Juma
- Self-denomination
- Where they are How many
- AM 12 (Siasi/Sesai, 2020)
- Linguistic family
- Tupi-Guarani
The Juma belong to a group of peoples, of the Tupi-Guarani language family, called Kagwahiva. In the XVIIIth Century, it is probable that the Juma had a population of between 12 and 15 thousand Indians. After successive massacres and the expansion of extractivist industries, their population was reduced to a few dozen people in the 1960s. In 2002 there were only five individuals left: a father with his three daughters and a granddaughter.
Location
The Juma belong to a group of peoples called Kagwahiva, who, according to the historical records, migrated from the region of the upper Tapajós to the area near the Madeira River (Nimuendajú, 1924; Menéndez, 1981/82). In this migration, the groups fragmented and, today, the Kagwahiva live dispersed over a wide area.
On the upper Madeira, there are the Karipuna, the Uru-eu-wau-wau and the Mondawa; on the middle Madeira, the Tenharim (of the Marmelos river, the Preto stream and the Sepoti), the Parintintin and the Jahui; in the region of the Purus, the Juma. Probably there are still isolated Kagwahiva groups.
The Juma inhabit the region of the Açuã River, near the city of Lábrea, in the southern part of the state of Amazonas. The territory of the group is located in the municipality of Canutama-AM and was demarcated in 1993 with an area of 38,700 hectares and a perimeter of 130 square kilometers. But, until now, the Indigenous Land has not been homologated, in part because of doubts regarding the survival of the people, since their survivors are all related and cannot have children.
The situation became even more complex when, at the end of 1998, the Juma left their lands, being transfered by local Funai employees to the House of the Indian in Porto Velho (Rondônia) and, later, to the upper Jamary village, to live with the Uru-eu-wau-wau, where the father and daughters of the Juma family married individuals of this other ethnic group. At the present time, they still inhabit this village and are in doubt regarding their return or not to their former lands.
History of Contact
The Kagwahiva groups were mentioned for the first time in 1750, in the region of the upper Juruena River, near the Apiaká. This place was practically unknown to the expansion fronts and later came to be seen as the domain of Língua Geral, alluding to the Tupi-Guarani language spoken by these peoples (Ferreyra, 1752). Later, this area was swept by the mining frontier, which advanced ever further to the north in search of new gold mines (Menéndez, 1989:38). The pressure exerted by this expansion front, as well as the war with the Munduruku, have been cited as the reason for the migrations of the Kagwahiva from this region to the area around the Madeira River(Nimuendajú, 1924:207-208). Tocantins (1877:93), who passed some time among the Munduruku, says that their main enemies were the Parintintin. However, according to Menéndez (1989:47), the existing interethnic dynamics in the region were conditioning factors of this complex migration.
The creation of the Indian Directorates, in 1757, - a period coinciding with the first references to the Kagwahiva, - made the indigenous popultation, settled in villages or not, become incorporated to the colonial system without intermediaries. The policy of Pombal led to an increase in the number of white colonists and greater control over the indigenous population. As a result, there was a reaction to the Directorates and a new definition of Indian policy in the years to follow. In any case, even after the fall of Pombal and until the Independence of Brazil, legislation continued to be anti-Indian (Moreira Neto, 1988:27-30).
Native labor was widely utilized, which generalized conflict in the region. The groups who refused to submit to colonial domination set off on long migrations in the Amazonian territory. In the case of the area located between the Madeira and Tapajós rivers, these conflicts led to the flight and extinction of whole groups who lived on the banks of the major rivers. Consequently, other groups, who lived in the forests, came to occupy the empty spaces, becoming more visible to the chroniclers and travellers who circulated in the region during the 17th and 18th centuries (Ribeiro, 1970:37; Menéndez, 1981/82:350)
The Kagwahiva are a clear example of this, for, after the references on the upper Tapajós, they are recorded in 1817, for the first time by the name of Parintintin. This name, it is supposed, was given by the Munduruku to their enemies. In 1850, both the Kagwahiva and the Parintintin are on record together and, later, the ethnonym Kagwahiva disappears and all of these people come to be called Parintintin (Menéndez, 1989:26). Only after the fieldwork undertaken by Nimuendajú in 1922 was it possible to determine that Kagwahiva is the self-denomination of the Parintintin and that this designation was only applied to one of these people (Nimuendajú, 1924:204-205).
