The Indian as Metaphor: politics, history and modernism in the Amazon in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Abstract

This paper discusses the constitution of Indigenism in Amazonia in the twenties. Using various news articles from that period as departure point, it looks at the way images on Indians were manipulated, in particular the ones portraying the Urubu-Kaapor and Tembé who were then going through a pacification process. Beyond those simple news lied the dispute on the fate of the Indians in the region whose main actors were german ethnographer Curt Nimuendaju and intelectual Jorge Hurley from Para. Through this polemic, both engaged in a political reflexion and in the definition of an historiography for the ongoing construction of Brazil's national identity and the future of its social formation.