Gauchos in South America arose in present day Uruguay

South American gaucho communities arose for the first time in the territory of the present Eastern Republic of Uruguay The gaucho is originally from the Banda Oriental. Although the word "gaucho" or "gaucho" has been used in different circumstances with different meanings, with reference to both the inhabitants of rural areas in southern America, and a type of culture, in the early times it was used to designate a type of inhabitant of the Eastern Sierras of the Eastern Band of Uruguay. During the second half of the 18th century, the people who inhabited the wild and misnamed "no man's land" were called the "gauchos" the borders between the Spanish and Portuguese domains. These people, families and communities inhabited the vast Country Guenoa, an area of ​​prairies, mountain ranges, marshes and sandbanks, which had been, fortunately for its ancestral inhabitants, relatively free (although not entirely or much less) from the genocidal greed of empires Spanish and Portuguese The "gauchos" and their predecessors the "gauderios" and "changadores" managed to subsist, sharing with Guenoas and other native peoples, the natural resources of the area, and more especially, the abundant wild cattle that had been widely reproduced in the grasslands of the Banda Oriental. The herds allowed them to stock up on derived products such as meat, leather and tallow, and also, by circumventing the control of the Spanish patrols, they could sell the troops to the Portuguese. Originally the words vagabonds or bagamundos, changadores, outlaws, and later, gauderíos, were used for this social group "cimarrón" of the Uruguayan and eastern prairies. The name "gaucho" has only just begun to be used regularly in recent decades of the eighteenth century, naming a certain independent and rebellious rural type, which does not obey or accept the social and work routines imposed by the authorities. The word itself appears for the first time in a document written in 1771, referring to certain "criminals" who were hiding in the Sierra at a certain distance from Maldonado, probably in the Sierra Roche region, perhaps in the Sierra de los Rocha itself or its adjacencies. This is a communication from the Commander of Maldonado, Don Pablo Carbonell to Vértiz, dated October 23, 1771. It goes like this: “Very dear sir; With news that some gahuchos had been allowed to see the Sierra, send the militia lieutenants, Jph Picolomini and dn Clemente Puebla, to the Sierra with a party of 34 men among these some soldiers of the battalion in order to make a discovery in the expressed Sierra, to see if they could find the thugs, and at the same time see if he could pick up any cattle; and having practiced… ”In that same year a similar reference from Santo Domingo de Soriano (March 31, 1771) speaks of“ mountaineering gangsters ”to refer to similar characters without using the word gaucho. This denomination only appeared three years later in a written document referring to three men caught in the Puntas del Bequeló (about 40 km southeast of the current site of the city of Mercedes). Although we do not know exactly the geographical area referred to in the Maldonado report to which we referred previously, we think that the "Sierra" mentioned should be somewhere in the "Serranías del Este", which extend through the current departments of Maldonado or Rocha. Since they were smugglers, who sought shelter outside the reach of the imperial authorities in the border areas and needed free passage to the lands controlled by Portugal, it is likely that their shelters were located in the easternmost mountain areas, in the vicinity of the “Narrows” that allowed to facilitate the passage to Brazil. Another route used for the contraband of cattle went to Brazil near the tips of the Yaguarón (present department of Cerro Largo). Further south, the passage of cattle was more difficult due to the presence of the Merin Lagoon and the Yaguarón River, which were obstacles to tackling. Fernando Assunçao in his classic book "El Gaucho" interprets these events in an analogous way. According to this author, the gaucho formation process was "a continuous transformation" and that in this process it is inclined to locate the birth of the gaucho in "lands that today are our country (Uruguay) and the most adjacent border areas of Rio Grande do Sul ”. In particular, Assunçao points out that the old entrerrianos cowboys, the primitive changadores and the gauderios that Concolocorvo saw (in the 1760s) are different from "the gauchos of the Maldonado and Rocha mountain ranges", which, according to this author, would be the first gauchos themselves. Continues at daniloanton.blogspot.com From: Chronicles of Human Peripecia, D. Antón, Piriguazú Edic. Enviar comentarios Historial Guardadas Comunidad

The Amazon basin

The Amazon basin, covering 6.157 million square kilometres, is one of the largest river basins in the world. It is shared by seven countries: about two-thirds of the basin (4 million square kilometres) is in Brazil, nearly 1 million square kilometres lies in Peru, 825 thousand square kilometres in Bolivia, and the rest in Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and Guyana.

