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Enawene-nawe potlatch againstthe state
The Enawene are sustained by the Juruena river in central
Brazil, where multiple hydroelectric dams are underconstruction and
in planning. The Enawene are fishermen whose highly ritualised
economic life centres onfeeding the demonic owners of hydraulic
resources. In this paper, Nahum-Claudel takes us through
tensenegotiations between the Enawene and the para-state
hydroelectric company, observing the formers adroitdiplomacy as
they repeatedly negotiate wins of ever-larger hand-outs (motors,
boats, petrol, money and evenfish) in the lead up to what the
company hopes will be a final compensation pay-out. In the era of
hydroelectricaccumulation by dispossession (Harvey D. 2005. The new
imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press),the Enawene enrol the
state in paying the debt to the demon-owners, becoming in a
perspectival twist themselves akin to these demons, engaged in an
inflationary potlatch against the state. Diplomatic relationsacross
this frontier are particular to the Enawene ritual economy, to the
very recent onset of their relationswith the state, and to the
speed of resource capture in this region. Given the massive
expansion of hydroelectricgeneration in Brazil, a nation currently
achieving vastly accelerated growth, the analysis is likely to be
ofbroader salience.
Key words Enawene-nawe, hydroelectric dams, debt, potlatch,
state
I n t r o duc t i o n
The Enawene-nawe (henceforth Enawene) are a 600-strong
Amerindian people wholive in a single village in their demarcated
territory on the upper Juruena river in theBrazilian state of Mato
Grosso. Mato Grosso has the highest rates of deforestation
andeconomic growth in all of Brazil; it is Brazils largest soya
producer and one of the areasin which a series of new hydroelectric
dams are under construction. An Enawene manout fishing one day in
2007 discovered the works site of a 30 MW small hydroelectriccentre
called Telegrafica, just 20 km upstream on the Juruena River from
Enaweneterritorial limits. It was one of five whose construction
was nearing completion in 2009,of a total of 67 in planning
stages.1 Until very recently considered an isolated group,
theEnawene suddenly find themselves living on an energy frontier,
at a time when Brazilsimpressive, feted growth is staked on its
accelerated expansion. During my fieldworkin 20089, diplomacy
between the Enawene, various state agencies and the dammingcompany
was intense and fraught.
Since 2007, the Enawene have exacted ever greater payments from
the state inthe form of gasoline, engines and other goods
(including fish), which have becomevital means of production in
their ritual fishing economy. The Enawene get constantpayments,
which increase with the states interestedness in them, and they
never cease
1 According to EPE (Pettena 2010: 32), 67 dams are planned for
the Juruena alone.
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ENAWENE-NAWE POTLATCH AGAINST THE STATE 445
to demand recognition in the form of permanent compensation,
i.e. a real stake indamming projects rather than a pay-off. I argue
that what looks like an example ofindigenous resistance to resource
exploitation, opportunistic acquisitiveness, coupledwith deliberate
state-sponsored dependence, could be understood as potlatch
againstthe state. This title is a play on Clastres now classic
Society against the State (1977)and was also inspired by his later
re-conceptualisation of the non-coercive nature ofAmerindian
leadership in terms of debt: Power relations . . . take the form of
a debt thatthe leader must forever pay (2010: 203). I use Potlatch,
after Mauss, as an ethnographicspur to thinking about gift-debt
logics (see High, this issue); it becomes transfiguredby this new
problematic a concept centred on the drive to indebt as a
counter-assertionof political sovereignty. The hydroelectric
frontier becomes a site for the deliberativediplomatic balancing of
powers between rival sovereignties (the Enawene and the
state),fought through the medium of vital resources.
If indeed the Enawene are very much plunged into predicaments
that are new anddisorientating to them, how is it that they prove
to be such experts in foreign diplomacy(Levi-Strauss 1949)? The
answer, I suggest, lies in an understanding of Enawene
ritualeconomy, which is profoundly debt-oriented. It necessarily
includes the state once thelatter seeks to exploit resources that
belong to theEnawenes constitutive others, demonscalled Yakairiti.
Just as Enawene economy and existence is shadowed by Yakairiti
whoown resources (and the fish and the waterways are especially
their dominion), so theEnawene become a kind of demonic shadow to
exploiters of water resources, imposing,via their infinite demands
for goods and recognition, a debt that tugs, galls and
harassesagainst the states spectre of limitless profit. Via their
adroit politicking, the Enaweneeffectively transform the states
limited compensation regime into something muchmore akin to a bond
of indebtedness at times we might even say that it comes to lookas
though the state is paying them tribute.
To begin, I will put the current situation in its historical
perspective with a briefoutline of the Enawenes experience of this
frontier, placing emphasis on the relevantactors and events in the
current period of rapid, para-state hydroelectric expansion.I then
turn to the description of the principle dynamics of Enawene ritual
economy(Yankwa). The two expositions come together with the
Enawenes recent co-optionof state resources, including
hydroelectric damming compensation, for Yankwa. Igo through the
accelerated capture of relations with the state and provide a
detailedanalysis of the crucial meeting in 2009 when the
compensation pay-out was finallyagreed.
