My archival research was carried out in the headquarters of CIMI in Brasilia and in its regional branches in Cuiabá, Belém, Manaus, and Campo Grande; the Centro Burnier, in Cuiabá, where the archives of former Jesuit missions of Mato Grosso are hosted; and the Tia Irene Community Center in Sào Felix do Araguaia (Mato Grosso). I thank their very helpful staffs. I also conducted interviews with historical missionaries and lay missionaries in Brazil and Paraguay: Msgr. Pedro Casaldáliga, Bartomeu Mélia, S.J., Thomaz de Aquino Lisboa, Egydio Schwade, Renato Athias, Egon Heck, and Nelo Ruffaldi. 1 want to thank all of those named here. For reasons explained in this article, this study partly relies on their important corpus of oral memory. Finally, I thank the two anonymous reviewers of The Americas whose informed comments significantly improved this article. All of the translations and their imperfections in the article are mine.

1. Assembléia de Chefes Indígenas, Diamantino, Mato Grosso, 1974. Available at the CIMI Library, Brasilia.

2. de Certeau, Michel, “The Indian Long March,” in The Indian Awakening in Latin America, Maternes, Yves, ed. (New York: Friendship Press, 1980), pp. 113–127.Google Scholar Moura e Silva, José, Jesuítas em Mato Grosso do Sul, Rondónia e Mato Grosso (Cuiába, Mato Grosso: unpublished, 2003), p. 143.Google Scholar At the same time, Moura e Silva, to my knowledge the only surviving observer of the first assembly, thought of it as a failure and called it “an imitation” of an assembly (ibid.). A reading of the minutes leaves little doubt that the preparation was insufficient. Some participants were seemingly unaware of the purpose of the event. The comparison between the early contemporary indigenous movement and historical figures of armed indigenous resistance to colonization in Brazil is recurrent in activist and scholarly literature, although the former, in principle a social movement, relies on the “peacefulness” of means and methods used to articulate demands and confront the state. For example, see Heck, Egon and Prezia, Benedite, “500 anos de resistencia e luta,” Povos indígenas: terra é vida (Sào Paulo: Atual Editora, 2002), pp. 10–41;Google Scholar Prezia, Benedito and Hoonaert, Eduardo, Brasil indigena. 500 anos de resistencia (São Paulo: FTD, 2000);Google Scholar Hoonaert, , “Da importancia das Assembléias Indígenas para os estudos brasilciros,” Religiâo e Sociedade 3 (1978), p. 177–187;Google Scholar Bicalho, Pollane Soares, Protagonismo indigena no Brasil: movimento, cidadania e direitos (1970–2009), (Ph.D. diss.: Universidade de Brasilia, 2010);Google Scholar Ortolan Matos, Maria Helena, O processo de criaçâo e consolidaçâo do movimento pan–indígena no Brasil (19701980), (M.A. thesis: Universidade de Brasilia, 1997);Google Scholar Moonen, Frans, “O movimento indígena no Brasil: mito ou realidade?,” Cadernos Paraibanos de Antropologia 1 (1985), pp. 25–41;Google Scholar and Ossami, Maria Castro, “O papel das Assembléias de Líderes Indígenas na organizaçïo dos povos indígenas no Brasil,” Série Antropologia 1 (1993), pp. 1–50.Google Scholar

3. Albert, Bruce, Organizaçôes na Amazonia, Instituto Socioambiental [herafter ISA], Sào Paulo, Google Scholar (accessed January 10, 2014, in English). See also Albert, , “Territoriality, Ethnopolitics, and Development: The Indian Movement in the Brazilian Amazon,” in The Land Within: Indigenous Territory and Perception of the Environment, Surrallées, Alexandre and García Hierro, Pedro, eds. (Copenhagen: IWGIA, 2005), pp. 200–228.Google Scholar On indigenous mobilizations to resist development projects, see Turner, Terence, “Amazonian Indians Lead Fight to Save their Forest World,” Latin American Anthropology Review 1:1 (1989), pp. 2–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. CIMI financed the first six encounters, after which it received some financial support from Oxfam Brazil. See Athias, Renato, Oxfam, trente anos apoiando povos indígenas no Brasil, (Unpublished, 2002);Google Scholar and Temas, problemas e perspectivas em etnodesenvolvimento: urna lettura a partir dos projetos apoìados pela OXFAM (1972–1992), (Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa, 2002).