The region is characterized by a high annual rainfall — averaging over 2 thousand millimetres — falling during two rainy seasons separated by drier periods. The vegetation is mainly dense rain forest, including extensive wetlands (almost 600 thousand square kilometres). The Amazon region is also home to some of the world’s largest and most diverse ecosystems.

Because the basin is sparsely populated (25 million people, mainly living in the highlands and on the slopes of the Andes, with a density of only four people per square kilometre) and there is plenty of water available throughout, there have been few contentious issues related to the management of its resources. With the growing drive to build dams and the encroachment of mining operations, this situation is expected to change.

The population density of the rain forest itself is very small, as most settlements are situated along the rivers. The major cities of the basin are Manaus and Belém, with about 1.5 and 2 million people respectively; others include Iquitos in Peru and Santarém in Brazil. The river plays an important role in both transportation and fishing. Travel  between communities of the basin has traditionally been by boat, although lately air travel has also become important.

Land routes are few and, in the heart of the forest, almost nonexistent. Fishing has been one of the main subsistence activities of the population. Thus, contamination of the aquatic bioresources may represent not only a health hazard but also elimination of a source of food and income.

The region is also home to numerous indigenous micronations, which are well adapted to using the forest ecosystems.

Although the destiny of these groups is closely linked with that of the water systems, decisions on basin management are usually made without any consideration of their point of view or interests.

Land policies in Brazil have traditionally favoured the newly arrived occupant, who can prove possession by burning or logging the forest, rather

than native groups who have lived on the land for many generations.

These policies have not changad much, during the last year the elected president Jair Bolsonaro, has imposed new restriction to the delimitation of indigenous areas and new forest fires have erupted reducing the area of the rainforest at the highest historic rate.

An important drive to occupy the region has been promoted by the building of dams, particularly by Brazil, which is the largest country in the area and has defined hydroelectric dam construction as a national strategy. There are plans to build dams at 43 sites on 13 rivers; they will have a generating capacity in excess of 70 thousand megawatts (Mougeot 1988). This “hydro-development” drive is to be concentrated in three river systems: the Xingu (32%), the Tocantins (20%), and the Madeira (15%). A number of dams have already been built, both on the Amazon and in neighbouring basins (such as the Paraná) with similar characteristics. In some cases, disastrous environmental and social effects have been observed (such as in the Tucurui impoundment on the lower Tocantins).

As a result of deforestation, hydrological regimes are already changing throughout the basin. Droughts and floods, formerly unknown, are taking place along many tributaries, and water quality is being affected by the increasing amount of effluent wastewaters entering the rivers from cities and mining operations.

Contamination from mining is related to the establishment of gold mines. Gold is extracted from ore using mercury or cyanide solutions. (In Brazil, the mercury technique is more common.) Both procedures damage the environment.

Cyanide is highly poisonous and mercury becomes concentrated as it moves through the trophic chains and may reach toxic levels in some aquatic organisms that are consumed by the local people. In Japan, mercury poisoning affected the villagers of Minamata Bay in the 1950s, killing 1 382 people (Serril 1994). In the Amazon, mercury pollution is particularly serious in the upper basins of the Madeira, Tapajós, and Xingu rivers, and

there are indications that widespread poisoning may be taking place in some of the most polluted areas. In the fishing community of Rainha, upstream of Itaituba on the Tapajós, tests on the population showed mercury levels far in

excess of the 6 ppm maximum accepted by the World Health Organization. Similar data were obtained in several other locations. In the Madeira River basin, hazardous levels were found in the fish-eating Kayapo communities.

