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THE VILLAGE   
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THE VILLAGE

All the Asuriní currently reside in a single village, located about three kilometres from the shores of the Tocantins river. In 1988, the village was formed by thirty houses, which sheltered the different nuclear families.

The houses are built from caryota rufflepalm wood, used for the walls and flooring, and ubim straw, employed for the thatching and sometimes also for the walls. The architecture of the houses follows the regional pattern, while some are built on raised platforms. Although more rare, some mud hut are also made. Some 4 or 5 years ago new houses were constructed from wood and roofing tiles, paid for by compensation received for the Trans-Cametá road.

Dwellings are usually divided into three areas: living area, kitchen and sleeping area. Found to the rear of the house are small constructions such as sanitary holes. Some dwellings have more than one sleeping area, one for the couple and the other for children, but most possess just one large room where all the family sleeps. This area is used for sleeping and afternoon naps, as well as for performing tasks such as preparing ammunition and mending clothes, which require some privacy or distance away from children.

Most of the time a house's residents remain in the kitchen-living area. Some houses have a kitchen built a slight distance away, usually in a more open construction without side walls. The kitchen contains a raised worktop and a stove, generally built from an arrangement of bricks, wood and clay. Some families formed by younger couples use gas stoves. The worktop is used to prepare game and other food and to clean dishes. These are hung in a window on the outside of the house so that the water does not drip inside the dwelling.

Domestic utensils are kept on shelves or stuck into the thatching of the walls and roof of the kitchen: plates, knives, cutlery, cups, toothbrushes, fishing line, etc. The area also contains the most sophisticated furniture in the house: the tables and chairs. This is the area used for meals and receiving visitors. Visitors may also be received on the patio in front of the house. In terms of domestic objects, the Asuriní also usually own hammocks (and more rarely beds), cupboards, radios, phonographs and, in some houses, television sets.

Houses are built by men who usually perform the work alone. Construction of a new house may be spurred by the age of the old dwelling or by the desire to change location due to reasons such as a fight with neighbours.

The creeks close to the houses are almost taken to be a domestic space, an extension of the village. The women use these creeks to wash clothing and collect water for the houses. This is also where people bathe. Children spend a large part of the day playing in the rivers. Each residential section uses a particular point on the river course. In the areas between the dwellings and the creeks, small swiddens are usually cultivated with maize, yam, potato, banana and pineapple.

The village's dwellings are constructed in a line along the path running from the FUNAI post to the flour cabin - the latter is located on the village outskirts, that is, on the periphery of social space. Certain clusters of houses making up the residential sections are also found along this main path. Each of these residential units possesses a communal patio, generally in front of the oldest couple's house. In day-to-day terms, these patios mark the spaces of interaction at the village's internal level.

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Only one space exists for the interaction of the whole village: the Tekataua - the permanent ceremonial house. It is in this ritual space that the village is enacted as a unit. There is no pre-determined site for building the Tekataua, the only stipulation is that it must be built with its front facing the east, where the Jaguar-Spirit resides. Thus its localization refers not to the Social (the village), but to the Supernatural.

The Tekataua is used only on ritual occasions and therefore does not comprise a political space. Political decisions are taken 'informally' within the sphere of the houses, without the village as a unit being activated. Politics is a dispersed activity. Occasionally a meeting between the Indians and one of FUNAI's employees visiting the village may take place in the Tekataua, but it is more usual for this to be held in the vicinity of the FUNAI post.

The FUNAI post amounts to a non-traditional space of social interaction, predominantly involving meetings to discuss matters concerning the indigenist body and the school. The latter involves the social interaction of children from numerous residential sections who would otherwise not live with each other on a daily basis within the village context.

Another non-traditional space is the collective flour house, built by FUNAI. This structure houses the ovens used to toast the flour, the manioc grinder, the grater and the tubular manioc presses. Traditionally, each nuclear family or residential section performed this task in its own space. Some families still follow this custom, but only for processing the flour consumed by themselves. Production of manioc flour for commercial ends has entailed the need to use the new infrastructure.

The Asuriní village is structured around residential sections modelled on the uxorilocal extended family. Its paradigmatic composition is therefore the head-couple, their unmarried children of both sexes and their married daughters and incoming husbands.
Each residential section makes up a spatial unit, but above all an economic and political unit. Within these sections there is a regular exchange of foods, co-operation in economic activities, daily living together, and solidarity in moments of crisis, such as illnesses, fights and political disputes.

The residential section usually corresponds to a spatial configuration: clustered houses sharing a common patio. The residents of a section also share the same bathing spots on the creeks surrounding the village. This is a space of daily conviviality mainly for women who spend a good part of their day there washing clothes and eating utensils.

The location of the swiddens usually corresponds to the residential units. The residents of a same section habitually locate their swiddens close to each other. FUNAI's 'community swidden' projects slightly modified this spatial organization since, today, there is a single large swidden of manioc, rice and cacao, intended for commercial production of these crops. However, the subsistence swiddens (dedicated to the cultivation of yam, potato, banana, pineapple and maize) continue to be organized following the logic of the residential sections.

The distinctive feature of these sections is economic and political autonomy. In this sense, the Asuriní village appears to be no more than the juxtaposition of these residential units, which in daily terms operate independently. The only occasion on which the residents of different sections act in conjunction is during rituals. It is as though each residential section comprises its own village. Siblings of the opposite sex have an important role in establishing the continuity between the various residential sections. Though belonging to different units, they maintain a network of informal relations that in practice comprise the connecting link between the sections. It is these relations that, by passing through the distinct residential sections, contribute to the institution of a larger unit, namely the village.

It is also important to stress that the residential sections are fairly fluid; their particular arrangements vary over time. One of the factors behind this re-structuring is precisely the tendency for siblings of both sexes to remain united. Thus, if sister exchange or marriage of sibling sets do not lead to this situation, re-arrangements unforeseen in the formal system may take place.

Whether the head-couple is alive or not is a critical factor in such reconstitutions of a section. While the father-in-law or mother-in-law are alive, they continue to exercise power over their sons-in-law, which is reflected in the maintenance of uxorilocality.
The break-up of marriages, as well as misunderstandings between residents of a section and the wish of siblings to remain united, comprise the more common factors for the re-arrangements of the residential units - they institute a movement toward dissolving uxorilocality.

01. photo: Michel Pellanders, 1987
Lúcia Andrade
Pro-Indian Commission - São Paulo
luciaandrade@uol.com.br
February 1999
 
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