Quando a terra é dinheiro, a natureza é território: uma investigação histórico-geográfica de povos indígenas no Médio Xingu, 1950-1980

Abstract

The research deals with historical-geographical research on the process of territorialization of indigenous peoples in the Middle Xingu during the 20th century. The method of the geographical situation is elaborated, as delimitation, at the same time physical and relational, coming from a concrete subtotality temporally marked by the incidence of events whose technique is considered the main vector. The situation thus allows the definition of both a scale of events and a scale of concepts. Still accepting the subjects' actions in a central way in their methodological structure, it is observed from the author's previous coexistence with the indigenous peoples to the interlocution with the memories and biographies of the sertanistas and "gateiros" auxiliaries. In order to update the geographical situation, the combined use of the historical or colonial situation was made from the field of historical anthropology. In this way, the events circumscribed the different situations which represent the historical framework with which the indigenous trajectories interact. The first event is the opening of highways from the second half of the twentieth century on the Tocantins-Xingu inter-fluvial, the main ones being Belém-Brasilia, opening in 1955, and the Transamazônica highway, begun in 1970. The second event , arising from the first: the monopoly of the land. Beginning in the second half of the 1970s, "land" has become a reserve of value for the great capital of the Xingu Valley. Before looking at the historical movement of space, the intention is also to approach the understanding of an indigenous spatial dimension. From "keys" of interpretation from an existentialist ideology, to the extent that it considers an existential indigenous structure embedded in perpetual becoming, which makes its "meaning" also understood under the perspective of this becoming. In addition, it is through reading the content of space, the Structure, from where it is expected to reveal the territory, or the conjuncture, thus allowing to reach the totalizing understanding of the geographic object. This research demonstrated that the movement of indigenous peoples, which corresponds to flight and the search for refuge zones, was not limited to an inexorable spatial delimitation. The zones of refuge were established as the colonization progressed. In addition, what later was admitted like territory or Indigenous Land is a portion of the space much smaller than that of use and occupation of these towns. Thus, in the present plan of events and analysis, indigenous appropriation and movement for space essentially presented itself as a possible search for isolated spaces of colonial violence as well as the risk of epidemics. The escape to the centers of the earth thus indicates past experiences of contact with the colonial population and the subsequent triggering of outbreaks and widespread mortality of populations. Finally, contrary to pursuing a precise metric that establishes rigid territorial units, in the mold of the concept of "private property," the study demonstrated a clear need for understanding of space-society concepts based on knowledge of the use and significance of indigenous peoples, in the face of the historical movement of total space