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Correspondence Address: Scott William Hoefle, Departamento de Geografia, Universidade Federal do Rio
de Janeiro, Cidade Universitária—Ilha do Fundão, Caixa Postal 68537, 21941-972, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Email: scotthoefle@acd.ufrj.br
concerning meaning, storytelling and performance, but one wonders whether hyper-
enchanted Parintins is representative of the Amazon. Smith (1996) took an origins
and ecological functions approach to the same material, and covered the eastern
half of the Amazon over a 20-year period, but limited his study to people long
present in the region, tracing the origins of the lore from Amerindians, and excluding
recent settlers. Unsurprisingly, the sub-title of his book refers to a vanishing world.
My aim here is different: rather than focussing on one social group and how it has
received outside influences, and then comparing case studies in order to (maybe)
arrive at regional trends, I will directly examine regional cultural interaction.
A consensus exists among researchers that there are very few ‘pure’ Amerindians
in the Amazon, and that most groups have experienced decades if not centuries of
‘acculturation’. For example, the worldview of the Tikuna Amerindians included
in this study has a good deal in common with that of the historic riverine peasants,
who are themselves to varying degrees the descendants of Amerindians and
Europeans. As the agrarian frontier advances into southern Amazonas State,
considerable interaction also occurs between riverine peasants who move to the
roads and settlers coming from both developed and less developed regions of Brazil.
Research that continues to separate these groups in an essentialist way simply flies
in the face of reality, and does not address the future of the region. Consequently,
I have employed a systematic-qualitative research design involving multiple sites in
an effort to embrace the actual socio-spatial complexity of the Amazon.
In what follows, the relationships between worldview, environmental ethics and
cultural identity are presented from two complimentary theoretical perspectives,
each based on different epistemological and textual strategies. In the first part,
a qualitative-interpretative approach is used to illustrate how belief and disbelief in a
living earth in which extraordinary creatures exist in the wilds are shown to define
human identity before Nature, as well as to express historical/colonial ethnic
relations in the Amazon. A more quantitative-descriptive approach is employed in
the second part to demonstrate how degree of belief and disbelief in different
elements of an enchanted worldview varies according to cultural factors (age, gender,
educational attainment, farming systems, geographical place of origin and present
residence and religious affiliation). My objective is to critically evaluate different
models of worldview disenchantment with regard to socio-environmental impacts,
as well as to offer a complex view of environmental ethics at the level of individuals.
in mundane affairs). Settlers, too, bring a spiritually bifurcated worldview with them,
as well as tales of enchanted creatures from their regions of origin. Consequently, the
emphasis here will be on regional processes of cultural interaction and fusion
between Amerindians, riverine peasants and settlers, an approach I previously
employed in comparative studies of Amazonian farming systems and multi-scalar
politics (see Hoefle, 2003, 2006; Bicalho & Hoefle, 2008a).
Research Design
This study builds on three decades of research on the relationship between farming
systems, environmental ethics, and cultural identity in Northeast and Southeast Brazil
(Hoefle, 1983, 1990, 1999, 2003, 2008). During this time, research methods shifted
from a classic ethnographic approach to the systematic-qualitative approach used
here. However, long before researching multiple sites became the norm for
ethnography (Marcus, 1995), and under the influence of criticism of village studies
in which communities were assumed to be isolated, socially homogenous and, until
recently, unchanging (Gough, 1968; Harris, 1968; Hymes, 1969; Frank, 1969), I have
always included at least three different sites in previous research with the aim of
embracing spatial variation. Consequently, I have always tried to steer a middle course
between what later became multi-sited research and those, such as Candea (2007), who
espouse a return to some form of bounded holism (also see Hensen, 2007).
The present study involves more than two years of accumulated time in the field.
Since 1998, general socio-economic questionnaires have been applied to farm owner
and worker families (n ¼ 527) in 15 municipalities of Amazonas state, which were
chosen to reflect differing degrees of capitalisation of farming systems and market
articulation, according to proximity to the principal consumer market of Manaus.
