Political relations - expressed in rituals, in body painting and, principally, through an intense factionalism - are based on a series of rights and duties stipulated by kinship relations. They are also guided by the contextual articulations of factions with the diverse non-indigenous agents of contact present in the region (the Indigenist Missionary Council, the Attorney General of the Republic, the state government, the municipal prefecture, the National Indian Foundation, the Baptist Mission, etc). The Xerente factions - which are groups of individuals (consanguineal and affinal kin) who give their support to one (or more) indigenous leaders - live in constant competition, seeking political dominion of each one of the villages, as well as of communication and articulation with the other non-Indian agents. This dynamic generates divisions, increasing the number of villages and chiefs, and, as a result, new political, social, and cerimonial arrangements are formed. To get an idea of this dynamic process, up until 1988, there were nine Xerente villages. Today there are 33. However, such alterations do not necessarily involve the rejection of kinship ties, nor do they put in check the internal unity of the group. The political roles with greater authority are the chief, the shaman, and members of the council of elders (wawes).

New forms of political leadership have been gaining ground among the Xerente, such as coordinators of associations and indigenous teachers. In political-institutional terms, the Xerente had a councilman in the municipal council of Tocantínia during the legislative period from 1992 to 1996. Due to inexperience and local anti-indigenous political pressures, there was a very great distance between the elected councilman and the Xerente, which led the group to temporarily discredit this type of initiative. Nevertheless, in the municipal elections of 1996, only a few more votes were needed to elect two Xerente candidates as councilmen in Tocantínia. The more than 600 Xerente voters (between men and women), have a decisive importance in local party politics. There are denunciations on the part of indigenous leaders that the electoral process (voting and, especially, the counting of votes) is manipulated to their detriment. The non-Indian residents of Tocantínia show by "jokes" that they are afraid that this municipality - encrusted in Xerente territory - may become the "first indigenous municipality of Brazil". The first direct experience of the Xerente with indigenous associations - the founding and operating of the Xerente Indigenous Association (XIA) from 1992 to 1995 - relied on the political assessment and direct economic support of the local CIMI, in partnership with an NGO from Luxemburg, the BRIDDERLECH DEELEN. In its nearly four years of operation, the Association implemented a series of economic projects that included all of the villages, which facilitated the beginning of Xerente autonomy from the complicated local network of political and economic relations. The Association closed at the end of 1995. Various Xerente leaders state that one of the principal motives for the end of the XIA was also related to local political pressures. From 1998 on, the Xerente - by then more experienced in relation to this type of organizational form - founded three new indigenous associations, each of which brought together specific nuclei of villages closest to each other in terms of political, cerimonial and spatial relations.