Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil’s Northeast

2011; Duke University Press; Volume: 91; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-1165334

1527-1900

Sarah Sarzynski,

Colonialism, slavery, and trade

Jan Hoffman French’s Legalizing Identities is a comprehensive analysis of the processes that two groups in Northeastern Brazil went through to classify as federally recognized Indian and quilombo (maroon) communities. The book focuses on neighboring communities along the São Francisco River in the sertão (backlands) in the state of Sergipe. Her point is to show why and how rural people who historically did not identify as Indian or black (descendents of slaves) have assumed or negated such identities in recent years, and she argues that their decisions were not solely based on the acquisition of land rights or phenotypical distinctions. The formation of a consciousness about a shared identity stemmed from three overlapping conditions. In both cases, large landowners threatened rural workers’ previously existing access to farmland. Catholic priests and church activists, anthropologists, lawyers, and NGO activists helped groups construct a history and traditions appropriate for their “new” ethnoracial identity. Federal laws protecting Indian and quilombo territories facilitated community decisions to declare themselves Indian or quilombola (quilombo descendent) because of the benefits perceived and granted with the change of identity. The first part of the book examines how a group of people living on the island of São Pedro came to identify themselves as Xocó Indians, receiving legal rights to land in 1989. The second, more extensive part of the book details the more recent struggles of a group of people in the neighboring town of Mocambo who received legal recognition as a quilombo in 1997 and a communal land title in 2000. French argues that the “process of obtaining the land and the structures of feeling that are produced through that process . . . provide the meaning of struggle” and motivate people’s commitment to a new identity (p. 145).What is impressive about French’s work is her detailed attention to multiple conflicts within and between the communities and families, adeptly proving her point that “community” defined as a “group of cohesive, coequal groups of people whose common interests supersede their differences” is an oversimplified concept (p. 174). Many of the people who identified as Xocó were related to quilombolas, and many of the Mocambo residents who opposed the quilombo project identified themselves as black. French leads the reader through familial and local power struggles and conflicts, vividly demonstrating how personal connections and rivalries led to inclusion or exclusion from the two communities. French superbly explains Brazilian laws and legal language for the layperson without legal jargon and often through a comparison with US laws and legal terminology. Coupled with captivating stories she acquired through interviews and succinct historical explanations, French’s compelling narrative is particularly fascinating for those following contemporary debates in Brazil about the quota law and the Statute of Racial Equality. Her study forces us to question notions of ethnoracial authenticity, showing how groups reconfigured “traditional” cultural practices, reshaped identities and history, and used the law to gain communal land rights.One of the tensions I felt when reading the book was French’s premise that Indian or black identities did not exist until nonlocal priests and lawyers introduced such possibilities. As French claims, people in the communities have long identified as sertanejos (people from the backlands) of mixed racial origin, and choosing to identify as Indian or black was a political process of consciousness-raising. In her chapters on constructing ethnoracial cultural practices, she shows how folk dances are turned into evidence establishing Indian or quilombo identity. She examines how a narrative of the birth of the quilombo community developed to fit national expectations of a quilombo, eventually turning into a local play that made explicit connections to Afro-Brazilian religion. Perhaps it is my own (Western) desire to believe that popular forms of memory exist in the rural Northeast, but I wish French had presented the possibility that such identities may have their roots in memories transmitted for generations through alternative means such as cultural practices and oral traditions. Also, I would have liked more about the power-laden relationship between the Xocó Indians/Mocambo quilombolas and national institutions and NGOs. A good companion to this book is Millie Thayer’s Making Transnational Feminism: Rural Activists, NGO Activists, and Northern Donors in Brazil (Routledge, 2010), in which a rural sertanejo women’s movement struggles to make their local ideas of feminist identities and agendas heard in conversations with regional and transnational feminist NGOs.This said, French’s focus is on the law and the ways in which marginalized groups use and change laws in Brazil to gain rights, access to land, and material sustainability. French’s comparison with Indian struggles for recognition in the United States in her conclusion suggests the progressive nature of the current interpretations of Brazilian laws and how Brazilian conceptions of race and ethnicity provide flexibility and the possibility for redistributive justice. She gives us a well-written and innovative study of the processes and conflicts surrounding the recognition of ethnoracial identities in Brazil, connecting local Northeastern struggles with national and transnational political debates about identity.