5. How CIMI chose participants deserves a separate study since it raises questions pertaining to political science, such as legitimacy and political representation. A reading of the assemblies’ minutes, as well as interviews with historical actors, leaves little doubt that the haphazard seems to have been the rule: ad hoc criteria for participation evolved throughout the 1970s and varied from one assembly to the other, with local missionaries liberally interpreting instructions from the central authority. The emphasis on indigenous chiefs was originally a strategy to prevent the destabilization of the political balance in villages amid rapid changes, but participants were labeled “chiefs” or “leaders” rather liberally—many were neither. And, as CIMI soon learned, there was often a tension between its objective to support the traditional leadership and the need for educated participants able to master Brazilian cultural codes. The ability to speak Portuguese became an important criteria when it became clear, after the first assemblies, that some participants could not understand each other. Thus, education took over political legitimacy as the primary criteria for participation.

6. Prezia, Benedito, Caminhando na luta e na esperança: restrospectiva dos últimos 60 anos da pastoral indigenista e dos 30 anos do CIMI (Sao Paulo: Ediçôes Loyola, 2003), p. 47;Google Scholar e Silva, Moura, Jesuitas em Mato Grosso, p. 143.Google Scholar

7. e Silva, Moura, Jesuitas, p. 178;Google Scholar Thomaz de Aquino Lisboa, interview by author, Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, 2009; Egydio Schwade, interview by author, Presidente–Figuereido, Amazonas, 1999.

8. See Belleau, Jean-Philippe, “The Ethnic Lives of Missionaries: Early Inculturation Theology in Mato Grosso, Brazil,” Social Science and Missions 26:2/3 (2013), pp. 1311–166.Google Scholar On Utiariti, see Silva, Joana A.F., Utiariti. A útlima tarefa. Missionários e indios na ocupaçâo do Mato Grosso (Bachelor’s thesis: Federal University of Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, 1999).Google Scholar For a call to an anthropological approach to the mission system and the vast changes it underwent in Brazil, see Shapiro, Judith, “Ideologies of Catholic Missionary Practice in a Post-colonial Era,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23:1 (January 1981), pp. 130–149;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Montero, Paula, “Indios e missionários no Brasil: para urna teoria da mediaçào cultural,” in Deus na aldeia: missionários, indios e a mediaçào cultural, Montero, Paula, ed. (São Paulo: Editora Globo, 2006), pp. 31–66.Google Scholar

9. Burnier, J.B., Proposta de elementos para a reformulaçâo do relacionamento Provincia& missào dependente, July 12, 1976.Google Scholar

10. On state indigenism, see de Souza Lima, Antonio Carlos, Um grande cerco de paz: poder tutelar, indianidade e formaçâo do Estado no Brasil (Petropolis: Vozes, 1995).Google Scholar On the conflict between state indigenism and the emerging indigenous actors, see Ramos, Alcida Rita, Indigenism: Ethnic Politics in Brazil (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998).Google Scholar

11. Bruce Albert, “Territoriality.” There were indigenous organizations prior to 1988, but they were very few and not legally recognized. The first pan-Indian (and short-lived) Union of Indigenous Nations (UNIND) was founded in 1980; just as short–lived was the monoethnic General Confederation of the Tikuna Tribe (Confederaçào Geral da Tribo Tikuna, CGTT), founded in 1982. In 1984, two more organizations were created in Manaus. By 1987, only five such indigenous organizations existed.

12. On the foundation of CIMI, see Suess, Paulo, A causa indígena na caminbada e proposta do CIMI: 1972–1989 (Petropolis: Vozes, 1989), p. 15–19.Google Scholar On CIMI’s ideologies, see Shapiro, “Ideologies”; and “From Tupà to the Land Without Evil: The Christianization of Tupi–Guarani Cosmology,” American Ethnologist 14:1 (February 1987), pp. 126–139. See also Rufino, M.P., “;A missâo calada: pastoral indigenista e a nova cvangclizaçâo,” in Entre o mito e a historia, Montero, Paula, ed. (Petropolis: Vozes, 1996), pp. 137–202.Google Scholar

13. The text is the Declaration of Barbados I, 1971, http://www.nativeweb.org/papers/statements/state/barbadosl.php (accessed January 10, 2014).

