Kryýgi, the Aché girl returned to her ancestral land after 120 years
BY MIGUEL H. LÓPEZ FOR DEBATES INDÍGENAS
The Aché people inhabited the vast eastern jungles of Paraguay for centuries. Their history is marked by bloodshed and dispossession. Kryýgi's life did not escape this dynamic: after her family was murdered, her name was changed to Damiana, she was forced to work as a maid and then was taken to Argentina. When she reached adolescence, she was admitted to a neuropsychiatric hospital where she died of tuberculosis. The condition of her remains was not the best. While her skeleton was lost in the La Plata Museum, her skull ended up in a German university. A century later, the Aché people managed to reconstruct her body and return it to the jungle from where it should never have left.
