Encarte Women Among the Kuiláro — Living side by side in the Alto Xingu are Kanb Aruak and Tupi language groups BRUNA FRANCHETTO while coexisting In a dense relational network of exchange the vanous villages Translation by CHRISTOPHER PETERSON still maintain their respective territorial political linguistic and cultural identities This article systematizes scattered The reader MI find a story told in a literary ethnographic observations on women and personal rather than academie style womanhood sexes and sexuality among stitchtng together fragments from vanous the Kuikuro a Kanb people from the Alto sources excerpts from my field diary Xingu recorded on the fringes of another drawings narratives songs conversations study of a different nature with different My narrative sequence is a rather objectives ' The Alto Xingu region located isomorphic tracing of myworking and living in the State of Mato Grosso constitutes an expenence as it unfolded In an indigenous ecological political and cultural unit the village of some three hundred inhabitants result of a long history of migrations and from 1976 to 1982 Along the way I adjustments by vanous indigenous peoples gradually lost my ninai feeling of oddness who ended up forming an intertnbal and as both a foreigner and a woman An multilingual society shanng many elements initially and rogynous being ended up being of social organization and cosmology drawn into a female Identity constructed in the contradictory space between a woman on this side and another woman 1 My research was and is of a linguistic nature and — the objective of the field work camed out over the that was feeling her way around on that course of a year and a half was to document side Once there my need for ennotional descnbe and analyze lhe Kutkuro language one of survival drove me into an apparently the vanants of Alto Xingu Kanb My PhD thesis was an archa te feminization together with a ethnolinguistic study proper where in addition to refusal of or reaction towards a woman structure I consider values and uses of the language in lhe social and cultural context This research being who (once again apparently) would not have been possible without lhe support crudely revealed what we on this side of the Program for Graduate Studies in Social identify as marginalization inferionzation - a Anthropology at the Museu Nacional/UFRJ lhe suffenng conditton Finally I discovered the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq) and lhe Ford Foundation I continue with lhe Kuikuro village women themselves once having today and I continue to learn with and about them achieved a basic connmand of their and lhe peoples of lhe Alto Xingu I thank Vanessa language through conversations and my Lea for the invitation to participate In lhe Working labor at understanding words expressions Group she coordinated on gender In lowland South narratives songs - In short my discovery of Amencan indigenous socleties at the 19th Meeting of lhe Brazilian Anthropology Association (Univers, a women s collective and its power dada Federal Fluminense Rio de Janeiro March Beyond the desire to share a woman s 1994) where I presented a preliminary version of the singular expenence In the specific context data and ideas contained In this article and where of an indigenous society this essay adds I had lhe opportunity to hear cnticism and suggestions I ciso thank Cecília McCallum and ethnographic and reflective elements to Carlos Fausto for their contnbutions an anthropological discussion of genders ESTUDOS FEMINISTAS 225 N 1/96 the result of an increasingly sophisticated inscnbed in my body they accepted me literature abounding in recent years I thus among them In their terntory while never suggest(bywayof conclusion)whcitonemight failing to constantly re-situate me on the call an alternative reading of the mythical/ fringes of womanhood Thus I could ritual complex of the Jamunkumalu the traverse and occupy some male spaces Hyper-Women seen asthefemale voice that were forbidden to the women the - that of the Kuikuro women expounding pathways on the central village grounds on the theme of difference hierarchy and and the kwakutu the central house of the complementanness between the sexes male collective where the men meet teul stones and histories rest far removed from Among the men observing the women the family and domestic domam n and The first phase of my living expenence in where they prepare for and develop the Kuikuro village was marked by solitude feasts sacred and profane rituais I and the harsh feeling of being outside the moved about equallyamong the domestic fringes of a society inwhichlwasabsolutely areas of the houses the huge Xingu houses foreign and strange The Kuikuro placed arranged in a circle around the vast cen me in the surreal position of anandrogynous tral plaza not having my own space I being At night certain dreams from my could enter ali of them both free and adolescence would reappear fantasies locking a center with no reference except of androgyny and hermaphroditism my own little nook a hammock a sleeping Distant from the women who eyed me bag a few boxes a guest imposed and with distrust since they did not speak my received with certain careful calculations language nor I theirs 1 was stuck among as to material and symbolic prestige the men under their contrai because of adopted into a family in a pantomime of the goods objects giffs that I possessed protection and control In time I ended and was expected to distribute or cede up having powerfu) brothers sisters little by little Distant distrusting women (women)friends who waited patiently for and nearby distrusting men defined my my metamorphosis and a severe ambiguous ridiculous frightening Identity explonng and hopelessly distant mother A solitary individual like the owners of Finally identified fictionally as the member spells I hada woman svisible and obvious of a family I ended up being identified bodily traits yet they were covered realistically as the member of a faction disguised by clothing I had male traits and gained some cilhes and enemies manifestations of some power emanating faithful and coherent as such to the very from the world of whites and traits of end At the same time 1 never faleci to be incomplete mutilated femaleness a a woman for the men who always hagy2 an old woman according to the reminded me of what I could not do for system of age categones and the fact that not being and being at the same time 1 had no children marned but without a intellectual limits ( women have hard husband alone stenle exiled To the heads ) which made the aiready difficult women i was a pseudo-woman beyond work of my learning process even harsher reach from the other side of a borderline limits to freedom (there were forbidden To the men I was a pseudo-woman rather spaces and times like those of the paje- disgusting for not being a fullwoman rather lança or shamanic session which I was desirable for having something female supposed to either avoid altogether or traverse with a keen awareness of the nsks involved) insurmountable limits of the body ' The Indigenous terms are written using the spelling (blood smell) Outside of my nook/refuge established for the Karib vanants (Kuikuro Kalapalo Maitupu and Nahuqua) The Alto Xingu lndians are my hammock I always felt on the verge of undergoing an incipient literacy phase in both their nothingness at the edge of an abyss (or on mother tongues and Portuguese top of an open tower in the middle of a ANO 4 226 1° SEMESTRE 96 storm another recurrent theme in my body which has aiready displayed the , dreams/nightmares In the village) forms of a work of sculpture in living fiesh There are two definitive charactenstics of The hair must grow black and shiny until it being a woman among the Kurkuro (and hides the face and back The skin must be not only among them) blood essentially kept perfectly white in the darkness of menstrual blood and a particular smell reclusion from which the young girl is only unmistakable exciting and disgusting allowed to leave for a few minutes in the dangerous for men and individuais In early evening or when she presents herself threshold situations (transformations in in dances at the height of rituais- exhibitions initiation and disease the integrity of the of her beautrful body and gradual previews wrestler and the paje or shaman) of her return to society as a woman literally Menarche is an unavoidable fact in a made Her legs are painstakingly modeled woman s life marking a cntical passage in her knees and ankles bound with embira fibers biological and social life a metamorphosis or cotton string for her calvos to swell up taking place dunng a penod of pubescent tumescent and round overly highlighted reclusion 3 When a woman menstruates between the upper and lower furrows Her for the first time she is defned collectively body is beautiful white and fat her thighs and publicly as masope (from matso to and buttocks fat for months the recluso menstruate with a nominalizing and tem- has her physical activity reduced to a poral suffix added she who has already minimum Regular scanfication ingestion had menstrual blood ) is removed from of emetics and observation of dietary social visibility for a penod varying from restnctions associated with blood - several months to two years depending interdiction of fish the basic source of on her family group s expectations and proten in the Alto Xingu diet- helpfabncate status Physically invisible in a protected the body/person maintaining a balance surrounded nook