Abstract

HENRIQUE, Fernanda Borges. The Multiple Agencies of the Encantados: An Outline of Kiriri Political Theory. Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol. [online]. 2020, n.41, pp.57-77. ISSN 1900-5407.  https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda41.2020.03.

The article focuses on the Kiriri indigenous people of Rio Verde who, in March 2017, after leaving Muquém do São Francisco, west of Bahia department, in Brazil's northeast, occupied a land in the south of the Minas Gerais department, in the country's southeast. The occupied land covers 39 hectares and its legal owner is the state of Minas Gerais. The Kiriri's permanence in the area was authorized by its verdadero dueño or true owner, an ancient tapuia figure who appeared during a ciência, a ceremonial moment in which a more direct and intentional communication takes place with the encantados (or enchanted), ancestral and not ancestral, other-than-humans, who inhabit the kiriri cosmos. Unlike the tore, brincadeira ceremonial meeting in which food is shared between humans and the encantados, and in which the chants are softer so that the other-than-humans do not reveal themselves, in the kiriri ciência, the chants are louder so that the mestres or encantados encosten; namely, that they spiritually possess those who have the gift of allowing them to reveal themselves. While the occupation is legitimized by the old tapuia, the Kiriri acknowledge that they also need to negotiate with the state of Minas Gerais, the legal owner of the area, to regulate the land. Thus, this article is intended to understand how the kiriri create evidence of the process of land occupation that they conducted, based on the actions of the encantados, an action legitimized by the verdadero dueño of the land and how they communicate this to the state of Minas Gerais. Thus, in order to understand the negotiations between the Kiriri and the State, they must be considered from the standpoint of the recognition and analysis of the actions of the broad network of human and other-than-human agents. To better understand this, we propose that attention should also be paid to the kiriri ciência. In this context, the article outlines questions about what we can call a “kiriri political theory,” showing how diplomatic exchange and negotiation relations can be constituted in an “other” way in the world.

Keywords : Ciência; cosmopolitics; encantados; ethnology; Kiriri; other-than-humans.

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