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Thought to be extinct at the turn of
the 1940s, when news of their movements through the region
became scarce, the Indians known as 'Arara' in the valley
of the middle Xingu returned to prominence with the construction
of the Transamazonian highway at the start of the 1970s.
The section which today links the towns of Altamira and
Itaituba in ParáState passed within a few kilometres
of one of the large villages where various Arara subgroups
came together during the dry season. The road cut through
swiddens, trails and hunt camps traditionally used by
the Indians. What had already been a small population
was separated by the "road for national integration:"
its main carriageway, borders, crossings, access trails
and clearings formed barriers impeding the passage of
the Indians through the forest and imposing limits on
the traditional interaction between their subgroups, which,
living dispersed across the territory, used to be conjoined
via a cohesive intercommunity network.
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The eventual success of the lengthy process
of attraction, from February 1981 onwards, after more
than a decade of frustrated attempts to make contact,
found some of the Arara subgroups already disunited and
scattered apart. At least four of these subgroups to the
south of the new highway, close to the 120 km point, joined
together in order to confront the non-indigenous penetration
of the territory. Another subgroup to the north, isolated
and in constant flight, was contacted in 1983 with the
help of those contacted two years earlier. Yet another
subgroup was contacted in 1987, already living far apart
from the remainder, separated from the others for reasons
internal to the Arara people, but increasingly more isolated
and confined to the more deserted corners of the territory
due to the avid occupation and economic exploration of
the indigenous area. This last subgroup was perhaps the
one submitted to the most dramatic post-contact situation,
which still continues today due to the lack of official
definition of the areas allocated to the Arara. |
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01:: photo: Moreira Mariz
02:: photo: Carlos Namba, 1981
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