Claude Lévi-Strauss

ANTHROPOLOGISTS OF THE WORLD 

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 - 2009) 

Claude Lévi-Strauss (28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology".

He argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the same everywhere. These observations culminated in his famous book Tristes Tropiques, which positioned him as one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought, where his ideas reached into fields including the humanities, sociology and philosophy. Structuralism has been defined as "the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity."

He was honored by universities throughout the world and held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France (1959–1982); he was elected a member of the Académie Française in 1973.

Claude Lévi-Strauss was born to French parents who were living in Brussels at the time, and grew up in Paris. At the Sorbonne in Paris, Lévi-Strauss studied law and philosophy. In 1935, after a few years of secondary-school teaching, he took up a last-minute offer to be part of a French cultural mission to Brazil in which he would serve as a visiting professor of sociology at the University of São Paulo while his wife, Dina, served as a visiting professor of ethnology.

The couple lived and did their anthropological work in Brazil from 1935 to 1939. During this time Claude undertook his only ethnographic fieldwork. He accompanied Dina, a trained ethnographer in her own right to a conducted research foray into the Mato Grosso and the Amazon Rainforest. They first studied the Guaycuru and Bororo Indian tribes, staying among them for a couple of days. In 1938 they returned for a second, more than half-year-long expedition to study the Nambikwara and Tupi-Kawahib societies. At this time his wife suffered an injury that prevented her from completing the study, which he concluded. This experience cemented Lévi-Strauss's professional identity as an anthropologist.

He returned to France in 1939 but had to escape from the Vichy government to Martinique, from where he was finally able to travel on. In 1941, he was offered a position at the New School for Social Research in New York, and granted admission to the United States. Along with Jacques Maritain, Henri Focillon, and Roman Jakobson, he was a founding member of the École Libre des Hautes Études, a sort of university-in-exile for French academics. Lévi-Strauss returned to Paris in 1948. At this time he received his doctorate from the Sorbonne by submitting, in the French tradition, both a "major" and a "minor" thesis. These were The Family and Social Life of the Nambikwara Indians and The Elementary Structures of Kinship.

His works

The Elementary Structures of Kinship was published the next year and quickly came to be regarded as one of the most important anthropological works on kinship. Lévi-Strauss argued that kinship was based on the alliance between two families that formed when women from one group married men from another.

Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lévi-Strauss continued to publish and experienced considerable professional success. On his return to France, he became involved with the administration of the CNRS and the Musée de l'Homme before finally becoming professor (directeur d'études) of the fifth section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études

While Lévi-Strauss was well known in academic circles, in 1955 he became one of France's best known intellectuals by publishing Tristes Tropiques (1955). Essentially, this book was a memoir detailing his time as a French expatriate throughout the 1930s, and his travels. Lévi-Strauss combined exquisitely beautiful prose, dazzling philosophical meditation, and ethnographic analysis of the Amazonian peoples to produce a masterpiece.

Lévi-Strauss was named to a chair in Social Anthropology at the Collège de France in 1959. At roughly the same time he published Structural Anthropology, a collection of his essays which provided both examples and programmatic statements about structuralism. At the same time as he was laying the groundwork for an intellectual program, he began a series of institutions to establish anthropology as a discipline in France, including the Laboratory for Social Anthropology where new students could be trained, and a new journal, l'Homme, for publishing the results of their research.

In 1962, Lévi-Strauss published what is for many people his most important work, La Pensée Sauvage (The Savage Mind). The book concerns primitive thought, forms of thought all humans use. The first half of the book lays out Lévi-Strauss's theory of culture and mind, while the second half expands this account into a theory of history and social change. This latter part of the book engaged Lévi-Strauss in a heated debate with Jean-Paul Sartre over the nature of human freedom. On the one hand, Sartre's existentialist philosophy committed him to a position that human beings fundamentally were free to act as they pleased. On the other hand, Sartre also was a leftist who was committed to ideas such as that individuals were constrained by the ideologies imposed on them by the powerful. Lévi-Strauss presented his structuralist notion of agency in opposition to Sartre.

