Índia pega no laço

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Índia pega no laço is a phrase common in Brazil that roughly translates to "an Indian woman caught by the lasso". The phrase is often used by non-Indigenous Brazilians who claim that they have an Indigenous female ancestor, often a great-grandmother or great-great-grandmother. The phrase is a reference to Portuguese colonizers using lassos to bind, kidnap, torture, rape, and enslave Indigenous Brazilian women. This abduction of the imagined Indigenous female ancestor is often romanticized. The "pega no laço" ancestry myth is often a source of folkloric pride among non-Indigenous (usually white) Brazilians and is a running gag regarded as humorous. The phrase is widely considered racist and misogynistic by Indigenous Brazil women.[1]

Criticism[]

Indigenous Brazilian feminists have criticized the phrase for normalizing and trivializing rape and violence against Indigenous women.[2] The Brazilian anthropologist Alcinda Rita Ramos has argued that the ancestry myth of an Indian ancestor who was caught in the woods by a lasso is a way of claiming "Indian blood" as an "abstraction with no material cost". By claiming that the mythical Indigenous grandmother's blood was transfused throughout the generations, non-Indigenous Brazilians are making a claim to legitimate Brazilian identity stretching back many generations.[3] Ramos has claimed that non-Indigenous Brazilians claim to the "Indian grandmother is like an ornament that one wears one day and puts away the next." In the Brazilian national imagination, a "good Indian" is one who remotely contributed her blood to the soil of the Brazilian nation but who is far removed from modern day life. The alleged ancestor is always a distant female ancestor and never a mother, father, or grandfather. Making the ancestor a long lost "wild" great-grandmother who was "tamed" by colonizers creates a "safe genealogical and gender distance" while authenticating a metonymic bond with the first peoples of the land. Despite the commonness of the claim, Brazil has one of the smallest Indigenous populations in South America.[4]

Despite the persistence of the ancestral myth, there is a lack of documentation of Indigenous women being "caught by the lasso" of white men.[5]

The Indigenous Brazilian writer and educator Daniel Munduruku, a member of the Munduruku people, has written that is bizarre for non-Indigenous Brazilians to be proud that their great-grandfather supposedly had raped and enslaved their great-grandmother and forced her to bear unwanted children.[6]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ ""EXPRESSÃO 'PEGA NO LAÇO' É ESTUPRO NATURALIZADO NA CULTURA", DIZ VERA DE PAULA, QUE LANÇA O QUE QUEREM AS MULHERES". Heloisa Tolipan. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  2. ^ ""MINHA AVÓ FOI PEGA NO LAÇO": A QUESTÃO DA MULHER INDÍGENA A PARTIR DE UM OLHAR FEMINISTA" (PDF). Federal University of Goiás. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  3. ^ "Neither Here nor There" (PDF). Brazilian Anthropological Association. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  4. ^ "THE PREDICAMENT OF BRAZIL´S PLURALISM" (PDF). University of Brasília. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  5. ^ ""Pega no laço": por que essa expressão ofende mulheres indígenas". Universo Online. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  6. ^ "A LITERATURA NATIVA E O ENSINO DAS RELAÇÕES ÉTNICO-RACIAIS NOS ANOS INICIAIS DO ENSINO FUNDAMENTAL" (PDF). University of Campinas. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
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