From deer to tapir, from prohibited to meat. The strategic (re)classification of cattle among the Karitiana in Southwestern Amazonia

• Autor(a) principal: Vander Velden, Felipe
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Acta Scientiarum. Human and Social Sciences (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.uem.br/ojs/index.php/ActaSciHumanSocSci/article/view/70300
• topic: oxen; horses; food; knowledge systems; Karitiana; indigenous peoples.; boi; cavalo; alimento; sistemas de conhecimento; Karitiana; povos indígenas.

Records of the first contacts with oxen, horses, and other herd animals (donkeys, goats, sheep, buffaloes, pigs, and others) introduced with the European invasion of the New World, as well as memories of these events, are quite rare among indigenous peoples in Lowland South America. For this reason, we know almost nothing about the processes of (re)cognition of these new and strange beings and their gradual incorporation (or refusal) either into the daily lives of villages or into the so-called native knowledge systems. This article discusses some narratives related to the appearance and first encounters with cattle and horses recorded among the Karitiana, a Tupi-Arikém-speaking people in the northern state of Rondônia, Brazil. The story of the ox and the horse among the Karitiana points to an initial classification process, followed by what appears to have constituted a strategy of reclassification of these beings – recently detected (2023) through a change in the names of the animals – which was driven by the ways of using oxen and horses that changed over time. This process took place as the exotic became increasingly commonplace and familiar in the devastated landscapes of Rondônia, increasingly occupied by cattle from the 1950s onwards.