Being in the culture: practices of autonomy, cosmopolitical translations and counter-anthropologies of the Tupinambá of Olivença

Abstract

This article explores, through some fragments of the historical background of the Tupinambá of Olivença, the practices of autonomy, the cosmopolitical translations and the creation of a Tupinambá counter-anthropology, produced in the plot of their indigenous movement throughout the struggle for the demarcation of their Indigenous land and the retaking of the territory. However, these fragments escape from the capture that these categories of analytical origin provoke, connecting to each other. Due to this, I use the metaphor of the weaving of a fabric to talk about the intertwining of relationships produced by indigenous relatives. It is for this reason that, throughout the text, when talking about autonomy, the narrative leads us to understand how it goes along with the retomadas (land recoveries); on the other hand, the retomadas can only be explained by the autonomy achieved by the relationships accumulated in the cosmopolitical confrontations between the worlds that cancel each other out in the struggle for territory; a confrontation that, in turn, is materialized in the alterity produced in the lived spaces where autonomous practices are guaranteed. These interlacings form a framework of ubiquitous relationships that underlie the struggle of the Tupinambá of Olivença.