Continuing mining operations are expected to increase the environmental and human health effects of mercury contamination further.

With deforestation and indiscriminate occupation, the apparently invulnerable Amazon ecosystem is deteriorating, and this is not only affecting its inhabitants but also the population of the world at large. It will not be easy to address the many issues that are producing these changes in the Amazon basin. New policies will be required in many areas. Land

allocation rules and recognition of the land rights of indigenous peoples should be reviewed. Migration to the region must also be checked through adequate policies. The environmental and social impact of hydro projects should be strictly and independently evaluated to ensure that no further ecological destruction takes place. Finally, any strategy will have to take into account not only the interests of the distant industrial metropolises but also the views of the people who live in and suffer most from pollution of the Amazon: the indigenous nations who have managed their

land in a sustainable way for innumerable generations.

The chaná-arawak linguistic family, a surviving memory in southern America

Danilo Anton

The Arawak family can also be called Chana (or Chane) due to the frequent use of this word or similar ones by some Arawak peoples to self-designate. This family presents a marked differentiation between their dialects or closely related languages ​​(much more marked, for example, than the Tupi-Guarani or Namkom-Chaco languages).
This would indicate that it is an older linguistic family, with a rather prior immigration to the Guarani or Namkom.The Arawak log is one of the largest in the Americas, distributed from the Caribbean to the Rio de la Plata.
In northern South America and the Caribbean, it includes the Goajira, Taina, Piaroa, Arawak proper, and several dozens of languages.
In the south of the continent belong to the Arawak family, the languages ​​of mojos, baurés, chanés (all of them in the present territory of Santa Cruz, Bolivia), chaná-guaná, terena and peasantry of Mato Grosso and almost Surely the language of the chaná timbu and chaná mbeguá of the region of Paraná, among others.
Although the Arawak languages ​​show remarkable divergences that indicate their genetic antiquity, they still present clear similarities at the phonetic, grammatical and vocabulary level.

An unexpected chaná speaker

Blas Jaime, born in Nogoyá, Entre Ríos (Argentina) has expressed himself as the last speaker of the language Chana, to be transmitted by mother and female., His knowledge of the language is surprising, given that it was thought for a long time That the language had been extinguished more than 150 years ago.
But the Chana language was resistant to death.
Some facts: Blas Jaime explains for example that: timú is pigeon, the son; ata is the water, ata ma is the river, "water that walks" and vanatí ata, the children of the river (the streams). A lake is ata renderé.  Beada is mother and beadá a is the Earth.
The tree is the son of the Earth, vanatí beada, and its branches are called palá as the arm of man or the oar  
Yogüin is the fire, vanatí yogüin  is smoke, which would be the "son of the fire" the one that makes cry the person who is burning 
And then: "Tijuinem is God, tijuí is the father, nem is the spirit, taé it is bad, oblí is cute, good, the soul is ancat, death is ña, sweet spear (flying death), opatí maa, the family, opatí maá is the village,  he continues.
To say, "a lightning bolt fell", mari depoti,  to fish, ña ichi, to hunt, ña mbaratá. The chana will say ocó aratá reé ña ichí, to advance that at night will not fish, but in fact that expression does not fit in that aboriginal culture because chana do not fish at night, it is forbidden by the "son of the sun".

He continued: to the otter we say emu emu (nmu nmu)"; to the vizcacha, curí, and terrá is everything that is cave, caverna; mbiní is the bird. atic is the leather, he continued. He also stated that inchalá  meant brother (as in Charrúa language).
These are some examples of his memories. 
The linguists who analyzed these contributions, have confirmed the authenticity of these idiomatic data.
For all of us, those who inhabit these Southern lands that were his, it is an obligation not to let this valuable memory be lost in the future.