Contra-invenções indígenas: antropologias, políticas e culturas em comparação desde os movimentos Nahua (Jalisco, México) e Tupinambá (Bahia, Brasil)

This research is a comparison that relates the mutual splitting between the indigenous movement of the Tupinambá of Olivença peoples ¿South of Bahia, Brazil¿ and that of the Nahuas of Ayotitlán ¿South of Jalisco, Mexico¿. Both cases centre in their struggle to get their rights recognised and their reconstitution as indigenous peoples. However, the neighbouring populations, governments, and specialists, who consider them being acculturated or mixed, have questioned their demands. This situation has led the agents of the policies of difference to stage assembles (theoretical and practical) to explain why these indigenous peoples, allegedly meagre, would have "decided to assume an indigenous identity". Similarly, these movements have produced wide repertoires (theoretical and practical) to answer to those questionings regarding that alleged "poor indigenousness" that is assigned to them. This confrontation reveals the asymmetrical and colonial relations in the dispute for the definition, and the meaning of what it means being indigenous. In the midst of this conflict, marked by creative inventions and counter-inventions, the movements also made obvious the elaboration of the categories and practices that question the raised issues about them, through the diverse theories derived from these "kind of phenomena". At the same time, this situation shows the insides of the production of the anthropological knowledge and about the other, regarding important issues: ethical, methodological, epistemological, political and theoretical. This doctoral research dealt these series of relations, issues and dilemmas, problematizing four points. Firstly, a reflection about the relation between the indigenous practices and those of anthropology in the production of the disputed categories that define the scope of these conflicts. Secondly, the documentation of the production, inside the framework of these movements, de definitions of alterity and sameness as part of a production related with the inventions and counter-inventions, both practical and of categories. Thirdly, the elaboration of a new possible reading, from the point of view of the indigenous peoples, their struggles and the problems they are facing due the policies of difference with the objective of getting inside the historical framework, outside the frames and assumptions given when designated as "meagre indigenous peoples". Finally, the development of a self-reflective work about the encounters and mismatches that were built along the relations, inside and outside of this research, with the objective of reveal the anthropological work and practice, both in the production of these conflicts, and the extent and coproduction of the issues that they present to the worlds we share (AU)