Indigenous Struggle At The Heart Of Brazil

DIVHow the Xavante Indians have reshaped the Brazilian government & rsquo;s policies of nationalism and assimiliation./div

Indigenous Struggle at the Heart of Brazil examines the dynamic interplay between the Brazilian government and the Xavante Indians of central Brazil in the context of twentieth-century western frontier expansion and the state’s indigenous policy. Offering a window onto Brazilian developmental policy in Amazonia and the subsequent process of indigenous political mobilization, Seth Garfield bridges historical and anthropological approaches to reconsider state formation and ethnic identity in twentieth-century Brazil. Garfield explains how state officials, eager to promote capital accumulation, social harmony, and national security on the western front, sought to delimit indigenous reserves and assimilate native peoples. Yet he also shows that state efforts to celebrate Indians as primordial Brazilians and nationalist icons simultaneously served to underscore and redefine ethnic difference. Garfield explores how various other social actors—elites, missionaries, military officials, intellectuals, international critics, and the Indians themselves—strove to remold this multifaceted project. Paying particular attention to the Xavante’s methods of engaging state power after experience with exile, territorial loss, and violence in the “white” world, Garfield describes how they emerged under military rule not as the patriotic Brazilians heralded by state propagandists but as a highly politicized ethnic group clamoring for its constitutional land rights and social entitlements. Indigenous Struggle at the Heart of Brazil will interest not only historians and anthropologists but also those studying nationbuilding, Brazil, Latin America, comparative frontiers, race, and ethnicity.

DIVHow the Xavante Indians have reshaped the Brazilian government’s policies of nationalism and assimiliation./div

How do the lives of indigenous peoples relate to the romanticized role of "Indians" in Brazilian history, politics, and cultural production? Native and National in Brazil charts this enigmatic relationship from the sixteenth century to the present, focusing on the consolidation of the dominant national imaginary in the postindependence period and highlighting Native peoples' ongoing work to decolonize it. Engaging issues ranging from sovereignty, citizenship, and national security to the revolutionary potential of art, sustainable development, and the gendering of ethnic differences, Tracy Devine Guzman argues that the tensions between popular renderings of "Indianness" and lived indigenous experience are critical to the unfolding of Brazilian nationalism, on the one hand, and the growth of the Brazilian indigenous movement, on the other. Devine Guzmán suggests that the "indigenous question" now posed by Brazilian indigenous peoples themselves-how to be Native and national at the same time-can help us to rethink national belonging in accordance with the protection of human rights, the promotion of social justice, and the consolidation of democratic governance for indigenous and nonindigenous citizens alike.

Chronicling the dramatic history of the Brazilian Amazon during the Second World War, Seth Garfield provides fresh perspectives on contemporary environmental debates. His multifaceted analysis explains how the Amazon became the object of geopolitical rivalries, state planning, media coverage, popular fascination, and social conflict. In need of rubber, a vital war material, the United States spent millions of dollars to revive the Amazon's rubber trade. In the name of development and national security, Brazilian officials implemented public programs to engineer the hinterland's transformation. Migrants from Brazil's drought-stricken Northeast flocked to the Amazon in search of work. In defense of traditional ways of life, longtime Amazon residents sought to temper outside intervention. Garfield's environmental history offers an integrated analysis of the struggles among distinct social groups over resources and power in the Amazon, as well as the repercussions of those wartime conflicts in the decades to come.

How do the lives of indigenous peoples relate to the romanticized role of "Indians" in Brazilian history, politics, and cultural production? Native and National in Brazil charts this enigmatic relationship from the sixteenth century to the present, focusing on the consolidation of the dominant national imaginary in the postindependence period and highlighting Native peoples' ongoing work to decolonize it. Engaging issues ranging from sovereignty, citizenship, and national security to the revolutionary potential of art, sustainable development, and the gendering of ethnic differences, Tracy Devine Guzman argues that the tensions between popular renderings of "Indianness" and lived indigenous experience are critical to the unfolding of Brazilian nationalism, on the one hand, and the growth of the Brazilian indigenous movement, on the other. Devine Guzman suggests that the "indigenous question" now posed by Brazilian indigenous peoples themselves--how to be Native and national at the same time--can help us to rethink national belonging in accordance with the protection of human rights, the promotion of social justice, and the consolidation of democratic governance for indigenous and nonindigenous citizens alike.

An engaging, innovative history of Brazil's black and indigenous people that redefines our understanding of slavery, citizenship, and national identity. This book focuses on the interconnected histories of black and indigenous people on Brazil's Atlantic frontier, and makes a case for the frontier as a key space that defined the boundaries and limitations of Brazilian citizenship.

Preacher, politician, natural law theorist, administrator, diplomat, polemicist, prophetic thinker: Vieira was all of these things, but nothing was more central to his self-definition than his role as missionary and pastor. Articles in this issue were originally presented at a conference, “The Baroque World of Padre António Vieira: Religion, Culture and History in the Luso-Brazilian World,” Yale University, November 7–8, 1997, commemorating the three hundredth anniversary of Vieira’s death.