Aché

The Aché (/ɑːˈtʃeɪ/ ah-CHAY) are an indigenous people of Paraguay. They are hunter-gatherers living in eastern Paraguay. The Aché (/ɑːˈtʃeɪ/ ah-CHAY) 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. The Aché are also known as the Axe people. In the past they have been called the Guaiaqui, Guayakí, Guayaki-Ache, and Guoyagui by Guaraní-speaking neighbors and by early anthropologists, however, these terms are now considered derogatory. The earliest published reports (Lozano 1873-74 summary of Jesuit accounts in the 17th century) 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'). The Aché language provides clues to their origin. Current analysis suggests that it is a Tupí-Guaraní lexicon, overlaid on a unique grammar structure not found in sister Guaraní languages. Genetic analyses suggest that the Aché are a group of mixed biological origin containing about 60-65% Tupí-Guaraní genes, and 35-40% of genes with affinities to the Macro-Ge (also known as Jé) language family. The Aché are also culturally and biologically 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. Their subsistence practices and technology were considered extremely simple, and nomadism made them secretive and evasive.