SEGUNDA PARTE Minas Indígena - Instituto ANTROPOS

Minas Indígena viii
SILVA, Cácio Evangelista da. Indian Minas – Socio-cultural Survey and the Possibilities
of Missionary Approximation with the Indigenous Groups of Minas Gerais. Viçosa:
Centro Evangélico de Missões, 2002.
ABSTRACT
Within historical, social, cultural and missiological perspectives the eight indigenous
groups of the State of Minas Gerais are presented here in an attempt to point out their
actual situation as distinct social groups, the reasons which led them to be in this situation,
what has been done in missionary outreach and what can be done in the face of this reality.
For many centuries these groups have been almost exterminated by those who conquered
these regions, starting with the first explorers from the State of São Paulo who came to this
region in search of precious minerals, followed by the military who from their bases
committed genocide exterminating or militarizing Indians and also by the Catholic priests
who in the villages committed ethnocide by prohibiting the use of their mother tongue and
the religious traditions of each tribe, as for example forcing the marriage of Indians with
the Negroes. The result was a reduction of more than a hundred indigenous groups present
here in the sixteenth century to only eight groups, whose today are struggling for their
ethnic identity. With a population of about nine thousand persons, who preserved three
indigenous languages, these groups live a cultural reality of losing their identity; a religious
reality of a strong Roman Catholic and animist syncretism; they present an ethnic picture
of accentuated miscegenation and a social situation of being marginalized. Three principal
missionary approaches with different fronts of action were discovered in four of the eight
groups – linguistic, kerygmatic and social assistance, leaving the other remaining groups
without any evangelical presence. However at least seven of these groups need urgently to
receive a relevant missionary thrust.