Amazonian Exchanges: Txema's Lessons with Outboard Engines
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IRSR INTERNATIONAL REVIEW of SOCIAL RESEARCH Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012, 173-190 International Review of Social Research Amazonian Exchanges: Txema’s Lessons With Outboard Engines, Mosquito Nets and Images Bárbara Maisonnave ARISI• Federal University of Santa Catarina ISCA - Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology University of Oxford Abstract: This article provides an ethnographic analysis of lessons given by an Amazonian Indian elder called Txema concerning transactions of objects and images. Txema has lived until 1978 in the Amazon as a hunter and farmer in very small communities spread in the forest mainly avoiding conflict with non-indigenous people. The Matis established contact with the Brazilians in 1978 and now Txema deals with British TV crews and researchers. This paper brings detailed information on how Txema transacts many objects like outboard engines and mosquito nets for images and care. Values are discussed in those transactions. Drawing an ethnographic description as the way to achieve reflection, this paper tries to show a close approach to what kind of transformation a lot of industrialized objects provoke in an indigenous community. Material culture exchanges are closely related to values and Txema teaches us what is valuable for this elder Amazonian man. Keywords: value, economy, transaction, Amazon, Pano, Matis. ‘The outboard motor you brought us won’t last long but the images you take will last for ever’, said the tribal chief [Txema Matis] knowingly to Parry, while also making it clear that he and his people were underwhelmed by film crews asking them to go native for the camera.’ (Flett 2007, The Guardian newspaper) The Matis indigenous people live in the had had sporadic relations with non- Terra Indigena Vale do Javari, located in Indigenous outsiders until they made the Amazon forest, the second biggest contact with the Brazilian government indigenous land in Brazil with 8.5 in 1978. Men and women who told me million hectares, close to Brazil, Peru their memories from when they use to and Colombia triple border. The Matis live as ‘isolated Indians’ - as the media •email: [email protected]. Barbara M. Arisi (PhD in Anthropology) currently holds a post-doc position at NIGS - Núcleo de Identidades de Gênero e Sexualidades (Sexualities and Gender Identities Group) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. This research was funded by CAPES, FAPESC/CNPq, Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia Brasil Plural, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina and Núcleo de Transformações Indígenas (NuTI/ Pronex). Her PhD dissertation was directed by Dr. Oscar Calavia Saez from the Federal University of Santa Catarina and co-directed by Dr. Laura Rival from the University of Oxford. Acknowledgments: My thanks go to Sandra Rubia Silva for the careful editing and to Carlos Carvalho for the help with the images. Special thanks to the Matis for accepting me and for all the care they offered. © University of Bucharest, February 2012 174 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012 and the Brazilian government use to made starring the Matis, spreading call them (Arisi, 2007) - are the same their images in the world. who in 2009 negotiated to perform One of the recent films with the monkey hunting and animal parties Matis people was part of BBC’s with a South Korean and a North series Tribe, made by the famous UK American TV crew. journalist Bruce Parry. The epigraph The Matis work hard in the economy of this paper is a comment written by of their culture and the exchange of the journalist Kathryn Flett (2007) on goods, technology and knowledge with Parry’s work that was published in foreigners. This is not new for them as The Guardian, an English newspaper. while hunting, farming, gathering, and Flett reproduces a dialogue recorded living their lives in the forest, they have in the documentary, where Txema, a always been participating in global Matis elder, confronts Parry with the networks of trade. The Matis have differences in values he attributes to always been exchanging with forest the images captured by him versus the dwellers such as animals, different outboard engine, the counterpart, one indigenous groups, loggers, rubber of the payments agreed with the Matis tappers and the tsussin (vital forces, to let the cameras document their lives. disencorporated potencies that for the This brief Txema’s discourse shows Matis circulate in the many layers of how much the Matis worry about the cosmos) (Arisi, 2011). This article the economy that they are involved focus on two lessons given by Txema, in, exchanging with foreigners their the elder, concerning mosquito nets beauty, their knowledge and their and outboard engines. images. What kind of stuff and In order to introduce the Matis quality of relationships can pay for community recent history in summary, that? ‘Stuff’ is understood here in it is enough to mention that, in less than Miller’s (2010) broad