14. Suess, Paulo, Em defesa dos povos indigenas (São Paulo: Ediçôes Loyola, 1980), p. 11.Google Scholar

15. See Prezia, , Caminhando, p. 61–62,Google Scholar on what he called “the first crisis of CIMI.” See also Pissolato, E. and de Souza, R.A., “Missào e ciencia: os verbitas e o anthropos no Brasil,” Revista CES (2008), pp. 103–122.Google Scholar

16. For studies on the historical roots of this theology in Brazil, see Deus na aldeia, Paula Montero, ed.; Rufino, Marcos Pereira, “O código da cultura. O CIMI no debate da inculturaçào,” in Deus na aldeia, pp. 235–275;Google Scholar and Belleau, Jean-Philippe, 2012, “Dieu est-il multiculturaliste?” in Le multiculturalisme au concret, Dumoulin, D. and Gros, C., eds. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2012).Google Scholar Belleau argues that inculturation theology has distinct historical roots from liberation theology and preceded it in time. In her early articles, “Ideologies” and “From Tupa,” Judith Shapiro also uses the term “incarnation” and provides evidence of the “radical reorientation away from proselytizing and toward political advocacy.” Shapiro, “From Tupa,” p. 133. Shapiro was, to my knowledge, the first scholar who saw in the contemporary missionary appropriation of indigenous cultural elements a radical refounding of missionary practice rather than a strategy to convert.

17. The mission’s legal name was “Diamantino,” and it is revealing that these missionaries instead used the name of the sixteenth–century century Jesuit José de Anchieta.

18. The participants also included Marcos Xako’iapari, cacique of the Tapirapé village, who attended most of the assemblies in the 1970s. The Tapirapé Indians were an anthropologically extinct people until a group of French nuns and a Dominican bishop, in a rather unprecedented enterprise of anthropological engineering, gathered 47 dispersed Tapirapé in 1952 to “jump–start” a new community. The Sisters of Foucault have been living incultured since then in the Tapirapé village. They are also part of the CIMI network, as their bishop after 1969, Pedro Casaldáliga, maintained strong relationships with both the sisters and CIMI. See de Foucault, Irmàzinhas de Jesus de Charles, O renascer do povo Tapirapé, 1952–1954 (São Paulo: Salesiana, 2002);Google Scholar and Shapiro, “Ideologies,” pp. 130–140.

19. Balduíno, Tomás, “A açâo da Igreja Católica e o desenvolvimento rural,” Estudos Avançados, l5:43 (September/December 2001), pp. 9–22.Google Scholar

20. See Paula Montero, Deus na aldeia, for important ethnographic contributions on the effects of these notions on specific indigenous communities where missionaries have worked in the late twentieth century. Artionka Capiberibe, “Sob o manto do cristianismo: o processo de conversôes paliku,” in Deus na allieta, pp. 305–342, finds that missionaries now orient indigenous communities toward “culture” rather than toward God. See also the spectacular historical and ethnographic study by French, Jan Hoffman, “A Tale of Two Priests and Two Struggles: Liberation Theology from Dictatorship to Democracy in the Brazilian Northeast,” The Americas 63:3 (January 2007), pp. 409–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hoffman French makes the important argument that if the indigenous communities associated with CIMI were to disappear, the very flocks that priests tend to would cease to exist. Since these communities rely on their traditional territories for social reproduction, the defense of indigenous land became central to CIMI; the preservation of cultural identities was essential to the preservation of faith. Novaes, Sylvia Caiuby, The Play of Mirrors: The Representation of Self as Mirrored in the Other (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997),Google Scholar finds that missionaries, who used to demonize native cultures, now embrace them.

