Fisher 1994 Mega Development, Environmentalism, And Resistance..Kayapo Indigenous Politics

history, the entailments of rainforest environmentalism for which the Kayapo have served as symbols and spokespersons can be related to a Kayapo social project that encompasses a wide range of needs and goals which, as in any society, are not completely articulated.

Kayapo participation as regional actors in the areas of southern Para and eastern Mato Grosso comes into better focus if one considers their actions over the long term. The Kayapo are indigenous people inhabiting 14 independent villages. All settlements resulted from fissions occurring as the Kayap6 moved west- ward from their ancestral village between the Araguaia and Tocantins Rivers in what is now the state of Tocantins during the early 19th century. They traditionally combine horticulture with hunting, fishing, and foraging to provide their subsistence. They have a longstanding acquaintance with different aspects of Brazilian society and manufactured goods, and even those villages contacted as recently as 30 years ago already had previous knowledge and limited access to metal pots, shotguns, cloth, machetes, and other manufactured products.

This paper highlights the underplayed linkages that exist between the structures of regional political economy and forms of political action undertaken by indigenous peoples. The strategies employed by the Kayapd to further their objectives can be periodized in terms of a regional political economic context. During the extractive period in which Brazilnut, rubber and other extractive activities dominated in areas adjoining the Kayapo, they alternately robbed individual collectors and negotiated with local bosses. In the aftermath of the massive Brazilian government-initiated Transamazon highway construction, and the im- plantation of agriculture and ranching as foci of commerce, the Kayapo obtained influence through bureaucratic structures that oversaw economic and social "development" in the Amazon. In the 1980s when mining and large projects such as the Tucurui dam depended heavily on internationally available technology and financing, the Kayapo forged alliances with international environmental groups. These phases of "development" can be better seen as accretions rather than stages of economic organization that totally supplanted one another. An understanding of the accumulated historical experience of the Kayapo proves to be essential to evaluate their current role as environmental activists and their acquisition of manufactured goods and legal or extralegal entitlement to their lands. The present-day Kayapo's ability to either disrupt or, through threat of disruption, create space for negotiations can be seen to be the key to their success.

Kayapo presence in the publicity and mobilizations surrounding the environmental movement has been attributed by both social scientists and the media to the resiliency of their cultural traditions which flourish only in harmony with the tropical forest. With the tropical forest under threat of destruction, the Kayapo and the environmental movement have convergent interests in agitating for changed policies and safeguards against ecological devastation. In the opinion of some commentators such as Schwartzman (1991), an environmental challenge of global pro- portions seems to gave given rise to a global response led by an "alliance" between First World non-governmental organizations and Third World social movements which include indigenous groups. The conjoining of diverse constituencies to shape policies influencing the environment appear to be capable of mobilizing considerable supporting public opinion.

To garner support for protecting territory and resources, the

Kayapo speak directly to an international public in terms of an ecological discourse. The production and reception of this discourse needs sociological analysis. By attributing Kayapo discourse to their culture rather than viewing it as a formulated appeal intended for an international public with shared environmental concerns, both anthropologists and the public can mis- understand the basis of Kayapo resistance to threats to their communities. It is not their connections with nature expressed in their culture that gives the Kayapo leverage to advance their objectives, but their readings of opportunities for action that dis- rupts "business as usual" within the southeastern Amazon. The issue is not whether the Kayapo have specialized environmental knowledge, but whether that knowledge comprises a distinct interpretive framework that explains the political stance of the Kayapo (or any of the other dozens of indigenous peoples in Brazil) in the face of diverse threats to their livelihoods, society, or survival.

I begin with Piven and Cloward's insight (1979:3) on poor people's movements: the "occasions when protest is possible among the poor, the forms that it must take, and the impact it can have are all delimited by the social structure in ways which usually diminish its extent and diminish its force." This stricture is equally applicable to indigenous political activity; eruption of protest is determined by the pressures and the opportunities afforded by the political and economic conjuncture and medi- ation by social institutions. Indigenous peoples are no less a part of economic and social relations within a larger context of multinational society than other groups of poor people, although the kinds of processes that constitute the links must be specified in each case.' That groups of poor people are vari- ably inserted into networks of economic and social relations points up the different opportunities and limitations that exist in peasant, landless, and extractive laborers' protests in the Am- azon compared with those of indigenous groups. This is a crucial question for the environmental movement because while both indigenous and other poor peoples have an interest in opposing the destruction of the environment, they have diverging interests in other respects and different opportunities to disrupt the development juggernaut. If alliances are to be formed between Amazonians of different origins, then the considerations of their differences in organizational base and potential, economic insertion and access to the organs of the state will define the kinds of roles they may play in environmental protest^.^,^

The sorts of demands and issues raised by the Kayapo show the inadequacy of analyses of indigenous protest that relate protests to encroaching capitalist relations in a straightforward way. Indigenous demands that the state provide health care, opportunities for trade, access to cash, social assistance, and other services are legitimated from the point of view of both the state and the Kayapo themselves by the spatial circumscription of the land over which an indigenous group may exercise control. The partial surrender of autonomy does not, however, mean that the Kayapo regard themselves as a defeated people destined to a thorough commodification of their social life. The Kayapo are attempting to conserve their life in small villages with subsistence and ritual activities that require a base in land and natural resources while maintaining their links to Brazilian agencies that furnish medical supplies and manufactured goods and other services that the Kayapo need and desire. Kayapo goals have remained fairly constant, but the changing regional context has

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necessitated different and sometimes contradictory forms of mobilization and participation. Concessions won by the Kayapo also call into question whether the degree of "enlightenment" shown by mediators and allies of forest peoples is a critical factor in their ability to win political battles (Schwartzman 1991).

Prior to publicly addressing the issue of Xingu hydroelectric projects, the Kayapo also played roles in issues of Amazonian mining, timber harvesting, and the storage and testing of nu- clear materials. There was also a celebrated attempt by the Kayapo leader Ropni to cure the noted Brazilian naturalist Augusto Ruschi of his terminal cancer. Kayapo have prominently represented themselves as natural scientists with much to offer in the way of environmental knowledge (Hamu 1987) and have become in- creasingly sophisticated in producing video images for both internal consumption and as public relations tools for a larger audience (Turner 1992). Both Kayapo activism and the wide- spread reception and use of indigenous representations need to be understood within a framework of social and institutional relations. I wish to give some idea how Kayapo responses have been shaped by their historical experiences of involvement in several phases of the regional economy over the past 55 years and to begin to think about the significance of this for building a strong environmental movement. Such an effort demands attention to the effect that the structure of the regional political economy of the Amazon has had on local environmental protest.

The Kayapo Protest Against Rainforest Destruction

In February 1989, the Kayapo leader Payaka organized the First Meeting of Indigenous Peoples of the Xingu to protest the impending construction of a series of hydroelectric dams along the course of the Xingu River. Some 600 Indians attended: 500 Kayapo and about one hundred invited representatives from 40 other tribes (Turner, 1993). Members of the news media, politicians both from Brazil and abroad, and NGO supporters almost equaled the number of indigenous demonstrator^.^ The town of Altamira in the interior of Para along the Xingu river, site of the two biggest proposed construction projects, was chosen for the protest. Altamira itself is a product of recent Brazilian development policies, having grown from about 5000 inhabitants to about 40,000 under the aegis of the Transamazon Highway construction and settlement. At the time of the indigenous protest, the proposed dam projects were already drawing heavy fire. Eletronorte, the state owned utility, had already cancelled plans for one dam called "Babaquara," and the World Bank was under pressure to withhold a power sector loan to Brazil that could have been used to finance the other dam known as "Karara6."

