The Aché ( ) are an Indigenous people of Paraguay. They are hunter-gatherers living in eastern Paraguay.
From the earliest Jesuit accounts of the Aché in the 17th century until their peaceful outside contacts in the 20th century, the Aché were described as nomadic hunter-gatherers living in small bands and depending entirely on wild forest resources for subsistence. In the 20th century, four different ethnolinguistic populations of Aché were contacted and pacified. They are the Northern Aché, the Yvytyruzu Aché, the Ypety Aché, and the Ñacunday Aché. Each of these populations was an endogamous dialectal group, consisting of multiple residential bands, with no peaceful interaction between the groups.
The Aché suffered repeated abuses by rural Paraguayan colonists, ranchers, and big landowners from the conquest period until the latter half of the 20th century. In the 20th century, largely under military dictator
Alfredo Stroessner, the Northern Aché, who had been the only inhabitants of nearly 20,000 square kilometers of rural Paraguay, ended up confined on just two reservations totaling little more than 50 square kilometers of titled land. In the process, they were massacred, enslaved, and gathered onto reservations where no adequate medical treatment was provided. This process was specifically carried out to pacify them, and to remove them from their ancestral homeland, so that absentee investors (mainly Brazilian) could move in and develop the lands that once belonged only to the Aché. Large multinational business groups—e.g. La Industrial Paraguaya. S.A. (LIPSA)—obtained title rights to already occupied lands and then sold them sight unseen to investors, who purchased lands where Aché bands had roamed for thousands of years, and were still present. The fact that Aché inhabitants were present and living in the forests of Canindeyu and Alto Paraná on the very lands being titled in Hernandarias seems to have been dismissed by cities such as Coronel Oviedo.
The Kuetuvy Aché were forcibly removed from the Mbaracayu region in the 1970s, but managed to return to their ancestral homeland in 2000.
Name
The Aché are also known as the Axe people. about the Aché refer to them as "Guajagui", a term based on the Guaraní root "Guaja" (= enemy tribe, or brother-in-law) and "gui" a common Aché suffix (meaning "essence of" or "having the property of").
Language and genetics
The Aché language provides clues to their origin. Current analysis suggests that it has a Tupí-Guaraní lexicon, overlaid on a unique grammatical structure not found in sister Guaraní languages.
Genetic analyses suggest that the Aché are a group of mixed biological origin containing about 60 to 65% Tupí-Guaraní genes, and 35 to 40% of genes with affinities to the Macro-Ge (also known as Jé) language family.
The Aché are also culturally and phenotypically distinct from the neighboring Guarani. Early descriptions of the Aché emphasized their white skin, light eye and hair color, beards, and Asiatic features as identifying characteristics. describes them as hunter-gatherers who ate only palm pith and fruits, venison and roots, and fastened little stones to their lips, which made them look ferocious, and he states that they worshipped only thunder. This is congruous with the Aché, whose economy is indeed based on palm pith and meat, and whose spiritual beliefs place "Berendy" (associated with booming meteors) in a central position. Lozano (1873) (whose information about the Aché was published posthumously). Finally, a German immigrant, Federico Maynthusen contacted a group of Aché in 1908, in the modern department of Itapua, and published information on both their language and culture.
Contact
In 1959, after decades of persecution, the Ypety Aché were contacted in modern-day Caazapa and pacified by Manuel de Jesus Pereira. Pereira then used Ypety Aché guides to track down, contact and pacify the Yvytyruzu Aché in the Guairá Department in 1963. Both groups together numbered only about 100 individuals when contacted. Between 1963 and 1968 more than half of the Aché that had been recently pacified perished from disease while under Pereira's supervision. During this time, the Ypety and Yvytyruzu Aché were studied and described by anthropologists Branislava Sušnik, Leon Cadogan, and Pierre Clastres. Prior to the 1960s, most ethnographic studies of the Aché were based primarily on captured Aché children.
