Indigenous peoples of Brasil

The Tupiniquim nation, struggling to keep its identity

The Tupiniquim nation is located in the state of Espirito Santo in coastal Brazil and it is composed of the remnants of a much larger ethnic group, perhaps of several hundred thousand people. Now they are about 3,000, have lost their language, but keep awareness of their history and traditional culture.

Recent history of Tupiniquim

The few authors who wrote about the Tupiniquim note that the 1960s were decisive in the alteration of the land panorama, marking the arrival of the Aracruz Florestal in the region, followed by the progressive expulsion of the Indians. The ordeal of the Tupiniquim gave rise to a few protests. When studying the different eco-systems of the State of Espírito Santo in 1954, the biologist Augusto Ruschi saw in Caieiras Velhas, on the left bank of the Piraquê-Açu River, "80 Tupi-Guarani Indians" living in an area of 30,000 hectares of virgin forest. In 1971, Ruschi deplored the manner in which the flora and the fauna was being destroyed, with the deforestation affecting the Indians, since more than 700 families, among Indians and posseiros, had been removed from the region that had been ‘reforested’ by the Aracruz Florestal. Ancient Tupiniquim villages such as Araribá, Amarelo, Areal, Batinga, Braço Morto, Cantagalo, Guaxindiba, Lancha, Macaco, Olho d'Água and Piranema were destroyed. Today the Indians still recall the scenes of violence and disrespect that they were submitted to in the areas Aracruz Florestal wanted.

In 1975, Funai – Fundação Nacional do Índio (National Foundation for the Indian), the successor of the SPI – recognized the presence of the Tupiniquim in Espírito Santo. The administrative process of identification of the indigenous lands had plenty of conflicts, giving rise to several denunciations by Indians, associations and various other organs. The complaints referred to the losses caused by a 1980 agreement between Funai and Aracruz Celulose (an affiliated of Aracruz Florestal), when the limits of the three Indigenous Lands were established; they reached their highest point in 1983, when the areas were homologated.

The Drum dance

Even the older Tupiniquim cannot remember matrimonial rules or any other norm of kinship different from the present ones, whose prescriptions are identical to those of the rural, non-indigenous regional population. Of their ancestors, they inherited the fear of using the ‘indigenous language’, totally lost in scattered reminiscences. The grandparents of the present-day Tupiniquim ‘knew the language’, but did not use it because they were threatened if they did; thus in the beginning of the 20th Century it stopped being taught to the young. The older Indians still mention the língua, the Indian who, because he was able to speak well both Portuguese and the indigenous language, was a translator and thus received the guests and talked to the forest Indians who came to the village to take part in the Dança do Tambor, or Banda de Congo (Drum Dance, or Congo Band), in the religious celebrations.

In 1951, the researcher Guilherme Neves identified, among several Congo bands, the members of the Caieiras Velhas band, made up of descendants of the Indians who founded them in Santa Cruz back in the 19th Century.

The religious celebrations took place on the days of São Benedito (St. Benedict), Santa Catarina (St. Catherine), São Sebastião (St. Sebastian) and Nossa Senhora da Conceição (Our Lady of the Conception), and last two or three days. The Indians cut a tree in the forest to made a post and the Capitão do Tambor (Drum Captain), decorated with a stick and a headdress, commanded the band, which went from house to house inviting the Indians for the dance. At the occasion, the women prepared a beverage, coaba, made of fermented cassava, while the men played, as percussion instruments, the cassaca (an anthropomorphic reco-reco, a musical instrument consisting of a length of bamboo with transverse notches cut into it and over which a wand is rubbed to produce a rhythmic sound) and the tambor (drum) proper, made of hollow wood covered with leather.

These rituals used to place in Caieiras Velhas, Pau-Brasil and Comboios, and there was an exchange between the first two, since the Indians crossed the forest to participate in the festivities. Today the Dança do Tambor is performed only in Caieiras Velhas.

In the old times, the Capitão do Tambor had prestige and was also regarded as a curandeiro or rezador – shaman or quack healer - by the other Indians. The Tupiniquim declared themselves Catholic; the Pentecostal churches came to the region recently, but attracted several Indian families to their denomination. Only the local Capitão do Tambor had ascendance over the families of a given village, being responsible for passing on their cultural traditions. The Dança do Tambor reinforced the exchanges and the symbolic integration among the Tupiniquim. It was the ‘residual culture’ that gave support to their resurgence, enabling the Indians to establish a cultural distinctiveness that identified them against the regional population not as ‘wild’ Indians, a representation that used to be quite common, but rather as caboclos (‘civilized’ Indian) Tupiniquim.

From the struggle for the demarcation of the Tupiniquim indigenous lands in the 1970s comes to the scene the cacique (chief), a social category that expresses the new articulations established among the Indians, who before recognized only the Capitão do Tambor. The figure of the Conselho Comunitário (Community Council) appears at the same time as the cacique. The councils of the villages, through the Tupiniquim and Guarani leaders, along with the respective caciques, had an active participation in the demarcation works of the Indigenous Lands. The struggle for the increase of their territories has produced a formal political organization, called Comissão de Articulação Tupiniquim e Guarani (Tupiniquim and Guarani Articulation Commission), but it is the daily, immediate problems – deforestation, depleted soils, planting, lack of assistance – that maintain the cohesion between the communities and their leaders, strengthening the disposition for demands in all villages.