Now a worldwide celebrity, Lévi-Strauss spent the second half of the 1960s working on his master project, a four-volume study called Mythologiques. In it, he followed a single myth from the tip of South America and all of its variations from group to group up through Central America and eventually into the Arctic Circle, thus tracing the myth's cultural evolution from one end of the Western hemisphere to the other. He accomplished this in a typically structuralist way, examining the underlying structure of relationships among the elements of the story rather than by focusing on the content of the story itself. While Pensée Sauvage was a statement of Lévi-Strauss's big-picture theory, Mythologiques was an extended, four-volume example of analysis. Richly detailed and extremely long, it is less widely read than the much shorter and more accessible Pensée Sauvage, despite its position as Lévi-Strauss's masterwork.

Lévi-Strauss completed the final volume of Mythologiques in 1971. On 14 May 1973 he was elected to the Académie Française, France's highest honour for an intellectual. He was a member of other notable academies worldwide, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He received the Erasmus Prize in 1973, the Meister-Eckhart-Prize for philosophy in 2003, and several honorary doctorates from universities such as Oxford, Harvard, and Columbia. He also was the recipient of the Grand-croix de la Légion d'honneur, was a Commandeur de l'ordre national du Mérite, and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. After his retirement, he continued to publish occasional meditations on art, music, and poetry.

He died on 30 October 2009, a few weeks before his 101st birthday.

© Text and photo: Wikipedia

Ser quilombola

Lecture: To be a Quilombola

Speaker: Marta Rodrigues

Date: August 1st 2011, 18:30h

Place: Cultural Center of the City Council, Salvador de Bahia (Brazil)

Webpage: www.ceao.ufba.br

Admission: free of charge

Comments: 

The public hearing titled "Identity and Access Quilombola Public Policy" initiative of the Commission of Reparation of the City Council, chaired by Councilwoman Marta Rodrigues, will discuss the importance of affirming the quilombola identity in the process of defending their constitutional rights and their public policies. The event will be attended by the Secretary Elias Sampaio (SEPROMI), Alexandro Reis, director of the Heritage Protection Department of Afro-Brazilian Palmares Cultural Foundation, Silvany Euclênio, Director of Programs of the Secretariat of Policies for Traditional Communities SEPPIR, Secretary Carlos Brasileiro (SEDES), Secretary Ailton Ferreira (SEMUR), Eduardo Jorge Gomes (SEDIR), José Vivaldo Mendonça, director of the Company for Development and Regional Action (CAR), State Representative Bira Côroa, Valmir dos Santos, from Quilombo State Council of Bahia and journalist and director of the documentary "SER QUILOMBOLA", Jaqueline Barreto, who will present her project for the communities.

The hearing will be initiated by the screening of the documentary "SER QUILOMBOLA." The audiovisual production discusses the main elements that constitute the identity from the quilombola communities of the São Francisco do Paraguaçu and Porteiras, located respectively in the cities of Cachoeira and Entre Rios. Some issues discussed are relationship with the land, kinship ties, racism, traditions that reinvent themselves and self-esteem. "Ser Quilombola " counts with the participation of historians Ubiratan Castro and João José Reis, Lydia Cardel, a sociologist and professor at the Federal University of Bahia, the former representative of the Palmares Cultural Foundation, Luciana Mota, and the sociologist Walter Altino.

The documentary covers the two criteria of Decree 4.887/03 which is under threat in the Supreme Court: territoriality and self-definition. It also represents a right of reply of the São Francisco do Paraguaçu community displayed by the report in Jornal Nacional Rede Globo. The documentary is intended to be used as a political tool that encourages self-esteem and the need of quilombola affirmation of identity as an instrument access to public policies.

About Quilombolas:

A Quilombola is a resident of a Quilombo in Brazil. They are the descendents of slaves who escaped from slave plantations that existed in Brazil until abolition in 1888. The most famous Quilombola was Zumbi and the most famous Quilombo was Palmares.

Many Quilombolas live in poverty.

A quilombo (from the Kimbundu word kilombo) is a Brazilian hinterland settlement founded by people of African origin, Quilombolas, or Maroons. Most of the inhabitants of quilombos (called quilombolas) were escaped slaves and, in some cases, a minority of marginalised Portuguese, Brazilian aboriginals, Jews and Arabs, and/or other non-black, non-slave Brazilians who experienced oppression during colonization. However, the documentation on runaway slave communities typically uses the term mocambo to describe the settlements. "Mocambo" is an Ambundu word that means "hideout", and is typically much smaller than a quilombo. Quilombo was not used until the 1670s and then primarily in more southerly parts of Brazil.

