The Mapmaker's Wife (48 page)

293.
“I owe to Madame Isabelle,”
Jean Godin’s “Last Will and Testament.” Copy provided by the Saint Amand-Montrond municipal library.

294
. The description of Isabel stroking her sandals and cotton dress comes from Felix Gilbert Grandmaison, the son of Isabel’s nephew Jean-Antoine.

295
. Lemaire, in his article “À la recherche de la famille d’Isabel Godin,” writes of seeing the sandals when he was a young man.

Along the Bobonaza Today

There are several indigenous groups that live in the Bobonaza region today. Shuars, known as Jibaros in the eighteenth century, have settlements along the Pastaza. They long had a reputation for being skilled warriors, and became known for their custom of shrinking the heads of their victims. The Shuar population is about 40,000 today, and many live in towns that border the jungle, such as Puyo.

As was the case in 1770, Quichua live in Canelos and along the banks of the upper Bobonaza. They are the indigenous group that has always interacted the most with the Spanish. Canelos still has the feel of the mission town it once was, and Pacayacu, which is about twenty miles downriver from Canelos, also has Spanish-style buildings. Sarayacu, meanwhile, is a thriving Quichua village of perhaps 1,000. The people there live in traditional ways.

There are several Achuar communities along the lower Bobonaza. The Achuars are related to the Shuars, and for a long time the two groups fought regularly, with the victors carrying off women from the other tribe. Fiercely independent, the face-painting Achuars remain wary of intruders, and outsiders traveling through this stretch of river are advised to avoid stopping at their villages unless they come with someone who can provide an introduction. Achuars may still hunt with blowguns and curare-tipped darts. There are only about 5,000 Achuar alive today.

Like the Shuars, the Zaparos were known for their fighting skills. But this group was devastated in the first half of the twentieth century by contact with whites who came into the Pastaza region looking for rubber. Today there are fewer than twenty Zaparos who speak the Zaparo language.

Huaoranis live to the north of the Bobonaza, deep in the jungle. As recently as forty years ago, their members used stone axes and resisted contact with outsiders. Quichua called them “Aucas,” meaning “people of the jungle, savages,” because of their aggressive attitude toward other indigenous groups and white colonists. However, since that time, oil exploration in Ecuador’s orient has put tremendous pressures on the Huaoranis, endangering their way of life. There are thought to be
about 2,000 Huaoranis living in the Ecuadorian rain forest.

The people of Sarayacu and along the lower Bobonaza are currently struggling to stop oil exploration in this river basin, fearful that it will contaminate their lands and ruin their way of life. They point to the experience of indigenous groups in northeastern Ecuador, where Texaco began drilling in 1971, as reason for this concern. Texaco dumped millions of gallons of toxic waste fluids in open pits and streams from 1971 to 1991, and the indigenous people there maintain that the pollution has caused many to die from cancer.

Although oil companies initiated plans to explore the Bobonaza in 1989, opposition from indigenous groups stalled these efforts until late 2002, when an Argentinian oil firm, Compania General de Combustibles (CGC), established work camps on the upper section of the river. That led to several skirmishes between the oil workers and residents of Sarayacu, who at one point “detained” several oil company employees who came into their territory. Throughout 2003, tensions continued to escalate, and toward the end of the year, the Ecuadorian government announced that if the indigenous people living along the Bobonaza continued to resist, it would send in military troops to enable the oil drilling to proceed.

Marlon Santi, who was one of my guides on my trip down the Bobonaza, is now the president of the Sarayacu and a leader of this resistance. Several international environmental groups are supporting the indigenous people of the Bobonaza. They note that the region around Sarayacu is old-growth rainforest and one of the richest biological environments in the world. Updated news of this conflict can be found at
www.sarayacu.com
and
www.mapmakerswife.com
.

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