FLASHES IN THE FOREST AND REVERSE CAPTURE

SPI PHOTOGRAPHS AND KULINA-MADIHA RESISTANCE PERFORMANCES AT THE RIO GREGÓRIO INDIGENOUS POST

Abstract

The rubber plantation and its organization chart transformed the Amazon. In the case of the Kulina-Madiha, between the 19th and 20th centuries, it proved to be voraciously deadly and exploitative. During the implementation of the Serviço de Proteção aos Índios (SPI), Indian Protection Service, and its defended “protection” in the Amazon rainforest, this people, in the Juruá river channel, became the protagonists in the Rio Gregório Indigenous Post, in Amazonas. The indigenist agency photographed the indigenous people in order to consolidate their image as agricultural workers and “civilized” people. In 1928, on the lower Gregório River, they were photographed by the assistant photographer, Anastácio Queiroz, who was one of the people working on the records. Therefore, the aim of this article is to analyze some of the images taken during this period and, based on them, to construct a theoretical reflection based on bibliographies, through which it will be possible to tension the concepts of “performance” and “inverse capture”. In this sense, we will be able to understand that, despite the photographer's intentions, there was Kulina-Madiha agency through performance, which culminated in an “inverse capture”. Was the photographer really hiding the Madiha protagonism and resistance in those parts? This is a piece of material that seeks to think critically about images in the context of Indigenous History.