‘The traditional is where history lives’: the transformations and remaking of the Anacé people in violated territoriesAbstract
This article presents anthropological research conducted by an indigenous anthropologist from the Anacé people in the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve in Caucaia, Ceará, Brazil. The study sets out to understand the impacts caused by the second removal of the Matões and Bolso villages following the implantation of the Pecém Industrial and Port Complex (CIPP). Its main objective is to describe how the process of construction and reconstruction of cultural identity, memory and spirituality has been evolving in the new territory. Emphasis is given to struggles, mobilizations and symbolic re-significations - especially the Saint Gonçalo Dance - as a tool of cultural reaffirmation and spiritual continuity.
Keywords:
Anacé Indigenous People; Displacement; Territory; Spirituality
Resumo
Este trabalho trata de uma pesquisa antropológica realizada por uma indígena antropóloga do povo Anacé na Reserva Indígena Taba dos Anacé em Caucaia, Ceará, Brasil, buscando compreender os impactos causados após a mudança de território resultante da segunda remoção das Aldeias Matões e Bolso, motivada pelo Complexo Industrial e Portuário do Pecém-CIPP. O objetivo central da análise é descrever como está evoluindo o processo de construção e reconstrução através da identidade, memórias e viver cultural narrada pelas famílias no novo território. Para tanto, o trabalho dará enfoque nas lutas e mobilizações, destacando a Dança de São Gonçalo do Povo Anacé como um dos principais motivadores na adaptação no novo território e ressignificações simbólicas dos indígenas. A discussão abordada nos resultados da investigação transcorre ao longo dos cincos anos de mudança para o território e a relação espiritual que está sendo ressignificada através dos rituais ancestrais, tradições, danças e a relação espiritual Anacé com os espíritos encantados.
Palavras chaves:
povo indígena Anacé; remoção; território; espiritualidade
INTRODUCTION
My childhood was marked by the struggle and resistance of the Anacé people. I accompanied all the mobilisations and moments of conflict alongside my mother. At the time, we were living through a turbulent period in Matões village, our home in Caucaia, located in Ceará state, Brazil. Large industries were invading our territory and, in their efforts to reaffirm themselves as Anacé - which in the Tupi linguistic trunk means ‘Welcoming People’ - families were fighting to remain in the spaces where they belonged. My maternal grandmother, Maria Lucimar Sales de Morais (now an encantada),1 would often say: ‘We are Indians, but it is not good to say so. My mother used to say that Indians are wild creatures; you can’t make sense of them.’
For many years, the Anacé people were silenced as the result of a long process of extermination dating back to the earliest waves of colonisation. Today, I give thanks to all my ancestors who fought, breaking through this ethnic silencing in order to ‘be Anacé.’
The Anacé people have inhabited the western coast of the state of Ceará, particularly the Caucaia region, since before Portuguese colonisation. During the colonial period, the Anacé were subjected to processes of forced aldeamento, forcing them to live in ‘Indian villages,’ as occurred with other indigenous peoples of the region. In Caucaia, historical records indicate the activity of religious missions and the establishment of parishes that directly influenced the spiritual and social life of indigenous communities. This even involved the building of chapels dedicated to Catholic saints, such as São Gonçalo do Amarante, devotion of whom was appropriated and re-signified by Anacé families.
Relations between indigenous and non-indigenous people, especially in recent decades, have been marked by periods of relative harmony as well as by growing tensions as industrial and urban expansion increasingly affected the traditional territory. The presence of Christian religious groups, particularly Catholics, exerted a strong influence on the symbolic reorganisation of the territory, not in the sense of a simple ‘implantation’ of Catholicism, but rather through a process of symbolic negotiation in which indigenous practices persisted in other forms, especially through festivals and rituals incorporated into the oral tradition of the Anacé people.
For the Anacé people, one of the landmarks in breaking the silence was the São Gonçalo Dance of the Anacé people of Amarante. The revival of this dance culminated in an ethical reaffirmation and in the recovery of symbolic and spiritual relations with the Traditional Territory of Matões. The ritual of the São Gonçalo dance has been performed for over nineteen years by Anacé families and is identified as sacred, conveying indigenous history and knowledge between the souls of the dead and the power of the Saints who interact within the ritual. The São Gonçalo Dance is considered a patrimony of indigenous identity. The dance was brought by the Portuguese and taught to the Anacé, who incorporated it into their own traditions as part of a strategy that made it possible to continue performing rituals that had been otherwise prohibited. During the dance, the Catholic references came to be re-signified with indigenous spirituality.
The teachings of the São Gonçalo Dance are reflected in my work as an indigenous anthropologist, allowing us to speak of new ways of doing anthropological science, based on new perspectives and new methodologies, as discussed by Linda Tuhiwai Smith in her book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples:
Decolonizing Methodologies is concerned not so much with the actual technique of selecting a method but much more with the context in which research problems are conceptualized and designed, and with the implications of research for its participants and their communities (Smith 1999: 11).
Today, I understand that being an Anacé indigenous woman at the university - as a researcher and as a subject of research, no longer as an object - and occupying this space as a tool of struggle, implies making use of research mechanisms and methodologies that place me even closer to the struggle of the Anacé people and the broader endeavour of epistemological decolonisation.
Discussing indigenous anthropology presupposes lived experience and anthropological practice. The anthropologist Florêncio Almeida Vaz Filho (2019) tells us that indigenous students from different peoples can now - and indeed are - producing their own readings of well-established ethnographies and anthropological theories about indigenous peoples. Being situated within the epistemological field invites us to reflect on scholarly productions and interpretations from the standpoint we occupy within anthropological practice.
The indigenous anthropologist has a privileged perspective grounded in the specificities of their people: a way of looking at our own as part of our own. Hence, I have the opportunity to describe my trajectory as a researcher whose path is linked to collective narratives, allowing me to reflect academically on the cultural aspects and the different forms of violence faced by the Anacé people of the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve, seen from a vantage point distinct from those previously adopted by non-indigenous authors.
