Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
director of the Parish's educational program, Father Dídimo de Campos Filho, whom
I interviewed on July 17, 2001, told me that his program taught young, unmarried
Xavante men to masturbate in order to “liberate sexual energy so they don't go around
having sex with every women in the village.” Meanwhile, this same director was known
for chasing Xavante girls around and inviting them for private “visits” to his office. The
moralizing efforts of the Salesian missionaries, whose boarding schools most Xavante
in Sangradouro have been forced to attend since the 1960s, also fell upon the people's
socionumerical system. While Xavante kinship relationships relied heavily on tight
social and sexual interactions between men and women, Salesian social life, on the
contrary, praised sexual abstinence.
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It is likely that the single, unmarried missionaries
resented being considered “lonely halves” or
mitsi
- the name for the number 1. One
of the main objectives of the missionary boarding schools was to physically separate
Xavante boys from girls, whose “precocious sexuality”- girls can go through sexual
initiation as early as 8 years of age - outraged the “chaste” Salesian Christians.
Figure 5.8. “100 years of Salesians in Mato Grosso.” The sign, which shows the contours of
the original boundaries of the Mato Grosso state, central Brazil, depicts “wildlife” before
Catholic colonization. Poster posted on the walls of the church at the Paróquia São José, on
the Sangradouro Indigenous Land, 2003.
