In non-literate societies there exist no written contracts.  All contracts are verbal. For example, before a Chácobo bachelors marries, he must make a contract, not with his potential wife, but with his potential in-laws.  When the verbal contract  is sealed and concluded, they call each other "raisi."  

 

At marriage, one did not become a "son-in-law," "father-in-law," or "mother-in-law,"  but a "raisi." For the Chácobo bachelor, the status position of raisi meant becoming the food supplier of the household-of-five of which he becomes the fifth member.  This means he is obligated to supply his in-laws with fish, wildlife, and food from his garden, and help around the house in exchange for conjugal rights to their daughters.

 

It also means he must leave his place of residence and move to the village of his in-laws. And in order for the economic unit called the household-of-five to work, the daughter must continue to give her primary allegiance to her mother after marriage, not to her husband. 

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In so doing, the Chácobo, from a Divine perspective,  redefined the meaning of family and what it meant to be married. Such misrepresentations of Divine meanings we deem to call memes. These misrepresentations of God's Truth were leading the Chácobo down the path of cultural extinction. 

 

On the other hand, becoming a raisi for his in-laws means they must provide their potential son-in-law with a roof over his head, a place to hang his hammock, all the beer he can drink, and food prepared by his mother-in-law. If the potential son-in-law happens to be a village bilingual school teacher living in another village, his mother-in-law (raisi) will expect him to give up his job and move to her village where his future wife will continue to be her mother's helper. 

 

From a Divine perspective, the meaning they had attached to the concept of marriage was in fundamental opposition to the "one-flesh" principle stated in Genesis 2:24.  In our attempt to place a Chácobo bilingual school teacher in each village, their restructuring of the nuclear family and their creation of a new status position called "raisi" presented us with unexpected problems in preparing the Chácobo with the skills and know-how needed for living in the new economy which was slowing engulfing them.  One goal was the establishment of bilingual schools which would capacitate students to interact with the dominant Bolivian culture.    

 

We soon discovered that the young unmarried men we had prepared for this task and whom were appointed to be school teacher in the village they were raised, upon marriage everything changed. Becoming a raisi meant submitting to the desires of one's "mother-in-law" (raisi) who always lived in another village. It meant he was expected to live in the village and household of his "mother-in-law" where it was his duty to be their main food supplier in exchange for conjugal rights to her daughter.  

 

Our naive attempts to conform to the cultural forms of Chácobo culture providentially ended when two families decided to leave their villages and move to another. Rather than go along with them, each of these school teachers decided to repudiate their status position of raisi and remain as village school teacher. They decided not to follow. And sadly, no wife was permitted remain and give her primary allegiance to her husband. To do so would destroy their existential defensive system against anxiety.  

 

Eventually, I became aware that SOCIAL EXISTENCE in the Amazonian Rainforest had highly shaped and influenced Chácobo behavior.  They had restructured the nuclear family, replacing the husband-wife dyad with that of mother-daughter. Chácobo women, I discovered,  covertly ruled. And this knowledge dramatically changed the way I approached evangelism, church planting, and community development

 

This tension between which dyad should be dominant in society, mother-daughter or husband-wife,  is revealed in the following piece of satire created by a son-in-law who clearly understood that their ancestors had replaced the inherent meaning attached to the concept of marriage with a meaning shaped by existence in the Amazon Rainforest.

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                                              The Story of Pai as a Raisi

 

On a hunting trip, the men of the village encountered a herd of pigs running through the

jungle. They immediately shouted, “Yahua, yahua.  Let’s go!” So the men chased the wild

pigs hoping to kill a few. After shooting a few, they stopped the chase. 

 

Pai, however, kept on running. He was thinking about his stressful home environment.

After chasing the wild pigs for half a day and never shooting any of them, a male yahua finally

stopped and asked Pai, saying, “Why do you keep chasing us if you are not going to shoot

one of us? What is your problem? And what do you really want?” they asked. 

 

“I am Pai,” he replied. 

 

And (seeing he had an unhappy marriage) the yahua said to Pai, “Take  this female to

be your wife and join us.” 

 

Then they instructed him, saying, “Get down on your hands and knees.”

 

So Pai got down on his hands and knees. Before doing this, however, he first placed his

bow and arrows against a tree. There he left them. 

 

Then the jahua took Pai into another forest. As he was running into the other forest, pig’s

feet, pig’s hair, pig’s teeth, and a pig’s body and face began to appear. Despite the

transformation, he was still able to speak Chácobo. 

 

When it became dark and he failed to return home, his wife began to cry. “A jaguar

must have killed my husband,” she lamented. In the morning Pai’s wife and children went

out to search for him. Failing to find him, they returned home. They returned weeping.

 

Eventually his wife remarried. Then sometime later, the Chácobo man who married his

“widowed” wife went hunting. One day, when his raisi (mother-in-law) saw him return

home without any game, she placed a slab of rubber into the tortilla she was preparing

instead of meat. As he entered the house his raisi   called out, “How did it go?” “Terrible.

I didn’t see a thing,” he replied. Then his raisi said, “Here is some ‘meat’ for you to eat.

Enjoy it.”

 

As he was biting into the ‘meat’ he failed in his attempt to bite off a piece. So he pulled

harder. As he was pulling on the ‘meat,’ the slab of ‘meat’ snapped out and smacked him

in the eye. “Good, grief! I was hit in the eye with a piece of rubber! Doesn’t your mother

know what she is doing?” he exclaimed to his wife. His wife began to cry.

 

The next morning he said to his raisi, “I am going to go hunting for wild pigs. Perhaps

the same thing that happened to your former son-in-law (raisi) will happen to me.” Grabbing

some manioc flour (to eat along the way), he left. By noon he had arrived at a large creek.

