After discovering that the Chácobo innately knew the primary quality of being a human being was to love their neighbor and help him in time of need, a Principle for Living they could not have learned from experience, I next discovered, as I was collecting Chácobo myths from my neighbor Maro, there existed sons-in-law of another era who created humorous stories critical of a life-way which compelled them to fit in, conform, follow, and obey the implied commands of their mothers-in-law.  They had lost their freedom. 

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It was a great discovery! As critics of the Chácobo life-way, their condemnation of how their ancestors had structured the nuclear family enabled me to understand why the Chácobo were a maimed, dying society. There existed within their sociocultural operating system social forms which constrained freedom. 

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After studying the satire they created, I finally concluded that at sometime in the remote past there existed Chácobo sons-in-law who fully understood that the status position of raisi was maiming them. The new status position they created prohibited husbands from naturally assuming the headship role in the nuclear family, thus producing a leaderless society.  Mother-in-laws, I discovered,  covertly ruled. 

 

Aware that their opposition to mother-in-law control would be condemned by their peers, these critical thinking sons-in-law expressed their opposition to the way the nuclear family was structured by telling humorous stories as a means to an end.

 

They believed that the dominant dyad of the nuclear family, which was the mother-daughter dyad, needed to be replaced with the dyad of husband-wife. Whereas the mother-daughter dyad  was selected to satisfy a particular need, their need for manioc beer, the husband-wife dyad promoted freedom and self-actualization.  Unknown to these sons-in-law, their life-way and traditions, in the words of the apostle Paul, had been shaped by the "material elements of their environment"  (Col. 2:8) which, in their case, was the Amazonian Rainforest.

 

The discovery was a wake-up call.  Something needed to be done if the Chácobo were to be set free from ascribed functions which had transformed them into person-things.  It meant Marian and I  were in a strategic position of moving ourselves away from being the guardians of a dying function based society to that of being promoters of a revealed cultural operating system grounded in status positions like husband, wife, father, and mother to which there were attached Divine meanings.

 

These Chácobo sages intuitively knew their design for living had placed structural restraints on their freedom to live a qualitative existence as real husbands and wives and they wanted out. 

 

In my case, these cultural constraint on human freedom became real when the young men we  had trained to become bilingual school teachers approved by the Bolivian government married.   Each started off by being a teacher in the village of their birth.  That all changed the minute they married. Customary law demanded that serving their in-laws took priority over that of serving the community as a bilingual school teacher preparing the community for what was to come.  

 

The moment they married they didn't become sons-in-law but raisis. Their primary task in life was not to serve the community, but to be food provider for their in-law's household-of-five of which they became the fifth member. This meant leaving their village of birth to the village of their in-laws. 

 

As I collected these stories, it was obvious that few if any Chácobo recognized it to be satire. They were just stories, not warnings that should be heeded. Then when I pointed out the following satire to Rabi who had become a "raisi," he immediately recognized he was trapped. He had no freedom to self-actualize.  His mother-in-law was in charge.

 

The Perspectives of Two Sages of Another Age 

The day I discovered there existed Chácobo "insiders" who knew they were being maimed by cultural forms like family and marriage to which were attached Chácobo meanings rather than Divine, was truly a great day. At some point in Chácobo history a number of discouraged and miserable sons-in-law left a verbal record informing their hearers that something indeed was wrong.  

 

For their verbal records passed down from one generation the next, I am forever thankful. They each had concluded that the Chácobo sociocultural operating system was a prison from which they needed to be set free.  And they expressed their sentiments in the following stories, The Dying Raisi and Pëta Rejects the Role of Raisi.  

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                                          The Dying Raisi (Son-in-Law)

His troubles began when he got married. When he took their daughter as his wife, his

in-laws were very content in the beginning. Then things at home began to change.  He

first noticed that he was getting thinner and thinner. In dismay he asked himself, “Why

am I becoming so thin?”  He said to his wife: “I am not sick. But for some reason I am

getting weaker and weaker.  If this keeps up I  will no longer be able to feed you all any

longer.” 