The f r on t i e r
The Enawene have gone from a marked situation of isolation to
total imbrication ina national Project of Accelerated Growth (PAC)
in just ten years. The frontier beganto be felt at least half a
century before official contact by a Jesuit mission in 1974(Lisboa
1985).2 In another sense contact began significantly later because
the radicalmission effectively fenced in the Enawene, protecting
them from outside threat andinfluence and, rather than
proselytising, upheld the Enawenes extraordinarily vibrant
2 Intensified attacks from the neighbouring Cinta-Larga through
the 1950s and 60s were probablybutterfly effects of the
frontier.
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religious life. In 1998 the mission ceased to be the sole
mediator of Enawene relationswith the outside. That year the
Enawene received powered launches from the stategovernorMaggi, as a
bribe for building a road through their lands.ThePublic
Prosecutor(MPF) stopped the road, but the Enawene began to
sporadically visit nearby towns andtravelling further afield to
fish became increasingly aware that portions of their
ancestralterritory were being encroached upon by cattle, soya and
rice farmers. From 1998 to2007 they gradually acquired more
outboard engines and launches via state pensionpayments. Since
2007, hydroelectric damming has entailed intense relations with
manymore state agencies. Today it is the road-building state
governors son, Blairo Maggi,a soya impresario who was also for a
time state governor, who is responsible for fivehydroelectric
centres (PCH) under construction on the upper Juruena.3
The first five dams on the Juruena were authorised in 2002 and
granted a RS 360million loan from the Brazilian development bank.4
Never having been consulted,the Enawene discovered the nearest of
the dams (Telegrafica) in 2007. In 2008 thepublic prosecutor
investigated the licensing process and ordered that construction
atthe dams be halted. This was a small (and temporary, as we shall
see) victory in a tugof war between different organs of the state:
the public prosecutor, the environmentministry and the National
Indian Agency (FUNAI, which has a sort of tutelary rolevis-a`-vis
Brazils Amerindian population) interject demands for environmental
andsocio-cultural impact studies, legal scrutiny and consultation
meetings with affectedpopulations, setting off a chain of
bureaucratically cumbersome due-process that slowsdown
developments. Affected peoples like the Enawene can throw the force
of theirbodies on this side of the tug of war, with acts of
blockade and occupation and in thissituation such acts were
decisive, halting construction and awakening judicial and
otherstate apparatus to their tutelary and constitutional
duties.5
In June 2008 the public civil action case was overturned in a
Supreme FederalTribunal and works on the dams began again. The
judge acknowledged the unconstitu-tional nature of the licensing
process but ruled that further financial losses to the nationshould
be prevented. In this battle for national interest, the tight mesh
of alliancesbehind the PAC won out. The Enawene followed these
developments eagerly and amonth after construction resumed, in July
2008, they were called to a meeting withthe National Energy
Research Company (EPE); there they were shown maps thatpinpointed
potential hydroelectric generation sites all along the Juruena they
wereconfrontedwith theplanned exploitationof their entire river
basin.They affirmed (alongwith their former enemies and now allies,
the Cinta-Larga) their absolute opposition toall dams, stated their
refusal to allow teams of hydroelectric viability researchers to
entertheir territory and withdrew from compensation negotiations
already underway for thefive existing dams. From this time the
Enawene talked constantly about the threat posedby damming and a
month later they went and burned the site of Telegrafica.
3 A Parliamentary Commission of Investigation has been set up to
investigate how so manyhydroelectric licences were granted so
quickly and to such a limited circle of investors duringMaggis
premiership.
4 By fiat of a law passed in 2002, the usual requirement for
environmental impact assessment waswaived for plants generating
less than 30 MW. This facilitated a hasty licensing process that,
in thecase of dams in question, was deemed unconstitutional by a
Public Civil Action Case brought inApril 2008.
5 InDecember 2007 andMay 2008 the Enawene blocked the regions
main roadwith a series of claims,including their opposition to the
dams.
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ENAWENE-NAWE POTLATCH AGAINST THE STATE 447
The state as I deploy it (repetitiously) here corresponds to the
Enawenesperception of a frontier that repeats its threat in
multiple forms, now includingcompanies who have bought damming
concessions to carry out state-defined projects(hence the
designation para-state). The Enawene do not use the word estado but
talkconstantly about inoti, the word for non-Amerindian men that
denotes their wholeworld in relation to our own. In many ways it is
akin to what we mean by the frontier.Inotimeets Enawene lives with
many faces, always in passionate antagonism. The statethey meet is
in their experience duplicitously sub-divided; made up of specific
entitiesthat have entered their lexicon as well as peopled by
figureheads they know personally:Empresa (the company), ANEEL (the
ministry for mining and energy), IBAMA(the environment ministry),
FUNAI (the national foundation for indigenous affairs),Municipio
(the municipality), MPF (the public prosecutor). Enawene diplomacy
withthis multiplicitous state is characterised by a constant
hedging of bets with differentagents, relations oscillating between
alliance and enmity, co-optation and rejection.For example,
negotiating compensation directly with the company and
simultaneouslyawaiting the impact of documents lodged by the MPF
and other allies to halt the damprojects. The Enawene perceive the
blurred boundaries of the state and the cross-cutting ties within
it public and private are not meaningfully distinguishable since
allthe important actors overlap a point epitomised in the figure of
Blairo Maggi.
