Tiguino, Ecuador -- Penti Baihua, a community leader of the Huaorani Indians, knew there was more to the massacre of 26 members of a rival Amazon tribe than mere revenge.
In May 2003, nine Huaorani warriors from the village of Tiguino killed 26 Tagaeri men, women and children. They justified the massacre of nearly one- fifth of a tiny tribe that shuns outsiders as payback for a 1993 murder. But Colombian loggers may have instigated the raid so they could seek lucrative stands of Spanish cedar and a mahogany called aguano abundantly found on Tagaeri land, according to recent interviews with government officials, police investigators and several Huaorani leaders.
"They (the loggers) were scared of the Tagaeri and went to Tiguino," said Penti Baihua, a Huaorani leader who spoke with several of the nine raiders after the attack. "They told them: 'We'll give you gasoline and bullets if you kill the Tagaeri. We want to work in that area.' "
Regional laws protect the Tagaeri -- a nomadic tribe of fewer than 150 people who subsist on hunting and fishing in a 1.7 million-acre reserve -- as well as thousands of other indigenous peoples living in remote areas of the Amazon rain forests of Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. But all are feeling the pressure of "civilization" advancing on their territories.
Tiguino, Ecuador -- In the years since development began in Ecuador's Amazon region, the Huaorani and Tagaeri Indians have taken very different paths.
In the first recorded encounter with the outside world in 1956, the Tagaeri -- also known as Auca or Jivaro -- killed five American missionaries. In 1987, they murdered Spanish Bishop Alejandro Lavaca and a Colombian nun, Ines Arango, with poison-tipped spears. An oil company helicopter had dropped the two off so they could bring the word of God, discuss the arrival of oil workers and offer ways to help the tribe.
In contrast, Ecuador's government spent decades working through U.S. missionaries, the Catholic Church and the armed forces to "civilize" the 2,000- strong Huaorani tribe and pave the way for oil drilling in their ancestral lands. In 1989, Babae Ima, the leader of the Huaorani, settled in the community of Tiguino along an oil road, which remains the only land access to the muddy Tiguino River. Ima, who is in his 70s, charges a fee to all outsiders who enter his territory. No one travels down the river without his consent -- not missionaries, eco-tourists or illegal loggers.
Standing beside a ramshackle outhouse on the outskirts of his remote Amazon village, Ima shook a yellowing canvas sack until a grisly object rolled into view -- a human skull from the raid that he led last year that killed 26 Tagaeri in what he called revenge for the death of a Huaorani man by a Tagaeri spear-thrower in 1993. The gruesome memento is a long-standing tradition of Amazon warfare, he said.
In the first recorded encounter with the outside world in 1956, the Tagaeri -- also known as Auca or Jivaro -- killed five American missionaries. In 1987, they murdered Spanish Bishop Alejandro Lavaca and a Colombian nun, Ines Arango, with poison-tipped spears. An oil company helicopter had dropped the two off so they could bring the word of God, discuss the arrival of oil workers and offer ways to help the tribe.
In contrast, Ecuador's government spent decades working through U.S. missionaries, the Catholic Church and the armed forces to "civilize" the 2,000- strong Huaorani tribe and pave the way for oil drilling in their ancestral lands. In 1989, Babae Ima, the leader of the Huaorani, settled in the community of Tiguino along an oil road, which remains the only land access to the muddy Tiguino River. Ima, who is in his 70s, charges a fee to all outsiders who enter his territory. No one travels down the river without his consent -- not missionaries, eco-tourists or illegal loggers.
Standing beside a ramshackle outhouse on the outskirts of his remote Amazon village, Ima shook a yellowing canvas sack until a grisly object rolled into view -- a human skull from the raid that he led last year that killed 26 Tagaeri in what he called revenge for the death of a Huaorani man by a Tagaeri spear-thrower in 1993. The gruesome memento is a long-standing tradition of Amazon warfare, he said.
Federal investigator Marco Vargas, who visited the massacre scene a week afterward, said revenge might have been one reason for the deadly raid, "but I'm absolutely sure it wasn't the only one. The business ties between the loggers and Tiguino are very, very strong," he said. "The only people who represented an obstacle to the loggers (in that area) are now dead."
Vargas' investigation -- detailed in a 200-page report -- was abruptly cut short by the Organization of the Huaorani Nation of the Ecuadoran Amazon, a council of elders of 32 Huaorani communities, who pardoned all nine attackers after they promised never to do it again. Ecuador's 1998 constitution gives indigenous communities the right to settle internal conflicts according to their traditions.
Vargas' investigation -- detailed in a 200-page report -- was abruptly cut short by the Organization of the Huaorani Nation of the Ecuadoran Amazon, a council of elders of 32 Huaorani communities, who pardoned all nine attackers after they promised never to do it again. Ecuador's 1998 constitution gives indigenous communities the right to settle internal conflicts according to their traditions.
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