Bapera: The Bororo Encyclopedia and the Encounter between Salesian Missionaries and Boe Indigenous People

Abstract

This article is part of my master's ethnographic research that analyzes the Bororo Encyclopedia as an ethnographic artifact that materializes the encounter between Christian and Amerindian cosmologies, investigating how Salesian imagery production reveals the dynamics of symbolic reconfiguration of intercultural contact. The research is based on the hypothesis that the Encyclopedia should not be understood merely as an ethnographic record produced by missionaries about the Boe, but as a hybrid communication system resulting from a collaborative process involving agencies and negotiations between different cosmologies. Initially, I contextualize the Boe in their territorial, organizational and historical aspects, exploring the establishment of the Salesian mission and the dynamics of intercultural encounter, including mythological perspectives of contact and resulting cultural transformations. Subsequently, I examine the structure, production and collaboration in the Bororo Encyclopedia, highlighting the fundamental role of Tiago Marques Aipiboreu as the main indigenous interlocutor. The analysis of imagetic representations and their temporal evolution reveals transformations in the missionary perspective over the decades. The investigation of the material dimension of the Encyclopedia, through the documentary archive and museological collection of the Dom Bosco Museum of Cultures, demonstrates the close relationship between the work and the cataloging systems developed by the Salesians. I seek to highlight the Encyclopedia as a hybrid communication system and expression of Boe thought, following Marta Amoroso's perspective on the symbolic reconfiguration of intercultural contact. This research is conducted through a methodological approach that interrelates the anthropology of archives and art, understanding the Bororo Encyclopedia as an object of study and problematization that transcends simple documentation to constitute itself as a uniquely Bororo project.