D. Indians

Numbering about 3,000, the Indians form a significant group and, today, constitute one of our main pastoral concerns. They form a series of groups among which we can highlight as the most notable the Paumarís, Jamamarís, Apurinás, Yumas and Catuquinás. Being many groups, and not so high the number of individuals, it can be concluded that these groups are not very numerous. Due to the resemblance that appears between several of these groups, it can be concluded that they have, a common origin.

The wars between them, the struggles for survival, the need to look for new lands and other rivers for their agriculture and fishing, possibly forced them to divide and thus formed new groups.

We also have Indians without names, such as those discovered or found a couple of years ago. They don’t speak Portuguese, we don’t understand their language, we don’t even know their name. At the moment we have baptized them with the name of the river where they live: Coxoduá and also, for the easiest, New Indians. [Editor’s note: refers to the tribe recently contacted at that time and whose current names are Zuruahã, Suruahá or Suruwahá].

The semi-civilized Indians, although they generally live more or less grouped among themselves and separated from the non-Indians, have a good deal of communication with them and, little by little, are adopting their customs. Their houses are similar, they dress like them, they wear wristwatches, they buy record players, records, tape recorders, they love music and they even get drunk to be more like non-indigenous people.

The non-indigenous population has humiliated and humiliates and despises the Indian so much that he feels ashamed of being an Indian; hence his eagerness to resemble non-indigenous in everything, to be treated like them.

Those still isolated are already different, judging by what has been observed in our New Indians. They live in a common house for the whole group although, within it, each family has its own corner, without partitions or separation from the other families.

All they have is for all. The chief distributes the jobs and then everyone eats what some have hunted, fished or grown. They don’t know salt, sugar and oil, and they eat meat and fish roasted or cooked in water, nothing more.

Ordinarily they all walk around naked, sometimes covering their sex for some unknown reason with leaves or fabrics that they make of vegetable fibers. They sleep in hammocks made by themselves, also made from tree fibers.

They are very clean and bathe a lot. The mothers bathe their little ones, filling their mouths with water and pouring it forcefully in the form of a shower over the body of the creature, while they rub and clean it with their hands.

They make fire by quickly rubbing two dry sticks together, a task that they do not repeat many times since they try to keep the fire going once lit; They don’t even turn it off at night.

They cover their bodies with substances taken from different plants to get rid of mosquito bites.

In the new tribe there was an Indian who was missing a leg. Through signs, it was believed that he had been bitten by a snake or animal, but it was not known how they cured him and cut off his leg.

All this is known through the coexistence that the missionaries had with them, which was not much. From what they saw and from what they could understand by signs, they drew the previous conclusions.

We will still have to wait a long time to learn their language and thus be able to find out so many interesting things about their life and customs.

The concept of the common is deeply rooted and it seems that it has always existed and in everyone. A few months ago a group of semi-civilized Indians arrived in Labrea. Without speaking to anyone, they went directly to a house that the Prelature has unoccupied and that they surely knew from other occasions. They arrived, took possession of the rooms they found open, and when the person in charge of taking care of the house called their attention, one of the group said simply: your house is my house; and, without further explanation, they continued to settle.

Another day, I was in my room, as always with the door open, when without realizing it I found myself in front of my table with an older Indian and a younger one who turned out to be his son. Without any preamble, the older man lifted his shirt and, touching his stomach, he tells me: hungry.

I explained that lunch time had passed and I didn’t have any food at that time. So, money, was the Indian’s response. I gave him the money and without further ado, he left. He still returned on other occasions to ask for food or what to buy it with.

In one of the visits, he told me that he already knew me and that previously he had been staying at my house for several days when his little son, the one who was with him, had drunk liquid rubber and had formed a ball in his stomach so big that it It was necessary to operate to remove it. I remembered the case perfectly, but I did not recognize the Indian.

I compared the way this Indian asks and that of non-indigenous people, who invent a thousand reasons or lies to move you to compassion. The Indian no. He was hungry, he supposed that I might have something to give him and he asked for it like someone who had every right—and didn’t he?—to my help.

Until recently, our work with civilized or semi-civilized Indians differed little from our work with non-Indians. In missionary forays they go to the missionary for the same thing: baptize, marry, confirm, etc., in the same way as non-indigenous people; and possibly with more affection they were cared for by the missionary.

For a few years now, we have started special work with our Indian brothers, since they are in need of our work. I even dare to say that at the moment, one of our greatest pastoral concerns is the Indians.

It is known that the ancestors of our current Indians were here and lived here when the discovery of Brazil, back in 1500. These lands were theirs and they lived on them, more or less in peace and quiet until the discoverers arrived.

