Asurini do Tocantins

The Asuriní say the universe was first created, but then it was flooded and the earth ceased to exist, 'it became soft.' From this misfortune, only one man survived, sheltered at the top of a bacabeira tree. It was then that Mahira summoned tapir for the animal to harden the surface of the earth. Mahira also extracted his own rib, transforming it into a woman, which allowed the human population to increase.

Name

The term Asuriní derives from the Juruna language and has been used since the 19th century to designate various Tupi groups living in the region between the Xingu and Tocantins rivers. The term began to be employed to name this particular people in the 1950s by agents of the SPI (Serviço de Proteção aos Índios - Indian Protection Service) during the process of pacification. The Asuriní of the Tocantins are also known as the Asuriní of the Trocará (the name of their indigenous territory) and the Akuáwa-Asuriní. This latter name was used by the ethnologist Roque Laraia in the 1960s, as the researcher considered the term Akuáwa to be the group's autodenomination.

However, the people have adopted the term Asuriní as their autodenomination for a number of years now. In contrast, as the anthropologist Lúcia Andrade confirmed in the 1980s, Akuáwa has acquired a pejorative connotation, being used to designate 'Indians of the forest' or 'wild Indians,' meaning those only recently contacted.

Language

Família Pukará e Asuriní. Foto: Michel Pellanders, 1987

The Asuriní speak a Tupi-Guarani language, studied by the linguists Carl Harrison, Robin Solly and, more recently, Velda Nicholson, Catherine Aberdour and Annette Tomkins, all from the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL, called Sociedade Internacional de Lingüística in Brazil). According to Harrison (1980), various dialectical differences exist between the Asuriní language spoken by the Trocará group and the group found on the Pacajá. In his opinion, such differences suggest that contacts between the two groups, by then residents of a single village, were previously intermittent. In 1962, the members of the Pacajá group were basically monolingual, while the Asuriní living at the Trocará Indigenous Post (IP) already spoke Portuguese, learnt from the Post workers and their families, as well as from neighbours on the Tocantins river who visited them sporadically. By 1973 all the Asuriní children and youths living at the Trocará IP spoke only Portuguese, while all the members of the Pacajá group spoke the indigenous language. Today practically all the Asuriní speak Portuguese fluently, younger people and children communicating almost exclusively in this language.

Location

Information from the Asuriní indicates the Xingu river as the region they came from, where they used to live with the Parakanã, comprising a single people in the past. It is surmised that during the first decades of the 20th century, the Asuriní abandoned the Xingu region, motivated by a series of internal fissions and conflicts with other indigenous peoples. As a result, they relocated towards the east, occupying the headwaters of the Pacajá river and later the shores of the Trocará river, where they are found until today.

Currently, they live in the Trocará Indigenous Territory, 24 kilometres to the north of the centre of Tucuruí municipality (Pará), in which they are located. Administrative demarcation of the 21,722 hectares of this Indigenous Territory was approved by the Decree no. 87,845 of 22nd November 1982, registered in the Tucuruí land registry and the Federal Heritage Service.

The Trocará IT is traversed north to south across its entire length by the BR-153 which thereby divides the area into two parts. The village and the FUNAI post are located to the east of the road, in the section bordered by the Tocantins river. The area situated to the west is a rectangle of forest comprising one of the region's last vestiges of primary tropical rainforest.

The Trocará IT is set within the region covered by the Grande Carajás Project, which includes Maranhão State and parts of Pará and Tocantins. This immense mineral-metallurgical exploration program, developed in conjunction with a series of infrastructural works (such as the Tucuruí hydroelectric plant and the railway linking the Serra dos Carajás with São Luís), has led to radical changes in the socio-economic structure of the region inhabited by the Asuriní.

