Jurupari se suicidou?: notas para investigação do suicídio no contexto indígena

Abstract

Several evidences shows that in Brazil, suicide mortality rates of some indigenous people are significantly higher than national and regional rates. Furthermore, evidence points to the difficulties to transport biomedical categories to the indigenous societies, because they use specific symbolic references to understand the health-disease process and the death. The aim of this paper was to reflect on the difficulties to use the concept of suicide in the indigenous context, an important principle to explore this theme from a less ethnocentric way. The proposed way for this was to resort to the so-called "anthropological strangeness" of the biomedical concept of suicide. To this end, we did an analysis of an indigenous myth that is widespread in the Upper Rio Negro region, the myth of Jurupari, using three guiding questions: Jurupari wanted to die?; Jurupari died?; Who killed Jurupari? To answer these questions we used the ethnographic information about suicide among Brazilian indigenous. Through the performed analysis, the difficulty to transport the biomedical concept of suicide to the indigenous context was demonstrated. This was down when we presented: i) the amplification of the difficulties to speak of intentionality in this context, ii) the different indigenous conceptions about death and dying, iii) the complex correlation between suicide and homicide in native's etiological systems. Finally, even in a preliminary way, some potential difficulties and possible ways to approach indigenous suicide by qualitative and quantitative strategies was presented. Keywords: Suicide; Indigenous Population; Interdisciplinary. Maximiliano Loiola Ponte de Souza ResumoNo Brasil, há indícios de que alguns povos indíge-nas apresentam taxas de mortalidade por suicídio significativamente superiores às taxas nacionais e regionais. Por outro lado, evidências apontam para as dificuldades de se transpor categorias biomédi-cas ao contexto das sociedades indígenas, tendo em vista que estes se valem de referenciais simbólicos particulares para compreender o processo saúde-doença e a morte. O objetivo deste artigo foi refletir sobre as dificuldades para utilização do conceito de suicídio no contexto indígena, ponto crucial para abordagem deste tema através de uma perspectiva menos etnocêntrica. O caminho proposto para tal foi o de se recorrer ao chamado "estranhamento antropológico" do conceito biomédico de suicídio. Para tanto, nós fizemos a análise do mito do Jurupari amplamente difundido entre os povos indígenas da região do Alto Rio Negro, utilizando três perguntas norteadoras: Jurupari queria morrer?; Jurupari morreu?; Quem matou Jurupari? Para responder estas perguntas, recorreu-se a informações etnográficas sobre suicídio entre povos indígenas brasileiros. Através da análise realizada, demonstraram-se as dificuldades de transposição do conceito biomédico de suicídio para o contexto indígena. Isto foi feito na medida em que evidenciamos: 1) a amplificação das dificuldades de se falar de intencionalidade no contexto indíg...

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