They are also savvy that FUNAI, who they describe on the one
hand as somethinglike our very own government which works for us,
is likely to be working traitorouslyagainst their interests;6 or if
not, when it is genuinely on side, this is mere emptytalk lacking
concrete influence. Another recurrent problem with FUNAI from
theEnawenes perspective is that to fulfil its role representing
Amerindian interests it getsin the way of negotiations the Enawene
seek to make without intermediation. Thesuccess the Enawene have
had by which I mean not only the disruption they havedirectly
caused to the dams construction but also their success in enrolling
others intheir opposition to the dams has been in the measure that
they have put differentorgans of the state to work for them,
bypassing ineffectual intermediaries and short-circuiting
bureaucratic process by, for example, demanding the immediate
presenceof high-level officials at road-blocks. In sum, on a very
sudden, tense and extremefrontier, the Enawene have actively and
rapidly co-opted relations with the state in anexperimental and
testy political diplomacy.
A cosmopo l i t i c s o f deb t and an economy o f p l e n i t
ude
Yankwa, a mode of life that absorbs the Enawene from the
November corn harvestto the planting of manioc gardens in June, is
a total social fact akin to Kula, Moka orPotlatch. Its three main
pillars are manioc, village life and flutes. The circulation of
foodin the villages central arena is the node aroundwhich the
prodigious productivity of thefifteen Enawene longhouses that
surround it turn like radial extensions of the spokes ofawheel. As
soon as food is produced manioc, corn, beans and potatoes are
harvested orfish is caught it is owed to others. Food production
sustains what Enawene have come
6 They recognise, effectively, that assistance from FUNAI is
proportionate to the strategic economicimportance of their
territory, with infrastructure or resource projects activating the
states tutelaryrelationship (Graham 1995: 61).
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448 CHLOE NAHUM-CLAUDEL
to gloss as Ritual, a new reification for the hours of flute
playing, rhythmic, steppingdance and singing of cosmographic myths
that is an everyday affair in the central arena.The food exchanged
and eaten in public there is prepared bywomen, served by the
hosts(the men of one clan) and consumed by Yankwa (the men of the
remaining eight clanstogether). Yankwa, in addition to referring to
The Ritual as a whole and the seasonproper to it, is also a
collective noun that could variously be glossed as the dancers,the
fishermen and the flutes depending on context. Women make the food
and drinkand along with the hosts who serve them and keep the
ceremonial hearths burning inthe arena, and are referred to as the
owners of Yankwa.
Yankwa sing and dance daily around these hearths for about 23
months beforegoing to build fishing weirs in distant parts of the
territory and for about another 23 months after returning to the
village with their catch. In a straight-forward idiom,Yankwa is
clan-based ceremonialism centred on a dualistic relationship
between hostsand women who are the owners of manioc and all the
fishermen (Yankwa). In the2-month build up to their departure for
the weirs, the hosts feed the singers with ketera(a cooked,
porridge-like manioc and corn drink) nightly, and amass manioc
starch andfibre with which the fishermen are sent off on their
expeditions. When the fishermen(about 100 adult men and many
children with them) return, laden with smoked fish,they are met by
the hosts with about 4,000 litres of ketera, a great excess
designed tosatiate the incomers and to domesticate the demons
(Yakairiti) they impersonate. Atthis point the pace of ceremonial
exchange peaks with the give and take of manioc forfish and a
dizzying alternation of transactional positions between hosts
andYankwa. Asa whole, energetic cycles of amassing surplus and
evincing expenditure are harmonisedwith the maturation of corn and
manioc crops and the spawning and migrations of fish.
People justify all harvesting in terms of feeding or quenching
Yankwas thirst,women keenly go (usually daily) to the manioc
gardens to pull up roots for Yankwa(on behalf of their fathers or
husbands clan) and very rarely go to harvest food forhousehold
consumption. The effect is that, during Yankwa, almost all food is
revealedpublicly in the arena; everyone eats with Yankwa and
through its dynamic there is aconstant revelation of great plenty;
lines of full calabashes arranged in the central arenamatching
lines of sartorially perfected, coordinated dancers. People are
preoccupiedabove all with producing plenty, the beauty of a mass of
people and things rows ofcalabashes of fish soup, stacks of fish
drying on a rack, baskets of dried manioc breadsor starch balls and
sacks of manioc flour. All this plenitude is forYankwa. This could
becharacterised as a riverine horticultural version of Batailles
general economy of surplusexpenditure (2002), for there is no such
thing as subsistence or household economy(Sahlins 1974) where the
sphere of generalised exchange inside houses is so restricted
infavour of the massive expansion of balanced reciprocity between
ceremonial affines inthe central arena.
Like the Gawans for whom the elementary sacrificial act is the
separation of foodfrom the self (Munn 1986: 88), the Enawene seek
to escape the self-closure implied byeating in perpetual feasts in
which no one drinks to excess and a portion of all the foodsthat
circulate in the arena are left to spoil and are eventually
discarded. In tandem withcoordinating labour in extraordinary ways
to produce a dried, storable surplus, a glutof perishable food is
periodically cooked in great quantity along with foods said to
berotten or sour to the living but that the Yakairiti (subterranean
demons) most desire.
