Xukuru against the State? Anthropological contributions about the tentacles of the state in everyday life

Abstract

This work deals with a piece of writing that has as its guiding thread thinking about the state as an important social institution that awakens reflections in Anthropology. Having contact with authors in the field of Anthropology and Social Sciences, we view the state as an institution that is constructed culturally, economically and symbolically in different historical and local contexts. To establish the authors’ anthropological sports used in the text, we will focus, ethnographically, on the political activities of the Xukuru people of Ororubá, who hold an indigenous assembly annually, organized “with” and “against” the state. This work starts from a small ethnographic window into participation in the indigenous assembly in 2023, the assembly is a political and cultural event that takes place annually in the territory of the Ororubá mountain range in the municipality of Pesqueira in the state of Pernambuco. With a process of ethnic organization and political struggle for the maintenance and defense of their territories, for more than two decades the Xukuru nation has held an indigenous assembly whose main objective is to dialogue about the political organization of the Xukuru people. Through a brief ethnography, the text presents how the Xukuru visualize and negotiate with the Brazilian state within their political mobilization. From a particular context in northeastern Brazil, the Xukuru people weave a collaborative and critical relationship with the Brazilian state. It is this every day and political relationality that the article explores.