Preceding the protest, in November 1988, a tour was organized for two Kayapo leaders, Payak2 and KubE-i. Among the organizers were Friends of the Earth and Survival International. The Kayapo travelled to Holland, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Canada, and the United States to meet with representatives of governments, multi-lateral development banks, commercial banks, and tropical hardwood importing industries. They issued calls for an end to the destruction of the rainforest which threat- ened their homelands and lobbied against approval of the World Bank loan to Brazil. Support and publicity was sought for the Altamira p r o t e ~ t . ~

The February 1989 indigenous protest gathering in Altamira

lasted several days. While the First Meeting of Indigenous Peoples of the Xingu was held in the gymnasium of the Altamira Civic Center, in the streets of the town approximately 3000 demon- strators rallied against the Karara6 dam. The rally was spon- sored by the Rural Workers' Union of Altamira and supported by the Catholic Prelate of the Xingu. Kayapo leader Ropni addressed the crowd although, to avoid confrontations with dam supporters in the town of Altamira, there were no appearances by other indigenous leaders (Arnt 1989a).

In addition to demonstrations against Eletronorte's plans, 15,000 people had previously attended a counter-demonstration held days earlier favoring the Karara6 dam project. This public demonstration was organized by the right wing antilabor and anti-land reform Democratic Ruralist Union (Arnt 1989b).~ The mobilizations advocating different development alternatives thus involved various constituencies to whom the issues of indigenous rights were largely peripheral.

The demonstrations supporting and opposing the Xingu dams were important developments, although they were hardly reported outside the Brazilian press, apparently because of the emphasis by the press and environmental activists' on the symbolism of native participation to the detriment of analysis of the larger political and institutional context of the indigenous protest. The image of indignant natives appeared to lend greater weight to the indigenous protest, although this action was numerically smaller than the other demonstrations. The public's fancy (as mediated by the press) was given over to traditionally garbed natives reproving western society for its misdeeds. The media were filled with images of traditionally adorned Kayapo and, in fact, the Kayapo urged other tribes to remove their western attire and decorate their bodies following their own customs (Pereirs 1989:78). There were those who contended that the power of the Kayapo derived from their skill in manipulating symbols of the Amerindian as guardian of the forests and upholder of the ecology (Pereira 1989:78). And indeed it was this image that the international media picked up and broadcast throughout the world.

Shortly after the Altamira Kayap6 protest, the World Bank announced that it was denying the Brazilian power sector loan. Analysts have hailed the Altamira demonstration as an initiative that "profoundly changed political reality and expectations for Indian people in Brazil and beyond and that was instrumental in fueling a pan-Amazonian indigenous identity (Ireland 1991:54). Its success as a media event is credited with generating such intense political pressure that Brazil's government was forced to call a retreat in its plans for dam construction.

Given the difficulty that the poor and disenfranchised have in organizing successfully to have an impact on institutions and policies that affect their lives, I think we should ask "How was the Altamira protest possible?" and "What lessons does it hold for movements organizing against destruction of their environment?" I have indicated above that I believe an adequate answer must be found in the relationship between local actions and the possibilities and pressures caused by the changing economic and institutional linkages between the Brazilian Amazon and the rest of the world. All activists know that many well organized and well conceptualized movements fail more often than not because the institutional opportunities for their success are sporadic and limited. The tremendous creativity, energy, and political savvy shown by the Kayapo leadership could not in

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itself guarantee the successful prosecution of the campaign against Xingu dam constructions. In examining the history of the Kayapo attempts to forward their own agenda in the context of a regional economy heavily responsive to federal dictates and orientation, we can see how the Kayapo have, in fact, consistently been effective political players. I will attempt to periodize the struggle waged by the Kayapo and to give an idea of how the possibilities for protests like those of Altamira were created.

The Extractive Period

Even before they were officially contacted and pacified by the Brazilian government, bands of Kayapo had entered into arrangements with individual entrepreneurs along the Xingu R i ~ e r . ~ I will spend some time describing encounters from this period because the form of regional commerce greatly influenced the forms of transactions that the Kayapo were able to construct to serve their immediate ends while simultaneously making certain goals more desirable or pressing. The account of the German enthnographer Kurt Nimuendaju (1952) is illustrative of the sociology of the Kayapo region during the extractive period. While proceeding up the Xingu in 1939 to research the Gorotire-Kayapo, recently contacted by the Brazilian Indian Protection Service, he sought shelter overnight at the residence of local strongman Constantino Vianna and his son. Their little settlement contained nine other huts housing rubber tappers and Brazil nut collectors. There were also some Gorotire-Kayapo orphans being raised in the settlement. In spite of powerful feelings of distaste and even hatred for the Indians shown by Constantino's son and the other neighbors, Constantino derived considerable profit by trading goods for Brazil nuts gathered by Kayapo women of the Kubenkrakegn group. While independent of the Gorotire-Kayapo and only "officially" contacted by the government 12 years later in 1952 (Silva 1952) this group was already clearly involved in the wider local economy. Constantino extended goods in advance, so that by the time of Nimuendaju's visit some members of the Kubenkriikegn-Kayapo had acquired large size debts, pay- able in Brazil nuts.

The region that the Kayapo inhabited through the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s was structured by the economic intermediaries of the extractive economy. Kayapo access to goods did not vary very much whether they were on reserves or raiding, purloining, or trading on their own. Those rubber tappers and Brazil nut gatherers who surrounded Kayapo country lived with meager material possessions, all of which were also accessible to the Kayapo. But individual gatherers were beholden to the local merchants who bought up extractive products, transported needed manu- factures and foodstuffs to the area, and extended credit in the arrangement known as aviamento and characterized by the gatherer's perpetual indebtedness (Murphy 1960). For the Kayapo to ensure a fairly constant replenishment of goods, they had either to make arrangements with the local merchants or owners of Brazil nut groves or other extractive industries. As the case of Constantino Vianna shows, both parties had something to gain from the transaction, and, depending on context, both extractive bosses and Kayapo initiated the contacts.

Efforts were made during the 1950s to contact and pacify the Kayapo through the auspices of the Superintendt?ncio do Piano de Valoriza@o Econ6mica da Amazbnia (Superintendency of

the Economic Valorization Plan for Amazonia or SPVEA), founded in 1953. Due to the chronically scarce resources of the Indian Protection Service (SPI), an agreement was made with the SPVEA to provide financing to contact the Kayapo (Estado de Siio Paulo, 20 Sept. 1958). This policy was justified by the militancy with which these Indians protected their homelands and attacked extractive workers. Bringing the Kayapo under government control would make their territories accessible to workers in the different extractive industries.

