Traduzindo Políticas: Lideranças, associações e a representação política entre os Yanomae do rio Demini (AM)

Abstract

Through an ethnography of Yanomami (Yanomae) political representation, this thesis aims to describe the relationships between kinship groups, leaders, and communities along the Demini River, in their engagement within the horizon of relations with nonindigenous people (napëpë) and the Brazilian State. I seek to reflect on the creative articulation between the politics of multiplicity – its codes, characters, and relationships – and the politics of representation and the demands for identity and univocity that create the conditions for indigenous people to act before the napë and within the State. To this end, we will follow the forces of convergence and disputes in the negotiations between communities, leaders, representatives, and associations at different scales of relationship: in the transmission of the words of the communities and their elder leaders through written documents and young bilingual emissaries; in the fabrication and projection of representatives; and in the organization and institutionalization of collective action around indigenous associations and elected directors. As mediating figures in the Yanomami-napë interface of relations, the position of the representatives is constructed related to different perspectives: of those represented and those of the interlocutors to whom they direct their representation. Thus, different images of the representatives are produced, and these vary according to the conceptions of politics being translated. An analysis of practices of political representation in the context of the Demini River region, anchored in the conceptual translation procedures carried out by the Yanomami to act in the passage between these two registers of thought and political practice, reveals the central terms and relationships for the processes of production and projection of subjects and collectives and, between associations and leaderships, the modes of legitimation and evaluation of the effectiveness of the representatives.