 

A salt slick (that animals came to) happened to be there. His former buddy Pai also

happened to be there, but he was unaware of it. As he was making camp he thought that

perhaps he might be able to shoot a few wild pigs this time. Just then Pai came up behind

him greeting him saying, “Is that you, buddy?”  “Yes, it’s me. So this is where you are

living,” the new son-in-law (raisi) replied.

 

“Yes. This is where I now live,” Pai answered.     

 

“While you live here in the forest, your former wife and children have been wondering about

you. They really miss you,” the new raisi said. “Is that so,” Pai responded. “There is

no way that I am going to return (under the present set of rules). Besides, I have now

sired another family and returning is impossible. But what about you? What are you doing

here, buddy?”

 

“I just needed to get away. My raisi hit me in the eye with a slab of rubber so I left. I told her

that I was going hunting,” he said. 

 

The former son-in-law, now yahua Pai, suggested to his friend that he shoot one of the old,

large wild pigs standing and one of her piglets. “Now I want you to roast that old sow for

our raisi and the piglet for your wife. However, when you bring it home, I don’t want you to

carry it all the way up to the house. Leave the sow on this side of the creek for our raisi to get.

But this tender piglet you give to your wife. That you bring up to the house,” he told him.

 

So the young man shot the old sow and piglet to roast. As he was butchering them, a 

vulture landed in the trees above. “Now kill that vulture for me too, buddy,” pig Pai said. 

So the young man shot the vulture. He gives the vulture to pig Pai who then

magically transformed the form (not the content) of the vulture into a partridge (in order

to get even with his ex-mother-in-law). He then placed the partridge (vulture) on the fire-table

to roast, saying, “This too is for our raisi." 

 

The next morning the young man decided that it was time for him to return home. After

saying goodbye to pig Pai he traveled all day, arriving home the next morning. Arriving at the

creek, he sets down the heavy package of meat for his raisi before crossing to the other-side.

His wife’s package he brings across the creek, leaving it near the house.

 

“He is back,” they all shout."Did you shoot any wild pigs?” they all asked.

 

Declaring that he had shot a few, he then tells his wife that her package is near the house on

this side of the creek. He then tells his raisi that the larger package is on the other side of the

creek. It was too heavy to carry across.

 

Mother and daughter excitedly leave together to get the meat. When his raisi sees the size of

her bundle, she calls to her daughter saying, “Come and help me lift the basket so that I can

carry it back across the creek.” The daughter helps her mother. “Now you cross the creek first

and I will follow,” the mother tells her daughter. 

 

But as the mother is crossing the log, the log begins to break when she reaches the middle.

The log breaks in two from the weight of the mother-in-law and the heavy load she is

carrying. While holding on to the bundle of roasted meat, she falls into the creek below

screaming.

 

As she hit the water the tooth of the pig cuts her on the head. There was a profusion of blood.

There was so much bleeding that it turned the creek into a large lake. Hearing the log break

the daughter ran to the edge of the water and exclaimed: “Mother has disappeared into the

water! She has turned into a porpoise!" 

 

The mother-in-law who was bleeding from the head had turned into a porpoise that swam away.

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In this story, the satirist is informing his audience that Chácobo mothers-in-law should be removed from the jealousy triangle in which mother/mother-in-law and son-in-law/husband  were competing for the allegiance of the conflicted daughter/wife. 

 

Because the Divine Meanings attached to the forms of family, marriage, husband and wife had been triggered and brought to consciousness, they knew that Chácobo newly weds should be allowed to become “one flesh."  They should be free to set up independent households. 

 

But Chácobo cultural forms that adequately provided for their self-felt need for beer also prevented daughters from “leaving,” “cleaving,” and becoming “one flesh” with their husbands (Genesis 2:24). 

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In fact, in the words of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Chácobo society was “involved in seeking security at the expense of other life,” namely the freedom of their sons, daughters, and their sons-in-law. In so doing, "The perils of nature are thereby transmuted into more into more grievous forms of human history.” I deem to call these "grievous forms" memes. 

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The satirist is informing his audience that a mother’s rights in their daughter terminated when their daughters married.  At this point, their rights to their daughters as “helpmates” are to be transferred to their husbands. The mother-daughter bond has to be completely broken as well at the contractual meaning of the term raisi and the institution of household-of-five.  

 

Sadly, from one generation to the next, the satire fell on deaf ears. A daily supply of beer, the "staff-of-life," transcended the needs of the spirit.  By submitting to the material forces of the Amazonian Rainforest, the Divine Meta-Script "written on the heart" that informed them how to live was  "transmuted into a more grievous form of history," one that was leading them down the path to cultural extinction. 

 

The good news is that I, as an "outsider," was able to counsel young Chácobo men that the advice from their own sages needed to be taken seriously. More importantly, their perspective on marriage was supported by the "one flesh" principle of husband-wife stated in Genesis 2:24.

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​Convictions:

1. Chácobo sages of another era rejected the definition their ancestors had attached to the concept called "marriage."  Their definition  of marriage had reduced them to functional cogs compelled to be food suppliers for the Chácobo household-of-five.    

2. As a society, they rejected and replaced God as their PROVIDER with a raisi whom was contracted to be their provider.

3. The Chácobo household consisted of father, mother, daughters, sons who move out at marriage, and in-coming sons-in-law.  The more daughters a household had, the more food providers they would have to provide for "family" needs.  Call it Social Security.

4. Replacing the inherent meanings of marriage and family with a learned meanings shaped by "the material elements of the world" "does not accord with Christ" (Col. 2:8).

5. The story of Pai the Raisi never would have been created if the "one-flesh" Principle of husband-wife had not been structured in the unconscious mind where it was triggered and brought to consciousness.