In some parts of Brazil, mainly the coasts, where the Europeans first arrived, they immediately began to persecute the Indians they found, killing them in violent fights when they resisted. They resisted as long as they could, but they always succumbed to the superiority of firearms that either killed them or drove them away, stealing their lands. The survivors took refuge in other places, until the conquerors arrived there again to do the same thing, to persecute them, drive them away and, if they resisted, to kill them. Many died in these fights.

Here, in our region, despite having been heavily persecuted in the days of discovery and conquest, they were living more or less peacefully until the end of the last century and the beginning of the present (XX), when non-indigenous people arrived again, now with the name of rubber tappers. The odyssey of the Indians started all over again.

The rubber tappers, in search of the rubber tree, went deeper and deeper into the jungle, sometimes finding Indian tribes that opposed their advance and tried, by all means at their disposal, to defend their lands. enforce their rights over what they considered and was rightfully theirs.

The fight began again and, as always, the Indian was defeated and pushed further inland, until the rubber tappers also arrived there, to repeat the same thing with the same consequences: the Indian defeated, driven away, or dead.

These encounters between non-indigenous and Indians, perhaps on a smaller scale than before, are repeated today. Not many years ago there were, within the territory of the Mission, horrible massacres of Indians who in turn tried to take revenge, causing deaths among non-indigenous people.

Another type of occupation of our jungle is taking place today with the same consequences of robbery, persecution, extermination and death of our Indians who, in this immensity of land that is theirs, no longer find a place to develop their lives as hunters and fishermen.

Large companies from the south of the country are arriving in the Amazon and, bribing the authorities, obtain titles and property deeds to huge tracts of land without taking into account or caring at all about the Indians, who for thousands of years have been in possession of them. therefore, belonging to them by right of use. They dispatch them to other lands that have already been purchased or will be purchased very soon by other similar firms that want nothing to do with them.

More than two million hectares, obtained this way, has a company in this region. Within that territory, Indians live —and non-indigenous workers as well— who are going to be left without an inch of land on which to live and work.

The Brazilian Church, in this chapter of its history, has always had brave and intrepid missionaries who defended the Indians. There is, among many others, the Spanish Jesuit from the Canary Islands José de Anchieta, beatified not long ago by John Paul II.

It has been in recent years, after the Second Vatican Council, after the meeting of the Latin American episcopate in Medellín and before the meeting of that same episcopate in Puebla, when the Latin American Church, and with it the Brazilian, responsible for its mission that encompasses man not only in what is spiritual, but also in what is material, aware of the injustice, plunder, extermination and death that the Indians are enduring, openly, brazenly, bravely, has come to the defense thereof.

Another type of work that I mentioned above is what must be done with the Indians, before evangelizing them. This work consists of reaffirming, even more, their awareness of the right they have to the lands where they live, teaching them the way to follow and walking with them, showing them the authorities to which they must go when someone arrives telling them that they have bought their land and they have to abandon it; in a word, to defend themselves, when they are in their right, against the power of the usurpers.

There are already several missionary priests who have fallen in this fight; others, foreigners, have been expelled from the country; some, foreigners and nationals, suffer in prisons for the same reason. Notable secular lawyers, simple Christians who, persuaded of the injustice, give themselves body and soul to the defense of their ideals that are confused with the rights of the oppressed. People of Indian ancestry themselves, more civilized, but proud of being Indians, have also fallen in defense of their brothers.

Few in number, insufficient for specifically priestly work, the Augustinian Recollects of this Mission, feeling the indigenous problem, even giving all the cooperation and help that is in our hands, cannot dedicate ourselves to working with the Indians in the manner and dedication that they deserve and need.

The above is the reason why we have brought to the Prelature the lay missionaries of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) and Operation Native Amazonia (OPAN), to work exclusively in indigenous pastoral care.

The vocation of these young people who, abandoning family, homeland, and comforts, dedicate themselves to the humanitarian cause of the Indians, enduring hunger, fever, mosquitoes, rain, heat, and a thousand more sacrifices the environment imposes, is admirable.

They live in humble houses, like the humblest in the place where they work, four sticks and a palm leaf roof built by themselves. They eat what they hunt, fish and cultivate in the free hours that their specific vocation leaves them. From time to time, they appear in the cities, to take a bath of civilization.

I have already noted that the work with the forestry, for the moment, more than evangelizing, is of a social nature. In my anxieties as bishop, responsible for the Mission, I have questioned them more than once about when the work of evangelization should begin. Everything will come in due time and the Indians themselves have to give us the opportunity, is the answer given.