This brings us to the invisible Yakairiti to whom this highly
visual and sensorypublic ceremonialism is ultimately oriented.
These demons dwell underground, their
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ENAWENE-NAWE POTLATCH AGAINST THE STATE 449
visible signs being extrusions such as rocks, waterfalls and
islands that disrupt the riversflow. However, they inundate the
terrestrial world with their presence, which is feltaround the
living all of the time and especially at the backs of Yankwa as
they dance inthe arena. Everything from the beautiful plenitude of
people and calabashes, throughto Yankwas excitation with rousing
cries and comical clowning is for the satiety orsatisfaction of
these demons.
Enawene life (especially duringYankwa) depends on fishing and
harvestingmanioc,beans, potatoes and palms, all of which belong to
the Yakairiti. Yankwa is thereforeentailed by the very grounds of
Enawene livelihood. Liable to become dissatisfied withthe portion
of any harvest that they are fed (especially when the living
withhold foodfrom circulation in the arena), the Yakairiti
frequently capture living souls, causingillness and death to be
ever-present features of life. The Enawene refer to them as
thekillers (the literal meaning of Yakariti) and these demons
reciprocally call them thedead people (mae nawe). The economy of
the living is premised on dis-appropriationin the Yakairitis domain
(the ground, the water), so the latters feeding and satisfaction
Yankwa must also be a never-ending project of diplomacy. This
sacrificial dynamicruns from soliciting the Yakairiti to loosen
their hold on resources by allowing fish toshoal into the traps of
fishing weirs, to inducing them with food sacrifices to
releasetheir hold on captured souls.
Such events blur into an everyday mutual entailment:Yakairiti
feed from peoplesdeliberately overflowing calabashes of drink,
share pots of fish soup and nightly drinkketera. Since, as
mentioned earlier, the Yakairiti are said to most enjoy soured
foodsand drinks and to delight in the sight of rotting leftovers,
we could say that the livingssurplus is their satiety. This is
overtly dramatised inmanyways, probablymost explicitlywhen soured
manioc beer is poured into the ground to fill the demons
undergroundpans or when salt is licked from hosts cupped palms by
Yankwa as they enact thevoracious desirousness of the
Yakairiti.
The Enawene channel the whole of their economy and polity into
this vitalcosmopolitics, which is a channelling of the energies of
the universe. As a sequenceof effective action, Yankwa proceeds
from the planting of manioc gardens for twohosting clans one year,
through the exhaustion of their first crop a year later, to
theexhaustion of the second crop in the third year. Since every two
years new gardensare planted for a different pair of host clans,
this sequence is never ending. Climacticendings at the point of the
exhaustion of each harvest, always precede the clearing orplanting
of new gardens.
Here then, as elsewhere in the world, reciprocities between the
living are shadowedby a spectre of negative reciprocity sorcery,
shame or counter-predation are thecounterparts to great wealth and
fame (Munn 1986; Young 1971) and the public stagingofmassive
abundance is drivenby amotivating debt.What is clear
inmyowndescriptionand in these ethnographic works is that debt is a
form of abundance: the vigour ofgarden work, the coordination of
impressive collective works, the orchestration ofceremonialism and
the expenditure of excess, all generate and are sustained by
anenergetic arousal (living for others) that is the vitality of
life itself. In contradistinctionto the island Melanesian examples
however, among Enawene neither debt to socialothers nor to rival
chiefs, is foremost. All of these kinds of others are encompassedby
the inhabitants of a different layer of the universe, the
Yakairiti, in a mirroringperspectivism between the dead and the
living who participate in one anothers being asfigure to ground
(Carniero da Cunha 1978): TheYakairiti are the shadow of human
life;
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450 CHLOE NAHUM-CLAUDEL
Yankwa, in its reified sense, is an annual project to reinstate
human origins and existencein relation to this spectre. Yakairiti
can be understood as reason, cause, principle, andas literally the
earth upon which humans live and move and create the trace of
theirexistence (after Weiner 1998: 136). This double sense literal
and figurative is indeedcaptured by the visceral existential
reality of the Yakairiti who belong to the groundand own its
products and towards whose will the Enawenes energies are
channelled.After Jorgensen (1998: 104), we might see this
phenomenon of spirit ownership asrecognition that the ground
everyone sits atop ultimately depends on beings who havea basic
indifference to human intentions in other words, there is a
foundationalcontingency to human projects.
Weiner asks the question to which we must now turn: What happens
then whenhuman being is detached from its grounding (Weiner 1998:
138) as a result of, forexample, the gigantic technological
imposition of hydroelectric dams on Enawenelivelihood?