A similar settlement exists in other Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, and is called a palenque. Its inhabitants are palenqueros who speak various Spanish-African-based creole languages. Quilombos are identified as one of three basic forms of active resistance by slaves. The other two are attempts to seize power and armed insurrections for amelioration. Typically, quilombos are a "pre-19th century phenomenon". The prevalence of the last two increased in the first half of 19th century Brazil, which was undergoing both political transition and increased slave trade at the time.

© Text and image: http://www.ceao.ufba.br 

Secrets of the Tribe

FILM REVIEW 

Title: Secrets of the Tribe 

Director: José Padilha 

Writer: José Padilha 

Year: 2010 

Running time: 110 minutes 

Country: UK, Brazil 

Plot summary: 

The field of anthropology goes under the magnifying glass in this fiery investigation of the seminal research on Yanomami Indians. In the 1960s and '70s, a steady stream of anthropologists filed into the Amazon Basin to observe this "virgin" society untouched by modern life. Thirty years later, the events surrounding this infiltration have become a scandalous tale of academic ethics and infighting.

Secrets of the Tribe is a film by director José Padilha premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. This documentary explores the allegations, first brought to light in the book Darkness in El Dorado, that anthropologists studying the Yanomami Indians in the 1960s and 70s engaged in bizarre and inappropriate interactions with the tribe, including sexual and medical violations. The film was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize.

© Text and image: IMDB

Yanomamö: The Fierce People

Title: Yanomamö: The Fierce People

Author: Napoleon Chagnon

Year of publication: 1968

Paperback: 304 pages

Language: English

Synopsis:

Based on the author's extensive fieldwork, this classic ethnography, now in its fifth edition, focuses on the Yanomamo. These truly remarkable South American people are one of the few primitive sovereign tribal societies left on earth. The new edition includes events and changes that have occurred since 1992, including a recent trip by the author to the Brazilian Yanomamo in 1995.

Chagnon is best known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, his contributions to evolutionary theory in cultural anthropology, and to the study of warfare. The Yanomamo are a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians that live in the border area between Venezuela and Brazil.

Working primarily in the headwaters of the upper Siapa and upper Mavaca Rivers, Chagnon conducted fieldwork among these people from the mid-1960s until the latter half of 1990s. Because the Yanomamö people could not pronounce his last name, they nicknamed him "Shaki", the closest pronunciation they could approximate, which also seemed appropriate because Chagnon was constantly asking questions, and "Shaki" means "pesky bee". A major focus of his research was the collection of genealogies of the residents of the villages that he visited, and from these he would analyze patterns of relatedness, marriage patterns, cooperation, and settlement pattern histories. Applying this genealogical approach as a basis for investigation, he is one of the early pioneers of the fields of sociobiology and human behavioral ecology.

Napoleon Chagnon is well known for his ethnography, Yanomamö: The Fierce People (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968) which was published in more than five editions and is commonly used as a text in university level introductory anthropology classes, making it the all-time bestselling anthropological text. Chagnon was also a pioneer in the field of visual anthropology. He collaborated with ethnographic filmmaker Tim Asch and produced a series of more than twenty ethnographic films documenting Yanomamö life. His life's work has made him both a celebrated figure and a lightning rod for controversy and criticism.

©Text: Wikipedia

The Suyá of Brazil

Name: Suyá

Living Area: Brazil

Population: 196

Language: Gê

Comments:   

The Suyá are a group of indigenous people living in Brazil, at the headwaters of the Xingu River. They have, historically, been best known for an unusual form of body modification which they practice. After marriage, Suyá men often have their lower lip pierced, and have a small wooden disk placed inside. The size of the disk is gradually increased as time goes on, permanently changing the size of the lip.

Like many other tribes in the upper Xingu, the Suyá were devastated by diseases introduced by European explorers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After the establishment of the Xingu National Park in the 1960s, and after the introduction of organised medical care into the area, the population of the Suyá grew greatly.