One day one of those missionaries told me that, on any occasion, an ordinary Indian would say to him: Why doesn’t a white man like an Indian? Chase the Indian, kill the Indian… And you, white, also defend the Indian, take care of the Indian, cure the Indian and love the Indian. And the missionary concluded: the occasion to speak to them about fraternity, about love, about God, will be then.

And what do you think about it? Are those missionaries and this bishop right or wrong?

Without intending to, but also without being able to avoid it, I have spoken more than properly about Indians, their problems, their situation, the work we are doing with them. I’m going to see if, before finishing, I tell something typically Indian, interesting and that you might like.

Xingane

Xingané is called, in general terms, any dancing party celebrated by some groups of Indians in our region, including the Apurinás.

I am going to briefly describe what they do when a girl stops being a girl and becomes a woman. They imprison the young woman in a stockade built for the occasion, for three or four moons/months. During that time, she cannot be seen by any man and two women attend to her every need and her food, which they pass through a hole made in the barricade.

Once the time of confinement is over, the festival itself begins, which consists of three days of dances, to the sad sound of their songs and instruments and in real drunkenness.

Once this phase of the festival is over, some men, I don’t know if all of them, armed with whips or sticks, beat the young woman, who is naked from the waist up, sometimes even making her bleed. She can neither scream nor cry, thus demonstrating that she is prepared, that she will be strong, to endure the pains and labors of motherhood.

In the last part of the ceremony, the women arm themselves with torches, brands or anything with resins, light the end of a stick and chase the men to, if possible, burn them, in revenge for the whipping they gave the young woman. Some, above all those excessively dizzy from alcohol, take their good burns, since the women burn them without compassion, in solidarity with the young woman.

With the above, the ritual of the party ends, and the party too. Generally, they do not allow any stranger to the tribe to take part in it or attend as a spectator. Some friend can be admitted sometimes. This was the case of Marta Calovi, an Italian secular missionary who works among the Indians of the Mission, specifically with those who celebrated the festival. It was she who told me. Even when she told me about it, tears fell from her eyes when she remembered the lashes that were given to the poor initiate who writhed in pain, without saying an ouch or shedding a tear. She took part in the party and did her best to catch up and burn some of the executioners, which was not easy to do, she says, despite her best efforts.

Coxoduas [today Zuruahã, Suruahá or Suruwahá]

I am going to lengthen this chronicle a little more with the account of the first encounter of the missionaries with the New Indians.

Fr. Gunter, Astor, Casilda and Heloisa, missionaries among the Indians of this Prelature, saw their efforts to contact the existing tribe in the Tapauá parish crowned with success, their malocas (giant houses) had previously been located from a plane. It was May 7, 1980.

On the difficult path, through the tangle of the jungle, they found large and well-kept crops of cassava, corn, bananas and fruits from the region. There, very close, in sight and within reach of them was the giant maloca in which they could hear children’s voices. When they approached the house they found no one.

Certain that their missionary adventure was nearing the end, they left axes, machetes, and necklaces made by Indians from other tribes there, in the maloca, and returned to camp.

On the eighth, at eight in the morning, when they were finishing breakfast, without knowing how they had appeared, they found themselves surrounded by no less than 40 Indians, all men, naked, strong, healthy, and armed with bows and arrows. Neither the Indians spoke nor understood Portuguese, nor did the missionaries understand anything the Indians spoke.

Very soon the Indians stripped them of all their clothes and with machetes, possibly the same ones they had left the day before, began to cut the hair on all parts of their bodies. As soon as some served as barbers, others turned the camp upside down. In this review they found some scissors and, curiously, they changed the machetes for the scissors and continued cutting their hair.

The Indians were surprised and did not understand how the missionaries, two men and two women, used four hammocks to sleep on. They understood less where the missionaries had gotten the milk they were drinking. They approached the missionaries, squeezed their breasts and, using signs, tried to explain that nothing was coming out and nothing could come out, because they were girls, young ladies and not mothers. The missionaries showed them the cans of powdered milk and liquefied it in front of them.

Father Gunter, German, tall, much taller than the rest of the group, presumably, was considered the leader and, rudely, was pushed and separated from his companions and taken aside. Positioned with his back against a tree, he sincerely believed that his last hour had arrived, that he was going to be shot, when the chief of the Indians, with the bow armed, positioned himself in front of him about four meters from him.

The missionary heard and saw that the arrow had been shot, but felt or saw nothing in his body. In a split second, he said, he thought it was all a test the group was being put through to see his intentions. He didn’t make the slightest suspicious gesture, despite having a shotgun in his hand.

