Can once-violent tribe shine light on gangs?
Story-Date: 04:39 a.m. PST Monday   , December 1, 1997

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Can once-violent tribe shine light on gangs?


By Fay Fiore
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- It was in the 1950s that anthropologists first identified
the tiny Waorani tribe near the Amazon River in Ecuador as the most
murderous people on Earth.

Virtually no one lived to old age. Entire families were routinely wiped out
with 9-foot spears. And the notion of killing a child was no more abhorrent
than the notion of killing a snake. A staggering six out of 10 Waorani
deaths came at the hands of another Waorani.

In a new book, an anthropologist who spent years studying the tribe asserts
that today's urban gang violence is no less routine.

"Killing a non-gang member for a pair of sneakers or a leather jacket is as
easy and inconsequential for a gang member as it was for a Waorani to kill 
. . . for an ax or a machete," writes Wichita State University professor
Clayton Robarchek in "Waorani: The Contexts of Violence and War."

But after generations of killing to resolve the smallest conflict, the
Waorani changed, convinced by missionaries that less violent behavior had
benefits. Virtually overnight, the murder rate in the tribe of 700 fell by
more than 90 percent.



A modern moral

Robarchek, whose book was recently unveiled at a conference of
anthropologists in Washington, holds that this near-miraculous
conversion offers a lesson for an urban America struggling to end gang
bloodshed.

"The blood vendettas between the Upriver and Downriver Waorani are mirrored
by those between (such U.S. gangs as) the Insane Crips and the Junior
Boys," Robarchek writes. "The Waorani deserve much closer examination,
particularly in view of the fact that they were able very rapidly to
transform their culture of violence."

Robarchek said the two jungles, as he calls them, are similar in what they
each lack -- a community acting as a moral force more powerful than
personal impulse. In neither the Amazon nor most U.S. cities was there an
obligation to any group other than a small, territorial band whose members
knew only one way to get what they wanted -- violence.



An attention-getter

Several Los Angeles gang experts dismissed Robarchek's theory as "a
stretch." Still, after years of battling a Los Angeles County gang
culture that is the nation's largest and most violent, even the most
skeptical experts found something compelling about the tribe's saga.

The Waorani story began 40 years ago when five missionaries landed along
the Curaray River in an attempt to save the murderous tribe from itself.
They were speared to death as soon as they got off the plane.

Two relatives of the dead missionaries went to finish the work, Robarchek
said. Because they were women, they presented no threat and were spared.

The Waorani lived in small bands of 10 to 20 blood relations and all those
outside the group were real or potential enemies.

Once the missionaries made contact, it was not talk of a punishing God that
changed the Waorani. It was recognition of the benefits -- trade, a better
selection of spouses -- that the tribe missed out on as band killed band.
The Waorani warmed to such advantages almost immediately, and the killing
virtually ceased.

Robarchek points to the successes of the Black Muslims and charismatic
Christians as models that gave their members a sense of accountability to a
larger society -- the same kind of loyalty that gangs inspire, but with
non-violent values.

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