The Sacred and the Profane: Pray for Rain

Outside my window, the rain falls in buckets. Saint Peter, chief of the heavens must be heeding the prayers of the druids of Brazil´s Mines and Energy Ministry, who labor tirelessly to prevent the country´s power grid from falling victim to blackouts, as it did in 2001-2002.

I don´t have anything against anyone praying for rain, even if it´s to fill the reservoirs of hydroelectric dams, but that doesn´t explain why a devout country like Brazil insists on defiling others´ religions to build dams that really don´t even generate that much energy.

Recently, in desperation over the fact that the Paranatinga II Small Hydroelectric Dam (29 MW installed capacity) has been completed on the Culuene River, principal tributary of the Xingu, Ikpeng Indians took eight anthropologists carrying out research for the dam-building company and four other workers as hostages. The twelve were released a week later only after the warriors were promised a meeting with the president of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) in Brasília.

For more than a dozen other tribes of the upper Xingu, the dam site is traditionally known as Sakikengu, and is where the Mavutsinim created all humanity and carried out the first Kuarup, a pan-tribal sacred funeral religious rite of the indigenous peoples of the upper Xingu.

According to one Amazonian news agency, the government of Blairo Maggi, king of soy and the governor of Mato Grosso state, convinced a Ywalapiti chief, to accept the dam in exchange for a $400,000 grant to a tribal project. Leaders of other tribes in the Xingu Park were not consulted.

So-called "small" dams are being fast-tracked in Brazil as an alternative energy source. The Indians say the dam will deplete migratory fish stocks on which they depend, and that navigation has been seriously affected by increased sedimentation resulting from the dam´s construction. With the dam already half built in 2005, other Indians took the government to court, and Paranatinga II was suspended for a year before another judge finally gave it the green light.

For the Indians of the upper Xingu, it´s more than just a debate over technical details of the dam´s probable impacts. Pablo Kamaiurá, a leader of indigenous people in Xingu Park, explains that the fish are the base of various rituals and celebrations of the tribes of the upper Xingu. "The host of the celebration fishes for the village. If we won´t have fish, what importance will the ritual have? We will not be able to do as our ancestors did - or will we now have to buy rice and spaghetti to carry out the ritual?"

At this point it appears the only thing the Indians can hope to attain is some material compensation -- health posts, schools, and seeds, although the dam builders are unlikely to want to extend their largesse to all the Xingu tribes that hold Sakikengu sacred. While Brazilian authorities are quick to proscribe praying to Saint Peter as a solution to the country´s energy crisis, no judge in Brazil is likely to order the dynamiting of Paranatinga II -- even though it defiles the sanctity of the house of Kuarup.