Since the extractive economy was to be the channel through which the state exercised control over indigenous peoples, the Kayapo reaction to such attempts comprised an attempt to establish their own terms for participation in larger social networks. Headlines of Brazilian national newspapers in 1957 broadcast the threat the Kayapo posed to the entire Brazil nut and rubber harvest ( 0 Globo 1 Nov 1957). The disruption of the harvest is best seen in light of events of the previous decade. In 1947 newspapers detailed the recent agreement between the SPI and the Minister of Agriculture to use Indian labor to strengthen the extractive industries. "With the new provisions adopted by the Service [the SPI], the excess of production resulting from Indian labor is to be sold and the income deposited in the Banco do Brasil to be applied as necessary in benefit of the respective tribes" ( 0 Globo 4 June 1947). A total of Cr$ 848.470.70 was collected in four regional divisions of the SPI, including Para. This total did not include four other regions where Brazil nuts were abundant. Not only were indigenous peoples to be dragged into the Brazilian economy along lines dictated by government planners, but they were to support themselves and provide a surplus to the government in the process!

Within this regional context there was little incentive for the Kayapo to submit to government pacification efforts. Given the feeble power and reach of the federal government's Indian Pro- tection Service (SPI) during this period, there were no great benefits enjoyed by those who lived within the confines of SPI posts. "Contact" and "pacification" are best seen as processes, which are even reversible in some cases, since whatinterested the Kayapo was not their legal status but their access to goods, some security, and a certain kind of lifestyle. Much of the impetus to "pacify" indigenous peoples in the area of the Kayapo was linked to the need to encourage extractive industries, especially Brazil nut collection. For example, Diniz (1963) reports that the Gorotire-Kayapo, in addition to traditional activities, collected Brazil nuts and Cumaru (a kind of palm), which were traded with the SPI in the same aviamento system adopted by local merchant^.^ Despite nominal government support, even on the reserve, extractivism based on long-term dependent indebtedness continued to be the only way that the ~ a ~ a ~ 6 could obtain what they needed.

The dictum that forms of struggle are constrained by the social structure is no less true in the frontier situation. It was the Kayapo's involvement in the very system of extractive pay-offs that made disruptions strategic. Raids were calculated responses based on an understanding of how the extractive industries op- erated at a local level.9 Verswijver (1985:279ff) in his study of Kayapo warefare provides ethnographic evidence for the hypothesis that raiding patterns involving warfare against Brazilians need to be distinguished from warfare against other Kayapo villages and indigenous groups. Booty rather than defense, revenge, or male honor was the prime rationale. In addition, Brazilians

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were the only adversaries to extend material enticements while suing for peace. The Kayapo understood that raiding widely scat- tered and impoverished extractive workers yielded an inadequate and uncertain supply of desired goods. Physical proximity to extractive areas made disruptions possible, however, and the disruptions made the granting of concessions probable. Given the weakness of government authority in the Para interior, we would expect to see the controllers of the extractive industries acting to placate the Kayapo and broker concessions from the government. The government maintained the role of extractive bosses in the aviamento system through lease of large areas of so-called virgin or unsettled areas to middlemen for the pur- poses of extracting forest wealth from them. Those living in the region could only work for the owner who held the lease (Silva 1952).

Indeed, Kayapo disruptions of extractive industries paved the way for deals with the government in which the bosses of the extractive industries acted as mediators. In 1958 the state governor of Para played host to the Xikrin-Kayapo chief Bemoti. Accompanying him was the owner of Brazil nut groves in the vicinity of Maraba, Sr. Plinio Pinheiros,I0 Sr. Jose Fernando Cruz, a former employee of the SPI and an Indian, Caapira, from the Gorotire-Kayapo village (Folha do Norte 20 Sept. 1958). During his audience with the Governor, Bemoti asked for and received hoes, rifles, pick-axes. and medicine for followers whom he numbered at 600. This kind of intercession of controllers of extractive industries between the Kayapo and the government can be found over and over again. Local government's Indian policy was enacted in response to extractive interests. The newspaper Ultima Hora (23 May 1959) reported on peaceful contacts made by SPI agent Francisco Meireles with the Kayapo settlements of Kokraimoro, Bau, Mekragnotire, and Karara6 in 1959. According to the paper in 1958, some of these Indians (it is not clear which, but the group was probably from Bau) produced 18 tons of rubber. Those responsible for the peaceable agree- ments worked out at the time were Isaac Benarroch and Rai- mundo Oliveira, owners of rubber groves near the towns of Al- tamira and Itaituba. Bureaucratic disbursement of funding often did not meet the urgency to placate the Kayapo felt by local communities, which, in some cases, evidently provided funds and support for "pacification efforts." In October 1960, for example, the newspaper 0 Dia carried notice that the sertanista [wilder- ness scout] Francisco Meireles would travel to the River Iriri next Monday to pacify the Kayapo "with or without the funds from the SPVEA" (29 October 1960).

The Kayapo continued to operate a framework in which participation or disruption of extractive industries were tactically utilized to achieve their goals. In 1962, the Xikrin-Kayapo chief Bemoti moved his followers to the juncture of the Catete and Itacaiunas Rivers where they would have greater access to the river traffic consisting mostly of Brazil nut gatherers, rubber tappers, and animal pelt hunters that frequented the area (Caron 1971, Frikel 1963). After their contact in the early 1960s, the Bakaja Xikrin-Kayapo collected Brazil nuts for Antonio Moreira de Oliveira, who introduced the Xikrin-Kayapo to market oriented activities. He traded in Brazil nuts and wildcat skins (Fisher 1991:50). The regatao itinerant merchant who to this day plies his trade along the Xingu near the mouth of the Bakaja is named Alcides. During the 1960s and 1970s he served as middleman in pelt trading and encouraged the Bakaja Xikrin-Kayapo to wage

war on their Indian neighbors, the Assurini who had formerly controlled the Bakaja waterway and posed a threat to poachers and gatherers working for Alcides.

To recap this period: the structure of the extractive economies posed certain threats and provided certain opportunities to the Kayapo. The period from World War I1 until the 1970s was characterized by weak government control of the interior. During the 1960s when confronted with guerilla insurgency in the Am- azon, the government established a powerful presence through military garrisons in small towns in the interior of Para such as Maraba and Altamira. Kayap6 leaders witnessed military might when invited to official events on military bases, and military transport was used to remote Indian reserves, but in the areas, where they actually lived, national security directives had small impact on Kayapo communities. Although the Indian Protection Service (SPI) had begun to enter into permanent contact with almost every individual settlement of the Kayapo, the SPI itself was forced to operate at the behest of the more powerful controllers of the regional economy, namely the leasers or controller of Brazil nut and rubber groves.I2 Whether or not the Kayapo were contained in areas nominally controlled by the SPI, they were constrained by the regional economy.

Bureaucratic Colonization of Para

On the heels of the military takeover in 1964, the SPVEA was abolished in 1966, and the goals of the federal development objectives for the Amazon were modified. A new organ to oversee development was created, the Superintendency of Amazonian Development (Superintendencia do Desenvolvimento da Ama- z6nia or SUDAM). New plans aimed to lay the groundwork for investments of private capital. The state was mainly to provide investments in infrastructure, research, and planning re- quiring large capital investments with a much longer return time (Cardoso and Muller 1977:114-115). Extractive industries were to be substituted by more profitable ones; incentives were provided for agriculture, and the goal of fixing stable nuclei of population in frontier zones was established. In 1967, rampant internal corruption prompted the extinction of the weak and debilitated SPI and a new organ, the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), was formed in the following year. These events signaled the era in which the federal government under military rule sought to extend its control of the economy of the interior.