I have been part of the Anacé struggle since my mother’s womb since I was born amid my people’s process of ethnic recognition. Most of my childhood was marked by mobilisations. I completed part of my elementary schooling at the Right to Learn (Direito de Aprender) Indigenous School of the Anacé People in Matões village.
In this study, it will be essential to distinguish the concepts of traditional territory, territoriality, indigenous land and new land, since each of these terms carries a specific political, historical and symbolic meaning. The term traditional territory refers to the area ancestrally occupied by an indigenous people, where relationships of spiritual, cultural, social and ecological belonging to the space are established (Almeida 2008).
Territoriality, for its part, refers to the set of practices and meanings that groups attribute to this space - a symbolic and relational dimension marked by collective experiences of using, caring for and making sense of the territory (Haesbaert 2004). The expression ‘new land’ (nova terra) is used by the Anacé themselves to refer to the area where they were resettled, created as a mitigatory measure, but one which does not yet replace the affective and symbolic value of the ancestral territory.
Finally, the term indigenous land refers to the legal category recognised by the Brazilian 1988 Federal Constitution (Article 231), which guarantees indigenous peoples the exclusive usufruct of the lands they have traditionally occupied, which must be demarcated, protected and respected by the Brazilian state.
The territory traditionally occupied by the Anacé underwent two moments of relocation during the construction of industrial projects. The first occurred in 1996 with the arrival of the Pecém Industrial and Port Complex,2 which culminated in the removal of houses and numerous families. Thereafter, many families were forced to relocate to settlements defined by the Ceará state government, compelled to leave behind their plots of land. Another part of the population remained in the territory, since, up to that moment, the economic development plans had not yet displaced them. But it was only a matter of time.
A second moment of expulsion of Anacé indigenous families began with the decree published in the Official Gazette of the State of Ceará, no. 28,883/2007, which declared an area of 33,500 hectares to be of public utility for the expansion of the CIPP. Consequently, the Anacé families who had previously resisted industrial expansion were now compelled to leave their lands.
Exploring this theme, this article analyses the impacts of the expropriations and the subjective dimension of the process, showing how this action left distinctive marks on sociocultural organisation. At present, the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve is home to 167 families, totalling approximately 489 people. This population is distributed in different family units that maintain ties with their territories of origin, especially Matões and Bolso villages, both historically associated with traditional practices and rituals.
The community structure includes an indigenous school with 276 enrolled pupils, which constitutes an important space for strengthening Anacé identity and for transmitting traditional knowledge.
The Anacé Indigenous Land has not yet been formally demarcated by the federal government. Although the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve was created as a form of mitigating the impacts caused by the Pecém Industrial and Port Complex (CIPP), its creation does not replace the official process of territorial demarcation set out in Brazil’s Federal Constitution.
The territory claimed by the Anacé people encompasses areas in the municipalities of Caucaia and São Gonçalo do Amarante, in the state of Ceará, and is currently in a process of recognition by the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI). The mobilisation of the Anacé is articulated within the wider historical struggle of indigenous peoples in Ceará, marked by resistance to coloniality and the denial of rights. In Caucaia, this mobilisation has at times been strengthened by the solidarity and coordination of neighbouring peoples, such as the Tapeba, particularly in shared campaigns for health care, education and land regularisation.
The Anacé form part of what is known as the emergência indígena - the indigenous resurgence - in the state of Ceará, a movement which, since the 1980s, has intensified and generated significant transformations in public policy, in the visibility of indigenous peoples and in the affirmation of indigenous identities in both urban and rural contexts. The accounts and life trajectories of indigenous people from the Taba dos Anacé Reserve help to elucidate the process experienced by this indigenous people.
Along these lines, I shall foreground the period of construction in the new territory, reflecting specifically on the space built for the families, as well as emphasising the problematic aspects of the reality to which everyone was subjected.
For this purpose, memory is a central element in the study. The work of collective memory has been singular in the adaptation of the families to the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve, involving practices that are being ‘re-signified’ (Santana 2022). The political potential of memory - and its subversive dimension - become evident when, for example, our recollections reproduce the meanings of the past and, simultaneously, possess the power to transform the conditions that make new processes of signification possible in the present.
The wisdom of the elders, masters and leaders is perceptible in the struggle to keep Anacé culture, traditionality and ancestral memory alive. These leaders also inspire Anacé ethnicity, stimulating processes of mobilisation, adapting to the situations and contexts into which we have been forced to live.
For this study, therefore, the methodology includes an autobiography and an ethnography conducted with my own people. Narrating my experiences alongside the stories and memories of other Anacé men and women allows me to present the collective construction of ‘being Anacé,’ focusing on cultural valorisation and the struggle for our rights, itself embedded into my life trajectory. To this end, I conducted interviews which, together with my own memories, enabled me to describe the social reality of the Anacé indigenous people.
As part of the research process, I surveyed previous works describing the relocation of the Anacé people and the construction of Anacé identity. I drew on the work of indigenous anthropologists who have been contributing to the struggle through their depictions and analyses, breaking with the stereotypes of the colonial process, including those highlighted by Felipe Cruz, a Tuxá indigenous scholar, who observes:
Most of the time, these [stereotypes] refer back to caricatured images, remnants of a regime of alterity forged during the colonial process. This is the ‘Indian of the Discovery,’ the indigenous figure associated with readily mobilised categories, a necessary counterpoint to the constitution of Brazil’s own self-representation. (Cruz 2017: 10).
By contrast, I accessed the memories and experiences of our own masters in order to understand cultural values and their implications - in rites, dances and spirituality - for the identity of the Anacé people.3 I should emphasise that in developing this study, I have drawn on references and productions by indigenous authors, as well as anthropological works, whether produced by indigenous or non-indigenous scholars.
