COLONIALISM, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE RAILWAY MADEIRA-MAMORÉ

Abstract

This article, generated from a historical and political-cultural reading, confronts ideals of coexistence (immigrants and autoctones) with arguments about the meeting of the Caripuna with the “titanic” enterprise of the Madeira-Mamoré Railway. Such narratives brought opinions that the indigenous would be a hindrance to the construction of the railroad. We tried to locate falsehoods in the colonialist analysis of some authors: Julio Nogueira, Vitor Hugo and, at the same time, Francisco Matias. The texts spread colonialist and permissive discursivity with disharmony. Vitor Hugo, despite a position similar to that of the other, manifests himself with something committed to humanizing bias, although with a catetic interest. As a result of this research, of philological matrix, we identify the deconstruction of the figure of the indigenous, who, in the view of the people, would never come to be subject of law, but a obstacle to the development of the country.

Keywords: Indigenous people. Amazon. Literature. Political Philology.