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Kararaa massive dam project brandedwith a name of a Kayap community whopledged their very lives to combat itsconstruction. The initiative was re-baptized Belo Monte3 after the 1989Encontro dos Povos Indgenas do Xingu,when a coalition of indigenous, national,and international opposition threw awrench into the project that would helpstall it for over a decade (Fearnside 2006).A revised and allegedly less prejudicial planlater became a cornerstone of the Lulaadministrations Programa pela Aceleraodo Crescimento (PAC), which wasspearheaded post-2005 by then Minister ofInternal Affairs, and now president, DilmaRousseff. 4 Despite the many and mightyarguments against Belo Monte, includingthose that look beyond economics andenvironmental science to human rightsanissue about which the President has

otherwise been outspoken5Rousseffsdefense of Belo Monte has only becomemore entrenched. In May and October2011, her government cut off relations withthe Inter-American Commission on HumanRights and refused to participate inCommission hearings on the rights ofindigenous peoples affected by the dam.

Deconstructing Regional Progress

Such is the fraught geopolitical context inwhich recent scholarship on Amazonia is

carried out and contextualizednot onlyin Brazil, but across the region. In Peru,Bolivia, and Ecuador, for instance, publicand private development initiativescontinue to threaten fragile and alreadydamaged ecosystems and those who live inand off of them. Reminiscent of 1970sdevelopmentalism, foreign capitalnowhailing from North America and Europe aswell as from Chinapromises economicgrowth and much-desired infrastructure,while those who embrace it frequently

the groundwork for the two overlappingdiscourses that framed scholarly andpopular considerations of the region foryears to come: rst, state-backed initiativesto harness the abundance and power ofthe rainforest to fuel the modernizationof the Amazonian countries; and second,deep skepticism over the neo-imperialistpolicies and processes that would pave theway for such progress. Price declared notonly that that the Amazon was practicallyempty, but that its development wasurgent if the free nations [were] todefend themselves, if the world [was] tofeed itself, and if this heedlessly breedinghuman race [was] to nd room for itsmultiplying millions (1952: 6).

Two years later, Brazilian President GetlioVargas, who had led a national effort toopen up the interior and conquer its

wealth while professedly seeking to free hiscountry from the grip of foreign capitalranted against domination and plunder byinternational economic and nancialgroups before taking his own life. Hisdeath exacerbated an extended politicalcrisis that culminated one decade later inthe installation of a U.S.-backed militarydictatorship that made the development ofthe Amazonunderstood both as ametonym and motor for the countryitsraison dtre. Among the many humanrights abuses that stained military rule wasthe collateral damage of modernization:

massive devastation of Native lives andlivelihoods. New thoroughfares slicedthrough the Amazon1 and elaborate planswere drawn for dozens of newhydroelectric damsmost of whichremained incomplete when Brazil began itsreturn to democratic rule in 1985(Chernela 1988; Andrade and Santos1990).2

A prized gem in the crown of the architectsof Amazonian development was

In peace as well as in war we needAmazonia, penned the Columbia-trainednatural historian, travel writer, and U.S.spy, Williard Price in a 1952 treatisecheerily titled The Amazing Amazon (3).One of many thousands of books on theregion published after the outset of the1870s rubber boom, Prices tomeexemplied the hyperbolic prophecies fordevelopment that have characterizeddominant accounts of the rainforest and itspeoples into the twenty-rst century. Ascritic Candace Slater argued in her 2003study, Entangled Edens, the mostwidespread and enduring representationsof the Amazon have for centuries comefrom outsiders who tend to romanticizeNative peoples and ignore the diversehistories and ways of life of the more than30 million people who across ninecountries call Amazonia their home (Garca

2011: 29). From among this population,over one million individuals identify withone of the 386 indigenous peoples whoreside in the Amazonian regions of Bolivia,Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, FrenchGuiana, Peru, Surinam, and Venezuela(OTCA 1997: 184). Over half of them livein Brazil, which alone lays claim to 63percent of Amazonian territory. Ecuadorand French Guiana bring up the rear with1.5 percent each (Garca: 2011: 24).