There are not many archaeological or ethnographic records extending back before 1884 because little cultural material can be preserved in the humid tropics, and most materials used were organic. However, the ethnographic evidence that does exist claims that the Suyá people made a long journey from a territory more than 1,100 kilometers to the northeast, fleeing and fighting enemies. They migrated to the Xingu region around 1840, where they met with a number of groups with whom they obtained women, children, and exchanged items. Although many of these tribes spoke different languages they shared a similar culture, and the region where they settled is often referred to today as the "Upper Xingu Culture Area." From the Xingu they adopted many aspects of their culture such as; canoes, hammocks, and ceremonies.

They also adapted food preparation techniques, such as believing that all food must be cooked before eaten. Body ornamentation was also an aspect of their culture that they took on. Body ornaments are significant markers of age and status.

The Suyá community has always believed greatly in the collective good. They share everything from fire, food, land, songs, performances, shelter, clothes, and children. A child is raised by the whole community not just by their biological parents, although they know who their biological parents are they do not identify with them as a westernized person would, with a sense of ownership. To a Suyá person the entire community is their family. Their names also have much more importance than people from the western world attribute to names as well. They believe that names are central to the definition of who a person is and the groups to which he or she belongs; therefore, they pick their names very carefully. Today the Suyá live in a single village of about two hundred inhabitants on the banks of the Suiá-Miçu River. They speak a language belonging the northern branch of the Gê language family. They hunt, fish, gather supplies, and trade with frontier settlements to get their basic needs. They are also protected from frontier violence and the national market economy by a reservation system that intermittently provides health care and material goods and involves them in a new multiethnic social system. Their myths claim that, although the Suyá society always existed, in the beginning the people had no fire, no names, no garden crops, no lip-disc ornaments, and few songs. They acquired fire from the jaguar, garden crops from the mouse, lip discs from enemy Indians, names from a cannibal people living under the ground, and songs from all of these.

Well-known by: their lip-disc ornaments

Tribes that are known for their traditional lip plates include:

The Mursi and Surma (Suri) women of Ethiopia

The Suyá men of Brazil (most no longer wear plates)

The Sara women of Chad (ceased wearing plates in the 1920s)

The Makonde of Tanzania and Mozambique (ceased wearing plates several decades ago)

The Botocudo of coastal Brazil (in previous centuries, both sexes wore plates)

Aleut, Inuit and other indigenous peoples of northern Canada, Alaska and surrounding regions also wore large labrets and lip plates; these practices mostly had ceased by the twentieth century.

Some tribes (Zo'e in Brazil, Nuba in Sudan, Lobi in west Africa), wear stretched-lip ornaments that are plug- or rod-shaped rather than plate-shaped.

© Text and image: Wikipedia 

The Samba de Roda of the Recôncavo of Bahia

The Samba de Roda, which involves music, dance and poetry, is a popular festive event that developed in the State of Bahia, in the region of Recôncavo during the seventeenth century. It drew heavily on the dances and cultural traditions of the region’s African slaves. The performance also included elements of Portuguese culture, such as language, poetry, and certain musical instruments. At first a major component of regional popular culture among Brazilians of African descent, the Samba de Roda was eventually taken by migrants to Rio de Janeiro, where it influenced the evolution of the urban samba that became a symbol of Brazilian national identity in the twentieth century.

The dance is performed on various occasions, such as popular Catholic festivities or Afro-Brazilian religious ceremonies, but is also executed in more spontaneous settings. All present, including beginners, are invited to join the dance and learn through observation and imitation. One of the defining characteristics of the Samba of Roda is the gathering of participants in a circle, referred to as roda. It is generally performed only by women, each one taking her turn in the center of the ring surrounded by others dancing in the circle while clapping their hands and singing. The choreography is often improvised and based on the movements of the feet, legs and hips. One of the most typical movements is the famous belly push, the umbigada, a testimony of Bantu influence, used by the dancer to invite her successor into the centre of the circle. The Samba de Roda is also distinguished by specific dance steps like the miudinho, the use of the viola machete - a small lute with plucked strings from Portugal, as well as scraped instruments, and responsorial songs.

The influence of mass media and competition from contemporary popular music have contributed to undervaluing this Samba in the eyes of the young. The ageing of practitioners and the dwindling number of artisans capable of making some of the instruments pose a further threat to the transmission of the tradition.

Inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2005)

© Text and images: UNESCO

Oral and Graphic Expressions of the Wajapi

The Wajapi of the Tupi-guarani cultural-linguistic group are indigenous to the northern Amazonian region. Some 580 Wajapi live in 40 small villages on a specially designated territory in the state of Amapá. The Wajapi have a long history of using vegetable dyes to adorn their bodies and objects with geometric motifs. Over the centuries, they have developed a unique communication system – a rich blend of graphic and verbal components – that reflects their world-view and enables them to hand down knowledge about community life.

This graphic art is known as kusiwa and its designs are applied with red vegetable dyes extracted from the roucou plant mixed with scented resins. The Wajapi consider that the technical and artistic proficiency required to master the drawing technique and the preparation of the dye cannot be attained before the age of forty. Commonly recurring motifs include the jaguar, anaconda, butterfly and fish. Kusiwa designs refer to the creation of humankind and come alive through a rich corpus of myths. This body art, closely linked to Amerindian oral traditions, possesses multiple meanings on socio-cultural, aesthetic, religious and metaphysical levels. Indeed, kusiwa constitutes the very framework of Wajapi society and is endowed with significance extending far beyond its role as a graphic art form. This coded repertory of traditional knowledge is perpetually evolving as indigenous artists are constantly reconfiguring the motifs and inventing new patterns.

Although the Wajapi live on their protected territory, their traditional lifestyle, including the practice of kusiwa, is in danger of losing its symbolic significance and may even disappear altogether. Such a loss would drastically alter the community’s social and cosmological reference points. The principal threats stem from disinterest on the part of the younger generation and the decreasing number of Wajapi proficient in the kusiwa repertory.

Inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2003)

© Text and images: UNESCO

The Suruí of Brazil

Name: Suruí

Living Area: Brazil

Population: 185

Language: Akwáwa

Comments:   

The Suruí, also called the Aikewara, are an indigenous people who live in the Rondônia region of Brazil.

First prolonged contact with the modern world came in the late 1960s, the Brazilian government laid the 2,000-mile Trans-Amazon Highway through Rondônia. The tribe was decimated by disease - nearly 90 percent died within a few years.

Well-known by: using high-tech tools.

The Suruí have recently made headlines as one of the first indigenous people of South America to use high-tech tools (in particular Google Earth) to police their territory. In cooperation with Google Earth Outreach, they can request more detailed satellite photos when they spot suspicious areas. If loggers or miners are detected, they refer the case to the authorities who have them removed. Satellite pictures show that this is highly effective as the Suruí territory is the only intact remaining piece of rainforest in the area.

The Suruí have recently launched a forest carbon project as part of their 50-year tribal management plan. A recent legal opinion by Baker & McKenzie determined that the Surui own the carbon rights to the territory, setting a precedent for future indigenous-led carbon projects in Brazil.

© Text: Wikipedia / Image: www.amazonteam.org

The Bora of the Amazon forest

Name: Bora

Living Area: Peru, Colombia and Brazil

Population: approx. 3.000

Language: Bora (Witotan family)

Comments:   

The Bora are an indigenous tribe of the Peruvian, Colombian and Brazilian Amazon, located between the Putumayo and Napo rivers. The Bora speak a Witotan language. In the last forty years, they have become a largely settled people living mostly in permanent forest settlements.

In the animist Bora worldview, there is no distinction between the physical and spiritual worlds and spirits are present throughout the world. Bora families practice exogamy. The Bora have an elaborate knowledge of the plant life of the surrounding rainforest. Like other indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon, such as the Urarina, plants (and especially trees) hold a complex and important interest for the Bora.

Bows and arrows are the main weapons of the Bora culture used in person to person conflict. The Bora are very divided and politically unorganized.

The Bora have guarded their lands from both indigenous foes and outsider colonials. Around the time of the 20th century, the rubber boom had a devastating impact on the Boras. The tribe's ancestral lands are currently threatened by illegal logging practices. The Bora have no indigenous reserves.

Well-known by: their dances

The Bora native community consists of about 3,000 native-speakers almost all living in Peru (about 2000 individuals) and Colombia (about 1000 people), although several Bora villages exist in Brazil. Unfortunately, the Brazilian Boras no longer speak their native language having been largely assimilated into the Brazilian culture. The Bora language is closely aligned with Huitoto (Witotan).

