Juan Toribio, who has edited many Wichí texts
[photo: Jo Hill, copyright 2006 WR411/11 ARG07DJ-141]
INGENIERO JUÁREZ, NORTHERN ARGENTINA — Asociana, the social arm of the Anglican Church, is involved in bringing literacy to the Wichí people in their own language. For the time being, though, some older members of the community continue to be a unique repository of Wichí stories and myths. To prevent the loss of this oral resource, Juan Toribio has been working for the literacy project collecting these valuable accounts of Wichí culture and history, recording them first and later writing them out by hand.
A lifelong Christian and a church pastor, Juan has also helped teach the Wichí alphabet to future Wichí literacy teachers, helped the Asociana team with their understanding of his language and been the editor on many of the Wichí publications that the team has produced. In one way or another he has been involved with the literacy scheme since it began in 2001, although previously he worked for several years on the translation of the Bible into the Wichí language.
Knowledge from the past
“My objective is that people should continue to benefit from the knowledge that they have from the past,” he says. “There are a lot of good things that come from the Wichí way of doing things. People can read and write in Spanish, but in order to take advantage of their own culture they need to be able to read and write in their own language. “Some things just need to be expressed in Wichí. Spanish is not the same. It’s not as precise – we can’t express ourselves as clearly as we can in our own language.” Juan, 59, was fortunate in having been part of a generation who were taught to read and write in Wichí by missionaries in the 1950s, as Chris Wallis, head of Asociana’s Wichí literacy project, explains. “Until the 1970s,” he explains, “discrimination against the Indians was so high that the Wichí weren’t allowed into public schools at all, so the only teaching that they had was from the missionaries. The alphabet they used, though it had its limitations, was workable. And the missionaries had a policy of teaching people to learn to read and write first in their own language and then in Spanish, which in many respects was extremely advanced thinking.
Children at the school in the Wichí
village of Santa Maria
[photo: Jo Hill, copyright 2006
WR411/11 ARG07DJ-291]
“When the Wichí started going to state schools, the state schools weren’t interested in teaching them how to read and write their own language, so all the earlier work done by the missionaries was lost. The only way people could learn to read and write their own language was in their homes or perhaps through the Church – or through Portions of the Bible. So, there’s a generation like Juan, of intellectual Wichí, who are in danger of disappearing.” “I can see that there are Wichí who are not learning their language well now,” says Juan. “They don’t know how to write it and they don’t know the grammar. I feel very sorry for them; if you know your language well, you feel proud of it.” And for Wichí pastors – of whom Juan is one – the value of having God’s Word in Wichí is incalculable.
Faith grows
“Now God’s language is the Wichís’ language,” he says. “It helps the pastors a lot: their faith grows, they can know the histories in the Bible better and it helps them to teach others.” Juan tells me how he has always felt that teaching was his calling; he talks about his distrust of the government who, he says, side with the Criollos in their disputes with the Wichí over land rights – and about the valued support the Anglican Church gives the Wichí in their various struggles. And again he talks about his recent work in collecting and preserving the Wichí myths and stories. But then his tone changes and he describes a pang of regret about the calling he feels he has been neglecting.
Felt ashamed
“Recently I was in Santa Maria,” he says, “in the forest. And I had a thought: I felt ashamed. I realised it wasn’t what I should be spending all my time doing. I’m a pastor, I should be teaching. Now that you’re here I can tell you.” For an earlier story about Juan Toribio, see World Report 370/10.
(WR 411/11 - 05.07) [9 photos]