Hydroelectric dams are a matter of life and death for the Enawene,
not onlybecause they are riverine people who eat only fish (never
hunting land animals) butbecause concrete dams usurp the Yakairitis
own stone ones (waterfalls) and threatento render ineffective the
Enawenes weirs of wood and vine. This is indeed how theEnawene
frame their opposition to hydroelectric damming. Here is an excerpt
from astatement written by six Enawene men to translate their
concerns for the outside worldon the internet:7
They have lied to us, the fish are dying, the water is dirty so
we want to be ridof the dams. All the Enawene-nawe are agreed about
this, we all want to throwthe dams away. We do not want the money
anymore. The water is very dirty,what if the fish are finished? We
do not eat meat at all so we do not want thedams. We are not
jesting. You can help us, we must not be alone, you can all help,do
you understand us? We are very serious. We know about dams because
wetoo build dams for Yankwa. The Yakairiti will be angry with us,
this is what theEnawene Nawe think about and worry about what if
Yankwa ends and Saluma[a dry season ritual] as well? Do you
understand?We are not joking. (HalataikwaEnawene-nawe 21/09/08)
Yankwa s deb t d i p l omacy w i t h t he s t a t e
The state is enrolled in Yankwas resource-intensive
cosmopolitics with constant tripsto FUNAIs headquarters in Juna, to
sustain diplomacy with various state agents.Sometimes this amounts
to a daily yoyoof engine-poweredboats (ofwhich theEnawenehad about
50 in 2009) back and forth from the city. These trips, which
usually entailseveral kinds of business, are oriented principally
to the orchestration of Yankwasweir fishing expeditions through
December and January, when drumming up moneyfor gasoline and
nautical oil or for engine repairs and new boats are major
priorities.I arrived in Juna to begin doctoral fieldwork in January
2008, to meet 20 Enawenemen there seeking help for the ritual from
three separate sources: FUNAI, municipalenvironment funds and the
hydroelectric company. Through these multiple alliancesthey won
6,000 litres of fuel (6,000 worth) that year. Such wins inflated
along the
7 The statement was written in the native language; I translated
it for Survival Internationals campaignwebsite and have slightly
abridged it here.
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ENAWENE-NAWE POTLATCH AGAINST THE STATE 451
course of my fieldwork: in 2009 at the same crucial juncture
(but after the burning ofTelegrafica) they obtained a total of
9,000 litres of fuel. A couple of months later inMay, after the
Enawenes fishing weirs had failed to yield an unprecedented
failure,which was undoubtedly down to hydroelectric works some of
Yankwas leaderswent to town to negotiate an advance of R$20,000
(about 7,000) from the upcomingcompensation package, so that they
could buy a truck load (3 tonnes) of a transgenicspecies of farmed
fish. The fish was smoked and taken back to the hosts and womenin
the village where it fed into months of ceremonialism. The Enawene
were back intown in early 2010, less than a year after receiving
R$1.5 M compensation (an eventwe will come to), drumming up
gasoline for that years ritual, and four months later,during the
phase of sumptuary expenditure in June, news online told me that
Enawenepeople were among 300 Indians occupying another
hydroelectric works site, renewingunerring demands for permanent
compensation.
This does not negate the states position of tutelage
overAmerindians or sovereigntyover resources. From the states
position payments are something like solicitory gifts(Malinowski
1922); investments in a strategy of mollification and seduction
that sootheresistance to damming. At some obvious but nonetheless
essential level also, from theEnawenes position, a communicative
relation with the state is inescapable once theyneed gasoline,
motors and even fish for Yankwa, and so their ritual economy is
entirelyinterconnected with the power of attraction and threat of
FUNAI and the company.This does not diminish the states compulsion
as soon as an interest in the Enaweneis established by resource
exploitation to respond to their relentless demands andthreats.
This is not a relation of submission or one-way dependence. Perhaps
it couldbe better expressed thus: it has become productive for
Enawene livelihood that inoti beperpetually indebted and obligated
to them. It is in this tension that the state is enrolledin the
continuation of Enawene life, via the satisfaction of the
Yakairiti.
This relationship is fraught but a degree of harmonisation rests
in an importantworking misunderstanding (Kelly 2011, cit. Sahlins
1985) around culture and ritual.The Enawene appeal to the state on
the basis of what is necessary to Yankwa;this chimes with the value
placed on the ostentatious ceremonialism as sign of theEnawenes
exemplary cultural authenticity. Since Yankwa was named
IntangibleCultural Heritage in Brazil (by the government body
IPHAN) in 2009 and byUNESCO in 2011, it is often referred to as the
most complete and extensiveAmerindian ritual in Brazil. Even if the
Enawene do consistently stress that they areworking for the
Yakairiti even (and especially) when they acquire gasoline, boats
andfish, many inoti persist in misunderstanding that culture and
ritual are also abouteconomic and political diplomacy. Instead, the
states authenticity-fetishism has led tosituations such as that in
2009 when, after the Enawene had bought farmed fish, theyheard that
they had been accused of culture loss by people in FUNAI, an
absurditythat angered them. My argument is that given that
hydroelectric damming is an assaulton and an appropriation in
theYakairitis dominion it makes perfect sense that the statebe
enchained in feeding the bottomless debt that binds the Enawene to
them.
There is a formal similarity between the relation between
theYakairiti andEnaweneand that between the Enawene and the state.