ACTIVATING ANACÉ IDENTITY IN MATÕES
In the community of Matões, the struggle for identity was one of the biggest challenges for the families, since relations between indigenous and non-indigenous people in the locality had previously been peaceful. Once we began to identify ourselves as indigenous, however, we were subjected to harsh discrimination and our identity was denied by neighbours, friends and state agencies because we were now seen as an obstacle to ‘development’ in the area. I have a very vivid memory of this moment of conflict since I was then studying at a non-indigenous school and attended classes covered in genipap body paint. It was common for teachers and pupils to laugh at me and criticise my presence in the classroom because of the paint and the necklaces I wore:
(...) by small domestic rituals, I was referring to those moments that evoke the past and project the future. The past evoking the original villages, for example, and the future the expectation of a new land during the first dispersal. Later, when once again removed from the reserve during the second dispersal, further rituals were activated to strengthen bonds and encounter kin. The sharing of trajectories across the generations, as well as the construction of narratives, takes place in these moments, by the fire or in the yard at night, when people gather to smoke or drink coffee. (Souza 2019: 122)
The territory is the principal support of indigenous identity, spirituality and culture. The manioc plantations and the farinhadas - the manioc flour-making gatherings that lasted around a week - were one of the most important rituals carried out in Matões. I remember the many days spent grating manioc and gathering the whole family in the flour houses of my paternal and maternal grandfathers, Francisco Chagas and Luís Paulino. Evenings always involved the sharing of flour and conversations filled with laughter.
On 16 February 2007, the State Assembly of the Indigenous Peoples of Ceará was held in the flour house of Baixa das Carnaúbas, in Matões village, with representatives from all indigenous peoples of Ceará. At that moment, a request was made for the registration of Anacé families with the National Health Foundation (FUNASA), the agency responsible for implementing indigenous health policies at the time.
During the period, the Anacé organisation was called the Comissão da Terra or Land Commission (Santana, Neto, Aguiar and Sousa, 2010). The Land Commission emerged as a vanguard movement confronting the challenges faced by the Anacé people, working to reconcile the conflicts between what the community seeks (demarcation of its lands and recognition of its traditional values) and the development projects planned for the region, as Dona Valdelice Anacé tells us:
Today we are happy, sitting here in the shade on these little chairs. We used to sit on the ground, we used to sit on a log, placed on a strip of wood and sit down to hold our meetings. How many times did we put a little oil lamp under a cashew tree or a guava tree, and we were all happy, building the bases for a struggle - the struggle of the Anacé people, the history of the Anacé people. Someone would say, they’re just a bunch of idiots, they don’t know anything. But we kept going. People in my own house would say, woman, get out of this, it’s dangerous, people are going to kill you. And I said, they might kill me, but I’ll continue and my story will remain. You don’t trust me, but it will remain. How many times people said, I’m going to finish off the mother, the son and the sister-in-law - that was me, the fighters at the beginning, the ones who kicked off our story in Matões. People would say, oh, she’ll give up, but they couldn’t find anyone willing to put an end to this woman with this matter of the Indians who don’t exist here, supposedly. And there I was, standing firm and strong, and here I am still today; people said, let’s put an end to them, let’s finish all this. (Valdelice Anacé 2022)
Hence, the beginning of the struggle was extremely arduous for the Anacé people, marked by threats and persecution. Yet Anacé identity is also bound up with a series of massacres that, from time to time, have struck our people, such as the killings at Lagoa do Banana (Meireles, Brissac and Schettino 2012).
As the demarcation process for the Indigenous Land - a crucial demand of the Anacé people - advanced, FUNAI began studies for the identification and delimitation of our territory in 2010. This opened a new front in the struggle and once again the dignity of the families came under pressure from the negative impacts on the Anacé way of life, traditions, culture and practices. It is worth emphasising the various physical and symbolic transformations that have occurred throughout the implementation of industries in the area. The land has been treated as a political football in the disputes between different large-scale business interests during the expansion of the CIPP, resulting in the denial of our people’s identity and constitutional rights.
Article 231 of the Federal Constitution of Brazil guarantees the future permanence of indigenous peoples, ensuring their land, protection of nature and the basic survival of their communities while seeking to ensure their physical and cultural well-being in accordance with their traditions. However, the Anacé Indigenous Land no longer qualified as traditional land under the terms of the Constitution since the demarcation of the territory had been annulled, clearing the way for invasions and occupation of Anacé land by the companies making up the CIPP.
And Matões was the kind of place where you could sleep with your door unlocked. Where you could travel at any hour of the night. Everyone was a sibling; everyone respected everyone else; there was love. Nowadays it is hard for a person when they want love, because they no longer know to whom they can give it. (Antonio Aldelino 2022)
The relationship with the territory and with spirituality continued to give rise to new aspects and dilemmas. During this period of conflict, we conducted treks and rituals in the localities where the flows of encantado spirits could be found and where we could strengthen ourselves for the struggle. I recall how, during one of these rituals, we visited Morro do Siririca: we spent the entire night beside the Jurema tree, singing and sharing food, feeling the strength and spirituality present in these places, among others that have since been removed.
So, we can observe how the Anacé people’s relationship with their ancestors is interwoven with their relationship to the territory, which is permeated by the sacred. Senhor Antônio Freire de Andrade, an Anacé elder from Matões, states in an interview with the newspaper Porantim that the Anacé who died in the struggle became encantados, and that in this way ‘the current of the encantado spirits arose, running from Gregório to Morro do Siririca. It passes over Jirau, Baixa das Carnaúbas, Baixa da Almeida and then plunges into the forest. Whoever has the strength and the power to receive it need only pass beneath. They give strength, they help.’ This narrative powerfully expresses the way the Anacé today re-signify their territory and their ancestors. (Meireles, Brissac and Schettino 2012: 131–132)
Some of the places mentioned above were physically broken apart during the first removal, such as Baixa da Almeida, Jirau and Gregório - the place where my family lived. Matões and Bolso remained as sites where the sacred rituals continued to be practised, honouring the ancestry that had been passed down. The traditionally occupied territory is the grounding of our identity. Anacé ethnic affirmation has enabled us to maintain our organisation and strengthen affective and emotional connections in both the physical and spiritual space.