In 1970, the military president Medici initiated the Program of National Integration. The Amazon was to be integrated into the economic advances of the rest of the nation, and its resources were to provide an impetus for economic growth. As part of this effort the Transamazon Highway was constructed linking northeastern Brazil with the capital Brasilia and the Peruvian frontier. Part of the reason for acceleration of the integration of the Amazon was the military's concern with control over the area.

Whatever the strategic reasons of the military government, the institution of the Program of National Integration brought great changes to the region. With the discovery of mineral wealth and introduction of large-scale cattle ranching, the area saw the coming of private companies that sampled and surveyed terrain, labor contractors who brought in laborers to mine and to clear the land, and colonists anxious to receive land and houses in


the government ago-villas. The influence and power of government agencies like the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) was great in small towns like Al- tamira. Moran (1981:81ff; see also Umbuzeiro n.d.) reports on the other government programs that flooded the Altamira region as part of the move to "integrate" and "develop" the area.I3

The Kayapo clearly felt the change in the government policy from the beginning. Many were called to work on the Trans- amazon Highway as scouts to seek "wild Indians in the path of highway construction or to hunt fresh game for construction crews. Fayak%, the main organizer of the Altarnira protest, worked from 1970 to 1972 with construction crews. His account of this experience was published as part of the FUNAIISummer Insti- tute of Linguistic language seminars. In this publication he points out that the President of Brazil had ordered the construction of the road. In his native language, he explained the ongoing development projects as a result of directives given by higher ups.14 That is, he attributed the projects neither to anything akin to "economic development," (e.g., land scarcity, supply and demand) nor to the actions of those laborers or officials directly engaged in building the road. Instead, Kayapo analysis inter- preted the cause for Amazon development as the political im- peratives of the government. This is actually quite an accurate way of representing events following the Program for National Integration initiated by PresidentIGeneral Medici. The GE groups among Brazilian Amerindians have always had an acute recognition of the hierarchical nature of Brazilian society, a perspec- tive based in large part on their own conception of hierarchy as it obtains in their own social structure. Since the very beginning of their contacts with Brazilian society, this point of view has allowed them to formulate very effective strategies aimed at getting the attention of higher ups.

During the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, air service was established to many Kayapo villages as they were encouraged to clear landing strips in remote forest areas.I5 This project not only afforded better access to Indian lands, it also made the administrative centers of the bureaucracy more accessible to the Kayapo. In part, the stress on air transport was an attempt by the FUNAI to bypass ongoing economic transactions between Indians and local entrepreneurs. Previous trade and contact had been mostly through river travel via traders who were also involved in extractive industries. FUNAI officials were determined to be the exclusive trading partners of the Kayapo. Indian lands were made less penetrable to locals lacking official authoriza- tion by constructing reserve posts or sentry posts along water- ways (Cotrim Soares 1970). In effect, FUNAI, a government agency, competed with local merchants, traders, and poachers for the Kayapo's attention. l6 In the case of the Xikrin-Kayapo village at Catet6 where a missionary played the role of medi- ating agent, the difficulty of establishing a monopoly of Indian trade was clear even though doing so was justified by the os- tensible goal of getting fairer prices and averting contact, dis- ease, and exploitation of the Indians (Caron 1971).17

Even to the present time, the FUNAI often remains at a dis- advantage in the face of long-term local traditions of reciprocity and patronage, despite the resources it commands as a government agency. Due to high turnover and instability, its institutional memory continues to be actually much shorter than that of local merchants, extractive workers, and indigenous peoples. In some ways the sporadic nature of the contacts between these groups

is less important than the memory of ongoing transactions within the region which the FUNAI is poorly prepared to understand. While I was in the field in the mid-1980s, occasional transients engaged in extractive pursuits in neighboring areas drifted across reserve lands - they would be welcomed, presents would change hands, and they would continue on their way. The FUNAI post official, with usually only a few months of job experience, looked on uncomprehendingly and was unprepared to offer a substitute for these encounters. Nonetheless, such contacts continue to represent alternative channels of social relations for the Kayap-6.

When no longer able to alternately attack or bargain with representatives of extractive economies, the Kayapo found new ways to press their interests. Focus now shifted to the FUNAI agency itself since it controlled access to trade and services. The most effective way to apply pressure was to travel to the local hubs of administrative authority. By their belligerent presence and demands, the Kayapo created discomfort among administrators that often resulted in compliance with Kayapo requests. In fact, administrators wish to keep Indians on the reserves at almost any cost in order to be left in peace to perform their duties un- disturbed by the presence of those they are supposed to be benefiting. Not only were the Kayapo able to make use of the distinction between "field employees" and "administrators," but they were able to use the quasi-military hierarchical model on which the organization was run. For many years, the head of the FUNAI was a military officer appointed by the President of the country (or by the head of the Department of the Interior in which the FUNAI was housed). It was much easier to get results by pressuring top officials than by having lower level employees send along reports outlining problems, needs, and policy recommendations. Often on the orders of top-level officials, local employees would shift resources from one Indian group to another, responding to pressure applied rather than to an assess- ment of specific needs.

In a related development that contributed to the construction of native leadership throughout Brazil, indigenous peoples began to be accepted into the military. During the 1960s, Indian scouts had proved very useful in tracking down guerilla insurgents in the Araguaia region. The increased military presence in the Am- azon made the use of indigenous know-how very attractive to the military. It is probable that some Indians thought that joining the military was a way of participating in Brazilian society and acquiring useful skills while reserving the option to return to ' their village of origin after military service.18

The instability of the FUNAI allowed other local forms of extragovernmental trade to remain important, but the Kayapo and other outspoken indigenous peoples such as the Shavante found that this same instability also yielded another potential source of influence. Indigenous support for FUNAI leadership changes had become necessary in order to minimize disruptions during frequent changes in administration. I was told privately by a FUNAI employee that enormous sums had been paid in bribes and favors to influential indigenous leaders in return for their support of new FUNAI appointments. The Kayapo bought houses in Belkm in order to be close to the seat ofdecision- making in the 2nd Delegacia (later to become the 2nd Superin- tendencia) of the FUNAI. In 1984 when I was to get my autho- rization for fieldwork, the head of the FUNAI in Belem proudly indicated that Fayaka was one of his greatest supporters and would not allow the FUNAI upper echelons to replace him.I9

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Eventually, Kayapo pressure led to a form of co-optation by the FUNAI itself. This feat was accomplished by incorporating Kayapo as officials of the agency, initially at a local level on reserves and eventually, in the mid-1980s a Kayapo, Megaron, was named to head the cabinet of the FUNAI president in B r a ~ i l i a . ~ ~

Able to both pressure and participate in the FUNAI, aware of the importance of elite opinion, and having established an institutional base in the federal and regional capitals of the Para state, the Kayapo were able to mobilize and influence the drafting of the section on indigenous rights in the Brazilian constitution of 1988. Their tactics were similar to those used to pressure the FUNAI on a local level and included street demonstrations, sit-ins, and meetings with leaders in which they asserted themselves in a threatening manner. Their analysis of and experience with Brazilian bureaucracy served them well. Moreover, they were able to finance the movement of large numbers of young warriors from their Amazonian villages to major population centers. They became the most visible of Brazil's native peoples.

