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Our Indians in Our America: Anti-Imperialist Imperialism and the Construction of Brazilian Modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Tracy Devine Guzmán
Tracy Devine Guzmán*
Affiliation:
University of Miami
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Abstract

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Indigenous peoples have been used and imagined as guardians of the Brazilian frontier since at least the mid-nineteenth century. This association was central to the foundation of the Indian Protection Service (Serviço de Proteção aos Índios, or SPI) during the early 1900s and culminated with the Amazonian Vigilance System (Sistema de Vigelância da Amazônia, or SIVAM) at the turn of the millennium. Throughout the period, the abiding desire to establish defensive dominion over disputed national territory subjected individuals and groups identified as “Indians” to the power of overlapping discourses of scientific progress, national security, and economic development. A trinity of Brazilian modernity, these goals interpellated native peoples primarily through the practice and rhetoric of education, which grounds their historical relationship with dominant national society. Drawing on SPI records, government documents, journalism, personal testimonies, and visual media, this article traces the impact of this modernist trinity on indigenist policy and in the lives of those who have been affected by its tutelary power. By transforming private indigenous spaces into public domain, Brazil's politics of anti-imperialist imperialism propagated a colonialist, metonymic relationship between “our Indians” and “our America” into the twenty-first century.

Resumo

Resumo

Os povos indígenas têm sido usados e imaginados como guardiões das fronteiras brasileiras desde meados do século XIX. Esta associação esteve no cerne da fundação do Serviço de Proteção aos Índios (SPI) durante a primeira parte do século XX e culminou, na virada do novo milênio, no Sistema de Vigilância da Amazônia (SIVAM). O antigo desejo nacional de estabelecer um domínio protetor sobre territórios nacionais em disputa sujeitou indivíduos e grupos identificados como “índios” ao poder dos discursos convergentes de progresso científico, segurança nacional e desenvolvimento econômico. Esta trindade da modernidade brasileira interpelou os povos nativos através da prática e retórica da educação, que formam a base da sua relação com a sociedade dominante do país. Usando como fontes principais os arquivos do SPI, documentos governamentais, jornalismo popular, fotografia e filmografia etnográfica, além de testemunhos individuais, este trabalho busca analisar o impacto da “trindade modernista” na política indigenista do estado e na vida das pessoas que foram subjugadas ao seu “poder tutelar.” Ao transformar os espaços privados dos indígenas em um domínio público e aberto, a política brasileira de imperialismo anti-imperialista acabou estendendo a relação metonímica e colonialista entre “nossos índios” e “nossa América” até a primeira parte do século XXI.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , 2010 , pp. 35 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

My thanks to Bianca Premo, Bill Smith, Edilene Payayá, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jan Hoffman French, George Yúdice, Juvenal Payayá, Marc Brudzinski, Kate Ramsey, Sônia Roncador, faculty and students of the Faculdade 2 de Julho, the Atlantic Studies Working Group at the University of Miami, and the three anonymous LARR reviewers for their comments and suggestions on previous versions of this work.

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