Following the arrival and implantation of Catholicism in Anacé Territory, certain churches and chapels are now regarded by us as sacred spaces. During one of the expansion initiatives of the CIPP in 2009, the chapel of São Roque, which stood very close to the Tortuga factory,4 was demolished. A protest was organised in response to this state action, which had permitted the destruction of this place deemed sacred by the families. I was about eight years old and I remember my eagerness to support the moment. I walked with other indigenous people from the Direito de Aprender school of the Anacé people in Matões village to Bolso village. We performed a toré ritual as a form of protest and the leaders spoke about the space’s importance for Anacé spirituality. It was a powerful scene to witness the demolition, especially because the community had not been given any prior notice.
The chapel’s demolition was initially halted, but unfortunately a few days later very little remained of it. We could say, therefore, that the second removal began with the taking over of one of the sacred spaces of the Anacé people for industrial use. It was also a house of miracles where families left carved pieces of wood shaped to represent the part of the body healed of some illness (the ex-votos), leaving objects symbolising what had been attained.
Many moments were filled with tears and a profound sadness. The elders would say that they would only leave this land dead: they would not endure another removal. Heavy machinery and vehicles began to circulate in the village and many workers from other states of Brazil came to live in the area. The Anacé Traditional Territory was becoming somewhere unsafe for the families.
THE NEW REMOVALS AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ANACÉ TERRITORY
The Anacé territory has been traditionally occupied for many generations. For the families, it is sacred, bound up with ancestry and containing an entire spiritual relationship with nature. The land is intrinsically linked to our identity, traditions and memories. In the face of the multiple impacts caused by the ‘development’ to which we were subjected, we were forced to adapt to new circumstances. As Almeida notes, ‘the identity of a group is shaped, among other things, by its relationship with territories constructed on the basis of their respective cosmographies’ (Almeida 2004: 10).
Territoriality functions as a source of identification, protection and strength. Moreover, the collective relationship with the Anacé territory involves not just physical aspects but also shared symbolic and affective relations. The Anacetaba land is a place of enchantment and Anacé traditions, which feeds and sustains us, yet it has also been subjected to processes of violent dispossession negatively affecting territoriality.
We fight against the coloniality of these structures so that other indigenous peoples may also have voice and agency in articulating what indigenous traditionality involves as a vital dimension of respecting and caring for these territories.
Those who had good things there but moved here did so because of their love for the movement, their love for each other. (Nilma Anacé 2018)
The families therefore began organising the move to the new land - the Reserve - following the state’s denial of our traditional territory in Matões. Even so, we ensured that a cemetery, the Cambeba sacred space, would be preserved from demolition. Negotiations then took place between authorities and Anacé leaders over the selection of a site to accommodate 163 families. In light of the various legal proceedings involving the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) and FUNAI, a meeting was convened in Fortaleza, the capital of Ceará, in 2013 for the signing of the term of commitment for the construction of the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve. The event was attended by Anacé leaders, President Dilma Rousseff, Governor Cid Gomes and representatives of Petrobras, the MPF and FUNAI. As Brissac (2015) notes, the signing ceremony referred to the lengthy trajectory of negotiations eventually leading to the final agreement, linked to the decision to install the Premium II refinery.
In 2014, the construction of the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve began, a moment marked by anguish, expectations and fears about adapting to the new area. The symbolic relationships with the traditionally occupied territory will never be erased for the families and many concerns emerged. After all, how can we know anything for sure without having experience of dwelling in a new environment? The traditional land remains, at least for now, the place where we lived our entire lives, since any adaptation to a new place takes time to ‘replant’ and ‘remake’ the references that activate customs and traditions (Souza 2019).
Transformations in the locality continued: many forested areas were cleared, lagoons were landfilled to allow the construction of large-scale developments and the places where my maternal and paternal grandparents had lived for most of their lives began to be squeezed by the railway line. Plantations started to diminish and hunting was banned. In my childhood, I still experienced moments in Matões filled with the abundance that nature provided us. But this gradually changed. Many good things had been shared on that patch of land.
On 6 February 2018, the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve was created, located in Alto do Garrote in the municipality of Caucaia, Ceará. The occasion included representatives from the fourteen indigenous peoples of Ceará, as well as representatives of different state bodies that had accompanied the process. The Reserve comprises 163 houses, each with an area of 80 square metres, one school and one health post, and is intended for use by families from the Matões and Bolso villages. It currently has a population of approximately 668 people.
After the families moved to the new land, fresh challenges began to emerge. I felt extremely reluctant to leave the house where I had lived my entire life for an unfamiliar setting. My mother, Ângela, was a leader who fought for this space to become a concrete reality. On the day we loaded our furniture onto the vehicle and moved, we cried as we set off for our new home. To this day we struggle to stay in this new locality and adapt. I write this passage in a state of deep emotion. Below I present various memories as a way of making the process of reconstruction experienced by Anacé families intelligible to readers:
The concept of social suffering makes it possible to show that the afflictions experienced by certain social groups are not the exclusive result of contingencies, misfortunes or chance, but consist of experiences that are actively produced and distributed within the social order. In the case at hand, this is a critical event whose sociopolitical roots are associated with the reproduction of earlier environmental conflicts. (Zhouri et al. 2016: 3)
Analysing the concept of social suffering through the Anacé case, it becomes clear that, in the process of relocation, families have suffered - and continue to suffer - physical and symbolic losses associated with moving to the new territory. Several years have now passed but I continue to hear many accounts of the painful difficulties endured, reflecting the extent to which political, economic and institutional power induces, produces and intensifies social problems and suffering.
The indigenous people who took part in my fieldwork make clear that their relationship with the traditionally occupied territory extends beyond the physical to include the many different feelings bound up with belonging to that enchanted place. Our principal inheritance and wealth are our identity and history, which we fight to ensure are passed down from generation to generation.
The Anacé families who were removed know who they are, the blood coloured by struggle that runs through our veins. Regardless of the place we inhabit, this identity does not leave our skin: it is the territory we inhabit. Our body-territory.