Recovered from the fright, with the greatest arrogance that the situation allowed, he advanced and friendly, but strongly, squeezed the chieftain’s hand, a gesture to which the Indian responded in the same way while smiling. Father Gunter handed him the shotgun, indicating by gestures that it was a gift that he was making. The chieftain received the shotgun and without even looking at it, without making a gesture of anything, he threw it into the river.

From that moment on, the attitude of all the Indians changed completely, and they began to be friendly. They recorded part of their conversations on a recorder, which they later listened to with the admiration that is to be expected. They also took many photos that, unfortunately, were not very good, because of the film that seemed to be old or damp.

All the Indians were almost naked; I mean, almost, because they all had their penis covered in a sheath made with leaves or tree bark. They wanted to put one on Fr. Gunter, but since it was not easily accommodated, they gave up the attempt.

At two in the afternoon the missionaries were invited to leave with the recommendation, that they could return and when they did bring more axes, machetes and also dogs, which they tried to identify by imitating their barking.

Unfortunately, due to a violent malaria that attacked Heloisa, the missionaries had to return to Labrea. Someday they would return and see how to try to work with them.

The fact that they knew the use of the axe, the machete and the scissors indicates that, although “savages”, they knew these instruments. Insistently asking for dogs implies that either they have had them or have seen them, and the gesture of throwing the shotgun into the river, without further ado, suggests or imagines encounters, certainly not peaceful, with a group of non-indigenous people who used them.

In fact, our first concern for these Indians, the search for their location, which we did by plane, is due to the fact that some rumors had reached us about the existence of wild Indians in those parts.

All this and much more, we will know over time, when we learn their language and they learn ours.

The missionaries returned the second time. The first thing the Indians asked was about the dogs that, as a preventive measure against the spread of any disease by the Indians, the missionaries did not want to take. It is not known if for this reason the missionaries were received very badly and could only be with the tribe for half an hour.

They returned a third time, they brought the dog, they were very well received and they stayed with them for three days, they slept in their maloca, they say that they always felt very closely watched, and they ate the food prepared by them, although unwillingly.

At the moment that I am writing this, five missionaries, two priests and three lay people, are traveling there again. If all goes well, they carry intentions and preparations to stay with them for several months. On this trip, as on the previous one, the missionaries carry a communications device with which they talk to us here in Labrea every day.

The Indians, and mainly those who do not have much communication with non-indigenous people, do not know many of our diseases and if they get infected with any of them, as their body has no defenses against them, many may die if they do not arrive on time to treat them. There have been cases where a simple flu has decimated entire tribes. Measles is another disease that kills them most easily.

When it comes to syphilis, it is said that the white man does not civilize, but rather “syphilizes” the Indian [Editor’s note: in Portuguese both words sound almost identical]. In fact, syphilis, until recently unknown among them, has wreaked real havoc.

In our New Indians, although I said that they are strong and healthy, the missionaries noticed that they were missing many teeth and those that still remain are very bad; possibly they chew coca or other leaves with the same destructive power, which abound in the jungle. They don’t know about the contraceptive pill, but they know leaves and roots that produce the same results and they use them.

Indians are very fond of children and small children, to whom they will never do any harm. A few years ago, in the parish, almost in the city of Tapauá, two groups of Indians fought with shotguns; From one side to the other they let the children flee and hide in the jungle doing nothing to them.

Contrary to what I have just stated, but without trying to retract what I have said, a few months ago, here in Lábrea, a policeman killed a young Indian; His father, blind with rage, went with other Indians to the policeman’s house to kill him. not finding it, he or someone of the group killed a little son of the policeman and he almost killed the other one too if the comrades hadn’t stopped him by telling him not to do anything to the children, that they weren’t to blame. In any case, one swallow does not make a summer and I would even dare to say that the Indians of the sad story imitated the defects of non-indigenous people due to their long contact with them.

Some of our Indians, as happens with the rubber tappers, work under the orders of the bosses. This is one more circumstance in which they are wickedly exploited. Rubber balls, work of several days or weeks, articles of their particular craft that are highly appreciated and worth very good money, are exchanged for a bottle of brandy, taking advantage of the fact that the Indian likes the drink very much.

By government law, it is forbidden to sell intoxicating drinks to the Indians, but you know, each law has its trick or one is sought.

Many of the non-indigenous have a true aversion to the Indian, whom they call a bug, an animal, with contempt, without any consideration. Many not only show that they do not care, but that they are happy with the situation and death of the Indians.

As I write this, a group of missionaries is engaged in an enterprise that, if it is no longer risky, is not without its dangers in traveling, first by boat, then by motor canoe, then by rowing canoe, and finally on foot; dangers with the great risk of malarial fevers and other diseases, danger perhaps, in the encounter with the Indians themselves and who they try to help and do good.

