Wichis

RODRIGO MONTANI

Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (2nd Edition), 6 volúmenes

Bloomsbury Publiching

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2021; p. 1 - 4

The Wichí are a Matacoan-speaking group who inhabit the semiarid part of the strip of land between the Pilcomayo and Bermejo rivers, i.e., the Western part of the Central Chaco. They are around 50.000 people, of whom some 3.000, known as ´Weenhayek, live in Bolivia, and the rest in Argentina. Throughout the year, and as traditional hunter-gatherers, fishermen and, to some degree, horticulturalists, Wichís? camps rotate from riverside winter sites to summer sites in the hinterland. Their camps comprise a few huts ?six to twelve? set around an open space, although riparian groups appear to have had more populous and stable camps.The traditional dwelling is an igloo of leaves: a dome hut formed by a structure of sticks nailed, folded and tied, covered with leaves, grass, and tree barks, etc. Its construction was the responsibility of women, something that, together with its form and function, made of the hut a symbol of femininity. In winter the house served as a shelter against the south wind, that is why the door faced north. At the beginning of spring it proved a refuge against the hot and earthy north wind, and the door faced east or west. The entrance could have a kind of passage or porch as a shelter from the wind and sometimes a door of branches, fur or some rag. The interior was a single undivided space. Extensive families formed by several nuclear families could build some connected dome huts. In addition to the dome hut, they built a four-cornered cooking-shed which functioned as a kitchen and shelter. The traditional dwelling was perfectly adapted to the requirements Chaco?s environment and of a transhumant society.Besieged by white settlers, throughout the 20th century Wichí people established in permanent settlements on the outskirts of new villages and ranches, in Christian missions, autonomous hamlets on fiscal lands and reservations created for Indians by the national government. The dome huts were replaced by quadrangular houses with trunk structures supporting a shed or gable roof, made up of earth, straw or trunks of palm trees, and non-load bearing walls of straw, adobe or planks. These houses, that necessarily require masculine work and the use of metal tools, brought about an increase in the rate of Chagas disease. Towards the end of the 20th century, the Wichí built houses made up of bricks, cement and sheet metal roofs.Although at times blurred, the new settlements maintain the pattern of the ancient ones: a central wasteland on the margins of which the church is placed, and beyond that, groups of houses are built around a courtyard. The pattern of aggregation of housing in residential complexes and of these in the settlement reflects the aggregation that occurs, through kinship, of domestic groups in residential groups and of these in the community. Many times the houses have barns, farming fences or stockyards. The settlement usually has a community hall, a primary school and a health room from the government, a cemetery and, sometimes, communal gardens and stockyards. Generally, one road divides the settlement into two.Both new and old houses are basically a place where keep the fire, a protection against severe weather, and a place to store food and goods. Even today, in addition to the house, there is usually a cooking-shed. Most of the domestic life keeps on taking place in this shed or in the yard, and, in summer, people even sleep outside on cots with mosquito nets.Except for a single ritualized form of legacy (the lëwit´äle), the customary rule indicates that the bereaved had to dispose of the property of the deceased and destroy the dwelling. This rule clashes with the new ?indestructible? forms of housing.