Beginning in 2002, I started experimenting with questions about enchanted creatures,
asked at the end of the interviews. In 2005, encouraged by two French research
institutions, I began full-blown research on issues of landscape perception on and
beyond the greater frontier. Specific, open-ended questionnaires were applied to
farmer and worker families concerning spatial perception (n ¼ 48), ethno-agronomy
(n ¼ 187) and environmental ethics and worldviews (n ¼ 279) in six study areas:
(1) Benjamin Constant-Tabatinga, (2) Humaitá, (3) Manaus and environs, (4)
Manicoré, (5) Parintins and (6) Silves (Figure 1).
Questions concerning enchanted creatures were, as before, always the last subject
to be treated, and asked in a manner meant to give the impression of an after-
thought, because, as Smith (1996) noted, people do not want to be seen as
superstitious bumpkins. I would ask, ‘Has anyone seen Curupira around here?’ in a
tone of voice marking an open-mind concerning its existence. When the answer was
not a resounding no, I would then go through questions I had used in previous
ethno-biological research in order to explore the similarities and differences between
these ambiguous creatures, conceptually located between, and mediating, people
and animals: Where were they found? What did they eat and what eats them?
Was their name used as nicknames for certain people (beastly metaphors)? If dealing
with human–animal transformations, why were they transformed, and what could be
done to transform them back? The ‘questionnaire’ consisted of a list of the creatures
and lots of space to write down what was said, always repeating out loud the exact
Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia 111
words being transcribed. This strategy was meant to dispel suspicion, and even made
the person being interviewed feel intellectually empowered because I was noting
down their exact words.
Of the different research areas, Humaitá proved to be crucial, due to the diversity
of social actors present. This municipality is located on the greater frontier in the
south of Amazonas state, and is undergoing intense colonisation along the
Transamazonian and Porto Velho-Manaus highways with the arrival of different
kinds of settlers from developed and less developed regions of Brazil, who practise
farming systems ranging from non-capitalised basic food production to highly
capitalised rice and soybean production [see Bicalho and Hoefle (2008a) for details
on farming systems in southern Amazonas state]. Many of the farmers on the urban
periphery of Manaus also arrived from other parts of Brazil, practise capitalised
vegetable cropping, and have relatively high levels of education, while riverine
farmers and those along roads of the nearby municipalities of Careiro da Várzea,
Iranduba, Manacapuru, Manaquiri and Rio Preto da Eva have mixed farming and
educational backgrounds [see Bicalho and Hoefle (2008b) and Noda et al. (2000) for
details on farming systems]. Farmers of Benjamin Constant, Manicoré, Parintins and
Silves, by contrast, are riverine peasants (as well as acculturated Tikuna Amerindians
in the case of Benjamin Constant) long resident along the Amazon and Madeira
Rivers, who practise semi-subsistence and semi-commercial agriculture and have low
levels of formal education.
112 S. W. Hoefle
The principal difference between this study and those undertaken by Slater (1994)
and Smith (1996) is the large number of people interviewed along a north–south axis
meant to include the accounts of riverine farmers and new settlers. With regard to the
latter, comparisons are made to previous research undertaken in their regions
of origin, so that the study takes on a multi-site dimension commonly used in
contemporary migration studies (Kenny, 2006). The present study thus represents
a rupture with classical ethnography, which assumes cultural and sub-cultural
homogeneity. Particularly in Humaitá, along the greater frontier, where different
social actors are present, a research design meant to gauge cultural diversity is
required, but this method also produces interesting results in the so-called traditional
riverine areas, which at first glance appear to be socially homogeneous.
like others treated below, is of indigenous origin, and is also used in Spanish in the
Peruvian and Colombian Amazon. This creature is ‘chief of the forest’ or ‘mother
of the forest’, and as such is feminine, like Caipora in the Northeast (Hoefle, 1990,
2008). This differs from the eastern Amazon, where Smith (1996) reports that
Curupira is male as is also the case in Southeast Brazil (Bicalho & Hoefle, 2002).
This illustrates how the myth suffers transformations in space [see Cascudo (1962,
1976) for the classic geographical and origins approach to Brazilian folklore].