21. This conversation was first narrated to me by Egydio Schwade when I interviewed him in Presidente Figuereido, Amazonas, in 1999. The story was later confirmed by Thomaz Lisboa, in an interview by the author in Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, in 2009. Silva, José Moura e, Jesuítas, p. 238,Google Scholar asserts that Lisboa made this proposal during an informal meeting of CIMI.

22. Silva, Moura e, Jesuitas, p. 143.Google Scholar

23. Benedito Prezia, (no title) in Porantim 21:216 (June/July 1999), p. 10. According to the national census of 2010, there were 817,963 individuals who identified themselves as belonging to 230 indigenous peoples. This figure represents about 0.44 percent of the Brazilian population, according to the IBGE census, in Azevedo, Marta, “O Censo 2010 e os Povos Indígenas,” Povos Indígenas no Brasil (São Paulo: ISA, 2011), pp. 45—48.Google Scholar The increase of the indigenous population can be explained by a set of factors, ranging from better counting methods, to better health to ethnogenesis (more people identifying as indigenous than before).

24. Ricardo, C.A., “Debate,” Cademos de Pesquisa, 4 (June 1996) CEBRAP, p. 32.Google Scholar

25. Bahuchet, Serge, Situation des populations indigenes des forêts denses et humides (Brussels: Commission Européenne, 1993), p. 100.Google Scholar

26. Le Bot, Y., Violence de la modernité. Indianité, société et pouvoir (Paris: Khartala, 1994).Google Scholar

27. On indigenous languages in the Brazilian Amazon, see “Línguas Indígenas da Amazonia,” the data-bank offered by the Emilio Goeldi Museum (Belém, Pará, Brazil),

http://saturno.museu–goeldi.br/lingmpeg/portal/?page_id=205 (accessed January 27, 2014) , pp. 81–86. See also Rodrigues, Ayron, Línguas brasileiras: para o conhecimento das línguas indígenas (São Paulo: Ediçôes Loyola Rodrigues, 1986).Google Scholar Portuguese is more widely spoken today in many parts of the Amazon than it was in the early 1970s.

28. See Davis, Shelton, Victims of the Miracle (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

29. Ferraz, Iara, “Résistance Gaviào: d’une frontière l’autre,” Ethnies 11/12 (1990), p. 81–86.Google Scholar

30. Pereira, Adalberto Holanda, “Os Tapayuna (Beiço-de-pau),” Revista de Antropologia 15/16 (1967/68), pp. 212–216.Google Scholar

31. Ramos, Alcida Rita, “O Brasil no Movimento Indígena Americano,” Anuario Antropologico 82 (1984), pp. 281–286.Google Scholar

32. Matos, Ortolan, O processo, p. 132;Google Scholar Prezia, , Caminhando, p. 333;Google Scholar de Oliveira, Roberto Cardoso, A crise do indigenismo (Campinas: Ed. UNICAMP, 1988), p. 35.Google Scholar

33. Prezia, , Caminhando, p. 333;Google Scholar CIMI, Outros 500: construindo urna nova historia (Brasilia: CIMI, 2001), p. 127; “10a Assembléia de Chefes Indígenas,” Boletim do CIMI, 6:43 (Brasilia: CIMI, 1977); Bicalho, Poliene Soares, “As assembléias indígenas: o advento do movimento indígena no Brasil,” Revista OPSIS 10:1 (2010), p. 112.Google Scholar

34. This was contradicted in every interview I conducted. The foundation of the Uniào das Naçôes Indígenas (UNI) took CIMI by surprise and brought about, in the words of one interviewee (Renato Athias), “an earthquake” within the Catholic institution and throughout indigenism in general. That Indians resorted to a formal, bureaucratic organization rather than the assembly model favored by the missionaries represented, to a certain extent, a disavowal of missionary policy.

