa Paraguay, and El Surtidor with backing from WWF Paraguay and Fundación Avina.