Curupira lives deep in the virgin forest of inter-fluvial areas, and at the headwaters
of rivers where few people live, so that only male hunters have contact with her.
She eats natural fruit or hunts animals like people do. As protector of wild animals,
Curupira can interfere with human hunting activities by causing a hunter to become
lost in the forest, and by springing traps. She normally only beats a hunter or his
dogs with invisible blows, or throws rocks at them, but in some tales dead hunters
were found tied to a tree deep in the forest, and this was attributed to Curupira.
Curupira is usually thought of as an enchanted spirit with the power of invisibility,
but when sighted she appears as a small brown-skinned mestizo (cabocla) or
Amerindian woman (occasionally as a man, occasionally with black skin). Curupira
can show her presence without being seen by making noise, such as striking a tree
trunk three times. She mixes human and animal characteristics and the human traits
are said to be Amerindian. She uses no clothes, has long hair covering her face,
and fur over her body. Her feet are pointed backwards, and in the western Amazon
she is said to have a short tail. She does not have the capacity of speech and only
makes guttural sounds. Because of this, she is said to have a ‘semblance’ to humans,
and so occupies a half-way position between people and animals (Figure 2). Hairy
men, or someone who is always in the forest, can receive the nickname of Curupira,
as can individuals who vomit their food (also thought to be a common trait of
Curupira). This of course implies that their appearance and behaviour is not human,
which is a classic function of animal–human metaphors (cf. Urton, 1985).
Curupira loves tobacco and sugarcane spirits, which are used to placate her into
not interfering with the hunt. This could be interpreted as an act of reciprocity within
an enchanted worldview, which might limit over-hunting, but no one interviewed
expressed the idea that Curupira maintains a balance between kills and reproduction
like that encountered elsewhere in Brazil, or in case studies of Amazonian
Amerindians (Bicalho & Hoefle, 2002; Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1976). In addition, no
one said that they avoided certain parts of the forest so as not to encounter Curupira
or other feared extraordinary creatures, in the manner that Smith (1996, p. 11)
suggests might serve to create no-go buffer zones that could permit faunal
reproduction. However, the idea of limiting over-hunting was present in one
description of Hell, told by a riverine farmer of Benjamin Constant, where the
damned were forced to eat the rotten meat of all the animals that they had hunted
beyond their alimentary needs.
Normally people steer clear of Curupira, but several have been captured using
sugarcane spirits to attract and to put her to sleep. In fact, because of her great force
and invisibility Curupira can only be captured this way. A number of stories were
encountered in the upper Amazon and Madeira Rivers of individuals or close
relatives having actually seen a captured Curupira being transported to sell
downriver or abroad. Older informants in Manaus remember reading of one such
114 S. W. Hoefle
Figure 2. Curupira mixes human and animal appearance and behaviour. Source: Wood
carving displayed in a restaurant in Leticia, Colombia (across the border from Tabatinga).
case in the newspaper. This goes beyond ‘folk imagination’, and indeed some
informants consider Curupira and Mapinguari (treated below) to be actual animals
rather than enchanted spiritual entities. Consequently, these cases could involve the
capture of a rare species of primate, much like Jensen (1983) postulated for yetis
of the Himalayas, although having said this, it must be noted that having a short tail
or no tail are not characteristics of New World primates. Furthermore, as Sahlins
(1976) argued long ago, this is the typical reaction of a scientific worldview whereby
a ‘rational’ explanation is sought for supernatural belief in beings that by definition
cannot ‘exist’.
Mapinguari is a lesser-known creature of the deep forest. It is said to have
a similar furry appearance to Curupira, and to walk on two feet turned backward,
which led some informants to identify it as the male consort of Curupira. However,
Mapinguari is much larger, and dangerous because it kills and eats hunters who
venture into the forest at night. The creature also has distinctive physical features,
such as a mouth where a belly button should be, and an impenetrable hide and/or
bone structure that repels bullets. A kill can only be made by shooting it in the
mouth at the exact moment when it screams. This creature is considered to be ugly
and particularly smelly, so that ‘Mapinguari’ can be used as a pejorative nickname
Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia 115
for a smelly person. Like the nickname ‘Curupira’, a person who only goes out
at night can also be called ‘Mapinguari’.