35. Ramos, Indigenism.

36. de Oliveira Filho, J.P. and de Rocha Freire, C.A., A presença indígena na formaçâo do Brasil (Brasilia: MEC/UNESCO, 2006), p. 188.Google Scholar

37. Garfield, Seth, Indigenous Struggle at the Heart of Brazil: State Policy, Frontier Expansion, and the Xavante Indians (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. Arruti, José Mauricio, “A árvore Pankararu: fluxos e metáforas da emergencia étnica no sertîo de Sâo Francisco,” in A vìagem da volta, de Oliveira Filho, Joâo Pacheco, ed. (Rio: Contra Capa, 2001).Google Scholar

39. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997).Google Scholar

40. For example, the “First assembly of Oiapoque,” gathering a polity of three indigenous societies, organized in 1984; the “First Tupi assembly” in 1986 in Altamira, Pará; and the first, second, and subsequent “assemblies of indigenous teachers.” More recently, there was the “Second Assembly of Indigenous Women of the Northeast, Minas Gérais, and Espirito Santo” in March 2011.

41. Not to mention the identities produced by such events (“Tupi People” [sic], “Indigenous Peoples of the Northeast,” and others.). On imagined communities created by the indigenous movement, see Belleau, Jean-Philippe, Le mouvement indien au Brésil. Du village aux organisations (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014).Google Scholar

42. Os Indios e as missōes (undated), CIMI Library, Reference br/00.00.8c.

43. Egon Heck, interviews by author, Manaus, 1999, and Campo Grande, 2009.

44. Trouillot, , Silencing, pp. 31–69.Google Scholar

45. Many anthropologists, Brazilian and foreign, who have had an important role in indigenous mobilizations have rarely, if ever, produced scholarship on their own involvement. Anthropologist Janet Chernela is a rare exception in taking credit, on her website, for founding the first indigenous women’s NGO in Brazil in 1984: http://janetchernela.outfoxing.com (accessed January 17, 2014). The disparity between what some actors know and what they say in private, or what they write as scholars, is often striking. If historian Anderson, Benedict in Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), believed that narratives must reproduce some “collective amnesia” to be successful, this one relies on silence and disappropriation.Google Scholar

46. Filho, and Freire, , A presença, p. 189.Google Scholar

47. For an example of such a campaign against CIMI by mainstream Brazilian newspapers, see CEDI, Povos Indígenas (Sâo Paulo: CEDI, 1991), pp. 20–27; and Ramos, , Indtgenism, pp. 104–117.Google Scholar

48. Novaes, The Play of Mirrors.

49. de Souza, José Coelho, O sangue pela justiça (São Paulo: Loyola, 1978).Google Scholar

50. Terol, J.L. and Pardo, J.C., Kiwxi. Tras las huellas de Vicente Cañas (Albacete, Spain: Terol, 2002), pp. 167–182.Google Scholar

51. de Aquino, Thomaz “Jauka” Lisboa, Os Enawené-Nam: primaros contatos (São Paulo: Ediçôes Loyola, 1985).Google Scholar See also Ramos, Indigenism, chapters 2 and 3, on state repression against both indigenous and indigenist actors.

52. The expression “institutional host” is from Houtzager, Peter, “Collective Action and Political Authority: Rural Workers, Church, and State in Brazil,” Theory and Society 30:1 (February 2001), pp. 1–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53. Leite, Serafini, Historia da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil (Sao Paulo: Loyola, 2004).Google Scholar

54. Dompnier, Bernard, “Les capucins français et leur passé,” Revue Mabillon 5 (1994), p. 230.Google Scholar

55. Nora, Pierre, ed., Les lieux de mémoire, tome 1 (Paris: Gallimard Quarto, 2009).Google Scholar

56. This NGO was founded by Egydio Schwade, a member of the Diamantino Mission and an eventual cofounder of CIMI. Keeping its acronym as it followed trends, this organization changed its name in 1994 to Native Amazon Operation (Operaçào Amazonia Nativa, OPAN). Father Anchieta, remembered in Brazilian school programs as one of the most important historical figures of the country, was beatified in 1980. See among others Koenig, J.. and Domingues, B., eds., Anchieta e Vieira: faradigmos da evangelizaçào no Brasil (São Paulo: Loyola, 2007).Google Scholar

57. See for example Prezia, Caminhando. The book is dedicated to Sister Cleusa Coelha and Vicente Cañas, both killed in the defense of indigenous communities. Paulo Suess, Em defesa, is dedicated to the Bororo Indian Simào and the Salesian Rodolfo Luckenbeim.

