Return to Tonantins: The Plot Thickens
While we were busy with the photographic reenactments, the sun was drawing nearer to the horizon and the shadows drew longer. Our motorcycle drivers had returned and were awaiting our return to Tonantins.
Following a group photograph and many handshakes and farewell greetings with the inhabitants of Sao Sebastiao, we were on our way. I was sitting behind the same driver as on our outward journey, a young woman by the name of Clara. While she had been remarkably silent on our way toward Sao Sebastiao that morning, the opposite was the case now. Over the noise of the motor, she initiated a conversation.“How was your day?” she asked with a smile.
“Wonderful! What a special place. People were very friendly and welcoming. I learned a lot today,” I responded, my entire being in the midst of processing the events of the day and the many details I was already struggling to hold on to until I could eventually write down notes upon my return to Tonantins.
“I don’t like these people so much. They are claiming they own this place.”
As it turned out, according to Clara, the people we had just spent the day with in Sao Sebastiao were claiming title to a tract of land with reference to being recognized as indigenous Caixana. Like many other nonindigenous residents, she was nervous that this would have a negative impact on her and her family, who had established their house on this land decades ago. She feared her family would be forced to vacate their property if the inhabitants of Sao Sebastiao were successful in their claims. Her family had lived in the area for generations, as was the case with many other nonindigenous families. As Clara was explaining the situation, I was clinging on to the speeding motorcycle, and the landscape with all its houses under construction immediately took on an entirely different meaning. So did the events that had transpired during our day in Sao Sebastiao.
“Perhaps the extremely welcoming interest of the inhabitants we met was connected to their ongoing negotiations of indigenous status?” I remember asking myself amidst the cacophony of thoughts trying to find their place in my mind at that very moment.Upon our return to Tonantins as the sun was setting, I relayed Clara’s story to Edson. We agreed to investigate these rumors, and over the following days, we managed to gather more information on this issue, which turned out to be a rather complex matter. The people we had met in Sao Sebastiao were engaged in a longstanding legal dispute over recognition as a separate indigenous group with rights to the land. Such legal recognition of their indigenous status depended on being recognized as having their own defined language and belief system—as expressed, for example, in a creation myth Saoctioned or verified by scholars—in addition to a documented historical attachment to the contested area. Contrary to neighboring groups such as the Ticuna and Miranha, the Caixana had neither “their own language” nor “their own creation myth,” and their traditions had not been recorded by visiting scholars, such as linguists or anthropologists.
According to the information we were able to gather from people in Tonantins, this case had been ongoing for years and was now nearing its final stages, and a decision was pending. From what we gathered, the presumed Caixana had seen their “habitat” increasingly encroached by outsiders, in addition to experiencing a rising resentment toward them. From official documents, we were able to understand that even in the case of being formally recognized as indigenous, the Caixana would not be able to govern the area. Rather, it would put a halt to new construction and regulate the number of inhabitants in the concerned area. Other similar cases of contested Caixana claim to indigenous status and land were reported across the Medio Solimoes River (Chaves, 2018; Faulhaber, 1987; Kohlhepp, 2002; Lima and Alencar, 2000).
Oliveira (1998) has argued that such processes of territorializaςao (territorialization) represent a process of social reorganization in which “culture” and the relation to the past are continually re-elaborated and negotiated between affected communities. Such processes of territorialization of indigenous people, Chaves writes with reference to Almeida (2008), are the result of a “combination of factors involving the capacity to mobilize around identity politics and a game of strength in which social agents, through their organized expressions, create mobilizations and claims vis-a-vis the state” (Chaves, 2018, p. 12).Surely our arrival in Sao Sebastiao was a welcome addition to this complex situation for the Caixana. Now, the Caixana had copies of the photographs of Albert Frisch, who presumably passed through their area documenting their (presumed) ancestors 150 years ago. And they also had ample documentation—films, photographs, sound, etc.—of a team of anthropologists visiting them with this very material and making new photographs. This could turn useful in their ongoing negotiations and claims to indigenous status. But why had they not told us about this when we visited them? Perhaps they took it for granted that we would know all of this already? After all, we were scientists. Or was it that it was not important? Or, indeed, that they were intentionally silencing it? What mattered was that they could make use of us in very specific ways so as to articulate their demands within the legal framework that governed their future and that emphasized historical and cultural consistency?
At a small restaurant on the riverbank, Edson and I opened a beer to accompany our rice, fish, and chili. Darkness had settled on the Solimoes, and the mosquitos were voracious. What were we to make of this? we asked ourselves, as we had done so many times in the past weeks of journeying in Frisch’s wake 150 years on.