The Tucuruí Hydroelectric Plant, located about 30 kilometres upriver of the Trocará IT, completely transformed the municipality. Its construction between 1975 and 1984 entailed the influx of thousands of people into the region. Thus between 1970 and 1980, Tucuruí's annual growth rate was 22.7%, while during the same period Belém presented an annual growth rate of 3.3%. The Asuriní territory was not flooded by the Tucuruí HEP reservoir. Located downriver of the dam, the Asuriní suffered what was conventionally called 'indirect effects,' that is, the consequences of the deep transformations in the region's socio-economic structure and the sweeping ecological change resulting from the project's construction.

These transformations include the installation of a series of farm-holdings in the region. The Trocará IA is now completely surrounded by cattle ranches and comprises one of the few remaining areas of forest in the municipality.

The deforestation surrounding the indigenous reserve has had a negative impact on the fauna within the Asuriní territory. As a result, the Indians complain that that hunting is increasingly difficult as many species can no longer be found there. At the same time, the Trocará IA's forest attracts numerous outside hunters who constantly invade the indigenous territory.

Another indirect effect of the hydroelectric plant and the accelerated occupation of the region was a large increase in the incidence of malaria among the Asuriní, which was the group's main health problem in 1985.

Population

The table below shows how the Asuriní of the Tocantins population evolved after its initial contacts with the government indigenist body.

Year	Pop. at the post	Source
1953	190	Laraia 1979
1955	66	Arnaud 1961
1961	26	Arnaud 1961
1962	35	Laraia 1979
1970	48	Trocará IP archive
1976	92	Vidal 1980
1980	106	Vidal 1980
1952	120	Andrade 1982b
1984	132	Andrade 1984b
1990	191	Funai 1990
1994	225	Funai 1994

As the above table shows, the Asuriní population remained below 100 individuals until approximately 1976-1977. This sudden growth partly resulted from the arrival in 1974 of the Asuriní who lived on the Pacajá river. After this date, continual demographic growth has been recorded, so that by 1984 children up to the age of 14 already made up approximately 55% of the population. At the time of contact (1953) the Asuriní population numbered 190 individuals. However, before the end of this year more than 50 people had died as victims of influenza and dysentery. After the epidemic, most of the Indians returned to the forest. In 1956, after a clash with the head of the FUNAI Post, the group that had stayed at the Post also retreated to the forest. Two years later, the remaining members of this group returned. At the beginning of 1962, the Pacajá group, who had first abandoned the Trocará IP, also returned to the site. At this period there were about 30 people; however, influenza and dysentery once more devastated the group: its 14 survivors fled to the forest, leaving 7 orphans at the Post.

History of contact

The Asuriní of the Tocantins first appear in the historical archives in the context of the advance of the colonizing front at the start of the 20th century, in the region above the Itaboca Waterfall (now covered by the Tucuruí HEP reservoir).

From the 1920s onward, the region from Marabá to Tucuruí became an important area for commercial Brazil nut harvesting. With the aim of ensuring transportation of the Brazil nut harvests from Marabá to Belém, the decision was made to build the Tocantins Railroad, which would by-pass the twelve kilometres of rapids on the Tocantins river, uniting the localities of Tucuruí (known at the time as Alcobaça) and Jatobal. This railway crossed the territory of the Asuriní and Parakanã, who reacted vehemently to the invasion.

The Tocantins Railroad was begun in 1895 and partially completed only in 1945. In 1935, only about 67 kilometres had been built of the 117 initially planned. Conflicts between Indians and railroad workers erupted at the end of the 1920s. In 1928, after a raid organized by the engineer Amyntas Lemos that resulted in the death of eight Indians, the Asuriní intensified their attacks against the regional population. Two years later, the Asuriní attacked and killed Brazil nut harvesters close to the place called Joana Peres. In May of the same year (1930), they killed another two people. Then in 1933 they retaliated against a police railcoach, killing and plundering the party on the 14 kilometre point of the railway. In 1937, the Asuriní came into contact with employees of the SPI. Soon after, however, they were attacked by railroad workers and in reprisal invaded a cabin, killing two people and injuring a third.

In 1945, the director of the Tocantins Railroad and the specia