The Internationalization of the Amazon

As the 1980s dawned, the Grand Carajas Program and the Program of Energy Mobilization became the two principle foci of development in the Brazilian Amazon (IBASE 1983:55). Both projects were directly to affect areas familiar to the Kayapo. Through decree law 1813 on 24 November 1980, special incentives were instituted for firms participating in the Greater Carajas Program, and an Interministerial Council was established for the program's implementation. Three basic objectives were laid out at a meeting of the Council (IBASE 198356-57): (1) the exploitation of the region's energy, mineral, and forest resources, (2) the exportation of the production, (3) the intensive use of foreign resources to carry out productive enterprises.

Amazonian development was thus not only increasing in scale but was becoming internationalized. A large part of the urgency was due to the looming foreign debt crisis in the early 1980s. The scale of investment demanded by both megadevelopment projects, however, constituted a new joining of interests. Bra- zilian civil society was neither consulted nor invited to contribute to discussions on the means and ends envisioned by these massive projects. While the effects on Brazilian society as a whole will tend to accumulate over time, the indigenous peoples of Para immediately experienced important changes beyond the destruction inflicted on the environment.

The shift toward megadevelopment with the initiation of huge mechanized construction and mineral extraction with large-scale foreign involvement in technology and investment shifted the regional balance of power even further from the FUNAI. No matter how politically weak and internally disorganized the FUNAI had been, the Kayapo pressure had been effective in directing resources to their own villages. Even after the action in the mid-1980s that guaranteed a percentage of gold production from the prospecting area located on their territory, the Gorotire-Kayapo, for example, relied on the FUNAI for certain services. It afterward became easier to circumvent the FUNAI entirely or to apply other kinds of pressure. For instance, the company responsible for the development and export of mineral resources from the Carajas range in Para, A Companhia Vale

do Rio Doce (CVRD), received World Bank financing with the stipulation that 13.6 million dollars be spent to support indigenous communities in areas influenced by the routing of rail lines over the course of a five year period. The misapplication and misdirection of plans and funds on the part of the FUNAI led to an agreement in 1984 between the CVRD and the FUNAI. According to the terms of this agreement, anthropologists and others appointed by the CVRD would advise on and audit the funds dispersed by the FUNAI (Vidal 1986:259-260). The FUNAI was thus subjected to strong outside pressures on behalf of indigenous communities. The World Bank financing of the Polonoreste Project in western Brazil and hydroelectric projects contained similar provisions to ensure careful planning to atten- uate the impact on indigenous communities (Price 1989, Rich 1986). The shortcomings of the FUNAI continued to be obvious, and World Bank monitoring of project impacts inadequate, nev- ertheless, the requirements attached to macro-project financing and the direct and indirect influence of business enterprises such as CVRD over government agencies affected the Kayapo's ability to defend themselves and maintain their place within the region. This shift was accompanied by a decline in the power of local extractive intermediaries within the region. While the unstable and precariously functioning FUNAI would often rely on credit, transport, and assistance from these intermediaries, the more powerful CVRD was able to establish links directly with indigenous communities. The Xikrin-Kayapo, for example, directed protests for better health care, demarcation of territory and other concerns to the CRVD as much as to the FUNAI during the mid-1980s.

Sociological literature on protest formerly focused on the breakdown of social structures, or on rising hopes and expectations, but neither factor is necessarily decisive in the case of indigenous protests. As contributions to resource mobilization theory stress (e.g., McAdam, McCarthy and Zald 1988, Tilly 1978) most attention needs to be paid to the possibilities for resistance. Doing so entails a focus on the way indigenous societies are articulated within the regional economy, and on the organizational potential they have at their disposal and their opportunities to use it. In cases of particular links between indigenous peoples and larger social networks within regions with a particular structure of economic activity, public opinion may prove crucial to the success of indigenous challenges to authority. In the case of recent megadevelopment, opinions of elites and the public create strong pressures on already heavily challenged Bra- zilian government policies.

As Piven and Cloward (1979:27) suggest, "It is not the impact of disruptions on particular institutions that finally tests the power of the poor; it is the political impact of these disruptions." They claim that the political impact of institutional disruptions in the US is mediated by the electoral-representative system, but I suggest that a different set of institutions mediates the impact of Kayapo protests. We need to advance a hypothesis about why international pressure should be at least partially effective in curbing certain destructive environmental practices. I believe that this relationship is due primarily to the particular partner- ship between multinational capital and state-run industries in Brazil as well as to the structure of government incentives for private investment in the Amazon. Recent in-depth studies of economic development in the Brazilian Amazon point to the preponderant weight of state intervention. In his study of large-


scale development, Hall (1989:250) concludes that "Expansion of government involvement in Amazonia through the Carajas Programme is consistent with the generally enlarged role of the Brazilian State in directing and planning national development." Hall and other writers (Bunker 1985; Hecht and Cockburn 1989; Mahar 1979, 1989; Schmink and Wood 1992) have described the effects of state policy on various aspects of Amazonian society.

There is debate over identification of the interests served by the state, but there is near unanimous agreement that a series of factors subordinate economic efficiency, sustainable development, and environmental considerations within Amazonia itself to powerful outside interests. Relevant factors include "generation of foreign exchange for debt servicing, the need of the CVRD, Brazil's State mining enterprise, to obtain cheap raw material supplies, and the expansion of mining activities to com- plement livestock production as a vehicle of regional and national economic growth . . . At the same time . . . pressure from overseas interests has acted in favour of defining development goals as a function of transnational mineral companies global strategies" (Hall 1989:253). IBASE, a Brazilian think tank, contends that where such economic interests of multinational firms are at stake, profitability is less an issue than supply of raw materials. Massive Brazilian government subsidies and the vertical integration of multinational enterprises make criteria of profitability applicable to industrial end-users rather than to the extractive producer within the Amazon itself.

These are "consumer's partnerships" where the interest of the partner lies more in the flux of raw materials and inputs assured by their investment share than in the eventual generation of dividends. Thus, prices will always be low and will always be contained; it is enough to assure the survival of the firm, without worrying about resulting profits or dividends, because the amount of private multinational capital investment is insignificant and interests as a 'buyer' of products prevails over the interests as a partner in the firm. Accumulation of capital that this activity makes possible takes place not in Brazil, within the productive enterprise, but in the exterior within the purchasing enterprise (IBASE 1983:74, translation by author).

Hall (1989:76) contends that it is too simplistic to see Carajas and similar mega-development projects as primarily servicing overseas end-users, but Bunker (1985:82) points out that international demand for extractive products from the Amazon has been intensified by the Brazilian state's sponsorship of development in ways that augment its capacity to capture foreign reve- nues and to establish its political legitimacy. He therefore echoes Mahar's (1979) analysis that the Brazilian government's policies in the Amazon were used as stopgap solutions in programs for rapid industrialization and socioeconomic development in the country as a whole. Negative social, ecological, and even economic consequences within the Amazon are thus outweighed by benefits accruing to government and private interests outside the region. Such benefits included the lessened "impact of international capital flows and maintain short-term economic growth for the Brazilian nation industrial center" (Bunker 198556). Thus geopolitical integration, national security, energy production, and internal room for migration (Mougeot 1986) as declared reasons for government policy toward the Amazon take their place alongside the need to capture foreign currency to finance continued economic growth and repay the national debt.

