Allison Coyle

March 17, 2008

Cannibalism in Amazonia: Morality or Murder

            One of the last true modern day taboos, cannibalism, is the topic of discussion in coffee shops around the world, but unfortunately takes a back seat in cultural discussions in higher learning institutions across America. The present research attempts to answer the questions, Is cannibalism cold-blooded murder as it has been made out to be by anthropological/ anthropophagical  studies in the past? Or is it a common misrepresentation of a truly harmonious ritual in which a society grieves for their loved ones?

These questions stem  from my personal fascination with the subject which was born last semester in my Studies in Latin American History class with Dr. Jach. This class examined the effects of colonization and settlement on colonial women in respects to the limitations, expectations, and responsibilities they faced. One statement in particular sparked my interest into cannibalism. It is from Susan Migden Socolow’s book The Women of Colonial Latin America. “ Returning home, she changed into warrior garb, attacked the offender’s town, captured him, and cut his heart out”( 17).

In my search to answer my questions concerning cannibalism, I got caught up in the story of one Indian tribe in particular, The Wari’. The Wari’ are composed of about 1500 people and they reside in the rainforest of Western Brazil. This indigenous population lived in this remote area, untouched by the pressures of modern technology, up until the 1980's. Their lack of contact with the outside world gave anthropologists  the keys to unlock the hidden mysteries about rituals, survival methods, and social aspects of the Wari, especially concerning the role that cannibalism played in their community.

The word cannibalism is the act of a human being ingesting a part, or an entire body, of another human being. As discussed by Eli Sagan, author of Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form, there are several different types and levels of cannibalism and ones culture or ethnicity can play a role in how this act is performed. According to Sagan, “In some instances, only the blood is drunk, and no part of the body is eaten; in other cases, only a part of the victim is eaten, so that it is possible that the victim remains alive”(p.2). There are many factors that go into why people eat others, how they eat others, under what circumstances they eat others, etc. For the sake of this paper the focus will be on funerary cannibalism.

In her book, Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society, well known anthropologist Beth Conklin takes her readers inside the world of the Wari’ tribe and attempts to show the softer side of cannibalism often seen as barbaric to the Western eyes. She describes the first accounts of cannibalism within the Wari’ tribe  that were first leaked into the public eye. They came from a man by the name of Fernando da Cruz, a special agent of the Dois Irmaos group, who had taken “a series of black and white pictures showing the corpse of a pretty but painfully emaciated Wari’ girl...The progression of scenes shows the second man dismembering the body while the other man squats nearby, his head bowed in the conventional posture for crying at funerals...then the placement of body parts on a roasting rack like those on which Wari’ roast game”(Conklin, 53).

My findings, while hard to express into only 4-7 paragraphs, have left me with sour taste in my mouth. The incident concerning the young Wari’ girl released by the press were, in my opinion, misconstrued. Now, take into consideration that these are the words given to the public by the media. So many times the media gets their hands on a story and they run with it. If the media would have taken the time to look more into the photographs they would have found a story of a community mourning the death of their loved ones. The young girl had been infected by the agents with influenza which, unfortunately, had a fatal consequence. It was then that the Wari’ took the young girl and proceeded to give her a burial that would be seen as respectable by their community (Conklin). This, in itself, leads me to believe that cannibalism, in the eyes of the Wari’, is a religious, harmonious, and symbolic means of mourning the death of their loved ones and the ethnocentric ways of civilized man to assume the worst of a culture unlike their own.

In future research concerning this topic I would like to examine the Polonoroeste Project in more depth. The Polonoroeste Project was a very large regional development program that was implemented in the early 1980's in Brazil. The projects’ intentions were to relieve population pressures in Brazil's crowded cities and to provide land to migrants from the south who had been displaced by new farm machinery. The young Wari’ girl was said to have died from influenza she had contracted from the “agents”. I would like further examine what effects this colonization had specifically on the Wari’ tribe.                       

 

Works Cited

Arens, William. The Man Eating Myth. New York, 1979. Oxford University Press.

Briggs, Charles. (1992) Since I am a Woman, I Will Chastise My Relatives. American Ethnologist, 19:3, 37-361.

Conklin, Beth A. Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society.

 2001, University of Texas Press.

Conklin, Beth A (1995). “Thus Are Our Bodies, Thus Was Our Custom”:Mortuary Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society. American Ethnologist, 22:1, 75-101.

Erikson, Phillipe. (2003). Cannibalism as Grief Management in Amazonia. Current Anthropology, 44: 5, 747-748.

Harris, Marvin. Cannibalism and Kings: The Origins of Cultures. New York, 1977, Random House Publishing.

Sagan, Eli. Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form. New York, 1974. Harpers and Row Publishers.