From here I accompany you with my prayers. Join yours to mine, so that everything goes well, and God in the name of whom the work began, will bring it to a good end with his grace and his light.

[Editor’s note: Currently the Zuruahã have a registered indigenous reserve of almost 240,000 hectares with 171 inhabitants. On the map below, the central area of the reservation]

 

Tsorá, god of the apurinás

Yakonero was the most beautiful, hard-working, and good Indian of all those who inhabited the Apuriná tribe. Single, young and beautiful, more than one Indian of marriageable age, felt their heart beat for her, they would strive to outdo everyone in warfare, in hunting and fishing prowess, to one day deserve be chosen as Yakonero’s husband.

Virtuous and admired, none of her companions, young like her, felt the tortures of envy so typical of that age and they all tried to imitate her so that one day they could win the will and heart of some young, brave warrior and distinguished worker.

One day, to the astonishment of the entire tribe, Yakonero appeared with unmistakable signs of being pregnant. Her parents, saddened by the fact, wanted to find the cause of her sadness and the shame of her daughter that she refused to uncover. For that, they painted her black and the one who appeared painted black the next day was the sun.

Harassed by questions from everyone, parents, tribal chiefs and companions, Yakonero confessed that, indeed, it was the sun that had made her pregnant, using the michingana, the wooden joint that the Indians used to inhale snuff ( xinha).

From the first days of her pregnancy and every day with greater clarity, Yakonero feels that the being or beings that live and grow in her womb, move, agitate, as if fighting against imaginary enemies.

She herself, in her intimate, experiences crazy, irresistible impulses that push her to the jungle to look for the best materials for the manufacture of bows and arrows for the men of her tribe. She spends her days in the jungle, looking for those materials and making those weapons.

One day, Yakonero gets lost in the jungle. After a long walk, she does not find the right way back and ends up in a neighboring tribe of Indians, but enemies. To the luck of Yakonero, the wandering and lost Indian: the men of the tribe are absent from the town, dedicated to hunting, fishing or who knows, perhaps engaged in warlike feats with an enemy tribe.

The women, received Yakonero with friendship and affection and took care of her with love. She is calm, happy and grateful, and tells her whole story, from before she got lost in the jungle.

The wife of the chief of the new tribe and with her all the women, decide to hide Yakonero before the men return and work to dispose of their spirits in her favor. To hide it from her, they choose a tree with thick branches and help the young Indian woman, who is about to become a mother, climb.

The position, the fatigue of the days in the jungle and, above all, her upcoming maternity, produce tremendous vomiting in Yakonero, precisely when a group of men, in the shade of the tree, rest from the fatigues of the day.

Yakonero is discovered; they send her down; After finding out where she came from, she is sentenced to death, despite the pleas of all the women, her benefactors and friends.

Before killing her, they opened her belly, tore off the fetal bag, which, when thrown away, hung from the branches of a small bush. The next day, someone saw that inside the bag something was shaking and moving. They pick it up, open it, and inside it they find five creatures that they adopt and raise, since the Indians are incapable of harming a creature. They put the names of: Tsorá, Orotá, Ichirabotsá, Yurikián and Ikipan.

The children of the virgin mother who one day came to know the story of their progenitor grow up. As adults, they decide to avenge the death of their mother and declare war on the tribe that had taken them in and raised them. They fight bravely, but the difference in numbers settles the fate of the war in favor of the tribe. In the fight, Orotá, Ichirabotsá, Yurikián and Ikipan died heroically.

Tsorá, seeing himself alone, understands the uselessness of continuing to fight and flees. Wandering and lonely through the jungle, like his mother one day, he comes to find, with more luck than her, with his tribe of origin to which he tells his story, the story of his brothers and his mother.

The Apuriná tribe receives him as a hero and proclaims him their chief. Tsorá leads his men to a thousand victories against his enemies. As an old man, he dies surrounded by the affection, admiration and respect of his people who see with admiration how after death, his body is taken up to the heights, until it is lost among the clouds of heaven.

Since then, Tsorá has been the god of the Apurinás, to whom he infuses his warrior spirit that keeps them in their struggles to preserve their freedom without voluntarily submitting to any other people.

The Apurinás until today demonstrate their bravery, fighting spirit and love for their independence. But it seems that not even the spirit of their god Tsorá is enough to get them victorious in the fight of the moment, in defense of their lands.

Help me ask our God, capable of everything, so that the right of the oppressed indigenous peoples be recognized, that justice be done to them so that they can live their lives, calmly and in peace.

NEXT PAGE: E. Rubber tappers

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