Political power of Amazonian populations is not tested in disruptions of institutions located in the industrial heartland that

play a key role in supplying capital or consumer goods. Instead, the Amazon's marginal economic relation with the industrial center in combination with the social and political implications of Amazonian development determine effective channels for indigenous people's influence. In order to understand the possibilities of indigenous people for creating political disruption, we must keep three salient aspects of Brazilian government intervention in the Amazon in mind. In the first place such intervention is tied to major national policies in which the Brazilian state must balance calculations of social, political, and economic advantage on a national basis. In the second place, changing global economic processes and government policies strengthen the role of multinational corporations in Amazonian development and constrain both private capital and government's ability to act unilaterally in project implementation. Policies that affect the viability of the project as a whole, even if they involve local events, are made at very high levels of a hierarchically organized decision-making structure. Finally, immense financial resources tied up in mega-projects greatly raise the stakes for their success.

The potential political disruptions caused by indigenous protests against environmental destruction are much greater than the institutional disruption that such protests may cause. Mega- projects are characterized by high financial risks, up-front capital requirements, the need for a delicate balance of the range of interests in play during negotiations involving multi-lateral and private banks and industry consortia, foreign governments, and Brazilian state run enterprises as well as immense financial resources (Neto 1990). This confluence of factors may in some cases favor concessions to indigenous peoples. Since indigenous demands seek to ensure forms of autonomy they are formulated to insulate indigenous peoples from the harmful effects of mega- projects rather than to alter mega-project productive and organizational structures. The moral weight of indigenous condemnation is yet another constraint among many formidable constraints on the autonomy of mega-project decision-makers. It is not the relationship of forces "on the ground in a localized region but the delicately balanced interests and structure of the mega-project as a whole that determines decision maker's attitudes to the challenges indigenous peoples place on project implementation. Since the challenges represent threats to the viability of a project, they are not treated as strictly "local" events to be dealt with by low- level officials, they are often, in fact, shunted up the decision making pyramid. The financial sums involved in concessions may be large relative to indigenous populations but small relative to the financial and political stakes of the project as a whole.

I suggest that the opinion of elites is so influential in Ama- zonian protests because the disputed projects are not centrally tied to the rest of the productive infrastructure of Brazil and are so heavily dependent on direct government investment; moreover, success is calculated in political rather than strictly economic terms. In fact, the most serious short-term impact from a failure or breakdown in these projects is in the capture of foreign currency through loans, exports, or conservation of foreign currency through substitutions of imports. Short and long term impacts involve the decline of state authority among both business firms and the wider populace. The link between external financing through multi-lateral development banks and Amazon development policies provides political leverage through which foreign pressure may be exercised within Brazil. US-based en-

V O L . 5 3 , N O . 3 F A L L 1 9 9 4 227

vironmentalists seized upon these opportunities to apply pressure in their efforts to halt tropical forest destruction (Schmink and Wood 1992:113).

Of equal importance for the Kayapo is the exclusion of the kinds of local institutions and networks on which they had exercised pressure during the previous decades. Huge development projects of the 1980s presented fundamental differences from the kinds of extractive industries practiced for centuries in the Amazon and even from the kinds of development proposed during the 1970s, such as small farming and cattle ranching. There is little or no place for a local population envisioned by project planners. Large dam projects in Brazil, for example, have habitually displaced productive communities and towns against their will (Magalhges 1988, Sigaud 1988). With the exclusion of the local population also comes the exclusion of most of the Brazilian bureaucracy responsible for the organization, the provision of services, and the regulation of village and productive activities. The government services in the Amazon are mostly provided by specific bureaucracies which function throughout the Brazilian territory (Bunker 1985). Municipal and county authorities are weak in that they are responsible for few services provided to rural dwellers. If one wants a house sprayed against malaria, for example, one contacts the local branch of SUCAM, a national government health service, rather than the city government. Other alternative services were provided by loggers, gold miners, airplane pilots or companies that are themselves responsible for much of the environmental destruction.

The progress of megadevelopment and the exclusion of the local populations over the total large areas of southern Para and eastern Mato Grosso occupied by the Kayap6 is far from uni- form. The channels previously used by the Kayapo to forward their own agenda have, in some areas, been rendered irrelevant. The possibility of forming local alliances or pressuring extractivist producers no longer exists in some places, and in some cases the financially and politically weak FUNAI is in no position to overrule the dictates of billion dollar projects. In other areas, river traders, prospectors, and extractivist activities continue to operate, sometimes taking advantage of their knowledge of the area to render services to mining companies and surveying companies as well as engineering consultant firms engaged in technical studies within the region.

An example from the area of my fieldwork confirms the point made by Schmink and Wood (1992:12) that some tenacious ele- ments of traditional Amazonian extractivism are able to maintain a place for themselves in the era of mega-projects by bro- kering their specialized expertise. The same regatdo merchant so influential in the pre-FUNAI Brazil nut and pelt trade along the Bakaji River inhabited by the Xikrin-Kayapo was hired to help demarcate their reserve border. He continued throughout the 1980s to provide supplies to the mining operation functioning along a disputed border of the Xikrin-Kayapo reserve. In effect, he ensured the border dispute and hence his further economic viability by making sure the gold prospecting area lay outside of the demarcated borders.

Indigenous protests are powerful not because they shake basic institutions of economic production in this case but because they call into question the government's intervention in the Amazon. Such questioning is possible because the Brazilian government, already reeling under the impact of economic crisis, is not able to put a unified face on its policies such that the diverging opinion

of elites is openly revealed. As suggested, the internal productive consequences of the disruption of large-scale Amazonian development are small, especially over the short-term. The political consequences of lack of confidence in government policies are potentially much graver. The analyses of recent Bra- zilian megadevelopment cited above share a common ground in pointing to the fact that state policies with regard to the Am- azon were considered successful if they engendered political and social benefits for the Brazilian state, particularly in the form of debt reduction, foreign capital investment, and political legitimacy, rather than because they catered to needs of Amazon residents.*' In other words, policy aims were not formulated in terms of rational resource use for the benefit of the local population but in terms of broad political decisions. It is under these circumstances that Kayapo protests stand a chance of winning lasting concessions from the government. Whether or not similar conjunctures of factors become common for indigenous peoples in other parts of the world, they constitute a major reason why the opinions of elites inside of Brazil and even outside of the country can have such an impact not only on the stimulation of protests by indigenous groups but also on the pressure felt by the federal and international authorities to placate such protest.

Conclusions

The Kayapo are, without any doubt, the main indigenous activists against the implementation of large-scale development in the Amazon, particularly the proposal to build seven dams along hundreds of miles of watercourse of the Xingu River that runs down from the central plateau descending into the Amazon basin and eventually joining the Amazon itself. While the effects of such a project would be a tragedy for indigenous peoples living along the waterway, the impending ecological disaster cannot by itself explain the scope and form of the Kayapo's response. That is, the environmental consequences of development do not in themselves breed resistance to development policies nor create the opportunity for that resistance to be effective.

The growth of environmental awareness and the correlated rise in influence of environmental organizations need to be analyzed as a socially constructed ideology associated with large- scale social processes. One of the unique features of environmentalism as an ideology is the indeterminate quality of environmental concerns as a social issue. In the abstract, there is no constituency that is uniquely or exclusively positioned to benefit from environmental quality, although there are pressing immediate interests at stake in any particular case. Therefore, the implications and agenda of environmentalism at any point need to be analysed as a social product (Buttel, Sunderlin, and Belsky 1991:ll). As a social product (i.e., as specific policy recommendations and action by or appeals to a specific constituency within a specific political and economic context) environmental issues have material and redistributive implications. In analyzing an environmental movement, we must focus attention not only on the indigenous and international constituency but their structural links with larger polities and systems of economic relations.

