Adrian Cowell *

In the black and tragic history of the European colonization of the Americas, there have been few periods when some group or institution managed to restrain the slaughter of the indigenous peoples. One of these was when the Jesuit Reductions, or missions, in Brazil and Spanish America succeeded - for a time - in preventing the slave raiders from capturing and marketing their congregations.

Cláudio Villas Bôas often talked about the Reductions when I first spent, in 1958, a few months in Xingu. He would point out that though the Jesuits were then the only entity committed to defending the indigenous peoples, the Indians were nothing more than their passive subjects, organised 'for their own good', dressed in clothes, mainly in white, and working and praying to a European schedule. Just the word 'reduction' meant that a number of villages, which had led separate existances for cultural and social reasons of their own, had been 'reduced' into a single settlement for the convenience of the Jesuits. Cláudio said the Reductions had no roots in Indian character and so they naturally vanished when the Jesuits were forced to leave.

Cláudio would then go on to say that his proposal was to play a less dominating role in Xingu, so that when he and his brother, Orlando, left, the Indians would be able to continue on their own. For the lifework of the Villas Bôas brothers, that was the test proposed by Cláudio in 1958.

40 years later, the great achievement of the Parque Indigena do Xingu is that that test has been passed with manifest success.

"The only hope," Cláudio would say, swinging in his hammock all those decades ago, "is to preserve the core of tribal society and to help the Indians graft on to it the more useful tools of our civilization. If an Indian asks for a metal cooking pot, then the request arises from his own needs. The use of the metal pot is na evolution for the man and his group. It will produce change, but not the same disruption as if I ordered all Xinguanos to abandon earthenware tomorrow. In this way they can grow towards our civilization, but in a manner and at a pace suited to their own nature."

Alternatively, Cláudio would say that the role of the Xingu Indigenous Park should be that of a filter for our civilization.

"The holes to begin with will be small, and the least destructive things will come through. The Indians now live as they always have done, but with the tools of our world. Axes. Pots. Rifles. The old men use the guns - their sons will learn how to repair them. Their grandsons will be school and university graduates who will study the theories and the science behind it all." Cláudio's ultimate dream was of a healthy and self-confident Indian society gradually adjusting to a working relationship with the rest of the world.

At the time, none of us who spent time with Orlando and Cláudio in Xingu could even guess whether this was anything more than a wild dream. In the early 1960s, I can remember waves of heavily armed expeditions forcing their way into Xingu to survey its land so that it could be sold in Cuiabá, Rio, São Paulo, and in some cases, in Europe. I went with Cláudio into the area of the Txkiao when it had been over-run by diamond prospectors prostituting their women. And in the early 1970s, the situation seemed truly desparate when the Parque was cut in half by the BR 80, and the Panara (then known as the Kreen-Akrore) were overwhelmed by roadbuilders and gold prospectors.

The fact that the Parque has survived at all is to the great credit of the Xinguanos who fought to restore the northern half of the Parque cut off by the BR 80, and who struggled to create for themselves a unique position in Brazil. But I doubt if they could have done it without the 30 year breathing space - between the 1940s and the 1970s - which Orlando and Cláudio battled to provide so that the Indians could adapt to Brazilian society, and learn to defend their interests within Brazilian politics.

Above all it was the brothers' encouragement for the increasingly close relations between the upriver tribes, grouped around Posto Leonardo, and the downriver tribes, around Diauarum, that helped give the Xinguanos the moral and political strength which they have today.

Until the brothers had brought them into the Parque, most of the downriver tribes had lived without friendly contact with other Indians, and I can remember anthropolgists criticising the Villas Bôas brothers for persuading the Indians to break with their isolationary traditions. For Orlando and Cláudio deliberately encouraged the tribes to come together, even though they realised it was a risky policy which led to a variety of crises and deaths, often linked to accusations of witch-craft. For instance, in 1967, before the first visit of the Kamayura to Diauarum - which led to 2 murders amongst the Kayabi - I asked Cláudio whether he wasn't concerned that something might go wrong.

"It's what the Parque is about," he said, swinging in his hammock. "When we first came here, it was a struggle to keep the Indians alive, fighting epidemics, trying to defend their land. But that's over for the time being."

Cláudio brooded on this for several swings of his hammock. "Should we keep them in a zoo? Of course not. The Indian must adapt to civilization. But the disturbing thing about civilization is not the atom bomb or the computer. It is the civilizado himself. One man alone can destroy a tribe's self confidence. Unconsciously, he can shatter its confidence."

He said that this was especially true of the downriver tribes which had lived isolated in the forest. The first task was to teach them to adjust to other people, and obviously it was easier for them to adjust to Indians before they tried to adjust to civilizados.

"Of course, it's good that the Kamayura should come," Cláudio ended. "They are more self-assured and sophisticated, and the meeting could be valuable." When the subsequent Kayabi murders occurred, it was open to question whether Cláudio had been right. But, now, after decades of cooperation between the Kayabi, the Kamayura, and all the other tribes of Xingu, there is no doubt about the wisdom of the Villas Bôas choice.

In 1985, I introduced the first president of the National council of Seringeiros, Jaime de Silva , to Ailton Krenak who was then the leader of U.N.I. - Brazil's first national Indian lobbying organization. What interested me was that Ailton said that it was the success of the Indians of Xingu which had encouraged him to form U.N.I.

And in later meetings between Ailton and Chico Mendes, when they were forming the Amazonian Alliance for the Peoples of the Forest, I noticed that Chico usually let Ailton take the lead. "Ailton understands politics more than we do," Chico explained simply.

And so, instead of creating ' passive subjects organised for their own good', like the Jesuits, Orlando and Cláudio left the Xinguanos a vital, politically successful, society which went on to influence other equally vital, emerging organizations in Amazonia.

And I think the uniqueness of theVillas Bôas achievement comes, less from their decades of immensely laborious and dangerous work in Amazonia, than from their perception of what the Xinguanos really needed. No-one can doubt the idealism or benevolence of Marshall Rondon's approach towards the Indians, but most of the Indian Posts he created looked like cattle ranches. And, in effect, what he offered the Indian was entry into the Brazilian economy at the level of a labourer on the agricultural frontier. Of course, you can hardly criticize Rondon for this. For what he was offering was what Brazil gave to the rest of its citizens. But you can say that it lacked an imaginative vision of how tribes, which had lived for centuries in isolation in the forest, should relate to Brazil's complex, industrial society. The great achievement of Orlando and Cláudio Villas Bôas was that they perceived that the Indians needed something different - some sort of temporary half-way house between indigenous isolation and immersion within Brazil. And whatever the visitor may think of the Parque Indigena do Xingu today, it's hard to mistake it for a cattle ranch.

NOTE
Anyone who would like to read more about the tense, but highly productive, relationship between the tribes, when Orlando and Cláudio Villas Bôas were trying to bring the Xinguanos together, might like to take a look at Chapters 1,2 and 3 of my book "The Tribe that Hides from Man." These chapters describe the Kamayura's first visit to Diauarum in 1967 which led to the two Kayabi murders mentioned above.

* O cineasta britânico Adrian Cowell realizou documentários sobre o Xingu desde os anos 60 e é autor do livro "A tribo que fugiu do homem".