Wealth and Geopolitics

In the context of the Cold War, it was notthe human population, of course, but thewealth and strategic location of theAmazon that provided the conditions ofpossibility that allowed Price and countlessothers who shared his vision to imagineAmazonia as the worlds last greatfrontier (1952: 190)a bottomless piggybank for the industrialized nations thatwere burning too quickly through theirown resources. Such imaginings helped lay

Whence Amazonian Studies

by traCy dEVinEguzmn | University of Miami | [email protected]

on the profession


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initiative, the polemical anthropologistDarcy Ribeiro lamented the tendency heobserved in academia to study indigenouscultures and societies with scienticobjectivism, likening such an effort to ananalysis of the German family in thebesieged Berlin of 1945 (Martins). Hispoint, of course, was to highlight theurgency of the ethical commitments thatare, for better and for worse, inherent ineach of the choices we make about ourresearch. Nearly twenty years later, manyscholars in and of the Amazon continue towork in keeping with this notion and toinstitutionalize it across disciplinesin thesocial sciences, the humanities, theenvironmental sciences, and theoverlapping areas of concern that theyinevitably share.

In the North American context, one recent

case-in-point is the 2010 formation of theSociety for Amazonian and AndeanStudiesan initiative that draws on theexpertise of scholars who have beenworking in the Amazon for severaldecades.8 Together with the institution ofnew interdisciplinary degree programs suchas the minor in Andean and AmazonianStudies at Ohio State University, thesecollective efforts complement the alreadysignicant and growing interest in the eldof Amazonian Studies from insideAmazoniaat the Ncleo de Altos EstudosAmaznicos of the Universidade Federal do

Par, for instanceas well as frominstitutions of higher learning in the southof Brazil and across South America,including the Universidade de So Pauloand Universidade Estadual de Campinas;the Universidad Nacional Mayor de SanMarcos in Lima; FLASCO-Ecuador, inQuito; and the tripartite UniversidadIndgena de Bolivia (UNIBOL).

While Brazils 2010 Statute of RacialEquality did not include afrmative action

national sovereignty, conspiring to inhibitthe development of the global south, orplotting to take over the Amazon.

Challenges for Researchers

These questions over rights, resources, andethicseach of them always alreadypolitical, pose challenges for scholars.Many researchers might seek, or bepressured by funding agencies and theexigencies of academic publishing, topresent them with some degree of objectivescrutiny. No one wants to be accused ofsimplifying complex situations, or to etchher contributions into the wrong side ofhistory. We have known for a long timethat the Amazon is not only aboutindigenous peoples; that indigenous peoplesare innitely diverse; that not all of them

live in rural areas or embrace ancestral tiesto particular territories; that many non-indigenous peoples also have historical andaffective ties to land; that state policies areuneven and inconsistent, serving in someways to protect at the same time theyneglect or punish. As we see in the struggleagainst Belo Monte and elsewhere,thousands of them do occupy traditionallands and there wish to remainneveroutside, but on the fringes of the capitalistmodernity that encroaches on them fromvarious directions. Defending non-Westernnotions of sovereignty and advocating for

ethno-development, many Nativecommunities thus aim to make theirpriorities compatible with those of thedominant majority rather than antitheticalto them. In doing so, they oppose thefrequent rendering of indigenous rights asprejudicial to those of everyone elseparticularly the non-indigenous poor.

In 1979, during a particularly dark periodfor Brazils indigenous peoples and on theeve of the unveiling of the Karara

ignore the high and sometimes irreparablesocial and cultural costs of the much-coveted progress. As in decades past,indigenous peoples and their labor areexpected to fuel the development ofnation-states that treat them as second-class citizens, and in the cases at hand,boast a checkered record with regard toindigenous rights in recent years. Irked inmid-2011 by the outspokenness of herDefense Minister, Nelson Jobim, PresidentRousseff revived Prices vision of Amazoniaas a terra de ningumno-mans landremarking that if she could, she wouldorchestrate a job for him in Amazoniaand leave him there (Savarese).6

In the wake of the deadly 2009 protests inthe northern province of Bagua, PeruvianPresident Alan Garca accused the Nativepeoples of the Amazon who were

manifesting in defense of their lands againstinternational oil and gas interests ofdragging the country toward irrationalityand primitive backwardness.7 Many ofthe indigenous organizations favorable toEcuadorian President Rafael Correa in the2007 elections have come to oppose hisgovernment in protest of new policies thattip the balance of control over land,resources, and legal jurisdiction away fromcommunities and in favor of the state. InSeptember 2011, riot police in EvoMoraless Bolivia violently suppressedindigenous protest against a proposed

roadnanced by Brazil and aimed tofacilitate trade with Asiathrough theTerritorio Indgena y Parque NacionalIsiboro Scure (TIPNIS), leading to calls forthe presidents resignation. These examplesshow that even in an age when manyindigenous peoples have access tocommunication technologies, they tend notto be met with dialogue, but with force.International human rights organizationsand NGOs that rally against state violenceconfront accusations of impinging on


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References

Chernela, J.

