Freddy with a crowd of children.
Photo: Mary Catherine Hinds/CWS |
Alfredo “Freddy” Cortez is captain in his Weenhayek community. These proud men, women, and children are hunters and gatherers. For centuries, they have sustained their lives by fishing the Pilcomayo River.
The act of fishing the river is a community endeavor involving all able-bodied people moving to the river. They fish from boats and use large nets requiring 20 to 30 people to handle them. When fishing is good, life is good. They are able to earn what they need to sustain their families and meet the needs of the community. The main fishing season is the months of May, June, and July. With the help of Swedish Lutheran missionaries they negotiated with the government for a different school year of August to April. The education of their children is a high priority.
As important as all the issues surrounding the Weenhayek are, at the very
heart of Cortez’s journey is the desire to help the Weeknhayeh people
to reclaim their lands. Church World Service’s partner agency Center
of Regional Studies for Development of Tarija ( CER-DET)
is helping them in this key struggle for the rights to one's land.
Sitting in front of his modest home, we listened as Cortez told how the
oil and minerals found underneath the topsoil of Weenhayek land are both
a blessing and curse. Taxes from the oil companies have aided the community
to move from mud houses into new brick homes and to have electricity. It
has helped develop a community center, a health clinic, and schools, and
they rejoice in all this for it gives them hope for the future of the Weenhayek.
It is a curse because the exploration and exploitation are slowly polluting their very life source -- the river. The river gives them fewer fish each year. The land along the river produces a smaller crop of native plants each year. Wild animals in the area are beginning to disappear.
No longer can they survive by fishing or to be simply known as fishers of the river. Their core cultural understanding of themselves will have to evolve as change happens around them. With the support of CROP Hunger Walk funds, and the help of Church World Service's partner agency CER-DET, new ways of making a living are being explored. Plans are developing. Goals are being identified. New economic survival strategies will come from this.
As Weenhayek people move into their inevitable future of change, the words of Cortez echo in our ears “We have good leaders with the possibility to succeed. We know the individual polluters. But my most important priority is teaching our music, our stories, our myths, and our culture to our youth.”
When we “Walk because they walk," we walk for hunger, for clean safe water, for education, for work, for land rights, and for the right to one’s cultural identity.