Unlike Curupira, though, Mapinguari attacks and eats people. Consequently,
it is usually considered to be a true animal, and not a human-like animal. The
ornithologist David Owen has the theory that belief in Mapinguari is folk memory
or actual experience with giant sloughs, which roamed the Amazon during the
Pleistocene or still exist in remote areas (Smith, 1996), a possibility which Forth
(2005) critically evaluates for Homo floresiensis on the island of Flores, Indonesia.
Furthermore, it is hard to imagine a giant sloth attacking and eating people, as it was
believed to have been a herbivore.
Juma, also called Jurupari Indian, is an extraordinary tall Amerindian entity with
long hair, ugly eyes and one huge deformed foot. Jumas can form couples and live
in the deep forest. They use Amerindian dress consisting of a loin-cloth for men and
bead apron for women, or go naked. A Juma may or may not have the power
of speech, and scares people with loud screams as if a shotgun is being fired. Some
people consider it inoffensive, saying that it may spit seeds at people, while others
insist that it attacks and eats people.
Martin is an invisible spirit that appears as a sudden wind deep in the forest.
As it is invisible, only its loud whistle indicates that it is nearby. It wanders through
the forest with no attachment to any specific place, and is fairly harmless, just licking
people to scare them.
Mention of Saci Pererê is rarer in riverine Amazonia, and more commonly found
on the advancing frontier among immigrants from southern Brazil, even if most do
not believe in it. In Humaitá it is characterised as a little black boy with only one leg,
who wears red shorts and a black cap, smokes a pipe and mounts a horse (Figure 3).
However, some stories ‘mix the description of the spiritual entities’, which cautions
against insisting on ‘typical’ tales. One farmer in Humaitá called this spirit Martin
Pererê, but gave a description normally attributed to Curupira. Another person
who lives on the periphery of Manaus said Saci once existed there when forest was
still present. His description mixed the appearance of Saci with the behaviour of
Curupira, in that Saci causes people to get lost in the forest and hunts forest animals
to eat. Here we see at the individual level how classic Structuralist transformations
and inversions occur, whereby people recombine elements of what for the ‘collective
consciousness’ approach to myth would be ‘different’ beliefs. Indeed, ethnographic
research methods that are not multi-sited and do not consult a larger number of
individuals would not even have detected this socio-spatial complexity.
afraid of the snakes because they attack and eat people, swallowing whole canoes.
A few individuals thought that the snake could transform itself into a woman, come
on to land, and try to carry off children, much like enchanted dolphins and mermaids
(see below).
Certain pink (actually ‘red’ in local colour perception) dolphins also have the
capacity to turn into people, usually young men, who come onto land at night. A
handsome but unknown young white man, dressed all in white, will appear at a party
or before a young woman near the river when she is washing clothes or taking a bath at
dusk, and enchant her into accepting his advances. Alternatively, such a dolphin will
transform from the shoulders down into human form, maintaining a dolphin head and
dressed only in a string-ray hat, an electric eel belt and shoes (Figure 4).
Unlike grey (called ‘black’ locally) dolphins, which are seen as being helpful to
people, particularly when they are drowning, pink dolphins are larger and tear nets.
These dolphins can scare fishermen by appearing suddenly at the surface with a
human bone or skull it has brought up from the deep. They are characterised as
being mean-spirited and wicked, terms usually reserved for human behaviour.
Enchanted pink dolphins ‘do evil’ to humans by placing young maidens into a trance
in order to seduce and impregnate them. An affected woman must be physically
restrained or else she will jump into the river and accompany her dolphin lover down
to his underwater abode, from which she will never return.
Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia 117
Figure 4. The dolphin, his human partner and mixed-species offspring. Source: Wood
carving displayed in a restaurant in Leticia, Colombia.
