Image is an artistic recreation.
The project work
I am doing now makes for not-to-exciting blog posts. This work involves mostly studying,
reading documents, filling out forms, planning for the future and corresponding
with email.
To liven up my posts I am
now going to occasionally add stories of things that I have experienced while
living in the village. Today’s post will
be one such story.
One of the subdivisions of the project is Amazon
Business. In this area we help entrepreneurs
in the village to start or grow their small businesses. We help with business planning and give
business loans of between $550 to $1,100 USD.
The aspiring business person must first submit a proposal detailing what
they want to do, the steps they need to take, and a somewhat detailed list of
for what they will be using the loan money.
During one of these planning meetings I first found out about the “cortar
cabezas”!
At 6:30 in the evening a 30 year old, who I am calling Oscar,
wanted to meet with me at Gustavo’s house.
We met on the porch as the sun was setting. He shook my hand and we talked briefly until
Gustavo brought up the reason for Oscar’s visit, which was to request a
business loan. Oscar was soft-spoken,
and as was the custom of many villagers, he avoided most direct eye
contact.
After I explained the program and expectations, with help from
Gustavo, the time came for Oscar to state his business plans and for what he
would need the money. He explained to me
that he wanted to start a fishing business.
He mentioned how he would fish, how many he expected to catch, how he
would store and transport the fish downriver to sell in the city of
Leticia. We proceeded to list, item by
item what he would need. Line, nets,
sinkers, net repair kit, Styrofoam coolers, and the like were noted by him. Towards the end of the list he paused for a
little longer than for the other items. At
this point he mentioned the item “escopeta”.
I recognized this word as meaning shotgun, but I believed my translation
to be bad. Spanish has many words that
have multiple meanings. I question again
and Oscar confirmed that my translation was correct. He had indeed meant he needed a shotgun. I must have looked surprised, because after a
moments silence he went on to explain that he needed the shotgun for the “cortar
cabezas”. Once again I doubted my
Spanish translation skills, for I understood him saying he needed the shotgun
for protection from the head cutters.
Gustavo was intently following our conversation. He then stepped in to explain that when
fishing at night, the time when the fishing is best, fishermen have the risk of
being attack, robbed and killed by the head cutters. After further questioning, during which time
I was being eaten alive by mosquitos and other insects, I learned from them that
the head cutters would wait on the banks of the river from high places, and
then swoop down with paragliders onto a fisherman. While approaching the fisher the head cutters
would shine a special light into their eyes which would blind and make them
dizzy. After this they would kill and
rob the fisherman. It was for this that
the shotgun was needed.
During this explanation I looked for signs that Oscar and
Gustavo were joking. They were not. I politely kept a relaxed expression on my
face, afraid that my slight shock/disbelief might offend them. I tried to rationalize what they were
saying. Why would people who owned paragliders
wait on the banks of the river to rob fishermen? Who were these people? Where did they keep their gliders during the
day? From what high spots did they jump?
Was the light that they used to blind a laser? Was this related to stores of the headhunters
of the past? Was this an “urban legend”
of the jungle? Additionally I knew that
it was illegal to own private firearms in an indigenous village.
What did I do? After
adding up all the cost we found that he didn’t have the money needed to buy the
shotgun. Thank goodness for
budgets. But another question
remains. They say that in every story there
is a grain of truth, and Oscar and Gustavo believed this story. The grain of truth in this story –something I may find next time I
am visiting the jungle…
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