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CHIQUITANO   
photo: Joana A. Fernandes Silva

Others names:
Chiquito

Where they are:
Mato Grosso (no Brasil) e Bolívia

How many people:
2.000 (in Brasil, in 2000)
and about 40.000
(in Bolívia, in 2000)

Language:
Chiquito

The Chiquitano people was formed by the amalgamation of different Indigenous groups put together in villages of Jesuit missions in the 17th Century. Living in the region of the border between Brazil and Bolivia, they were compulsorily dragged into political conflicts and cultural differences caused by a territorial division they had nothing to do with. The large majority of this people is in Bolivia. Those who live in Brazil have been exploited as cheap labor by landowners, who also represent a constant threat of invasion of the few territories left to them. But the Chiquitano have been struggling for the right for an Indigenous Land of their own, which is in the process of being identified by Funai, and that may ensure the continuity of their cultural identity.

Joana Aparecida Fernandes Silva
Ph.D. professor in the Department of Anthropology ICHS/UFMT (Instituto de Ciências Humanas e Sociais da Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso)
and of the Department of Social Sciences of the UFG (Universidade Federal de Goiás)
bfmaia@zaz.com.br

José Eduardo Moreira da Costa
Specialist in Social Anthropology and Indigenist of Funai/Cuiabá
theoedu@zaz.com.br

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