Adeus Capitao

“Captain” Krohokrenhum, leader of the Gavião ethnicity from the south of Pará State, who passed away in 2016 at the age of ninety, tells his daughters and granddaughters of the internal warfare between factions of his people and the ultimate transfer of the survivors to the Mãe Maria chestnut glebe near Marabá. There, the remnants suffered abuse from the very agency founded to protect Brazil’s Indigenous groups, Funai, which forced them into slave labor to harvest the nuts. Having reached the bottom of the barrel, Krohokrenhum confesses: “I was all rum and nothing else. Our world had ended.” After a rebellion in the 1980s, the Gavião people (which means ‘hawk’ in Portuguese) took over the chestnut glebe and achieved financial autonomy. The “captain” set about rebuilding his world.