Yet the second process of removal has involved new spiritual, cultural and traditional configurations.
Indigenous interlocutors highlight the importance of Anacé memory and identity in the process of reconstruction within the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve. In the future, this will become a traditionally occupied territory for the generations now being born, even as, for their elders and future ancestors, the traditionally occupied territory will remain the one they themselves once inhabited.
The strength and memory of Anacé families contribute to their collective endeavour to adapt to the locality. Nevertheless, we understand that this will take time. The families from Bolso village had their houses demolished, while in Matões village the houses remain intact. We continue to live with the uncertainty of whether they will be demolished and financially expropriated, since parts of Matões are now being used by companies and the Anacé have yet to be compensated. ‘They are government lands,’ we are told, meaning we can no longer access them. Indigenous people still become emotional when speaking about the process of moving to the Indigenous Reserve, referring to the symbolic relations with the previous territory and affirming that no amount of money can repay all that was lived and that they yearn for a time that will never return.
My research has been conducted with the removed families since 2018. Five years on from the relocation to the new area, the transformations that have already taken place are readily perceptible, such as the introduction of vegetable-growing areas for the families via projects implemented by the Ceará state government. This space is for the collective use of the families living in the Reserve where produce is marketed and the community is supplied. Practices and affective relations are being built. As Bourdieu (2005) observed, the legitimate vision of the social world reflects the state of symbolic power relations: this permanent symbolic struggle is realised by collective agents who confront one another within a given field.
During the first interviews conducted in the Reserve, I repeatedly heard the phrase toda muda murcha (‘every seedling wilts’) and I sought to understand its meaning. Indigenous interlocutors were referring to the relocation of the removed families: once taken from its habitat, the plant wilts, but with care and time it adapts to the new soil. I present an excerpt from these testimonies recorded shortly after the move (Souza 2019):
In the testimonies, the expression calling ourselves wilted seedlings refers to the move from Matões to the Reserve and evokes the difficult situation in which we found ourselves, but one that will pass quickly, because we are now planted in the new land and will once again re-establish our symbolic ties. All participants emphasised that all the restructuring has only been made possible by the unity of the residents, which constitutes the foundation of resistance in rebuilding our lives. A feeling of longing is present, yet it is also conveyed that those who were relocated possess the wisdom and strength of the encantado spirits, which propel them forward and make the process of adaptation more bearable for the families. The physical relocation impacts people’s quality of life, but at no moment did I hear anyone saying they wanted to give up and return to Matões. ‘We came to an Indigenous Reserve where there are only houses and forest, but we are well because we are all together with our kin, our families, we are recuperating Anacé tradition and culture.’ (Souza 2019: 55)
Despite all the changes, we remain conscious of the importance of staying together in the Reserve: the process of construction is unfolding step by step. The reconstruction of the Anacé people in the nova terra is taking place through the transmission of memories that foster an affective relationship with the land, a process based on practices and traditionality. As the anthropologist Gersem Luciano Baniwa (2006) has stressed, territory is a constellation of knowledge and traditions,
(...) a condition for the life of indigenous peoples, not only in the sense of a material good or a factor of production, but as the environment in which all forms of life develop. Territory, therefore, is the ensemble of beings, spirits, goods, values, knowledge and traditions that ensure the possibility and the meaning of individual and collective life. Land is also a fundamental factor of resistance for indigenous peoples, uniting them around a shared banner of struggle: the defence of their territories. (Luciano 2006: 101)
The internal organisation of the village provide spaces of welcome and recognition for the elders, our custodians of memory and knowledge transmitted collectively through dances, rituals and lived experience. For Halbwachs (2013), when one or more people combine their memories, they can describe facts or objects we have seen with considerable precision, sometimes reconstructing the entire sequence of our actions and words in specific circumstances, even when we ourselves no longer remember any of this. My status as an indigenous person and an anthropologist is grounded in a place of listening, giving voice to these holders of knowledge who safeguard and venerate Anacé ethnicity.
Collective memories are our source of strength and resistance. Historical recollections are accessed and attributed new meanings, ensuring that the spiritual connections and symbolic relations with the traditional territory will never be erased. Enchantments, forms of care and memories are also being spontaneously produced and resignified within the Taba dos Anacé Reserve.
The indigenous anthropologist Braulina Baniwa (2018) emphasises that our territory is composed of a constellation of knowledge disseminated across all levels of the people. In this context, it is possible to understand the notion of metamemory as the representation that each individual forms of their own memories, which shape the dimensions of belonging to the past of our people.
This conception resonates with the notion of collective memory developed by Maurice Halbwachs (2013), according to which individual memory is deeply anchored in social and collective frames of reference. Metamemory may be understood, therefore, as a subjective layer of collective memory in which personal experiences intertwine with the symbolic and spiritual markers that structure Anacé identity.
The mobilisations have led me to reflect on how the ‘conquest’ of Anacé land is the outcome of immense struggles and resistance to keep our identity, territory and encantos alive: ‘we have the land as a root that sustains us and that connection is not easily severed.’ Six months after the move, my grandmother Lucimar became an encantada. An indigenous woman who was illiterate and had never left Matões, she was unable to adapt to life in the Reserve. Today, I give thanks for all her strength, teachings and struggle, which make it possible for me to speak now about our people.
THE ENCHANTED SPIRITS AND THE SÃO GONÇALO DANCE OF THE ANACÉ PEOPLE
In recent years, we have lived through a mixture of emotions following the move to the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve. I identify the São Gonçalo Dance of the Anacé People as one of the principal sources of strength in the process of adapting to the new territory. This dance, which includes religious, historical and spiritual elements, was incorporated into Anacé tradition as a strategy of resistance and identity reaffirmation, particularly in the face of colonial prohibitions on indigenous spiritual manifestations.