 

Then he began to hear his mother-in-law complain to his wife saying: “I see your husband

 is not taking care of you.  I wonder what it is that is making him so thin?  He has stopped hunting.  If he is wastes away like this, how in the world are we going to survive"?

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The raisi was sad. He could only wonder why he was getting so thin when he was not sick.

He would talk to his wife about it.  She had no idea.  Then one night he reached the

conclusion that he was going to die. He had come to the conclusion that there really was

nothing wrong with him, yet he continued to waste away.  “I always need to rest.  I just

cannot get strong again," he told his wife. 

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Then one night when he was unable to sleep, he noticed that his mother-in-law who was

sleeping next to him was getting out of her hammock. Getting up, she turned her buttocks

toward his nose and began to release gas from her anus. It was powerful. It was the

strongest and foulest smell that he ever experienced. It frightened him. “Could it be that my mother-in-law is trying to kill me”? He asked himself. 

 

Three more times that night she released gas in his direction so that he would inhale and

swallow it. “I think I am wasting away because of smelling this powerful gas," he concluded.

 

In the morning he asked his wife for his bark bag in which he kept all the things needed for making arrows. “I want my roll of beeswax," he said.  “What do you want this for”? His wife

asked.

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“I want to fix my arrows for hunting. I think I am going to get well," he told his wife.  His

wife then handed him his bag containing his roll of beeswax needed for gluing feathers to

the arrow shaft. When his wife left, he took out the beeswax and began to soften it. His

had gone out with her mother to gather firewood so she did not see what he was doing. A

s he pretended to be working his arrows he was thinking: “So it is my mother-in-law who

is killing me. I need to stop her.” 

 

When his mother-in-law, his wife, and everyone else in the house were away, he warmed

the beeswax over a fire to make it soft and pliable. He then began to pull and stretch it,

forming a long plug. When he was finished he laid it aside. When night came he laid awake

waiting for his opportunity. He was going to plug his mother-in-law up.  

 

By midnight everyone was sound asleep.  Before going to sleep, his mother-in-law released

more flatus in his direction.  It was the same as all the others, it was strong. When she was

 asleep, he took his plug of beeswax and inserted it between the strings of the hammock

into her rectum. It was a really long plug.

 

Immediately the young man’s arms became stronger. But just then his mother-in-law got

up again to release gas in his face.  This time it backfired and his mother-in-law fell back

into her hammock and died. When the raisi saw what happened, he exclaimed silently, “Oh,

good grief!  Now I have killed my mother-in-law!  If her children ever find out they will

certainly kill me."

 

When morning came, her sons, daughters, and their husbands got up. They all left her

alone, not wanting to wake her. Her daughter (his wife) finally asked: “I wonder why mother

is sleeping so long? Kids, go wake her up, “ she said.

 

So the grandchildren ran to grandmother and called out: “It is time to get up, Grandma! The

sun is up"!  They then began to shake and shake her hammock saying, “Why are you still sleeping?” She was silent.  Her body was stiff and cold. 

 

In the meantime, the son-in-law in grief was saying to himself, “Good grief! I killed my

mother-in-law!"  So the raisi felt ashamed over what happened.

 

After they all examined the body, they concluded they would never know what killed her.  

His wife cried for months because she was very loyal to her mother. After a few months

the raisi gained his weight back. He began to supply food for his wife and children. 

 

Maro, my Informant's Perspective

For Maro, my neighbor, the satire was interpreted as:  “Daughters are very loyal to their mothers. This is customary among the Chácobo.” Maro’s closing remarks were revelatory.  He was stating a cultural norm.  Rabi, on the other hand, recognized it as being satire. For Maro, the primary allegiance of every married daughter was to her mother, not to her husband. It was the cultural norm. His wife covertly ruled. 

