“The white man is not afraid, but one day he will be.” — Davi Kopenawa, Shaman, indigenous leader and spokesperson for the Yanomami cause, the struggle against the destruction of his people and the forest.

Anthropophagy had one of its most stimulating theoretical iterations in Brazil. Its baptism, one could say, took place upon the poet Oswald de Andrade’s encounter with the painting (still anonymous at the time) of Tarsila do Amaral in 1928. Among the narratives that helped launch the anthropophagous movement was the choice of the title Abaporu, due to its indigenous origin. The word was one of the Tupi-Guarani entries found by Amaral and Andrade in the dictionary Tesoro de La Lengua Guarani (1639–40), by Peruvian missionary Father Antonio Ruiz de Montoya. This dictionary had assisted the new Jesuit missionaries in their work of evangelizing Indigenous populations in the Americas during the colonial period. The title Abaporu is a blend of the word Aba (man or person) and Porú (an eater of human flesh) and can be described as “a man that eats people” in reference to anthropophagous practices of great importance to the culture of the Tupinambá people. These practices were ultimately abandoned due to pressure from the Jesuit priests.

.... Read the full Editor's Message by Tiago Gualberto and Sara Roffino: https://brooklynrail.org/2021/02/editorsmessage/Editors-Letter

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