Xingu Photographs on the Avenida Paulista

View from the Instituto de Moreira Salles, Avenida Paulista, São Paulo

Marx commented that in actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, and murder, play the great part. This is probably true for all countries, but in Brazil the savagery of appropriation continues in its most extreme forms, most recently in the widely reported genocide of indigenous communities as the result of illegal gold mining in the Amazon. The photographs of malnourished children with tell-tale bony skin were truly disturbing. For the most part the miners, garimpeiros, are poor folk lured by the promises made by the real criminals the gangmasters and their superiors hiding away in mansions in Belem and Miami. Guns, mercury, fuel, alcohol, and engine oil, rupture the carefully nurtured balance of nature. The marked increase in exploitation and defoliation was openly encouraged by Bolsonaro who asked in one of his periodically inflammatory statements why it was that Brasil was the only country in the world that tolerated communities living in the stone age. This conflicted history was the subject of a recent photographic exhibition in the fantastic Instituto de Moreira Salles on the Avenida Paulista.  A relatively new addition to São Paulo’s cultural landscape, its remit is to archive important works of Brasilian literature , music, iconography, and photography. Designed by the office of Andrade Morettin, and opened in 2017, it  spreads over seven floors with a mid-level open air café and bookshop, photographic reference library, cinema, classrooms, and exhibition spaces. On the day I visited, two floors were devoted to the history of the Xingu nation. Mesmerised I sat there for hours. Early first contact grainy black and white photographs of khaki clad explorers delivering flu, otherworldly short films documenting cultural rituals, it was a moving insight into a way of life that is constantly under threat. What made the biggest impression on me though, and perhaps predictably, were the breath-taking high-definition aerial images of vast areas of forest cut in neat geometrically precise rectangles, cleared for cattle and soya cultivation. It doesn’t matter how many times I see these photographs of poisoned pesticide landscapes; they retain their power to shock, especially when blown up large. Many in Brasil defend the economic colonisation of the Amazon on the grounds of civilisation and progress. Every other country in the world exploits its natural resources and integrates its indigenous populations, why should Brasil be any different? On the wall opposite, traditionally clothed with exuberant feathered headdresses, Xingu militants stare into my bones. Determined to rid themselves of such ideas they hold a banner that reads “we want our rights, not acculturation.”