By the 1960s the Northern Aché were the last large uncontacted ethnic group in Paraguay, but they were constantly persecuted by colonists, loggers, and ranchers. Paraguay, like other Latin American countries, had a long colonial history of Indian enslavement that continued well after the official prohibition of slavery in 1869. Aché bands were systematically raided with the intention of killing the men, and capturing the women and children. A slave trade developed in Paraguay where Aché children were sold openly in the region as late as the 1970s. Chilean entomologist, Luis Pena, reported in 1971 on the slave trade at San Juan Nepomuceno (near the Paraguayan capital), writing that a child could be bought for between $18-$72. The "pacification" of the Northern Aché has been labeled as genocide by some writers (e.g., Munzel 1973, 1974, 1976). On 8 April 2014, the Aché presented a complaint of genocide against their people during the military government of Alfredo Stroessner in an Argentinian court.
Because of increasing hostile encounters with Northern Aché during the construction of the new Saltos de Guaira road in the mid-1960s, Manuel Pereira moved with the Ypety and Yvytyruzu Aché to a site called "Cerro Moroti", in modern Caaguazú District, in order to track down and pacify the Northern Aché. At that time the Northern Aché still ranged free over a huge region from San Joaquin mountains to the Paraná River, and from the Acaray River north to the Mbaracayu Mountains, and there were approximately 560 individuals in the population. Pereira was encouraged to pacify this group and remove them from the area.
In October 1970, several Aché from the Cerro Moroti reservation were attacked while hunting. They routed their attackers using newly acquired shotguns, and captured a Northern Aché woman who was taken back to Cerro Moroti. Within a month the captured Northern Aché woman led Pereira's reservation Aché to her forest band, and the group was persuaded to move to the Cerro Moroti reservation in order to receive protection from "Papa Pereira". This "surrender" was accomplished peacefully because many of the Yvytyruzu Aché living at Cerro Moroti had known and were related to members of this Northern Aché band (the two groups had only been separated in the late 1930s when the road to Ciudad del Este was constructed).
Between 1971 and 1978, at least ten different contact and extraction events of forest-dwelling Northern Aché took place. A high percentage of those taken to the Cerro Moroti government sponsored reservation (named officially the "Colonia Nacional Guayaki") died from respiratory epidemics within two years after first peaceful contact. In addition, several large bands fled from contact and suffered almost total mortality in the forest. Detailed demographic data on the Northern Aché population (based on extensive interviews with survivors) shows that 38% of the population died from contact related respiratory disease during this time period. This included 68 individuals who ran away from contact and died in the forest, 131 individuals who died at reservation/mission settlements between 1971 and 1978, and 49 individuals that were kidnapped by Paraguayans during the contact process and never seen again.
Ancestral lands and range
Although early reports locate Aché-like groups throughout eastern Paraguay and the adjacent areas of Brazil, by the 20th century the Aché lived in four dialectally distinct groups that inhabited the Paraná River watershed in the modern day Paraguayan states of Caazapa, Guairá, Alto Paraná, Caaguazu, and Canindeyu. The Northern Aché, who are the best documented, ranged from the forests near Coronel Oviedo, to the Paraná River near Saltos de Guaira, a home range of approximately 20,000 square kilometers.
Eastern Paraguay is characterized by gently rolling hills covered with subtropical, semideciduous forest, and low flat valleys filled with tall grasses. Rainfall totals about 2000 mm per year on average, and is characterized by high unpredictability in monthly patterns from year-to-year, but with a statistical dry season from May to August. Seasonal temperature fluctuations are more consistent, with temperature extremes ranging between 39 and 0 degrees Celsius. Eastern Paraguay contains regions of mature terra firme tropical forest, cerrado, grassland, palm-dominated swamps, bamboo forests, riparian flood forests, and a low drier forest type referred to as "kaati" by Guarani speakers. Although the region is an important endemic bird habitat, with over 400 species of birds recorded in the past few years, mammals are far more important in the Aché culture and economy. A provisional list of the mammalian fauna in the MFR includes 99 species of mammals identified by various methods. In the last half century before pacification, Aché groups occasionally raided their settled neighbors for manioc root (a starchy staple), domestic animals, and metal tools.
