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Chapter 5 Demographic Crisis and Recovery Xavánte population dynamics over the last three hundred years have been affected by the expansion of Western society into Central Brazil. As we have seen in chapter 3, historical sources show that as far back as the eighteenth century the Xavánte were experiencing displacements and the impact of epidemics. The historical experience of the Xavánte over the centuries is closely tied to demographic processes such as changes in settlement pattern, population decline, recovery, recombination , and migratory movements, which, in one way or another, were products of the interaction between Xavánte and expanding colonial frontiers. In this chapter we will analyze the demographic experience of the Xavánte that has resulted from their interaction with non-Indians. We are the first to recognize that we will only be able to recover fragments of this experience. This is because, due to lack of data for the Xavánte, it is impossible to carry out even the simplest demographic analysis of the events that they experienced before the twentieth century. Contact in the 1940s was only the latest and most enduring of several encounters between the Xavánte and Western society over the last three centuries. It was distinctive because the Xavánte no longer had the option to withdraw, since Central Brazil was becoming increasingly populated by non-Indians. The data that we will analyze in this chapter relate to the experience of the Etéñitépa Xavánte over a fifty-year period, from the onset of permanent contact in the 1940s to the 1990s. The time around the middle of the twentieth century was a period of crisis for the group, as they suffered the effects of loss of territory, epidemic diseases, and social disruption. We document this crisis and show how the Xavánte lived through it by analyzing mortality and fertility data from retrospective reproductive histories, genealogies, and censuses collected at several different periods from the 1950s on. We also consider the interplay between political disputes and death from epidemics and its impact on specific aspects of Xavánte social organization, including marriage arrangements. 120 Demographic Crisis and Recovery 121 Data Sources and Collection Unfortunately there is no adequate, systematic, and continuous system to collect demographic data on indigenous peoples in Brazil. The result is that if one attempts at present to carry out even the most basic demographic analysis, such as the construction of a population pyramid, the necessary data (information on age and sex composition) will not be available for the vast majority of indigenous groups. If such basic information is not available, neither, needless to say, are systematic data on mortality and fertility (crude death and birth rates, infant mortality rates, life expectancy at birth, total fertility rates, and so forth), which are fundamental to meaningful demographic analyses. Even government agencies that work directly with Indians are not good sources of demographic data. Several reasons account for this. Over the years, FUNAI has not had a policy or a system to collect and disseminate demographic data. Even if such a policy were implemented, judging by present conditions it is unlikely that most FUNAI posts would be equipped to provide headquarters with the necessary data. The collection of systematic data requires the continued presence of, or at least frequent visits by, well-trained personnel. Moreover, in recent years a growing number of FUNAI posts on Indian reservations have been either irregularly staffed or shut down completely. One would expect that the national decennial census could serve as a source of demographic information on indigenous peoples. Unfortunately , this is not the case. Although current census forms include the option of indı́gena under “color”—the 1991 census form was the first to include this option; the categories in the census of 1980 were limited to branco (white), amarelo (yellow), preto (black), and pardo or brown— Indian reservations are not systematically covered by the census. Furthermore , the census data do not allow one to derive information on specific indigenous groups from the broad category indı́gena, which lumps together all the hundreds of different groups in Brazil (Azevedo 1994, 1997; Oliveira 1994; Silva 1994). At different times, anthropologists and other researchers have collected demographic information on specific indigenous peoples in Brazil. Geneticists have been particularly active in collecting these data. Most of the results obtained up to the end of the 1980s have been reviewed by Salzano and Callegari-Jacques (1988, 44–67), who list data on...

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