sense, objects 30 years; the Matis made their official that make us, small things that can contact with the Brazilians and entered encompass ‘intimate relationships’, in full speed in the whirlpool that comes ‘material objects are viewed as an with all the usual transformations integral part and inseparable aspect brought by this sort of event. They of all relationships’ (Miller, 2008: faced sickness and death. They got 286). What do the Matis want from some access to new medicines and foreigners? What kind of stuff are different food. Industrialized objects they interested in from the world that such as machetes, axes and pans were exists outside their villages and the obtained in a larger scale, on a smaller huge forest? What is Txema teaching scale they got other technological us when stressing the impossibility of items like 16 mm rifles, outboard paying back things for social relations? engines, generators, solar panels, converters and more recently mobile phones and digital cameras. Soon, film makers disembarked to shoot them in the forest. Many documentaries were BÁRBARA MAISONNAVE ARISI Amazonian Exchanges: Txema’s Lessons | 175 Figure 2. ISA/CTI map of the area Figure 1. Map of the Amazon biome. studied. Source: adapted from Arisi, Map: Frank Koopman Cesarino and Francisco (2011: 7). Industrialized goods and other made. Decisions not only about their Indigenous people in Brazil life style, but also about their staying away from the many new people that entered their territories. Invasions After 1978 contact, together with the increased by the rubber booms during tragic demographic debacle and the the First and Second World Wars and arrival of a few foreign film makers, later on by the logging activities. I journalists and Brazilian workers, the suspect that in many aspects the Matis biggest novelties and transformations are similar to other Amazonian groups that occurred in the Matis economy like, for example, the Huaorani. were due to the huge amount of They are indigenous people that industrialized stuff that came to play an live in Ecuador and choose trekking important role in their lives in the last as their way of living, according to thirty years. Almost all of the artifacts Rival (2002). She sheds light on the the Matis had before 1978 were made ‘correspondences between Huaorani´s by themselves, such as their weapons particular mode of subsistence and use (four meter long blowpipes, arrows and of the forest and their system of social bows), household objects (ceramic pots alliances based on a strict closure of and water containers, palm tree bags the Huaorani social world onto itself, to carry fruits or fishes, hammocks), as well as on the partial isolation’ adornments (bracelets, earrings, (Rival, 2002: 178). collars, nose pendant), tools (paddles), So, to continue following the communication instruments (calling/ changes that a lot of industrialized hunting ceramic wooden horns), etc. stuff brought to the lives of the Matis, The men used to dress with a natural I would like to point out that a debate fiber string holding the prepuce and about ‘primitiveness’ should take into sometimes body painting. The few account that nomadic trekkers living in industrialized tools they had were small groups ‘may represent cultural metal axes and knives, probably traded and political choices already present in with or stolen from neighboring Indian preconquest values and social forms’, groups, loggers or rubber tappers. as Rival suggests. That is important Of course, this autonomous life was to stress because the majority of the partly a result of choices the Matis had 176 | IRSR Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2012 people are strongly prejudiced against and worries but also pleasures these Indigenous people, based on a very sort of fast track historical events and old fashioned evolutionary mindset the arrival of industrialized objects that considers that people living with have brought to them. less are also ‘less’; so maybe a lot of Gordon (2006) studied the spreading people would erroneously consider that of industrialized goods among people living the way the Matis used Amazonian indigenous communities (or use) to live were primitive. I shall in a new approach, different from digress just to make this point more the theoretical perspective common clear, because ideas about ‘primitive’ in the studies carried out in the 70’s societies have been changing lately due and 80’s that considered indigenous to the ecological movement activists’ transformations as acculturation. Many discourse. Many environmentalists academic books published in the last now consider that humanity is very decade in Brazil present ethnographies close to an enormous environmental that tried to follow the indigenous crisis, so they now call ‘primitive’ associations and to understand people living in industrialized cities that indigenous theories about their contact go on consuming without considering with the non-indigenous collectives the scarcity of our planet´s resources. from an indigenous perspective It also became common to consider (Gordon, 2006; Andrello, 2006).