The São Gonçalo Dance reached the Anacé people through contact with popular Catholicism during the period of missionary activity and mission village settlement (aldeamento) in the territory. Although initially an external imposition, over time the dance was appropriated by Anacé families and became a ritual of spiritual connection with the encantados and the land. We incorporated its rhythms, gestures and songs into our own way of sensing the world. What was once a practice taught by colonisers turned into an act of resistance and a reaffirmation of our ancestral identity.
Performed for more than nineteen years by Anacé families, the São Gonçalo Dance includes chants, gestures and choreographies that evoke the Catholic saint,5 but also the encantados, ancestors still present in the rituals and everyday life of the Anacé people. The dance has been re-signified by the Anacé as a sacred ritual, transforming the ceremony into a symbol of spiritual unity and cultural reconstruction, especially in moments of crisis and displacement.
In Matões, the dance was performed either in front of the old chapel of São Gonçalo or in the courtyards of houses, on commemorative dates or at moments of great spiritual need. Organisation was communal with each family contributing food, instruments or ceremonial attire, while the elders led the chants and the maracá playing.6 Children grew up watching and learning the steps of the dance and its songs, strengthening the intergenerational cycle of knowledge transmission.
With the relocation to the Reserve, part of this dynamic was disrupted. The space of the dance had to be ritually reconfigured and the encantados - formerly linked to specific places like Morro do Siririca, Jurema Branca and Gregório - came to be evoked within a new physical space. Even so, the dance is still performed today, now functioning as a symbolic link between the ancestral territory and the new land.
When we dance São Gonçalo, we also dance with the encantados. They manifest in the winds that brush our faces, in the beats of the maracá, in the force that descends into the body. Some say they have seen their ancestors in the circle; others feel a strong presence when the chants rise. This dance is not only performed for celebration but also as a way of listening to signs, healing pain and affirming that we are not alone. It is the moment when the encantados join with us to remind everyone that we are still a people in motion. It has become one of the principal markers of the spiritual and cultural resistance of the Anacé people, allowing the encantados to continue to be venerated, even far from their places of origin.
One aspect I have observed with particular attention is the difference between the ways we organised ourselves spiritually in Matões village and how this organisation is being reconstituted in the present-day Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve. This territorial transition has brought about substantial changes in the relationship with the encantados and with the sacred places of encantaria.
In the new space, we are immersed in a process of symbolic reconstruction, recreating spiritual connections with the territory we now inhabit. Even though the physical localities have changed, we continue to seek the presence of the encantados and the spiritual strength inherited from our ancestors, reaffirming that encantaria remains alive and accompanies us wherever we are.
In the article ‘A encantaria segundo a cosmovisão Pitaguary,’ included in the volume Territorialidade, Ancestralidade, Trajetórias e Resistencia (Rodrigues et al. 2022), encantaria is described as a form of territorial protection linked to the structure and organisation of our physical and spiritual lives, as described in the following citation:
Encantaria, in this dual characteristic of function and structure, complementarily fulfils the roles of being, constructing and sustaining all life (both spiritual and material) among indigenous peoples. We could say, therefore, that it is the indigenous ancestral soul and, at the same time, the social construction of the historical-cultural reality of these nations. It is through the encantados - the dwellers, builders and keepers of Aruanda, that is, of encantaria itself - that access is gained to this entire epistemic and psychosocial framework. (Rodrigues et al. 2022: 61)
Our encantados, in turn, are beings who accompany our history of struggle: for us, they are our guardians of nature, located in places of enchantment. In our Matões village, I would occasionally hear families speak of manifestations of the encantos during the process of clearing forests and draining lagoons. My concern here is to describe how this connection between the encantado spirits, the Anacé people and the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve is now being realised since, on many occasions, these manifestations expressed their opposition to the rampant destruction taking place in the traditional territory: ‘Encantaria is only understood by those who live it.’
We began here by binding people together, bringing together those we saw had the capacity to be there, and we would hold a moment there at the trunk of the Jurema,7which is still there today. We had our little Jurema place. Very often we had moments there, just with the shamans, with our shamanic sessions [pajelanças], asking for strength and faith. We gathered the group there frequently. And that is it: the Jurema also, in a certain way, represents us, because there are many Juremas, but we are speaking of white Jurema. A locality like that is not something you choose yourself; a right moment exists for you to arrive. Sometimes that place is not the right moment for you to perform a toré; it is not always the appropriate place. It has to be a place that gives you the strength of nature. (Aristides 2022)
As the elders recount, all negativity was left behind in the sacred forests so that situations might also be resolved by our encantado spirits. The encantado spirits, for us, are our Anacé ancestors; we believe that when they die, they become encantados. Some healers who have now passed away physically possessed the gift of being able to receive or ‘bring down’ our ancestral encantado spirits for the performance of healing rituals, as Sergio Brissac and Luciana Nóbrega (2010) describe:
The flow of Indians, or the flow of encantado spirits, is one of the elements that appears repeatedly in Anacé religious narratives. According to Antônio Freire de Andrade, an Anacé man from Matões, in an interview with the newspaper Porantim, the Indians who died in the struggle became encantados, and thus ‘the current of the encantado spirits arose, flowing from Gregório to Morro do Siririca. It passes over Jirau, Baixa das Carnaúbas, Baixa da Almeida, and then plunges into the forest. Whoever has the strength and the power to receive it need only pass beneath it. They give strength; they help’ (Picanço 2006: 6). Some of the encantado spirits, therefore, are understood to be the ancestors of present-day Anacé who, on dying, became encantados, going on to inhabit the forests in their traditionally occupied territory. At certain moments, these ancestors would come down into healers during ritual work in order to perform cures. (Brissac and Nobrega 2010: 5)
The ‘flow of encantado spirits’ are the guides of our spirituality, present in our songs, prayers and dances. Another connection I explored is the process of physical and spiritual construction in the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve. In my interviews with Aristides and Luciana, it becomes abundantly clear from their accounts that various difficulties are still being encountered over the years, as reflected in the following account:
Here, inside, there was a toré - one that you even took part in, and I think you saw the difference. There’s a place here where I went, where I entered the toré; it’s not just about stepping into the dance, it’s not just about participating. The locality matters, the energy, the force, these things. So when people say they’re going to take a cashew tree, clear the ground and hold a toré under it, you have to ask: are they doing it in the right place? Everything requires sensitivity to nature; sometimes it has to be moved from one site to another. (Aristides 2022)
Along the same lines, Luciana added that:
From time to time we sit there under the trees, right there, we make a little spot for ourselves, but it’s not the same, and I feel the absence. I think about the space I had there, about the projects I had there. I dream of making my own garden, of having my own yard with grass, and other things I had planned to do. But then, from time to time, I find myself remembering that I was meant to be there. Still, what can we do? Life is like that. (Luciana 2022)
Our relations with the encantado spirits in the Indigenous Reserve are developing in a processual manner. We have a space in the forest known as the Terreiro Sagrado, with several white Jurema trees where we have performed some rezas (healing sessions). The encantado spirits have not yet manifested in this space; however, they do make themselves present in other rituals, such as the São Gonçalo Dance of the Anacé people and the toré.
