Up the wooden gangplank in a single-file line, nearly an entire Indigenous village squeezed onto the Aquidaban’s front deck.
The Tomárahos had taken the boat downriver to vote in Paraguay’s national elections, and then had slept outside for four days, waiting for the Aquidaban to take them home.
Now, more than 200 of them squatted on overturned buckets, crowded on hammocks and sprawled on the floor.
No one was quite sure how many life jackets were aboard, but just about everyone was sure the Tomárahos outnumbered them.
“Ever since I was a kid, there was always the Aquidaban,” said Griselda Vera Velazquez, 33, a craftswoman in the Tomáraho village, where there is no road.
Persons:
“, ”, Griselda Vera Velazquez
Locations:
Tomáraho