1988 Potential Impacts of the proposedAltamira-Xingu Hydroelectric Complex inBrazil. LASA Forum 129 (2): 3-6.

Fearnside, P. M.

2006 Dams in the Amazon. EnvironmentalManagementVol. xx, No. x, pp. 1-13.

FUNAI

2011 Hidroeltrica de Belo Monte. (http://www.funai.gov.br/).

Garca, B.

2011 The Amazon from an International LawPerspective. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Guajajara, S.

2009 Environmental Policy, Social Movementsand Science for the Brazilian Amazon.University of Chicago. 5 Nov. Address. (Mytranslation).

Macedo, J.

2011 Indgenas abandonam graduao emMS. Rede de Saberes. 3 Nov. 2011. http://www.rededesaberes.neppi.org/noticias.php?id=714.

1979 Antropologia ou a Teoria do Bombardeiode Berlim. Encontros com a Civilizao 12(1979): 81-100.

OTCA.

1997. Tierras y reas Indgenas en la AmazonaLima: OTCA.

PAC-Portal Brasil

2011 PAC energia. (http://www.brasil.gov.br/pac/o-pac/pac-energia).

Endnotes

1 These included BR-230, BR-210, BR-319,BR-174, and BR-163.

2 The majority remained incomplete whenBrazil returned to democratic rule in 1985.

3 The name used by the anti-Republicancommunity of Canudos that perished at thehands of the Brazilian army in 1897.

4 Rousseff had previously served as Minister ofEnergy and Mines.

5 This is due, in part, to the torture she sufferedfor her resistance to the dictatorship.

6 Thanks to Idelber Avelar for this reference.

7 Ollanta Humala has initiated changes instate-indigenous relations, including theapproval of the Ley de Consulta Previa, whichin keeping with Article 169 of the ILOrequires consultation with Native peoples

regarding the use of traditional lands (effectiveDecember 2011). The fact that Brazil is also asignatory has been a key argument inopposing Belo Monte. The Braziliangovernment counters that FUNAI, a state-runbureaucracy with non-indigenous leadership,signed off on the project.

8 See: .

provisions for indigenous students toattend institutions of higher learning, overa dozen public universities nationwide havetaken it upon themselves to do so. Three ofthese are in the Legal Amazon:Universidade Federal do Par; FundaoUniversidade Federal de Rondnia; andFundao Universidade Federal de Roraima(FUNAI). Additionally, the state of MatoGrosso do Sul, which is not located in theAmazon but in the adjacent Pantanalregion, has more than 700 Native studentsin its institutions of higher learning, and isa burgeoning center of indigenousscholarship and cultural production (Redede Saberes 2011).

Although many Native students continue toface major financial and logisticalchallenges when pursing a college degree(Macedo 2011), their increasing enrollment

in programs of higher education at homeand abroad gives us cautious hope thatthey will continue play an ever greater rolein shaping both the future of AmazonianStudies and that of the Amazon. Manymight agree with Snia Guajajara, Vice-Coordinator of the Coordenao dasOrganizaes Indgenas da Amaznia(COAIB), who in opposing the stillpowerful legacies of Williard Pricesthought, argues for an alternative path todevelopment on which indigenous peoplescan contribute with autonomy, auto-determination, and recognition of the value

of their ancestral knowledge, as well aswith prior and informed consent regardingthe occupation and use of protectedterritories. As she put it to an audience atthe University of Chicago in 2009: We arenot against national growth. We are againstthe [model] that doesnt work for us.Brazil needs to grow, [but also] to take itspeople along.


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Povo Mebegnokre

2011 Carta de repdio ao Presidente da FunaiMrcio Meira. 1 Nov. (http://merciogomes.com/2011/11/01/megaron-ti-e-demitido-apos-26-anos-na-funai/).

Price, W.

1952 The Amazing Amazon. London: WilliamHeinemann.

Rede de Saberes

2011 http://www.rededesaberes.neppi.org/index.php.

Santos L. A. O. and L. M. M. Andrade, eds.

1990 Hydroelectric Dams on Brazils XinguRiver and Indigenous Peoples. Cambridge:Cultural Survival.

Savarese, M.

2011 Irritada com Jobim, Dilma planejademiti-lo ou deix-lo na Amaznia. UOLNotcias. 4 August.

Slater, C.

2011 Entangled Edens. Berkeley: U ofCalifornia P. n

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Whence Amazonian Studies