58. Furthermore, none of the indigenous leaders I interviewed between 1996 and 2009 mentioned Sâo Miguel. Typically, the more recent locations of indigenous mobilizations (such as demonstrations in front of Brazilian institutions) appear to have been chosen in a very strategic and political manner. Often they are in areas allowing for a maximum number of indigenous demonstrators to attend, such as Altaniira, Para, since 1989.

59. Egydio Schwade, Interview with author, 1999.

60. Baioto, Rafael and Quevedo, Julio, São Miguel. A saga do povo missioneiro (Porto Alegre: Martins Livreiro, 2005).Google Scholar See also Lessa, Luis C.B., São Miguel da Humanidade: urna proposiçâo antropològica, (Porto Alegre: Alcance/Tchê, 2005).Google Scholar

61. Mélia, Bartomeu “Y la utopia tuvo lugar. Las reducciones guaraní-jesuíticas del Paraguay,” in Un camino hacia la Arcadia, García Saíz, Concepción, ed. (Madrid: AECI, 1995).Google Scholar See also Reiter, Frederick, They Built Utopia: The Jesuit Missions in Paraguay, 1610–1768 (Potomac, Md.: Scripta Humanistica, 1995).Google Scholar

62. In 1759, the marquis of Pombal, minister of the Portuguese king Joseph I, ordered the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from Portugal and its colonies, for geopolitical reasons as much as for colonial policy. In 1763, after Guaraní troops had succeeded for several years in repelling Portuguese and Spanish troops, notably because of the Jesuit reductions, the expulsion became effective.

63. Casaldáliga, Pedro, “Yvy mara ei … Terra sem males. Memòria, Remoros, Compromisso!” Missa da terra sem males (São Paulo: Verbo Filmes, 2002), p. 1. (This is an article that appears before the libretto.)Google Scholar

64. Paula Montero, Entre o mito e a historia.

65. The expression is from Nora, Pierre, Lieux, p. xix.Google Scholar

66. Associaçào Nacional de Açào Indigenista, 1978, Ano dos Mártires. T-Juca Piratna. Indio, aqucle que deve morrer (Salvador da Bahia: n.p., n.d.; probably published between 1980 and 1986).

67. The death of Sepé Tiaraju is reported in ibid., p. 2.

68. CIMI journals are sent to missions, where they are read by both missionaries and an indigenous public.

69. Associaçào Nacional de Açâo Indigenista, 1978, ano dos martires, p. 3.

70. Ibid.

71. Casaldáliga, A missa da terra sem males (libretto), Verbo Filmes, 2002, CD. Judith Shapiro, “From Tupà,” provides an early analysis of this mass. For this anthropologist, its message is that “the Church must face up to its past sins and compensate for them with a new commitment” (p. 135).

72. Clastres, Hélène, The Land-Without-Evil: Tupi-Guarani Prophetism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995).Google Scholar

73. Tierra, Pedro, “Missa da terra sem males,” in Missa da terra sem males, p. 4.Google Scholar This is an article by the composer with the same title as the composition.

74. Joint martyrdom, referring to instances where an Indian and a missionary were killed together, is a subject of recurrent discourse. To expand on a note above: Paulo Suess, Em defesa, is dedicated “[t]o Simào Bororo and Rodolfo Luckenbeim, who fulfilled their Mission.”

75. Casaldáliga, Pedro, “Yvy mara ei…,” p. 1.Google Scholar

76. de Oliveira, Paulo Rogelio Melo, O encontró entre os guarani e os jesuítas na Provincia do Paraguai e o glorioso martirio do venerável padre Roque González ñas tierras de Ñezú (Ph.D. diss.: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 2009).Google Scholar

77. See for example “Nossos herois. Kiwxi Vicente Cañas, martyro da causa indígena,” Mensageiro 98 (1996), p. 6.

78. CIMI, Outras 500.

79. Casaldáliga, , “Yvy mará ei…,” p. 3.Google Scholar

80. The various texts of the polemic are available in ISA, Povos indigenas no Brasil, 1996/2000 (São Paulo: ISA, 2001), pp. 72–74.