I loved watching the artists work. The images I've seen in this workshop by some of the stronger artists are so uniquely their own, with a very personal style, so much rhythm and movement. The drawings are so spontaneous and not premeditated; they begin with the point of a pencil being put directly onto the woodplate. There is no erasing or re-considering the composition; the image simply flows and becomes alive.
Aside from being the teacher and facilitator, for me this was a very meaningful encounter with indigenous people. I've been so embarassed for so many years that I didn't know any of the indigenous people on a personal level growing up here. The Mennonites and indigenous people still live mostly side by side rather than with each other, with the Mennonites being more the wealthy employers and the indigenous people the peasants and labourers being treated generally as third class citizens by the whites. Most encounters I have had as a child were with peasants coming to our house to beg for food or day laborers doing some yard work. When I was in highschool I had tried to organize a social get together with the highschool students from Pesempo'ó, the indigenous settlement on the outskirts of my town, because I was curious to meet them, but there was no interest from my classmates. The same happened with the church youth and I never had the courage to undertake something by myself to meet 'the others'. I had been to some cultural events of theirs with my family, but always felt more like a foreign spectator. During this workshop I was able to meet this group of indigenous artists as a professional equal; we were all artists. I love and appreciate their work, I respect them for what they do and I got to know them somewhat on a personal level. They all come from rather humble, almost slum-like villages with simple one or two-room dwellings. They told me of their families, their children, their ailments and the difficulty of finding steady work. They all say that making art brings them so much joy and being able to sell it affirms interest in their culture and identity. It also seems that their drawings are a way for them to reflect about the changes of their culture and lifestyle, of how life used to be and how it is today.
Staying with Verena who has so much knowledge from and about the indigenous people in the Chaco after working with them since about the 70s (?) made me realize how little I know about the people on whose land we really live. Verena fights for their plight of landrights and other social injustices. She told me stories from the past that belong in every school's history book. In one story for example, she told of a massacre of a group of Nivaclé peoples in the 1930s. The Bolivian military promised one community to come by some time and bring presents for all. A couragous woman (wife of an Argentinian rancher?) warned the community that something terrible was going to happen. Some few believed her and fled into the bush, while the rest of the community (200 individuals) was lined up later and shot to death. Another story tells of how Paraguayan generals, who came to 'own' vast lands along the Pilcomayo River after the Chaco war suddenly began fencing in their territories; they told all Nivaclé people who had lived by the river and off the river for centuries to leave the fenced regions or be shot, which meant they were forcibly displaced from their home. (Verena has written the biography of the Nivaclé Marcos Nujach'e Moreno, who was seven at the time of the massacre, which will be published shortly and which contains these stories). Some years ago I audited a Canadian History course at the University of Manitoba taught by Gerald Friesen, in which his history textbook was written from the perspective of the Europeans (classic history), and also from the perspective of the indigenous people in Canada. Such a history book is so necessary here, because the perspective of the Mennonite colonization and the giant Paraguayan landowners is very one-sided and largely mission based. I never heard of such forcible displacements, but always that the indigenous people flocked towards to Mennonite settlements to get easy access to food and work. I've always been aware of different perspectives on all these issues, since my family is critical of the Mennonite perspectives of the indigenous people and my father has also been connected with/worked for an NGO (PCI) for 16 years that works with indigenous communities, but I realize again and again how little I really know and how little interest there is here in my community of learning more about our neighbours. Hopefully my first meaningful encounter with the local indigenous people is only the beginning. I'd like to get to know them better.
