A Wichí mother reads with her daughter
[photo: Jo Hill, copyright 2006 ARG07DJ-169]
Wichí people: their homes, languages and beliefs

There are about 40-45,000 Wichí people in Argentina, according to Chris Wallis, director of Asociana’s Wichí literacy project. There is also a group of about 5,000 in Argentina’s northern neighbour, Bolivia. The different dialects that there are within Wichí have led the project to have a series of meetings with Indian delegates to reach a consensus about an alphabet that would be acceptable to all dialect groups. There are a number of Chaco Indian peoples. They are traditionally hunter-gatherers. The Wichí are part of what are called the ‘Mataco Mataguayo’, a linguistic-cultural grouping that includes the Wichí, the Chorote, Chulupí (also known a Nivaklé) and Maká.

Ethnic groups

Argentina is usually thought to have about half a million indigenous people comprising some16-17 different ethnic groups. The Chaco, where the Asociana Wichí literacy project is running, is an alluvial plain in north-west Argentina, which rises gently from East to West. It includes two-thirds of Paraguay, the eastern part of Bolivia and parts of Brazil. It was originally an inland sea or lake and may only have been habitable for some 3,000 years. Where the people who now live there came from is still a matter of debate, some groups possibly entering from the Pampa region further south, and others from the Amazon region to the north.

No recognition


A typical Wichi home [photo: Jo Hill, copyright
2006 WR411/6 ARG07DJ-126]
Some 15-20 years ago, Chris Wallis says, there was no recognition of Indian rights at all. The name ‘Indian’ was (and mostly still is) used in a derogatory sense. And terms like ‘Mataco’ (the name that the Spanish invaders gave to the Wichí) are still considered derogatory. Now attitudes are beginning to change since Indian rights have been formally granted recognition in the National Constitution which was reformed in 1994. Indian peoples in general will say that they have knowledge of God, but obviously have their own names for God and their own idea of God’s nature. The Wichí, on the other hand, will usually say that they had no knowledge of a supreme universal God, before the missionaries taught the Gospel, although there is a mythical figure known as Nilataj, which could be translated as “the Eternal One”. Traditionally, the Wichí people would probably be classed as animists, who believe that there are spirit lords of almost all the natural world – both plants and animals. On the whole, Christianity has not destroyed these beliefs, but has rather added over and above them the belief in a “Lord of all life and beings”.

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