The belief in mermaids, also occasionally called iara, is not common in this part
of the Amazon, but when present it takes the contrary form of dolphins. Sirens
are beautiful women who have a human torso, a fish tail and sometimes duck feet.
They can live in the rivers, but usually in the sea. They seduce fishermen, take them
to their underwater abodes, and the fishermen are never heard of again. As with the
dolphin, a mermaid can transform herself into a complete human and come on land
to carry a man away with her. The dolphin and the mermaid thus form a pair of
symbolic inversions highly charged with ethnic and sexual overtones. The dolphin
is a white man or half ‘fish’ that seduces caboclas (female mestizos) and the
mermaid is a white or Amerindian woman who seduces caboclos (male mestizos).
appear and disappear. People dress properly and take a bath every day, and only
hunters go out into the forest at night.
All of the creatures described above engage in beastly acts or play harmless but
scary tricks on humans. Mapinguari and enchanted snakes are predators of humans,
almost like jaguars. Curupira reigns over the wild animals which men hunt. She is
almost a rival, like predators are, and she can do violence to hunters resulting
in death, but does not eat them. Werewolves are transformed humans who take
on the animal-like physical characteristics of filthy dogs and pigs, or behaviours
like eating raw meat and old bones, all of this divine punishment for not observing
proper religious practices. Similarly, a visage suffers miserable solitude because
of the sins perpetrated in life.
Creatures temporarily transformed into people, like enchanted dolphins and
sirens, lead people into sexual temptation and cause them to abandon their human
homes and live in an enchanted abode at the bottom of rivers and the sea. Some
stories of Curupira attribute a sexual side to her, describing how she tries to keep
hunters as mates; but men resist her overtures because she is so ugly, and are
consequently tied to a tree and forcibly abused.
The belief in lost souls closes the circle between humans and the extraordinary
creatures, in that some people think that enchanted dolphins are the lost souls of
drowned humans. Lost souls usually appear to ask the living to do some task left
unfinished, such as fulfilling a vow to a saint. They may also appear because they
want to carry a living person off to death, and so have company in their lonely
wanderings, or, when the lost soul is an enchanted dolphin, in their abode under
the water.
At another level, enchanted beings represent different historic ethnic groups in the
Amazon. Enchanted dolphins are young white males, and as such are considered
to be handsome. Juma is a deformed Amerindian, and Curupira is a hairy cabocla,
both living in the forest like animals. Saci is black, and also lives in the wilds. These
creatures can be seen as inverse images of the traditionally dominant European
ethnic component of Brazil. In popular and official history, the European colonists
were civilizados (the civilised) who desbravaram (tamed) the wilderness, and brought/
harnessed the other ethnic groups into this process; while the enchanted creatures
represent untamed Amerindians and Africans, living in the wilds outside of
European-dominated society. Riverine peasants commonly made statements like,
‘Mapinguari is a transformed Indian’ or ‘Curupira is an old Indian which turned into
its present form’. Another variant was, ‘Curupira tamed wild Indians and turned
them into cabolos’.
Finally, at the level of social groups defined by region of origin, belief and disbelief
in enchanted creatures set the historical population off from the new settlers
who arrive from other regions of Brazil. When asked about the creatures, settlers
would express disbelief or just unfamiliarity by saying that these beliefs are typical
of the riverine population, not themselves. They could soften their attitude vis-à-vis
the riverine peasants by stating that they had heard stories about other enchanted
creatures when they were growing up in southern or north-eastern Brazil, but that
they had never seen these creatures there. Finally, they could state simply that they
did not believe in enchanted creatures of any kind, anywhere.
120 S. W. Hoefle
just as much as by the use of capitalised farming methods. This is clearly the case
of farmers of southern origin who have higher levels of education and do not believe
in enchanted spirits, and of farmers from the same regions with low levels of
education who do. Consequently, regional origin involves an aggregate of technical,
social and ideological influences.