Systematic recording of dietary intake while living in the forest entirely off wild foods suggests that about 80% of the energy in the diet comes from meat, 10% from palm starch and hearts, 10% from insect larvae and honey, and 1% from fruits. Total energy intake is approximately 2700 kcal per person daily, and males acquire about 84% of all calories consumed. Children do not produce significant amounts of food until they are fully adult. Despite the presence of over 500 species of edible vertebrate prey, only nine species of mammals provide more than 1% of the prey biomass actually harvested by Aché hunters. Most important (in descending order) are nine-banded armadillo, paca, South American tapir, capuchin monkey, white-lipped peccary, South American coati, red brocket, and tegu lizards.
Hunting
Aché men hunt with bow and arrow, and by hand. They leave camp each morning as a group, walking in single file line, and after about a half-hour, they begin to spread out and search for game. Men stay within earshot of each other throughout the day, to call for assistance if cooperatively pursued prey are encountered. While searching, a hunter walks at a rate of about 1.5 km/h and encounters the most common prey, armadillo, about once every 5 km on average. Monkeys and deer are encountered about 1/3 as frequently as armadillos, and other prey types are considerably more rare in the environment. Armadillos, collared peccaries, deer, tegu lizards, tapir, and most other rare but solitary animals are stalked and pursued alone by bow hunters when encountered. Other species such as paca, monkeys, coatimundi, white-lipped peccaries, and social mammals are usually cooperatively pursued by groups, and encounters with these species usually induce men to call to others for help.
Large and swift mammals are stalked and shot with bow and arrow. Smaller and burrowing mammals are usually captured by hand. Because Aché hunting has been extensively studied using focal follow and other systematic methods, the encounter rates with prey, the time required for a successful pursuit, and the expected energy gains from prey types, are all well known. This has allowed for numerous tests of specific decision models from Optimal Foraging Theory to be tested using Aché data. Results generally support the notion that Aché hunters pursue only those prey types that would increase their energy return rates, and pass by some species (many small birds, rodents, reptiles, etc.) that would probably lower overall foraging returns if pursued.
The question of why men hunt, rather than spend all day extracting palm resources, cannot be explained by energy maximization, since men obtain about 750 calories per hour hunting, and around 1,000 calories per hour extracting palm starch and hearts. Hill has suggested that the macronutrient content of meat, relative to plants, means that meat is worth more nutritionally than equivalent caloric amounts of palm starch. Hawkes on the other hand, has suggested that Aché men hunt because hunting is a form of costly signaling, rather than exclusively a manner to provision hungry family members.
Gathering
Collected resources include mainly palm hearts and starch, insect larvae extracted from palm trees felled to encourage infestation, wild honey, and various fruits that ripen mainly in summer months, between October and February. Two non-native species are now dispersed throughout the forests of Eastern Paraguay and contribute significantly to the diet: These are honeybees of European origin (Apis mellifera), and volunteer oranges which were introduced by the Jesuits, and subsequently dispersed through the forest by birds and monkeys.
Despite the plant diversity and dietary variety introduced by the various collected species, only palm hearts, starch, and bee honey contribute significant energy to the Aché diet. Palm starch is the most important carbohydrate staple in the Aché diet. Palm trees are cut, then a small "window" is cut in the trunk to test out the inner pith, which when edible is soft and juicy with a high concentration of starch. The growing shoot (heart) is extracted from each cut palm, but this resource has a high water content and provides only a small caloric contribution to the diet.
When a trunk with good starch is discovered, one or more women will open up most of the trunk from base to top of the tree and systematically pound the fiber with the back of an axe to loosen it up and soften it. Large amounts (15–50 kg) are then transported back to the camp in baskets for further processing. At camp the palm fiber is dipped handful by handful into a pot full of water and wrung out by hand to extract all the starch. The pot of water containing the starch is then used to boil meat or insect larvae. This mixture will be eaten hot (as a thick gravy broth) or allowed to cool overnight, which hardens it into a pudding.
Although random transects show a high density of palms in the Mbaracayú region of Paraguay, most of these do not contain starch. Recent work shows that it takes about 15 minutes to find a candidate palm to cut down and then only one out of 8 trees cut has any starch. Thus, by spending a few hours searching for, and exploiting palms, Aché foragers can acquire carbohydrate energy at a rate of just over 1,000 calories per hour.
