VIOLENT MORTALITY IN THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE “PATAXÓ FROM BAHIA”: A POST- COLONIAL DEMOGRAPHIC APPROACH Rafael Posada - Department of Demography – CEDEPLAR/UFMG Vanessa Ferreira - Department of Demography – CEDEPLAR/UFMG Kevin Santos – Department of Education – Fae/UFMG Leidiane Souza - Department of Education – Fae/UFMG This work was developed with the support of CNPq and CEDEPLAR/UFMG XXVIII IUSSP International Population Conference in Session “Health and mortality in indigenous populations” - 1st November 2017 Abstract: According to WHO (2014) violence and injuries are global public health problems. In Brazil there is a serious problem of homicide and traffic accident mortality, which affects mainly the poorest areas. However, in the Brazilian literature on demography and health, violent mortality in indigenous communities and the effects of colonization on health outcomes have been little explored. Objective: This paper seeks to fill this gap by examining mortality from external causes in the Pataxó community of Bahia, Brazil, from a postcolonial demographic perspective. Methodology: Firstly, a systematic review of the Brazilian literature on the mortality of indigenous peoples was carried out. We then construct a theoretical approach to violence that focuses on colonialism as a social determinant. From the data of SIM (2006-2014) a quantitative mortality analysis was estimated by standardization, and the main causes of violent death were identified. Finally, a qualitative analysis was proposed from the CIMI reports (2007 to 2015) to explain the violent mortality among the Pataxó people. Findings: The results show a high pattern of juvenile and adult mortality among the Pataxó people. External causes were responsible for 16.8% of the total deaths in this indigenous population, affecting mainly men (89.5% of deaths) and people aged 15 to 44 years (76.3% ), and the main causes were homicide and road traffic injuries. The qualitative analysis suggests that colonial alienation can explain partially some kinds of homicide. Keywords: Indigenous, Post-Colonial Demography, mortality for external causes. 1 INTRODUCTION Regarding demographic studies on indigenous populations, Taylor (2009) argues that it is not appropriate to use the classic categories and contexts of demography in an uncritical way to analyze these populations, since such categories and contexts do not necessarily reflect indigenous social structures or their lifestyle. In this sense Taylor still points to an important question: "who is measuring what, for whom, and to what end?" (2009: 125). Trying to answer this question proposed by Taylor, we start saying that in this paper two of the authors are indigenous from the Pataxó group. Thus, we aim not only to write about indigenous communities, but also with them to achieve a postcolonial perspective on mortality from external causes in indigenous communities within the academic population. Another objective is making visible the specific impact of these deaths on the Pataxó community. Mentioning that, now it is necessary to define who is the Pataxó Community. They are indigenous people of the linguistic trunk Macro-Jê, that lives mainly in the extreme south of Bahia (Porto Seguro microregion), Brazil. According to data from the IBGE Demographic Census (2010), the Pataxó totaled 13,588 people; SIASI (2014) reported that this population is distributed in more than 40 villages in the states of Bahia and Minas Gerais, and their sources of income are supported principally by the agriculture, tourism and handicrafts (Grünewald 1999). However, in the pre-colonial period and at least in the mid-nineteenth century, they were a society of hunter-gatherers with nomadic habits (Paraíso 1994). Colonization meant for the Pataxó not only an invasion of their territory, an attempt to acculturation, and exploitation of their natural and human resources, but also the increase in mortality, both due to external causes produced by conflicts with settlers, as well as by diseases infecto-contagioses –sometimes even deliberately– by the latter (Sampaio 2000). Despite the resistance of the Pataxó, several elements of this history of invasion, exploitation and ethnocide, which developed in the colonial period (1500-1815), survived in the imperial and republican period due to the coloniality condition of social structures and the exercise of power. Thus, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Pataxó could 2 no longer move freely in their territory because their lands were limited and partly occupied by the farmers, with whom the relationship was always conflicting. In 1861, by the government's decision, under the justification of alleviating conflicts between farmers and indigenous, the Pataxó were confined to live