The Enawene do not exchange with theYakairiti who are fed by them,
in a one-way relationship, or with inoti, by whom theyare fed
resources. These two relationships contrast absolutely then to the
rigorousbalancing of reciprocities among the Enawene. Just as
Yakairiti are said to inspect andaccount for sacks ofmanioc flour
in storage in the eaves of Enawene houses and towatch
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452 CHLOE NAHUM-CLAUDEL
the rate at which bundles of dry corn diminish against the
amounts they have drunk, sotoo the Enawene subject outsiders to
their own regime of accountability. On separateoccasions Enawene
people assimilated the Yakairitis surveillance of manioc stores
totheir holding inoti to account, as kinds of fiscalisation. To
give an example closeto home, the Enawene guarded against my own
retentiveness, suspicions that profitswere accruing to me via my
research (which they understand to be extractive, muchlike
hydroelectric damming), by requesting large payments (on one
occasion 10,000litres of gasoline, roughly equal to 10,000) to test
the depths of my pockets. As theEnawene conceive it, their
anthropologists and their NGO like their FUNAI workfor them and are
constantly enrolled to serve Enawene projects. In town,
Enaweneleaders are tirelessly active, the environment ministry is
called upon to take men onfiscalisation rounds (policing their
territorial boundaries looking for invasion by loggersor miners);
they issue orders in FUNAI HQ get Brasilia on the phone, send this
faxthrough, help me draft this document. . .; they hurry along the
employment contractof their chief of post so that they might have a
FUNAI agent to work for themmore effectively. The rhythm and
intensity of these relations has, in recent years, comeclose to the
constancy with which the Enawene orient themselves to the desires
of theYakairiti.
The Enawene put pressure on state and company agents to a degree
they findunbearable so that they desire more than anything to drum
up money for gasoline(from a higher level of government or from a
pot of environment funding) or to speedup or short-circuit
cumbersome bureaucratic processes, so that the Enawene mightbe
satisfied and leave for the village. If the Enawenes indebtedness
to Yakairiti isalways at the forefront of Enawene peoples minds,
composing a kind of collectiveconsciousness that motivates their
action, these state agents are thrust into a similarposition of
having to constantly apprehend and work for the Enawene. Perhaps
the keydifference between the two relationships is that severing
the bond with the Yakairiti isnot desirable; Yankwa will always
begin again, it is eternal, as they say. Although thesituation
should be complex, involving an emotive history of the states
obligation toits indigenous citizens, enshrined in the
constitution, what is sought in these situationsand specifically in
the context of compensation is precisely a pay-off that severs
therelationship and sends the Enawene home. It is nonetheless
inevitable that they willsoon return and be again at the backs of
state agents. By constantly testing and revivingthe states
recognition, we could say that the Enawene transform this
relationship intosomething like the permanent bond between Enawene
and Yakairiti. To a measure theEnawene are currently succeeding in
bringing the states perspective around to meettheir own, making
compensation a tug of perpetual contestation. In sum, the
Enawenebecome demons at the backs of the state.
There is no doubt that in intensity this frontier relationship
has been progressivelyratcheted up. Enawene demands are accruing in
step with the states appropriation ofhydraulic resources. This is
the conjuncture I have likened to potlatch, an ethnographicconcept
that I initially defined as the drive to indebt as a
counter-assertion of politicalsovereignty. Recognising along with
High (this issue) that potlatch had diverseincarnations even within
the American North-West and that its nature has been subjectto
great debate (my readings are confined to Boas 1966, Codere 1950,
Goldman 1975),I want to mine some of the parallels with our
situation. First, potlatch, like Yankwa,exist[ed] in the context of
a fantastic surplus economy (Codere 1950: 63) and it tooentailed
primordial debts to others whose existence was constitutive of
human life
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ENAWENE-NAWE POTLATCH AGAINST THE STATE 453
(Goldman 1975). In the colonial era its in-built problematic of
infinite indebtednessand inflation became starkly apparent when the
magnitude of exchanges increasedyearly at a geometric ratio
(Goldman 1975: 74) much as Enawene gains from the statehave done.
Like potlatch then,Yankwa has thus far effectively channelled new
forms ofwealth for its own expansion. Beyond these interesting
parallels, potlatch against thestate captures the fundamental unity
of contrary aspects of the Enawenes relation tothe frontier. On the
one hand, they eagerly enrol outside resources and, on the
otherhand, they boycott meetings, block roads, occupy, refuse
compensation and go to war.There are many faces to potlatch: it may
also take the form of a war in which propertyis killed (Mauss 2002:
1412).
Back to even t s
Remember the Enawene expressed their resolve to keep energy
researchers out by force.They reached a pitch of frustration with
the impotence of state organs claiming to standup for their
interests, with the pretence of consultation, with having been lied
to aboutthe scale of the damming projects and with the endless
fruitless meetings in town thatput them at the beck and call of the
company but through which compensation wasendlessly deferred. They
claimed they would boycott all further meetings and werethrowing
out compensation.
A few Enawene men nonetheless hedged the collective bets and
attended anothercompensation meeting with the company
representative in the state capital Cuiabaon the 30 September 2008.
This meeting strengthened their resolve. As the attendeesreported
upon their return, Maggis environment man had promised now the
money isgoing to come, just wait until after lunch, when you come
back, youwill see themoney.After lunch he said just wait, we need
to do another study, and then the money willcome. The Enawene were
prepared to receive compensation for the five dams that werealready
under construction, now he was telling them that the same
compensation wascontingent upon their agreeing to further works.