 

The following piece of satire reveals the strong feelings of a Chácobo bachelor who wanted no part in becoming a raisi whose function was to provide food for the Chácobo household-of-five. To do so would reduce him to a "person-thing" controlled by his mother-in-law. 

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                                  Pëta Rejects the Role of Raisi

Pëta was unmarried and so was the young lady of this story. Pëta was a very nice fellow.

  One day he meets a young lady in the forest  whom he takes home.  She becomes his

wife. After living together for several months his wife becomes pregnant.  She gives birth

to their first child. 

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One day Péta’s wife says, “I want to go home and visit my mother. I’m taking our son

with me.”  “My wish is that you not go.  But go and see her if you so desire," Péta tells her.

 So she takes their son and leaves

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After his wife had been gone sometime, Pëta decides to make his wife turn back since he

really did not want her to visit his mother-in-law. He was determined that she not visit his mother-in-law [because she might be compelled to remain]. So Pëta transforms himself

into a small bird, flies past them, and lands on the trail ahead. By now she was half way

there. She never saw Pëta fly by. Pëta then set down on the trail.  There he growled just

a jaguar. 

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“Listen, my son, a jaguar [is ahead of us],” his wife exclaimed. “Let’s get back to your father.”

  So she ran back as quickly as possible.  When she arrives back home, she sees Pëta seated

his stool busy making some arrows. She was disappointed that she could not visit her mother.  “How did it go”? Pëta asks.  “Did you see your mother”?

 

“We never arrived," she answered,  “there was a dangerous jaguar on the trail."  “Now didn’t

I warn you that the trail was full of jaguars”? Pëta replies.  “You were right [and I didn’t

believe you].  They were frightening”! She answered.

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After some time passed Pëta’s wife again said: “I want to see my mother." Again Pëta told

her to go but refused to accompany her. [The informant then adds: “Pëta was probably embarrassed to see his in-laws because he had taken their daughter away.]  So the wife

goes the second time. The same thing happened the second time. This time Pëta’s growl

sounded like two growls.  Hearing the growls she again runs back home. When she arrives,

she see Pëta seated on his stool working on his arrows.

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“What happened”? He asks. “Don’t tell me you decided to come back again.” “It is dangerous

to travel alone.  Too many jaguars. I think you need to take us there," his wife says. “That

would be impossible," Pëta answers.  Pëta refused to go. 

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Convictions

1. The story of Pëta reveals the sentiments of a bachelor who refused to become a raisi because the status position suppressed freedom and self-actualization. The bachelor refused to be reduced to a functional "person thing," a food supplier for his wife's parents.

2. The story of the Dying Raisi reveals the sentiments of a raisi who finally came to realize his mother-in-law was not happy with the amount of food he supplied the household-of-five. If she gassed him to death, her daughter could remarry and she could gain a "better" food supplier.

3. Both stories imply the existence of an Interpretative System structured in the unconscious mind whose Principles could be triggered" and brought to consciousness.  

4. There is no more dangerous idea in missiology than the notion that God loves multiculturalism and that the existence of hundreds of family types existing around the world are valid as long as they functionally meet the needs of society. 

5. Failure to recognize that the basic unit of society is the nuclear family and that the “one flesh” covenantal principle which makes the husband-wife dyad the dominant dyad of the nuclear family, is a recipe for failure in positive church planting and community development.

6. The ascription of the function of "mother's helper" to Chácobo daughters and the ascribed function of every son-in-law being that of food supplier of the household-of-five, unless terminated, meant our efforts to train a core of young people having the skills and know-how to lead the Chácobo people into the 21st century would fail. 

7. Contrary to what contextualizing missiologists proclaim, there exists in the mind of every person a set of absolute cultural forms common to all people to which are attached Divine Meanings which are fixed and constant.  While, as a rebel, fallen man can suppress, reject and replace these Meanings with meanings that "belong to the people," they cannot be deleted from the psychic.