This can be seen when environmental ethics is related directly to specific farming
systems, and to whether the person is a farmer or a worker (Table 2). Without doubt,
small non-capitalised farmers along the rivers and highways have a more enchanted
worldview, and small capitalised farmers along rivers and highways have a less
enchanted worldview, but the relationship swings up and down according to whether
the person is a farm owner or a worker, which suggests the importance of class
position and access to higher education, rather than mere technical control of natural
processes.
Indeed, non-capitalised slash-and-burn agriculture and semi-extensive stock-
raising along the rivers and roads involve lower environmental and market risk than
cropping of sensitive vegetable and fruit crops, or highly capitalised rice and soybean
production. This is particularly true for farming above the flood plain, which is not
subject to flood risk and involves small fields of highly resilient manioc scattered out
in fallows of varying ages. Vegetable and fruit crops for the Manaus market, planted
on the flood plains or above, require the use of expensive crop defensives, are subject
to a number of crop pests, and may or may not have a harvest price which
compensates the higher production costs. In fact, belief in divine help and diabolical
harm is highest among small capitalised farmers growing these sensitive crops, even if
they believe less in the evil eye, much like occurs in capitalised vegetable farming
in Northeast Brazil (Hoefle, 1999). Ranchers as a group display cross-cutting trends:
(1) stock-raisers accompanying the frontier who are rural folk with enchanted
worldviews not much different from ranch hands; and (2) highly-educated, urban-
based merchants who invest in the nearby countryside as a sideline, and have more
disenchanted worldviews.
The greatest disenchantment is present in commodity production of rice and
soybeans, the most capitalised of Brazilian farming systems, in which even a slight
variation in weather can reduce productivity below profitable levels. Production
costs are high, produce prices fluctuate, and profit margins are so tight that this kind
of farming involves more environmental risk via market risk and not less [see Becker
(2004), Bernardes and Freire (2005) and Brown et al. (2004) for more on soybeans
in the Central-West and North of Brazil; also Bicalho and Hoefle (2008a) for
limitations to this kind of farming in the central Amazon]. What this farming system
does is promote large-scale deforestation, so that techno-economic modernisation
is more important for provoking disenchantment indirectly through landscape
domestication, which eliminates the abode of the spirits and ultimately belief
in them.
Historic riverine farming involves low landscape domestication, restricted to land
close to rivers and lakes. Fields are small and forest areas nearby (while the opposite
occurs with capitalised commodity production). Contact with the wilds through
hunting is common for men, and the occasional attack of a jaguar or alligator is a
risk for all. Men hunt alone or in pairs at night, deep in the forest where, in the pitch-
black darkness, all sorts of real and imagined noises are heard, and shadows seen.
Table 2. Belief in spirits of the wilds and spiritual interference according to farming system and environment (%)
Non-
Non- Capitalised Non- capitalised
Environmental capitalised off- capitalised Capitalised smallholder
ethics off-floodplain floodplain floodplain floodplain foodstuffs Owner Worker Owner Worker Owner Worker
As more schools have been opened in rural areas over the last 15 years, the young
have had the opportunity to obtain a formal education. Girls are more studious,
so they go to school for more years. This would lead us to expect that the young,
and particularly young females, would be more sceptical of the spirits of the wilds.
This does not occur in a clear-cut way; quite the contrary (Table 4).
The majority of people believe in one or more forest spirits. The young are just as
believing as the elderly, and even more so for river spirits. Disbelief in the spirits
of the wilds is surprisingly balanced across the age groups. Women are more
believing than men of both forest and river spirits (51% versus 45%, and 44% versus
25%, respectively, for two or more spirits). Indeed, with regard to the dolphin,
women would relate stories of actual encounters involving close relatives and friends,
while most men considered the dolphin to be much too convenient for accounting for
allegedly unexplainable pregnancies. On the other hand, when taking the dolphin out
of the equation, many men and women believe in the giant snake.
While people under 30 years of age believe less in spiritual interference in farming
than do people over 70, they believe more in the evil eye and diabolical harm than
middle-aged individuals do, some of whom have higher levels of education. Women
believe a little less than men do in supernatural forces, and a bit more in a vitalist
world.
