Violence, the state and gendered indigenous agency in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

The aim of this article is to understand feminine and indigenous forms of agency, especially that of the young women living in a specific Amazonian city, and the ways these forms emerge within and against the grammatical frame of insecurity, fear, death, and segregation that is produced by the Brazilian neocolonial project in the Amazon. I am interested in understanding the ways in which these women relate to a frame that places them in an ordinary state of exception between violent death and biological reproduction. I argue that the practices of sexual and economic exchanges between indigenous women and 'white men' are fertile for reflecting on these forms of agency in a frame of colonial contest. Finally, I suggest that these forms of agency indicate an analogy with counter-colonial mechanisms of cultural cannibalism.

“Sexual Exploitation” as a Logic, and Its Effects of Power in Contemporary Brazil

“…The present analysis does not focus on a particular locality, nor even a regional context (i.e., the Amazon). We will not go into depth describing the social and historical context of the Brazilian Amazonian border and its relations with sexual markets, as this has already been done elsewhere (Olivar 2014(Olivar , 2016b(Olivar , 2018. We will provide some contextual information, of course, but mostly the present article seeks to place the ethnographic research conducted in certain in Amazonian cities in relation to the disputes and legal and discursive transformations in the field of sexual policies in Brazil, specifically with regards "sexual exploitation".…”

“…Despite the potentially limited scope of such an interpretation, it suggests a way of understanding the self-created impotence of the logic of "sexual exploitation" under the terms in which it is currently expressed. For several of the youngsters in Tabatinga and São Gabriel da Cachoeira (Olivar 2018), the clearest image of "exploitation" that they could find in their experiences of transactional sex was when they made an "old man", a "white", or a "friend" pay for their beer without, at the end of the night, having sex with that person. Here we see an economic counter-exploitation of "sexual exploitation": not a revolutionary act rebuilding the structures of power, but an active, agencied manner of dealing with it.…”

“…However, the problem posed by the "military" (as a metaphor for the sexualized and "exploitative" male state) is more complex. On one hand, "the military", "police", and "traffickers" appear in the narratives and trajectories of young men and women as "consumers", "customers", or even "exploiters", but also as a special object of desire for sexual/economic/marital exchange (Olivar 2014(Olivar , 2018. On the other hand, "military men" appear in the narratives of Child Welfare counselors, social workers, and local human rights activists as a threat.…”

“…Finally, we will look at the "logic of the street". Here, we are not concerned with focusing on the practices and beliefs of the youths involved in sexual markets (Olivar 2008(Olivar , 2014(Olivar , 2018 or identifying practices of "exploitation" or power imbalances that may contribute to "exploitation". Instead, we focus on presenting the street as a point of view from which one can usefully perceive the "institutional sphere" of the state itself 4 .…”

“…São Gabriel da Cachoeira is an emblematic case in these discussions. It is a city of colonial contest(Olivar 2018), with a huge indigenous majority, vertically governed by foreign military and non-indigenous traders. In the city, colonial history is violently updated and reconstructed every day, fueling systematic racism against the indigenous peoples of the region.…”