Dra. Maria de Lourdes de Alcântara
Studies coordinator of the Imaginary Laboratory
Editor of the Imaginary Magazine

Introduction

This paper aims at a theoretical study on the use of Amazon "image" in the Liberation Theology. That is, the jungle and the Amazon population in the liturgical text , mainly its usage in the film "Amerindia".

In order to design this symbolic construction we will present a historical resume of how Catholic Church acted in Amazon ; at the same time, we intent to highlight the characters and the environment built up and re-semantized by Catholic Church during these almost five hundred years of colonization..

A historical resume

The history of the Church in Amazon, for almost all the colonial period, ran around two main poles : Portuguese Court occupation policy and the Christianization action of the religious missionaries.

Portuguese project for Overseas was well summarized in the following moto : Widening the faith and the empire - the Royal Provition, by means of law, April, the 1^st., 1680, claims : the king maintains that the main purpose for Amazon region is to spread the Holy Evangel preaching and try to bring to the Church's bosom those pagan people whose convertion God, our Lord, commited the kings of this kingdom. (1)

Portuguese project was to take the empire up to the Cordilleras, and for this purpose, they used the work of the missions. Thus, Friar Gaspar de Carvagal, in 1542, left the first registers about the big river and the tribes who lived on its margins, main affluents, which would be totally exploited in the beginning of XVIII century, and some of them, as Juruá and Purus, only in the second half of the XIX century.

Around 1540 Amazon region started to be known in Europe. Orellana's voyage happened between 1540 and 42, Pedro de Ursúa's, between 1560-61, and Lope de Aguirre's in the same period. The news spread around under a fantastic, superlative and marvellous language. Orellana's historian, Friar Gaspar de Carnajal, called his narration "relacíon del Nuevo Descubrimiento del Famoso Rio Grande de las Amazonas / report on the New Discovery of the Famous Great River of the Amazon Women." ; there he reported the presence of the Amazon women on the banks of the river. Pedro Teixeira's historian, the priest Cristobál de Alcuña, back from a Quito-Belém voyage, once again calls his report "Nuevo Descubrimiento del gran rio de las Amazonas/ New Discovery of the Amazon Women big river"( 1939 ) ; a century later Priest João Daniel writes about the same river under the title "Tesouro descoberto do Máximo rio Amazonas/ Discovered treasure of the Maximum Amazon river". All of them used adjectives to speak about the river : great, big, maximum, fantastic. This state of wonder, was defined by Greemblat, it's an instinctive recognition of the difference, the evidence of a highly concentrate attention. It represents contents that cannot be recognized, things one can barely believe. (2) ( 1996: 48)

The narrative about the cultural diversity under of the narrator's eyes is built, either as a deviation of his own christian beliefs, or as a radical way totally different from these beliefs, that is, the use of the invertion process magnifying the description of the symbol they represent. The mimetic circulation which represents the other is built by means of the christian European representations , that is, the European self representation, as properly states Edward Said.(3) People are aware that the alterity reported results from an European imaginary construction about the difference.

Próxima Página • Última Página

---

(1) CEHILA. História da Igreja na Amazônia ( The History of Church in Amazon ) Vozes, 1992 : 145, São Paulo

(2)GREENBLAT, Stephen. Possessões Maravilhosas. ( Marvellous Possessions) 1996, São Paulo, EDUSP

(3) Said, Edward W. O Orientalismo. O Oriente como Invenção do Ocidente. (Orientalism ) 1990. Companhia das Letras. São Paulo.