Congratulations to alumnus Lucas Bessire (University of Oklahoma) on winning the Gregory Bateson Book Prize from the Society for Cultural Anthropology and the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology Book Prize for Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life (University of Chicago press, 2014).  

Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life
In 2004, one of the world’s last bands of voluntarily isolated nomads left behind their ancestral life in the dwindling thorn forests of northern Paraguay, fleeing ranchers’ bulldozers.  Behold the Black Caiman is Lucas Bessire’s intimate chronicle of the journey of this small group of Ayoreo people, the terrifying new world they now face, and the precarious lives they are piecing together against the backdrop of soul-collecting missionaries, humanitarian NGOs, late liberal economic policies, and the highest deforestation rate in the world.