Like the toré, the torém and the coco, the São Gonçalo Dance has a dimension of spirituality and struggle. In the toré, the encantados are called into the circle; in the coco, there is a challenge of word and body. In our dance, the form is more circular, the gestures gentler, yet the force is the same. Song has the power to open paths, and the body, as it moves, causes the territory to germinate. The difference lies in the way in which we dialogue with the sacred: through silence, through song, through swaying, but always with respect and strength.
At the very start of the removal process, before the reserve had been created, one late afternoon we held our first toré in one of the streets with just a few people present. In the toré circle, there is usually a person who remains at the centre - someone who senses that the energy of those singing and playing the maracá has become stronger. Next to me, someone became entoada, but did not speak; they were just there with us in the ritual. The moment was so powerful and I understood it as a message from our ancestors, telling us that they continue to protect the Anacé people.
We are holding new encounters and our spirituality and encantos accompany us irrespective of where we are. Since the beginning of this research in 2016, prior to the relocation, indigenous families have asserted that the traditionally occupied territory is the village they were forced to leave behind. Our greatest wealth is our identity and our memory - and the symbolic bonds are being re-territorialised in the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve, as Valdelice Fernandes recounts:
Our guides, the messengers of light, those of the toré, those powerful rezadores [healers], there were many among our ancestors who were deeply religious, who cherished this. They are there in the forest; when you draw a toré, they are there with you. That is a moment of spirituality, a moment when you ask for graces, to disentangle the knots in your life - that is the moment to ask. You ask the messengers of light, those who have passed from one life to another; they are there, they are with us. Those toré I sing, they were the ones who gave me the strength to draw them forth. People don’t understand. (Valdelice Fernandes 2022)
Our encantado spirits are dynamic, since they are traditional and ancestral, living with us everyday. Despite all the difficulties faced, the elders pass on their knowledge, spiritual strength and self-knowledge concerning what it means to be indigenous, as well as the force of resistance we carry to confront moments of hardship, as Mestre Antônio Adelino describes:
And when I arrived here with my family, I suffered. It’s funny, every seedling that is transplanted wilts. And that’s the case for everyone who moves: even if you move just from here to the end of the street over there, you have to change. There is something that stays here that is not there in your former home. But we went through hardships, and with God’s help we overcame them and we’re still overcoming them. I was already standing firm. (Antônio Adelino 2022)
We continue to stand firm and have faith. The past few years have been challenging for families. Spirituality and the building of the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve do not depend on us alone, but on all of those who came before us and shed blood for our Mother Earth. Little by little, I have seen and felt these transformations taking place.
In the process of reconstructing the Taba dos Anacé Reserve, families have felt the impact on medicinal practices and spirituality. Since the move, the accounts I have heard from Dona Valda speak of her anguish at no longer finding her roots, bark and leaves. Being uprooted from the land considered traditional and having to create bonds in a new space is deeply challenging. The Anacé mezinheira (healer) recounts the difficulties faced in preparing her medicines:
Not everything I need is found here. There are things missing, for example, the jucá pod: I’ve looked and it isn’t here, but it grew in Matões. And the cashews here, the cashew trees don’t produce enough fruit for me to make cashew honey. Sometimes there is more cashew, but it’s sour, so it’s impossible. So it comes from Matões, from the coastal strip, and that’s how I make the honey. When I go to Matões, I go there, I squeeze it right there and bring it back to the Reserve. (Fernandes 2022)
Families emphasise that they are Anacé wherever they may be: ‘this is my place, no matter where I am.’ After the relocation to the new land, the São Gonçalo Dance became a vital link to the territory of origin. We dance in the reserve so as not to forget who we are. Even amid all these spatial transformations, we continue to keep the rite, the instruments and the teachings of the elders alive. The dance is a way of planting memories where there roots do not yet exist. It helps us reconnect with the encantados, strengthen our spirituality and teach children that to resist is also to dance.
Like spirituality, Anacé knowledge and the practice of traditional medicine are also undergoing a process of adaptation in the new territory. Four years have passed since the move and families have been seeking ways to rebuild their ties with nature and the land. Herbs, roots and fruits that were once within easy reach now need to be rediscovered, replanted or replaced with new possibilities. Even so, ancestral knowledge remains alive, passed on by the elders as part of the continuity of life and the healing of our people.
On 7 September 2022, following the Covid-19 pandemic, the São Gonçalo dance group, the coco dance group and leaders of the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve held the second vivência (experience/encounter) dedicated to strengthening the groups and passing on the memories of struggle of the Anacé people, bringing together approximately eighty participants. To make this event possible, we held meetings to develop a proposal for the Ceará State Indigenous Culture Prize with the aim of securing funding for the event. Once the project was approved, the programme was organised into two moments: a vivência and a cultural evening with rituals and performances open to the entire community.