I have made the obvious point that opportunities for Kayapo defiance and influence depend on the structure of regional Am- azonian institutions and their place within a larger governmental and economic structure. Attacks on rubber tappers or negotia-

22 8 H U M A N O R G A N I Z A T I O N

tions with controllers of Brazil nut groves are options within a predominantly extractive economy. Pressure on and integration into the government bureaucracy is the most productive strategy when the FUNAI had overwhelming control of Indian well-being within the context of the bureaucratic jungle established by the federal government in the Amazon. In a context when direct investment and control of Amazonian resources is being internationalized and the influence of macro-projects far outweighs the ability of the FUNAI to decisively intervene on behalf of indigenous nations, the Kayapo are presented with both new pressures and new possibilities not only for protest but to further their own agenda. My contention is that this agenda has not radically changed over the course of the last 40 years. Kayapo are defending not only their lives and their land but seek medical care, manufactured goods, and government services. Environ- mental activists need to be aware that the ability of poor people to cause significant political disruption is historically short- lived (Piven and Cloward 1979:27-32) and that analysis of the conditions that favor the winning of concessions is of greatest importance.

If these arguments hold true, there is a danger for both en- vironmentalists and the Kayapo in relying on the Indian image as guardian of the rainforest. This image implies that Indian lifestyles should be given a chance to survive because of specific acts they perform that are beneficial to the environment rather than basing the defense of indigenous rights on elementary no- tions of justice which would ensure their rights to maintain a separate cultural tradition. There are also reasons to doubt the efficacy of foundations or aid from international sources as a basis of a permanent solution. We have Piven and Cloward's documentation of the bureaucratizing of protests in organizational forms that counter the ability to disrupt and contain rather than unleash the activities that make protest successful (but compare Anderson 1991 for a nuanced account of disruption versus co-optation).

The rhetorical use of the image of ecomystical attachment to the land by natives is a representation compatible with a specific political-economic juncture in which international agents and world-wide pressure can be brought to bear on regional economic structures within the Amazon. The Kayapd have employed different representations of self throughout their history. Endow- ing their environmental stance to an essential component of "in- dianness" elevates what is a tactical position of the Kayapo to an enduring attribute rooted in culture rather than politics. More particularly in this case, in my opinion, this view well fits the need of international agencies for positions that support their capacity for intervention. This view of alliances with private foundations and NGOs as a long-term solution for the Kayapo underestimates the longevity and degree of the Kayapo's artic- ulation and association with not only the regional economy but also regional politics of the Amazon. The history of state intervention in the Amazon is filled with abrupt discontinuities. Bunker's work Underdeveloping the Amazon (1985) is an extended commentary on how the imposition of extractive organization not only contributes to its own demise but sharpens the difficul- ties of implementing alternative productive structures. Having experienced abruptly shifting balances of regional forces in the past, the Kayapo have strong motives to not sever all their connections with local entrepreneurs and government bureaucracy in favor of international allies. The effectiveness of these inter-

national allies rests on the current predominance of the export oriented model of internationally financed development. In the longer term, however, the intervention of multinational pressure will undergo periods of greater and lesser intensity and, at any rate, penetration is never complete. As the Kayapo successfully combat the construction of macro-projects, the latter may well withdraw from the region. This threat underlies the dilemma of the leader Payakti, who wavered between maintaining his ties with the FUNAI bureaucracy or associating himself with an internationally supported private foundation. He left his FUNAI position around April 1991 and has since been heavily involved in the Body Shop's project for a Brazil nut oil press.22

Sider (1987:20) makes the point that "to reuse, against dom- ination, the idea that Indians are especially natural both reinforces a shallow stereotype originated by the dominators and also con- ceals from native Americans the basis of their resistance." While the Kayapo need a resource and land base to continue their traditions, so do many other indigenous peoples who have been less successful in surviving and resisting than the Kayapo. To successfully defend a way of life, more is necessary than an em- bracing ecological consciousness. It is correct to point out that Kayapo social relations entail certain relations with their environment, but to conclude that their strong defense of this resource base derives from their relation with that base denies agency to Kayapo society. To bypass the social relations that mediate relations with the environment or to assume that such relations extend only inward toward an encysted autonomous social formation makes any real description of indigenous politics im- possible. If we limit ourselves to this view, how are we to understand the different histories of diverse indigenous peoples? Moreover, such a picture could limit Kayapo efforts to win concessions or use their territory in any manner they choose by defining authentic indigenous activity in terms of "traditional" social roles. While Westerners continue to view their own activity as innovative, indigenous activity continues to be "traditional" or innovative only inasmuch as native peoples make use of western technology. Not only does this viewpoint lead to consideration of social and technological change as independent rather than linked, but it downplays the Kayapo's own history as the basis for their partially successful resistance to the destruction of their society. In fact, the Kayapo have modified many aspects of their village life, social organization and surround- ings in the process of surviving more than two hundred years of colonial and post-colonial onslaughts.

The history of Kayapo engagement and resistance shows the variety of postures adopted in response to political and economic pressures within the ebb and flow of regional history. For a Kayap6 to be an environmentalist today is in some senses similar to being a warrior in other times. Both are stances dependent on a certain political conjuncture. To understand Kayapo environmentalism one needs to take into account the different pressures, opportunities, and native initiatives within the changing region, nation, and world. Consideration of the background to current Kayapo diplomacy suggests important considerations for those who envision permanent alliances between well intentioned environmental NGOs and native peoples. These considerations are outlined below.

1. While involvement with the international movement to halt rainforest destruction is a new step for the Kayapo, "en-

V O L . 5 3 . N O 3 F A L L 1 9 9 4 229

vironmental consciousness" within the Third and First worlds by itself is not the basic cause for the tactics chosen by the Kayapo- tactics which have to d o with opportunities for institutional disruption. To understand current initiatives, one must understand the continuity of longer-term political aims of the Kayapo as a people connected to, yet partially autonomous from, a multinational state. It is a particular system of financing and promoting economic development that has led to a situation in which international support is effective and crucial for Kayapo environmental politics. Recognition of how the Kayapo have sought to further their goals under different conditions in the past have implications for the future. The financial and political pressures on the Brazilian government make it unlikely that it will be able to continue to assume the major responsibility for investment in Amazon megadevelopment. The current state of affairs in which mega-projects are contested will be necessarily short-lived. Whether the movement to halt the destruction caused by the Greater Carajas Program or the construction of hydroelectric dams along the Xingu is successful or not, the Kayapo will once again be operating in a changed political context and will require new local alliances o r a revival of older ones.

N O T E S

It seems to me that a distinct indigenous cultural consciousness may mean that an indigenous protest movement need not entail a trans- formation of consciousness or behavior as Piven and Cloward claim for other protest movements. In the case of an indigenous nation (although not always) protest can simply be politics by other means.

Environmental activists should also be interested in the conclusions of Piven and Cloward that the protests themselves and the institutional disruption and response from elites should be the focus of their attention instead of the attempts to develop enduring organizations that can siphon off the impact of protests and simplify appeasement and co- optation efforts.