Cooperation during foraging
During food acquisition, Aché foragers are frequently observed engaging in activities that require some time or effort and appear mainly designed to raise the foraging return rate of another adult or unrelated child: cooperative foraging. The data suggest that foraging cooperation is widespread and intense, accounting for a good fraction of total foraging time, and including a high number of potentially costly acts that are performed daily. Cooperation also includes some actions that are not very costly to the donor, but which are highly beneficial to the recipient. Most importantly, the cooperative patterns observed during food acquisition are almost certainly related to the well studied Aché food sharing patterns. Reciprocation of foraging cooperation takes place in the form of food redistribution. Finally, cooperation during food acquisition represents only a fraction of total cooperative activity in Aché society. Indeed, cooperative food acquisition, food sharing, and cooperation in other realms (such as child rearing, mobility, camp construction, defense, etc.) are all part of an integrated system of reciprocal altruism and cooperative promotion of group welfare among the Aché.
Cooperative activities during foraging time included the following: cutting trails for others to follow; making bridges for others to cross a river; carrying another's child; climbing a tree to flush a monkey for another hunter; allowing another to shoot at prey when one has the first (or best) shot; allowing another to dig armadillo, or to extract honey or larvae when one has encountered it; yelling the whereabouts of prey escaping; calling the location of a resource for another individual to exploit while one continues searching; calling another to come to a pursuit of peccary, paca, monkey, or coati; waiting for others to join a pursuit, thus lowering one's own return rate; tracking peccaries with no arrows (for other men with arrows to kill); carrying game shot by another hunter; climbing fruit trees to knock down fruit for others to collect; cutting down palms (for others to take heart or fiber); opening a window to test for kraku (for others to come take); carrying the palm fiber others have taken; cutting down fruit trees for others to collect; bringing a bow, arrow, ax or other tool to another in a pursuit; spending time instructing another on how to take a resource; lending a bow or ax when it could be used; helping to look for another's arrows; preparing or repairing another man's bow and arrows in the middle of a pursuit; going back on the trail to warn others of a wasp nest; walking toward other hunters to warn of fresh jaguar tracks or poisonous snakes; removing dangerous obstacles from the trail before others arrive.
The estimate of cooperative time presented below is a minimum estimate, since data were not originally collected with a focus on recording all cooperative activity. Short cooperative activities were especially unlikely to be recorded in field notes. For example, examination of videotapes from hunting episodes during the sample period reveals that very short cooperative activities are frequently embedded into longer hunting segments that we have not coded as cooperative time. While pursuing monkeys, hunters often call to others to "stay put", "don't make noise", "don't shoot", "shake a branch", "pound a vine" etc. Other multi-hunter pursuits contain numerous similar requests. The recipient of such a command almost always complies immediately, at a cost to his own chances of making the kill. These events were extremely common, but of very short duration (usually only 10 seconds or so) and are not included in the analyses. Aché men spent an average of 41 (s.e. 7) minutes per day in food acquisition activities scored as cooperative, and women spent 33 (s.e. 14) minutes per day cooperating in foraging. Palm starch produced in large batches is shared in a manner similar to meat (but with no overt taboo against women consuming some of the starch they have extracted). Honey is somewhat less widely shared, but large portions are saved for members absent at the time of extraction. Collected fruits and insect larvae are even less widely shared but are still redistributed to those not present at a collection site. A hunter's nuclear family usually consumes about 10% of the game brought in by the male head of the household. For most other resources the nuclear family of the acquirer keeps less than 50% for their own consumption, but only 10-20% of small collected fruits are shared outside the family. Unproductive elderly Aché men were exiled from the group.
Fertility was high, with completed family sizes of post reproductive women being just over 8 live births. Analyses indicate that high return hunters, and large bodied women, had higher lifetime reproductive success than their peers. More detailed information relevant to theories about body size variation, age at menarche, menopause, life history tradeoffs, etc. are presented in Hill and Hurtado's 1996 Aché Life History.