The Bora tribe is divided into different clans, typically represented by an animal.  They paint their faces with different designs with huito (Genipa americana), depending upon their clan.  Intermarriage with the same clan is prohibited, thus preventing interbreeding and genetic aberrations within small communities.

Traditionally, the Boras dance using large (six foot) batons that they pound in unison on the ground as they dance.  The batons typically have shells attached to them that add to the musical harmony.

They also use Manguaré drums, which have different forms, depending on whether they are male or female, and are used in some Bora ceremonies.  They also manufacture traditional bark cloth, made by pounding the bark of a palm tree. The Boras peel strips of bark from the tree and pound it with a wooden hammer. After they wet and pound it until the outer bark disintegrates, only the inner bark is left. The inner bark is the natural fiber used for traditional Bora clothing. The bark clothes have a coarse, inflexible look and the texture of burlap. The bark clothing is coloured with natural dyes. Yellow colours are obtained from a ginger plant and black from pressed green fruits of the huito tree. The huito liquid is clear when first painted, but later turns black as it is oxidized by the air.

In addition to bark cloth, the Bora Indians have bags that are woven from chambira, a fiber obtained from a palm tree. The fibers used in these bags are typically dyed using native plants and the bags really are hand-made works of art.

The Bora tribe has managed to retain much of their knowledge of medicinal plants.  A good example is the coca plant (Erythroxylum coca) which plays an important role in the diet and traditional medicine of the Boras.  As in the Andes Mountains, coca leaves are consumed to provide essential nutrients and is an integral part of their diet.  Similar to the Andes, the consumption of coca allows individuals to work for extended periods without exhaustion. What is different from the Andes is the manner in which the Bora Indians process the coca. They do not chew the raw leaves as they do in the mountains. Instead, they dry the leaves over a fire, place them into a sack and pound them into a very fine powder. This powdered coca typically is not taken alone and traditionally a tobacco mixture is blown into one’s nostrils before the coca powder is placed in one’s mouth.

Around 1900, the Amazon rubber boom changed the ways of the Boras forever.  This period was disastrous for the Bora communities of the Putumayo as the Peruvian rubber corporations enslaved the Boras and forced them to harvest the latex from wild stands of rubber trees. Large numbers of Boras were wiped out during this period.  Before the rubber boom, the Bora indigenous population was estimated as over 15,000 individuals. Some years later, following Peru's disastrous loss of the border war with Colombia in the 1930’s and the ceding of territory north of the Putumayo, many Boras were evacuated to their present communities near Iquitos. By the 1940’s the total population of Bora natives had dwindled to fewer than 450 people.  

© Text: Wikipedia and Dr. Dan James Pantone / Image: Anibal Solimano

The enemy god - A yanomamö film

FILM REVIEW 
Yai Wanonabälewä: The Enemy God is a feature-length dramatic motion picture set in the Amazon rainforest. The film gives voice to a group of indigenous rainforest people to relate their own dramatic story. The film is made in partnership with Yanomamö communities in Amazonas province in the rainforest of Venezuela and proceeds from the film will go to benefit those communities as directed by Yanomamö leaders.
Yai Wanonabälewä: The Enemy God began with a request from a group of indigenous Yanomamö (or Yanomami), in order to find somebody that would allow them to tell their version of the history of their communities in the Amazon rainforest. After years of violence and fear, they want to tell the world about the new ways of peace and hope that they have discovered for their people. It is the story of a significant group, led by a respected headman whose Spanish name is Bautista. It is a true story.
Bautista Cajicuwa and his K'ekchi' fellow villagers acted as themselves in the film.
The Enemy God project is a multi-faceted initiative to raise awareness and involvement on behalf of indigenous people groups. Through The Enemy God project audiences will:
•See the self-determined transformation of an indigenous culture while preserving and honoring their uniqueness in their Creator’s eyes.
•Hear from and meet leaders from indigenous groups in the Amazon and other regions.
•Discover opportunities to partner with indigenous groups through short & long-term service, training, and advocacy.
•Partner with individuals an organizations dedicated to the empowering of indigenous groups all over the world.
See the film's webpage.