Insulted, they walked out and wereaggressively pursued by the man
who, in his anger, turned on the NGO man presentwith them, accusing
him of being the agitator behind the Enawenes intransigence.Doubly
patronised and with new proof of the companys underhand dealings,
thesefew men returned to the village and ten days later the whole
village launched a warriorexpedition and burnt the works site of
Telegrafica, causing R$15 million in damages.
This was a massive destruction of wealth, a bonfire of
state-incentivised develop-mentalism. In Mausss (2002) conception
of the potlatch of destruction, one sovereignpolity gained
ascendancy over another by destroying their own or the others
goods, in arisky and ambivalent torsion of reciprocity. Following
Mausss understanding, burningthe dam was an extreme form of the
capture of relations and resources that typifiesthe Enawenes
approach to the state it extended their drive to indebt the state
intonew realms. Since no compensation money had yet come, it was
the expiation of a debtthat the state had persistently refused to
recognise. They also simply wanted rid ofthe dam and were
performing their disdain for all they could gain by consenting to
itsimposition; by burning cars, gasoline, urban infrastructure,
motors and machines, theythrew away the goods that would come to
them in recompense for its building. Theoutcome of a painfully
ambivalent situation, this was also an act of war, a
manpowercascade (Wagner 1998: 56) beyond analytical dissection.
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454 CHLOE NAHUM-CLAUDEL
What is clear is that the Enawene sought the political and
economic recognitionthey had been denied, having been treated
repeatedly in a manner that assumedtheir disempowerment. Against
the liberal bias of dual discourses of resistance andliberation,
which hold out a liberal dream of freedom from the bonds of
exploitativerelationships, Robbins (2003) argues that in reality
people seek political processesforged through the sustenance of
relationships. Just so, this act of destruction, likethe
acquisitive form of potlatch that is its twin, was not about
breaking free orprofiting, but about binding others to a truly
diplomatic relationship one betweenpowers (Stengers 2003). It is
for this reason that soon after the act some Enawenewent to Juna to
hear what the inoti were saying and thinking a
diplomaticreopening.
The state responded well8: a delegation of 84 Enawene men and
women wentto Brasilia for meetings with the heads of all the
relevant government agencies. Theywere put up in a good hotel,
given plenty of money to spend all in R$100 noteswhich are blue,
crisp and rare like our 50 notes and they were promised that
alltheir demands would be met: they would get a FUNAI chief of post
whose solejob was to attend to their administrative needs, a house
in Juna, and the presidentof FUNAI would personally do everything
in his power to stop the constructionof dams on the Juruena river.
Upon their return to the village all energies turned tothe sweet
corn harvest that annually inaugurates Yankwa, and to the
acquisition ofgasoline that goes with it. As we know, the Enawene
acquired a significantly largerquantity of gasoline than they had
the previous year. Halfway through their time at thedams, but
before it was absolutely clear that the dams would not yield that
year, thefishermen went to town for the meeting in which they
finally signed the compensationagreement.
F i n a l c ompensa t i o n
Let me take you to a large meeting room. About thirty Enawene
men have come fromtheir fishing encampments. Many more Rikbatsa,
Nambiquara, Parecis and Cinta-Larga representatives, who will share
R$6 million compensation with the Enawene areunited in an audience
of about 300 people. They face a panel that unites the
companyrepresentative, people from different levels of the FUNAI
hierarchy and someone fromthe judiciary. The meeting hopes to
negotiate the time scale and procedure for handingover the monies
to indigenous associations. We want to pay attention in this
meetingto the tension between the states definition of payment as a
judicious passing on of thebenefits of development, and the Indians
perception that these are tardy, palliative,cosmetic measures
(Viveiros de Castro and Andrade 1988: 16, cited in Baines 1999:215)
and monies long overdue to them. The Indians will allow them their
fiction of dueprocess (in their documents and PowerPoint
presentations) as long as the conditions ofpayment allow them
autonomy to spend it unencumbered.
The dam reps speech goes over the history of meetings and nine
environmentalstudies, which have all shown that the impact of the
projects will be low and indirect,
8 Decades of indigenous struggle in Brazil have created the
historical conditions in which this actcould lead to conciliatory
meetings.
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ENAWENE-NAWE POTLATCH AGAINST THE STATE 455
not affecting the livelihoods of those he addresses.9 Then he
presents the compensationpackage, which is laid out in tables in
PowerPoint and subdivided in familiar terms supporting traditional
agricultural/cultural/artisanal practices, a car, computers forthe
administration and capacitation of the indigenous organisation.
This is a virtuosoversion of the companys judicious attention to
due process. All are well aware thatin fact the company had been
forced into motion (over and again) by invasions of theworks site
and road blocks led by the Enawene. It was all these events that
this presentmeeting sought to fold up and put away for good (the
burning of Telegraficawas nevermentioned). The representative
mentioned only that the basic environmental planshad been redefined
successively in the special case of the Enawene. In fact, the plan,
averitable shopping list of outboard engines, boats, gasoline
provision and vehicles hadbeen modified to conform to Enawene
wishes every time they exerted pressure on thecompany and
FUNAI.