The length of this paper precludes detailing the different social structural constraints under which indigenous and non-indigenous Am- azonian~ operate. A complete analysis would also consider the internal social organizational potential of the Kayapo based on chief-led factions, kin links, and age organization. T. Turner (1993) has addressed this issue, as have I (1991).

4 Among the foreign politicians attending were a member of Britain's Labor Party, a Belgian member of the European Parliament, members of Brazil's national congress, and heads and representatives of different government organizations such as the Instituto Brasileiro de Meio Am- biente e Recursos Naturais Renovaveis, the environmental division of Brazil's foreign service, Itamariti, the National Indian Foundation and others. Simultaneously, in Brasilia, the ambassador of France along with the charges d'affaires of Holland and Norway, solicited Brazilian President Sarney's participation at an upcoming conference in March 1989 at The Hague in which 20 heads of state were to discuss the administration of the Amazon (Jornal do Brasil 21 February 1989, p. 5).

5 In the January 1988, Payakfi and Kube-i had appeared with anthro- pologist Darrell Posey at an international conference on tropical forest conservation at Florida International University (Posey 1989). Imme- diately following the conference, resourceful activists from the Envi- ronmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation among others began to recognize the public relations impact of native peoples themselves speaking out against environmental destruction. They therefore arranged for meetings in Washington, DC between the Kayap6 leaders

and the World Bank, State Department, and Treasury Department, during which the Kayapo lobbied against the construction of the Babaquara and Karara6 hydroelectric plants.

6 Steve Turner (1989) estimated the counter-demonstration attendance at 2,500.

7 The same situation existed even earlier along the Araguaia River during the last century (Audrin 1963, Fisher 1990, Ianni 1979). The scope of this paper is limited to more recent events.

8 "In this manner, the head of the Indian post commits himself to sell the Brazil nut harvest, either in part or in its entirety, . . . beforehand in order to obtain credit. As a result, given the circumstances of an 'agreement' based on future payment, the capitalist [the merchant] imposes his will, furnishing only part of the total amount of merchandise agreed on beforehand. In view of this contingency, the Indians who are then recruited as 'manual laborers' suffer what we could call a 'legal rip-off; because besides being poorly paid, they pay exorbitant prices for the goods they do receive. In this specific case, the head of the In- dian post may also be exploited by the financier, to whom he has prom- ised to sell the harvest collected by indigenous workers, since the merchant may also appropriate the harvest for non-payment of money owed to him" (Diniz 1963, translation by author).

Additional evidence that raids against extractive industries were considered different from raids on other indigenous peoples is the lack of prestige associated with this kind of warfare by the Kayapo. More- over, the Xikrin-Kayapo told me that they calculatedly travelled outside their usual range to kill Brazil nut gatherers in an attempt to elicit a pacification expedition to their vicinity in 1961. In my opinion this action has to be recognized as a certain kind of diplomacy seeking to com- municate across institutional and cultural barriers. "Diplomacy" can take many forms: Kayapo peoples also have been known to take captives who could be used as envoys or even translators in cross-cultural communication (e.g., rivers formed natural barriers permitting communication without direct confrontation). Verswijver (1985:292) states that as a rule the Kayapo avoided direct confrontations in their raiding of small Brazilian settlements. The tactics of confrontation employed by Kayapo in current protests are not mere extensions of a "warrior" tradition but calculated to achieve certain effects in the present political climate.

10 Plinio was not only the head of the association of Brazil nut growers in Maraba but also owned extensive landholdings between the Vermelho and Sereno rivers where the Codim Company prospected for manganese. Pli'nio hired one of Caron's assistants with many years of experience with the Indians and an SPI person. He also tried to hire the other assistant. Plinio also had diamonds and gold on his properties (Caron 1971:105). This is interesting because we can see the method of Plinio; he repeatedly hired employees of the Indian agency, easily offering more than the low government salaries and through former government employees was able to maintain ongoing relations with the Indians themselves.

The trade in spotted wildcat pelts was especially active and lu- crative during the 1960s. whereas trade in alligator skins was empha- sized during the previous decade (Moran 1981:71-72).

l 2 Recall Maybury-Lewis' (1965) description of the forlorn and iso- lated SPI employee who was supposed to be responsible for the Xerente but lived by his wits and ability as a woodsman.

13 A very incomplete list of agencies can be given as examples of the scope of government involvement: ACAR-Para (Associac5o Brasil- eira de Crkdito e Assistencia Rural do Para), IPEAN (Instituto de Pes- quisa e Experimenta~fio Agropecuaria do None), DEMA (Departa- mento do Ministkrio de Agricultura), CEPLAC (Comissfio Executiva do Piano da Lavoura Cacaueira), SESP (Servico Especial de Saude Publica), SUCAM (Malaria Control Service), COBAL (Companhia Brasileira de Alimentos), MEC (Ministerio de Educaqfio) and SEDUC (Servico Estadual de Educacao), MOBRAL (the literacy program) SESI (Servico Social da Industria). In addition, the Banco do Brasil and the Banco da Amazonia played a key role in extending credit to colonists in government initiated settlements.


14 "Me benyajwor rax kaben k6t ne me pru nhipex o ba. Benyajwor rax-be PRESIDENTE DA REPUBLICA. Me benyajwor rax y i kaben k6t ne me kute pru y i nhipex o ba. Puka kuni-k6t benyajwor ne ya" (Payaki 1974:11), roughly rendered as: "In accordance with the words of great chiefs, folks work on the road. The identity of the great chief is 'President of the Republic.' He is chief of the entire nation."

15 The Gorotire-Kayapo Indian village had been accessible by plane before this time, but documents from the newly founded FUNAI in the late 1960s and early 1970s (e.g., Fernandes 1971) show that air strip building was a top priority.

16 Later, with the entrance of large firms, the FUNAI was offered credible competition as big companies could supply natives with health facilities, air transport, and large stocks of goods in return for land access and natural resources on reserves.

17 I believe that the impact of missionaries, particularly those res- ident in Indian villages, can be considerable. Analysis shows, however, that ultimately they are subject to the constraints of the regional power structure and economy. My analysis of the general direction of Kayapo protest holds for those villages experiencing missionary activity as well as those without.

18 This pattern occurred in the US west as well where the military made extensive use of native allies as scouts during the 19th century (Dunlay 1982).

19 The drawing of Indians into the government bureaucracy is not as unusual as one might think, since the concept of the government being the chief interlocutor is of longstanding among many indigenous peoples (Krenak 1989).

20 More research should be done on the sequence of events leading up to Megaron's appointment. He had previously administered the Xingu National Park, Brazil's most famous indigenous reserve.

21 I treat the question of foreign debt primarily as a political problem since the central issue for the Brazilian government is to face up to the redistributive question of who will pay for the debt. The incapacity to make rich beneficiaries of debt-financed growth shoulder the burden of debt repayment means the central question of debt repayment be- comes how big a burden lower classes will bear in the form of increased taxes, decreased access to basic goods and foodstuffs, and deterioration of public services (Cunha n.d.).

22 This information was supplied by T. Turner in a personal communication.

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Fisher 1994 Mega Development, Environmentalism, And Resistance..Kayapo Indigenous Politics

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