Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
greedy corporations and big time landowners, that plant mostly soybeans, rice, and
cotton, and raise cattle for export.
Tseredzaró follows closely in the footsteps of his father, Lucas Ruri'õ, the head
teacher of the bilingual elementary school at the Idzô'uhu Village, sponsored by
Funai - the Fundação Nacional do Índio (National Indian Foundation). Lucas,
who teaches both in Portuguese and in Xavante, got his teaching degree at the
Universidade Indígena em Cuiabá, the capital of the state of Mato Grosso. I first
met him in 1978, when he moved from Sangradouro to the Kuluene Indigenous
Land, when he heard I had been hired to open a school at the Ri'tubre Village. It was
because of this experience, and my kinship association with the Xavante of Kuluene,
that I was invited in 2000 to work in Sangradouro. Luca's father, Adão Top'tiro, and
his brothers had made a difficult decision to form a brand new village, the Aldeia
Idzô'uhu, severing their ties with the Salesian Catholic missionaries in 1995. The
missionaries controlled the lives of about 1,000 Xavante living in poverty in the
Aldeia São José, next door to the Salesians' colonial-style prosperous quarters. This
meant that Adão Top'tiro and his extended family, composed mostly of his sons,
their wives and children, would have to do without the missionaries' commodities
and hand-me downs, which the Salesians received from Funai to distribute among
the local communities. Liberation from the missionaries meant that the Xavante of
Idzô'uhu would have to assume responsibility for their own schooling, health care,
source of potable drinking water, and means of economic development.
In the next section I go back in time, reflecting on my experience as a young
school teacher in Kuluene, which set the tone for the work I did decades later, in
Sangradouro (see Chapter 6).
BACK TO THE RESERVA INDÍGENA KULUENE IN 1978
Most of the Xavante men and women I met on the Kuluene Indigenous Reservation
in Central Brazil in the late 1970s had been well trained at Catholic boarding
schools, such as the one in Sangradouro, and by Protestant missionaries working as
instructors in Xavante schools in the 1960s and 70s. While the women could sew and
embroider beautiful dresses and prepare exquisite cakes made out of industrialized
wheat flour and refined sugar, the men were skilled at raising cattle and working on
mechanized rice fields that covered the community's once lush and fertile territory.
The 1,500 Xavante of Kuluene seemed content about the opportunities created by
wage employment on nearby farms and cattle ranches. They were eager to show me
- their recently hired Portuguese and mathematics teacher - their progress in keeping
track of their household budgets. Neatly handwritten price lists of industrialized
products were brought to school and elaborate calculations were performed in an
attempt to figure out why the Xavante owed store-owners so much money that their
debts always seemed eternal. The people also wanted to understand how Funai
distributed its scarce goods and resources, such as tools and seeds, to Xavante
villages under its jurisdiction.