In the region of the Madeira River, the approximation of Kagwahiva groups to Brazilian society took place after an intense war which lasted for nearly 70 years, between the middle of the 19th Century and the 1920s, ending only with the action of the Indian Protection Service (SPI) and the definitive installation of rubber- tapping trails in the region. Curt Nimuendajú was the principal agent in this approximation: hired by the SPI, he organized expeditions and fixed himself up inside the indigenous territory. Due to lack of money from the agency, Nimuendajú abandoned his project after only five months, leaving several assistants in his place. Several years later, one of them, José Garcia de Freitas, had trouble with the number of groups, which he called "warrior clans":
"Tentatively we are aware of nine groups, all enemies amongst themselves, making war and committing the greatest cruelties with their victims. They are the following: Kuandey' (little hawks), Odiahub' (probably the present- day Jiahui), Itauéry', Tucut', Miundê', ´Pain', Apairandê' (the present-day Tenharim), Kôte-Apain', Boritá', a group which today is only comprised of women" (Freitas,1930:7-8).
From what it seems, the diversity of the Kagwahiva peoples in this region was until then unknown: all were considered Parintintin. Nevertheless, the ethnonym of Kagwahiva existed before, and references to them in various different places seem to indicate moves within a vast extent of the Madeira-Tapajós area. Given the characteristics of the social organization of these peoples, one can infer that they lived in small groups spread out throughout the region, making wars and establishing alliances.
In the Purus region, the first records already indicated the Juma as inhabitants of the area. When the effective occupation of the region by non-Indians began, wars against the peoples who resisted also started. As happened generally in Amazônia, peoples were brought into contact and later utilized in the extermination of other indigenous groups.
In the mid-19th Century, a connection between the Purus basin and the Madeira River was sought, in an effort to avoid the rapids along the stretch of this river. At that time, more specific references to the indigenous peoples who inhabited this region began to appear. This search for access to the Madeira River produced a series of reports on the region of the Purus, including its vegetation, climates and population. The main references from this period are Manoel Urbano da Encarnação, who navigated the Purus in 1861, João Marfins da Silva Coutinho, in 1862, e William Chandless, in 1864. There are indications in the sources that non-Indians came to occupy permanently the region of the Purus which, until the mid-19th Century had basically been occupied by the indigenous population (Dal Poz Neto, 1985:12).
The reports by Coutinho (1863; 1865) and Chandless ([1866]1949), present information on the viability of non-Indian occupation of the region, describing its general conditions, the manner of the Indians, the potential of the Indians in the "civilizing" process of the time, which characterized so-called "worker" and "warrior" populations. The Juma were always included in the second category, defending their territory from invasion and avoiding permanent contacts.
Several incidents from this period established a certain kind of action in relation to these people. In 1869, the Juma attacked a couple who lived in this region, which led to the sending of police troops to the locale, for the purpose of avoiding the interruption of extractivist activities. This fact occurred due to the imprudence of a man who fired against a group which demonstrated friendly signs (Mattos, 1870).
The conflicts with the indigenous peoples began to worsen in the second half of the 19th Century, when waves of migration began slowly arriving from the Northeast of Brazil to work in rubber extraction. This is directly related to the growing utilization of rubber by industries from the United States and Europe which reached their apex by around 1910 (Kroemer, 1985; Dal Foz Neto, 1985). To cite Kroemer:
"As a result, indigenous territories diminished drastically, and various societies were completely exterminated. Depopulation invalidated the indigenous systems of production and social organization, forcing dispersion. Punitive expeditions were organized by colonizing firms, navigation companies and land owners, with the approval or even the participation of the repressive power of the province" (Kroemer, 1985:78).
Again, according to Kroemer (1985:80), the most numerous nations of the Ituxi River were the Cacharari, Canamari, Guarayo, Apurinã, Huatanari, Paumari, Catauxi and Juma. Despite this, the depopulation of the indigenous peoples was proportional to the number of Northeasterners who came to work in the rubber industry.
Referred to as anthropophagous, perverse and ferocious, the Juma remained in relative isolation until nearly the mid-20th Century. With the creation of the Indian Protection Service, indigenous posts were established in the region and later abandoned. Nevertheless, according to Kroemer:
"The presence of the SPI not only led to the weakening of the indigenous posts but above all allowed the advance of the economic front up to the last hideouts of the isolated Indians, silencing the crimes commited against them.
From 1940 to 1965 there was a systematic extermination of the Mamori, Katukina and Ximarimã tribes, on the Cuniuá River; the Jamamadi, on the Pauini River; and