Dolphins and other lovers
The Andoque of the Amazon know what we have forgotten: the forest’s most beautiful creatures are also its most dangerous - by Eliran Arazi Read on Aeon
A tale of two septuagenarian spouses, Derode and Rosa, revealed an odd encounter during Derode's fieldwork in southern Colombia. After failing to catch fish, Derode placed bait in the Caquetá River, only for a dolphin to steal the fish. The poor fishing continued, prompting Rosa to reminisce about her grandfather's legendary catch, which included a dolphin. Despite the Andoque's willingness to eat any creature they could catch, Rosa insisted dolphins were people, and their meat smelled terrible.
The Andoque believed dolphins to be shapeshifters, often luring unsuspecting men and women into traps, leading to a deadly end. A story of a handsome man and beautiful woman, seen in a riverside bar, turned out to be a dolphin in human form, seeking prey. Upon Rosa's insistence, I joked about dolphins in aquatic circuses. However, the Andoque's world had changed drastically, with the arrival of whites impacting their culture and traditions.
The tribe had dwindled from 10,000 to a few dozen survivors by the mid-1930s, after enduring brutal enslavement and massacres. With a renewed sense of humanity, they returned to their ancestral ways, including rubber extraction, and became prosperous once more.
Written by urgent.news from Aeon's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
