Patrick Tierney - Darkness in El Dorado

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

For my parents, Patricia and John

It is important to recognize that Darwinism has always had an unfortunate power to attract the most unwelcome enthusiastsdemagogues and psychopaths and misanthropes and other abusers of Darwin's dangerous idea.

Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea

XIV ^^ CONTENTS

Chapter 5 Outbreak 53 Chapter 6 Filming the Feast 83 Chapter 7 A Mythical Village 107

Part II In Their Own Image, 1972-1994

Chapter 8 Erotic Indians 125

Chapter 9 That Charlie 149

Chapter 10 To Murder and to Multiply 158

Chapter 11 A Kingdom of Their Own 181

Chapter 12 The Massacre at Haximu 195

Chapter 13 Warriors of the Amazon 215

Part III Ravages of El Dorado, 1996-1999

Chapter 14 Into the Vortex 227

Chapter 15 In Helenas Footsteps 243

Chapter 16 Gardens of Hunger, Dogs of War 257

Chapter 17 Machines That Make Black Magic 280

Chapter 18 Human Products and the Isotope Men 296

Appendix: Mortality at Yanomami Villages 317 Notes 327 Bibliography 385 Index 397

Photographs appear between pages 164 and 165

Namowei War Deaths 34

Bisaasi-teri Mortality 51

Measles Antibody 55

Febrile Response to Edmonston B G7

Filming Deaths 121

Mortality and Mission Contact, 1987-1991 206

Corrected Mortality, 1987-1991 207

Victims in Worst Yanomami Wars 228

Stature of Amazonian Indians and Westerners 264

Yanomami Population Growth Projected at Historical Rate 269

Deaths at Kedebabowei-teri: The Impact of FUNDAFACI 324

Acknowledgments

First, I would like to offer heartfelt thanks to the guides and translators who were indispensable to both my research and my survival in the Yanomami rain forest. These included Severino Brazil, Pablo Mejia, Marco Jimenez, Alfredo Aherowe, and Jodie Dawson. Marinho De Souza, a microscopist and malaria diagnostician, was not only a great guide but also a healer for hundreds of desperately ill Yanomami Indians.

I would also like to thank the many anthropologists, doctors, and other scientists who read this manuscript. I am especially indebted to Leda Martins, who is finishing her Ph.D. at Cornell University, for her support throughout this long project and for her and her family's hospitality in Boa Vista, Brazil. Ledas dossier on Napoleon Chagnon was an important resource for my research.

I have obviously relied on Brian Ferguson's analysis of Yanomami warfare

XVIII ^ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

as a framework for several chapters of this book. I am also grateful to Terrence Collins of Carnegie Mellon University, Leslie Sponsel of the University of Haw^aii, Terence Turner of Cornell University, Kenneth Good of Jersey State College, John Peters of Wilfrid Laurier University, Jesiis Cardozo of FUN-VENA, Giovanni SafFirio of the Consolata Missionaries, and John Frechione of the University of Pittsburgh for their comments and encouragement.

Mark White of the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives assisted my search through his w^arehouse retreat, v^here we found a box containing the tapes from the Atomic Energy Commission's 1968 expedition. Mark Ritchie sent me the videotaped interviews with Yanomami men that are transcribed in chapter 8.

The final chapter of this book, "Human Products and the Isotope Men," would not have been possible without Eileen Welsome, whose book The Plutonium Files opened up an entirely new perspective on the Atomic Energy Commission. She helped me contact several key individuals, including Cory Ireland, of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, who shared his research into the human radiation experiments at Rochester's Strong Memorial Hospital.

The photographer Valdir Cruz has been outstandingly kind in allowing me to use his superb black-and-white photographs without charge. Valdir worked for over eight months in Yanomami territory on a Guggenheim Fellowship. I enjoyed his company for a week around the main missions of the Orinoco, and he walked with Marinho and me to the village of Irokai afiier going through quarantine with us.

Kristine Dahl, my literary agent, guided the manuscript through many storms and finally to safe harbor at W W. Norton & Company. Without Kristine's skill and determination this book would never have been published.

Norton, as everybody knows, is a brave house. Even so, Robert Weil took a courageous leap with this manuscript. He has been a discerning critic and a wise editor throughout the long preparation and legal review of this book. I know I am also speaking for Bob in thanking Rene Schwartz for her invaluable legal advice, Nancy Palmquist for her heroic patience, and Otto Sonntag for his extraordinarily detailed and helpful copyediting. Otto did wonders with the labyrinth of endnotes and sources.

My brother, John Tierney, has seen this manuscript in many different stages of evolution and has helped pull me through each one of them. Gra-cias hermano.

The University of Pittsburgh's Center for Latin American Studies gave me

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

XIX

an appointment as a visiting scholar, which facilitated my research at the university's excellent Latin American collection. I wrote much of this manuscript while living in the quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood and in the same home where I grew up. There is no way that I can repay my parents, Patricia and John, for their loyalty and generosity. I have dedicated this book to them, but they deserve better.

Introduction

Chagnon's observations and science are basically correct. He is in the front line of modern sociobiology. Because of this, perhaps, controversy follows him. Edward O. Wilson^

The renowned anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon appeared, unheralded, in Roraima, Brazil's northernmost state, often described as its most lawless, in September 1995. It was his first visit there in many years. Although he had helped make the Yanomami Indians the best-known tribe in the world, Chagnon faced nearly insurmountable hurdles in contacting them. In 1988, a past president of the Brazihan Anthropological Association had condemned him for portraying the Yanomami as innate killers.^ When he attempted to visit a Brazilian Yanomami village in 1989 with a BBC film crew, Chagnon was forced to cancel the trip due to both academic opposition and a planned protest march by human rights groups.^ And that was before Chagnon began the adventures that ended in his expulsion from the Venezuelan Yanomami Reserve by a judge on September 30, 1993.^^