Brazilian Feijoada

Feijoada is a stew of beans with beef and pork, which is a typical Portuguese dish, also typical in Brazil, Angola and other former Portuguese colonies. In Brazil, feijoada is considered the national dish, which was brought to South America by the Portuguese, based in ancient Feijoada recipes from the Portuguese regions of Beira, Estremadura, and Trás-os-Montes.

The Brazilian feijoada is prepared with black turtle beans, with a variety of salted pork and beef products, such as salted pork trimmings (ears, tail, feet), bacon, smoked pork ribs, at least two types of smoked sausage and jerked beef (loin and tongue).

This stew is best prepared over slow fire in a thick clay pot. The final dish has the beans and meat pieces barely covered by a dark purplish-brown broth. The taste is strong, moderately salty but not spicy, dominated by the flavours of black bean and meat stew.

A popular myth states that the Brazilian feijoada was a "luxury" dish of African slaves on Brazilian colonial farms (engenhos), as it was prepared with relatively cheap ingredients (beans, rice, collard greens, farofa) and leftovers from salted pork and meat production. Over time, it first became a popular dish among lower classes, and finally the "national dish" of Brazil, offered even by the finest restaurants.

However, historians like Luís da Câmara Cascudo consider that feijoada is a Brazilian version of stews from Southern European countries like France (cassoulet), Spain, Italy and, of course, Portugal. Traditional Portuguese bean-and-pork dishes (cozidos) like those from the regions of Estremadura and Trás-os-Montes are the ancestors of Brazilian feijoada. The earliest printed references to the dish appeared in the mid-19th century, based on menus of upper-class, urban restaurants.

Feijoada Recipe

Ingredients:

• 4 1/4 lbs black beans 
• 1 1/4 lbs dried beef 
• 1 lb salt cured pork 
• 1 lb bacon 
• 1 lb smoked sausage 
• 6 pieces dried sausage 
• 1 piece smoked beef tongue 
• 2 pigs ears 
• 2 pigs tail (or equal amount of ox tail) 
• 2 pigs trotters 
• 1 large chopped onion 
• 1 medium chopped onlion 
• 1 tablespoon olive oil 
• 6 cloves garlic 
• 3 bay leaves 
• oranges 
• hot peppers 
• rice, manioc, couscous or fried, shredded kale

How to cook it

Place beans and salted meats in separate bowls. Cover each with water. Keep covered with water for 24 hours; but change water every 6 hours. Put all of the ingredients into a very large cooking pan and cover with water. Add ½ orange, 3 bay leaves, 1 medium chopped onion and pepper. Cook everything over a low heat and gradually withdraw the meats as they are cooked to prevent them from becoming too soft. In a separate pan heat a tablespoon of soybean oil and fry the 6 cloves of garlic and the large chopped onion. Pour into the beans and mix well. Temporarily remove a cup of the beans and crush with a wooden spoon to thicken the sauce. Serve with white rice, manioc or fried, shredded kale along with hot peppers

© Text and image: Wikipedia / Recipe: www.world-recipes.info  

The Emerald Forest

Title: The Emerald Forest

Director: John Boorman

Writer: Rospo Pallenberg

Year: 1985

Running time: 110 minutes

Unofficial webpage:  The Emerald Forest

Plot summary:

Bill Markham is an engineer who has moved to Brazil with his family to complete the construction of a large hydro-electric dam. The construction requires large areas of forest to be cleared, even more to be flooded. Its completion will bring more people to the areas who will clear the jungle for agriculture and living space.

Markham takes his family to the edge of the forest for a picnic to show them the jungle. It is then that an Indian from one of the indigenous tribes known as the Invisible People notices his son, Tommy, aged seven, has bright green eyes the colour of the forest. The tribesman decides that it is unfair to leave the child with these strange people, who, in his opinion, are destroying the world. He abducts the child. Markham pursues them, but his son is gone.

The story jumps ahead some ten years. The dam is nearing completion. Tommy, or Tommé as he is now called, has become part of the tribe that he lives with, adopting their language, culture and way of life. His father finds him but discovers that he is not the son he once had.

Tommé's tribe is later threatened by another, as well as by the near completion of the dam. Markham decides to help his son so that the way of life he has adopted is not destroyed.

Based on a true story.

The film was screened out of competition at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.

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