in a village now called Barra Velha (Ibid.). It is worth mentioning that in 1951 there was a massacre in this village, known as "Fire of 51", which involved the Pataxó in an armed conflict that provoked violent police action to the detriment of the residents of Barra Velha. The Fire of 51 not only reduced the population of Pataxó but also caused the forced displacement of families that have dispersed to other locations in the region of Porto Seguro and even to the State of Minas Gerais (Carvalho 2009). In this way, new villages were formed, and conflict with farmers is frequent for the Pataxó to regain their ancestral territory (Grünewald 1999). Since most of the Pataxó villages are locates in the Porto Seguro Microrregion of the State of Bahia, Brazil, two new elements are added to the violence of a colonial matrix that survives until today: the modern means of transportation and the increased crime in this locality (CIMI 2009 and 2014). Thereby, the structures of violence and crime, as well as the policies of “zero tolerance” that affect both Brazil and the Porto Seguro microregion also end up harming the Pataxó Considering this context, the objective of this study is to analyze, from a postcolonial perspective, mortality from external causes in the Pataxó indigenous people of Porto Seguro microregion, from 2006 to 2014, using quantitative and qualitative data. This paper is composed by four sections. The first, “Background and Significance”, is the result of a systematic review of articles about indigenous mortality in Brazil, which was carried out at Scielo database. In the second section, “The Postcolonial Methodological Approach for Indigenous Violent Death”, we first present a discussion on Eurocentrism embedded in theories and concepts related to the demographic transition and the epidemiological transition, as well as its limitations in the context of indigenous populations. Later, within this section, we propose a theoretical scope to analyze violent mortality in indigenous communities based on colonialism like social determinant of violence. In the third section we describe the data and research methods used, in the fourth section we analyze the results, and finally we present the conclusions. 3 BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE According to Montenegro and Stephens (2006) Brazil is one of the countries within the region of Latin America and the Caribbean that has made the greatest efforts to produce published data and research on the health of indigenous peoples. With the purpose of describing some generalities about the most recent studies on indigenous mortality, it was proposed a systematic review of articles at Scielo database, on June 25th of 2016. This review was done using the keyword search tool with the following key words: indigenous mortality (40 results); indigenous demography and mortality (3 results); population studies and indigenous mortality (1 result), and indigenous population mortality (33 results). All the papers used in this section review were selected considering the appearance of the mentioned terms in title, summary or in keywords of papers published between 2000 and 2016. We excluded the repeated results and those that were not refered to Brazilian indigenous communities. A total of 26 results were found, which may not represent the broad literature on the subject in Brazil, but allow us to describe some generalities about the production of articles in recent years. Some features of the 26 revised articles are described below: (i) Health (34% of the articles), with subtopics of reproductive health, health information, infectious diseases and nutrition; (ii) Sociodemographic profiles (23%); (iii) Suicide (15.4%); (iv) Demographic dynamics (11.5%); (v) Mortality patterns (7.7%); (vi) Infant mortality (3.8%); (vii) Fertility. Regarding the ethnic groups analyzed it is possible to mention that: (i) 34,6% of papers analyze multiethnic contexts; (ii) 15.4% focus on the Xavante population; (iii) 11.5% study general society, but make the cut by race / color; (iv) 7.7% analyses the Kamaiurá; (v) 30.8% other ethnicities. Each one of these last 8 remaining articles address the following groups: Suyá, Xakriabá, Kayabí, Sateré-Mawé, Guarani, Guarita, Hupd'äh- Maku, and the Kaingang. The Brazilian States that are object of the surveys are: (i) Mato Grosso (42% of the works); (ii) Amazonas (27%); (iii) Paraná (11.5%); (iv) Minas Gerais (1 paper); (v) Rio Grande do Sul (1 paper); (vi) Pará (1 paper); (vii) one paper deals with the South and 4 Southeast states as a whole, and another deals with Brazil as a whole. Table 1 summarizes the mentioned results. Table 1 – Classification of revised texts on indigenous mortality in Brazil Theme Year Authors Title Ethnic State Classification Demographic profile of