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Nambiquaras in Paris: Archival Images, Appearances, and Disappearances

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Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age

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Abstract

This chapter centers upon the photographic images made by the Rondon Commission housed in the archives of the Map and Cartography Section of the National Library of France, a collection that gives rise to study of the relationships among archives, historical contexts, and the politics and poetics of remembrance. Through analysis of the photographs themselves, and the different archives, historical moments, and cultural contexts that provided access to them, Jaguaribe demonstrates how they exist as spectral digital pictures that haunt the present and posit unanswered questions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This chapter is part of a larger research project that has received funding from the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Técnológico (CNPq) and the Capes of the Brazilian Federal Government. I thank both institutions for their support. I also thank the employees of the Museu do Índio and specifically Thaís Tavares Martins from the iconography section. A version of this chapter has been published in portuguese. See Beatriz Jaguaribe, “Nambiquaras em Paris: imagens de arquivo, deslocamentos e aparições. Revista Famecos, REVISTA FAMECOS | PORTO ALEGRE | V. 26, N. 2, MAI.-AGO. 2019 | E-2704 http://dx.doi.org/10.15448/1980-3729.2019.2.32704

  2. 2.

    Auguste Comte’s writings and his positivist doctrine were highly influential in Latin America. In Brazil, military officers subscribed fervently to Comte’s positivist doctrine. Rondon studies at the military academy with acclaimed positivist professor Benjamin Constant (1837–1891).

  3. 3.

    For a positive appraisal of Rondon’s policies toward the indigenous peoples inhabiting Brazil, see Mércio Pereira Gomes’ article, “Por que sou rondoniano” in Estudos Avançados 23 (65), 2009. In this article, Pereira Gomes contextualizes Rondon’s policies and mentions his acknowledgment of the indigenous populations of Brazil as constituting culturally diverse nations.

  4. 4.

    It is beyond the scope of this chapter to debate the model of integration encamped by Rondon. However, it is worth mentioning that during the Campaña del desierto led by General Roca in 1878, the Argentine army practiced the physical extermination of indigenous populations as part of a state policy. Likewise, in the United States, during its expansionist phase in the nineteenth century, the employment of army troops against Native Americans was a generalized practice. By contrast, Rondon’s policy of nonviolence preached assimilation, but it was adamantly against physical oppression or violence. Ricardo Cavalcanti-Siedl notes in his article “A política indigenista, para além dos mitos de segurança nacional” (Estudos Avançados 23(65), pp. 149–164, 2009) that Rondon’s strategy toward the positioning of the indigenous tribes in their territory presented different models. The prevalent model of assimilation and connection with the state through the presence of the telegraph stations was widely used in Mato Grosso. Yet toward the end of his life, Rondon espoused an alternative view an idea of the indigenous reservation where indigenous cultures could thrive without the pressures of assimilation. It was in this spirit of preservation that Rondon envisioned the creation of the National Park of Xingu, now named the indigenous Park of Xingu. The Xingu park, finally created in 1961, is Brazil’s largest indigenous park. It has 2,642,003 acres and is located in the state of Mato Grosso, bordering the state of Pará.

  5. 5.

    The Roosevelt-Rondon expedition received extensive media coverage and did much to enhance Rondon’s worldwide fame. The expedition began in December of 1913 and ended in April, 1914. As is well known, Roosevelt nearly died on the expedition. Roosevelt’s book, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (New York: Charles Scribners and Sons, 1914), provides his firsthand account of the formidable expedition. Thomaz Reis compiled footage from several different films and with Roosevelt’s aid exhibited the film, Wilderness, to a packed Carnegie Hall on June 15, 1918.

  6. 6.

    Pierre Denis writes a laudatory account of Rondon and of the cartographic efforts under the supervision of Francisco Jaguaribe. The article is entitled: “Résultats Géographiques des Explorations du Colonel Rondon au Matto Grosso”, Annales de Géographie, Paris, 1924, pp. 46–65.

  7. 7.

    The documents referring to Jaguaribe’s mission in France at the service of the Rondon Commission are to be found in the archives of the Sérvice historique de la Défense, Château Vincennes, Code 7 N3391, EMA/2, Brésil, 1918–1940, Mission Gamelin, 1914–1925, 13, 391.

  8. 8.

    Rivet writes the text praising Rondon entitled “La protection des indiens au Brésil”, Journal de la Société des américanistes, 1913, pp. 687–691.

  9. 9.

    See Doris Sommer’s well-known book, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. The best known Brazilian Indianist writer was José de Alencar (1857–1865), whose romantic novels such as Iracema (1865), O Guarani (1865), and others became assigned reading in Brazilian schools throughout the twentieth century.

  10. 10.

    The Reading of Oswald de Andrade’s cannibal metaphor as a strategy of cultural appropriation and anticolonial satire has become somewhat of a platitude. Among the vast bibliography on the subject, there are dissident interpretations such as the one espoused by Carlos Járegui. Járegui contends that the cannibal metaphor is not the central motif of the “Manifesto Antropófago” because textually what is emphasized is the construction of a matriarchal mythic utopia that existed prior to the arrival of the Portuguese colonial patriarchal order (Jáuregui 2008: 394, 421, 425). Yet even if the Manifesto does not highlight cannibalism as a strategy of cultural appropriation and empowerment, this provocative reading is widely present in the subsequent unfolding of the movement.

  11. 11.

    For an inspired reading of the ontology of being in the context of indigenous cultures in Brazil, see Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s book, Cannibal Metaphysics. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2014.

  12. 12.

    See Micheal Aird’ chapter, “Growing up with Aborigines” published in Photography’s Other Histories, edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2003, pp. 23–40. In this chapter, Aird discusses how the descendants of Aborigines who had been photographed in exotic poses recast the meaning of these pictures as they envision them as modes of retaining memory and of recognizing their ancestors. In a similar vein, Luciana Alves Barbio in her article, “Comissão Rondon e a representação da identidade Paresí: um diálogo através de fotografias”, RECIIC, v5, n. 2, pp. 27–43, June, 2011, comments on, during her research with the Paresi of Rio Formoso, the indigenous people she interviewed that all demonstrated great appreciation for the photographs of the Rondon Commission and searched for images of their ancestors in the pictures.

  13. 13.

    For a discussion of the symbolic meaning of the Nambiquara act of naming, see Marcelo Fiorini’s Ph.D. dissertation, “The Silencing of the Names: Identity and Alterity in an Amazonian Society”. New York University: New York, 2000.

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  1. School of Communication, The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Beatriz Jaguaribe

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  1. Department of English, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Susan L. Mizruchi

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Jaguaribe, B. (2020). Nambiquaras in Paris: Archival Images, Appearances, and Disappearances. In: Mizruchi, S. (eds) Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33373-7_9

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