In 2021, on the same date, a vivência was held in a shared format at the terreiro of Sr António Adelino, where families gathered to share food. These moments from the preparatory phases to the realisation of the encounters were crucial to the development of the work presented here. I therefore highlight the importance of oral transmission through the memories of the village elders, as well as the significance of Anacé youths being involved in the dance groups and in these spaces of sharing, since they are seen as the next indigenous leaders of the Anacé people: ‘the collective mobilisations that give meaning to political struggles.’
FINAL REMARKS
Symbolic practices and relationships with encantaria, grounded in our understanding of territory as the place where history is made and lived, contribute to the strengthening and maintenance of the living traditionality of the Anacé people. My research and writing are political and intellectual positions that I carry as instruments of collective struggle. By sharing these experiences and the identity to which I belong, I affirm them as political and social stances with the commitments to pass this knowledge on to future generations too.
Thiago Anacé describes the importance of conducting engaged research and maintaining traditional knowledge within the territory:
We live our lives without reflecting on it, and the beautiful history is always the history others tell. Our own history, we don’t value it. The true history, the one that serves life, is ours; it is the history of resistance, and so we need to speak about it. We need to sit here in a vivência and make a large drawing, a big map. Rute has that file FUNAI produced in 2012, so we need to update it, to map out family relations here, so that when people ask whether we are really indigenous, we can say: yes, I am, because I am the great-grandchild of so-and-so, who is married to so-and-so - we need to be able to say this off the top of our heads. The first point is to say that the vivência is necessary: we do things, but we don’t reflect on what we do. I always saw the coco as a kind of game, a big challenge, you call the other person to break a coconut. But today I’ve thrown that idea aside. The coco has a political character of resistance and affirmation of identity; it has a spiritual dimension too, the drum that calls you, invites you, enters into relation with you. So the coco also carries a great deal of the spirituality of the resistance that you are. There is a lot in the coco that we don’t talk about, even among those who dance it. We need to discuss what the coco is. There is no way to speak about Anacé identity without speaking about the São Gonçalo Dance. If I speak about the Anacé people, I have to speak about the coco and about the São Gonçalo Dance. (Thiago 2022)
In this way, reflecting on Anacé intellectual and traditional production involves the challenge of transmitting and valuing our own culture and identity, which connect to different forms of knowledge, whether these are taken as ‘traditional’ or ‘scientific.’ I understand our practices as cultural heritage: it is this heritage that strengthens and unites us.
Throughout my journey in Anthropology, I have been producing collective ethnographies. Without the transmission of traditional knowledge, it would be impossible to produce epistemological knowledge capable of describing the aspirations of my people. The vivências in the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve have shown me the importance of occupying the university space and describing our rituals, spirituality and the resistance of the Anacé people. Writing about the community’s social memories from a position of alterity is an instrument of struggle and resistance for future generations.
In this way, the sharing of practices, histories and rituals has been symbolically important to the process of adaptation and strengthening in the current moment in which we find ourselves in connection with the encantos. In light of what has been experienced and presented here, I engage in practices of self-representation within the scientific field of anthropology. I consider, therefore, that, as both researcher and researched within the Taba dos Anacé Indigenous Reserve, I have a responsibility to retribute and contribute the knowledge and academic work produced here, so that it can be accessed by Anacé families and also serve as a record of identity, memory and resistance.
As an indigenous researcher, my field observations emerge from the process of spiritual construction and reconstruction in the new land - a process in which I am directly immersed and which involves many emotions and memories. We still have a long journey ahead. As I walk through the village, I can identify all the physical changes. At the same time, we seek to adapt our spirituality, not to replicate how it was in the former territory, but to reorganise our greatest wealth: the knowledge that comes from our Mother Nature.
The interviewees highlight the spiritual and symbolic transformations caused by the 2018 relocation. Families continue to reaffirm that the Traditional Territory is the territory where they were raised and raised their children, and they maintain symbolic relationships and encantos with the Bolso and Matões villages. Hence, this research exemplifies the importance of recovering and revitalising the São Gonçalo Dance of the Anacé people as a responsibility of cultural and spiritual continuity following the process of removal to the Taba dos Anacé Reserve. Despite all the violations endured, the dance continues.
REFERENCES
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1
Among indigenous peoples of the Brazilian Northeast, encantado(a) refers to those who, after death, do not disappear but come to inhabit a spiritual plane of protection and connection with the community. Encantados are understood as ancestors who remain present through spiritual manifestations, rituals and elements of the natural world. This concept will be picked up again and explored in greater depth over the course of the article, especially in the section on Anacé spirituality.
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2
The Pecém Industrial and Port Complex (Complexo Industrial e Portuário do Pecém: CIPP) is a mega-enterprise located in the municipalities of Caucaia and São Gonçalo do Amarante in Ceará. Created in the 2000s as part of the state’s economic development strategy, the CIPP brings together steelworks, thermoelectric plants, refineries and logistical infrastructures geared towards export. Its installation caused profound social, environmental and cultural transformations in the region, directly affecting indigenous and traditional communities such as the Anacé people.
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3
Remarks made by interviewees will appear in italics to distinguish them from quotations from published works and to improve readability. They may also contain features of oral language.
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4
A company associated with the Pécem Industrial and Port Complex (CIPP).
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5
TN: Saint Gundisalvus of Amarante in English.
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6
TN: The maracá is a gourd rattle widely used in indigenous rituals in Brazil and across lowland South America, typically associated with shamanic practices, song accompaniment and the activation of spiritual presences.
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7
TN: Jurema refers to native trees of the genus Mimosa central to indigenous ritual and spiritual practices in northeastern Brazil. Jurema branca (White Jurema) is often locally identified with Mimosa verrucosa.
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Data Availability Statement:
All data generated during this study are included in this published article.
Edited by
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Dossier Editors
Gersem Luciano Baniwa (gmapolero@gmail.com | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5222-9339)Luiz Eloy Terena (adv.luizeloy@gmail.com | https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9073-6086)Antonio Carlos de Souza Lima (acslima@mn.ufrj.br | http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5260-236X)
All data generated during this study are included in this published article.