The process of secularisation among interviewed individuals who have higher
levels of education also is not complete, as the exceptional case of a farm extension
agent with a university education demonstrates. This man is quite aware of the fact
that he should not believe in the agency of God in a material world; but because
of his strong faith he continues to believe in this. He also pointed out that all farmers
Table 4. Belief in spirits of the wilds and spiritual interference according to gender
and age (%)
of the region are highly religious so that if we can talk about secularisation at all
we must consider it to be selective, in that religion can co-exist alongside the
scientific worldview propagated by the system of formal education. Consequently,
the extension agent does not believe in the other entities of an enchanted worldview,
but does believe in divine agency, and hedges his view concerning vitalism in terms
of his awareness of environmentalist view points.
Finally, the relationship between religious affiliation and belief in enchanted
entities reinforces the importance of level of education. During the last few decades,
Catholicism has been losing members to introduced Protestant sects across the study
area, as well as the older Cruzista dissident Catholic movement which arose in the
western Amazon during the 1960s in reaction to the Vatican reforms. The rivalry
between these three religious groups internally divides communities, and even the
Tikuna Amerindians.
Contrary to what might be expected according to models of disenchantment,
worldview and level of education do not follow a linear transition from enchanted
folk Catholicism to disenchanted Protestantism, and finally to scientific secularism
(as in classic Marxist and Modernisation theories). One would expect on
theological grounds that Protestants would react strongly to questions about
belief in animist beings, because the latter can be considered to be manifestations
of the Devil; but in fact Pentecostal groups and Cruzistas believe much more in
forest spirits (63% and 100%, respectively, versus 45% for Catholics); more in the
evil eye (43% and 100%, versus 24% for Catholics); less in divine help and
diabolical harm in farming activities (respectively 43% and 50% for Pentecostals,
and 74% and 67% for Catholics), but much more in the area of social behaviour
(particularly with regard to diabolical interference in the morality of individuals in
which the dolphin is transformed into a manifestation of the Devil). Both
Pentecostals and Cruzistas are poor, practise non-capitalised farming, live in
forested areas and have low levels of formal education, and these traits, rather than
the disenchanting influence of religion, explain why so many of them have
enchanted worldviews. A few Lutherans were interviewed who had highly
disenchanted worldviews, but not because their religion demonised the forest
spirits, but rather because they were from the South, coming from domesticated
landscapes with high levels of education.
Seeing (or hearing), or, perhaps thinking what one saw (or heard), an enchanted
spirit, is believing. Direct personal experience is so important that it can override
considerations of farming system, educational attainment or religious worldview that
would predispose a person to not believe. This concrete certitude can even cause
someone to label almost all of the beliefs as childish superstition, but with regard to
a particular one say, ‘no, this one exists because my father saw it’. One’s father would
not exaggerate, or make up hunter’s or fisher’s tales. This emphasis on believing
in what has been actually experienced introduces exceptionality and complexity into
our account, so that it is not just an open-and-closed case of believing or not
believing, as if one attitude is ‘traditional’ and the other ‘modern’, the linearity of
which could be measured quantitatively through multiple-regression analysis, and
the extremes at the two ends of the curve of standard deviation could be discounted
as not being typical.
In fact, focussing on the exceptional cases, such as an elderly riverine farmer who
does not believe in the spirits, his better educated daughter who practises modern
vegetable farming who does, a relatively well-educated adolescent living in a peri-
urban area who does, or a university-trained veterinarian who does not, but believes
in divine agency knowing that he was trained to have a materialist, biological view,
reveal what really motivates the individuals who make up the aggregate trends.
A conventional ethnographic approach in a single-sited setting, involving a small
number of ‘informants’, probably would not have yielded these exceptional cases,
nor have detected the importance of actual experience for belief.
An approach centred on individual experience also shows how belief can
disappear. A common initial response to asking about enchanted creatures was
that these stories are told by grandparents or older ancestors who lived a different
way of life, in remote areas as rubber tapers, and with whom one had little or no
direct contact. Tales of enchanted creatures can only define human-ness and proper
social conduct if they do not disappear from the cultural repertoire.
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