When FUNAIs legal expert takes over to explain that the money
will be releasedgradually over two years, according to a planned,
collaborative process in which teamsresponsible for accounting for
expenditures, executing the projects and reporting backto FUNAI
would be set up within each community (You think that
accountability isonly white peoples concern, but it is not, you
will all have to capacitate yourselves toshow accountability), the
meeting erupts, someone stands up and shouts exasperated:meetings,
meetings, meetings! Im sick of all these meetings. Another adds if
yougive the money to FUNAI, what will they do? They will make
things difficult, I amspeaking as an Indian, not as a white-man,
pass this money directly to our associations.They receive great
applause. FUNAIs legal expert responds we will have to respondfor
any irregular usage of these monies. So everything will have to be
complied with,just as it is written in the document. This is a
veiled statement of FUNAIs tutelaryposition; that FUNAI are
responsible for Indians and have to pick up the pieces for
theirmisdemeanours. Her final words are FUNAI is responsible for
the payment process,which lies within the remit of the public good,
but she is interrupted by a chorusof murmurs to read the act! The
audience are referring to the position statementcollaboratively
drafted by the five ethnic groups the day before and that stands at
thispoint, for the voice they seek to reclaim, having listened and
been patronised (in themost literal sense of the term) all
afternoon.
As dusk falls on the meeting, FUNAI cede to pressure, agreeing
to pay all themonies to the indigenous associationswithin 60 days.
Everyonewaits tensely to see if theEnawenewill sign the agreement.
They are still adamant that the terms of themeeting arewrong since
only permanent compensation, a true stake in the resources being
exploited,will do; but they also know that there is no longer
diplomatic leverage in not signing: thedams construction would
continue, the others would get their money and the Enawenewould
simply be left out. They decide to make the company representative
sign adocument promising that permanent compensation shall be
discussed and reassessed ina future meeting. This is the
culmination of the tug of war running through the meetingand the
events leading up to it; if the Enawene are to sign the document
put beforethem, whose terms are not of their design, then the
others must sign theirs, and mustdo so first. The company rep comes
and crouches down by the side of the Enaweneleaders to sign their
document, in an unambiguous gesture of submission. Immediately
9 The many anthropological and environmental research reports
commissioned by the company werealways cited to support assertions
of limited liability, regardless of their substantive contents.
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456 CHLOE NAHUM-CLAUDEL
the Enawene walk to the front of the room to sign the
compensation agreement aftertwo years of broken and deferred
meetings.
Conc l u s i o n
I have shown that burning a dam and accepting compensation,
although they may lookantithetical one an assertion of sovereignty,
the other a capitulation to encompassment in fact compose a single
dynamic, a potlatch against the state. I have also argued Ihave
argued that what looks like indigenous resistance to resource
exploitation andstate-sponsored dependence, a lamentable and even
tragic, yet all too familiar situation,has less to do with
dependence on white goods (Hugh-Jones 1992) and more withthe
deliberative, inherently diplomatic balancing of powers. This meets
with the statesattempt to offer a golden handshake in replacement
for a livelihood, to free-up para-state companies to continue
construction they have already begun. The reader maybe thinking
that this situation with Enawene shopping lists fiscalised from
Juna cannot hold sway in the longer run. Gordons (2006) andGrahams
work (1995), thoughnot analysed in the same terms, bring to light a
similar dynamic between Xavante andKayapo people and the Brazilian
state.10 With hydroelectric frontiers multiplying apacein Brazil
and extending throughout the Amazon basin into neighbouring
countries,frontier dynamics like the one I have described are set
to become more and more (notless and less) prevalent.
Brazils hydroelectric expansion is a perfect example of
neoliberal economic growthfor which Harvey (2005) has coined the
term accumulation by dispossession in orderto banish the
preconception that predatory practices of primitive or
originalaccumulation are a bygone form of capitalism (2005: 144).
He convincingly arguesthat in many guises from housing
foreclosures, to privatisation, to resource extraction and
usuallywith public debt as its lever, accumulation by dispossession
has become theprimary form of wealth creation in the neoliberal
era. However, if hydroelectric dams,backedby state force, are just
somany idyllicmethodsof primitive accumulation (Marx1990: 895),
feeding Brazils unprecedented economic growth, then the
incorporationof water into capital11 will continue to meet the very
ground of peoples being.
Acknow l edgemen t s
The doctoral research resulting in this article was funded by
the Economic and SocialResearchCouncil ofGreat Britain. I would
also like to thankRupert Stasch and StephenHugh-Jones for
invaluable comments on earlier drafts.
Chloe Nahum-ClaudelPembroke CollegeCambridge CB2 1RF,
[email protected]
10 Amerindians have been most famous in Anthropologyas
debt-peons, subjected to traders whopressed credit on their Indians
(see Hugh-Jones 1992: 54; Killick 2011; Walker 2012). In
absolutecontrast, the Enawene talk of outsiders who work for
them.
11 Paraphrasing Marx, the incorporation of soil into capital
(1990: 895).
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ENAWENE-NAWE POTLATCH AGAINST THE STATE 457
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