Parentesco e aliança entre os Kalapalo do Alto Xingu

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to describe and analyze the marriage alliance system of the Kalapalo, a karib-speaking group from Alto Xingu (MT), by means of a critical review of the available hypothesis on the xinguan kinship and the presentation of newer ethnographical data on alliance in relation to the presently available ones in the anthropological literature about the region. Such data allow to identify the types of existing unions and its respective statistical trends, subsidizing the test of the current hypotheses on the forms of transmission and production of affinity in upper-xinguan systems in the ethnographical context of the kalapalo system. Still, one becomes able to question about the real reach and also the limits of the hypothesis on the alliance structure of the peoples of the region to be of the (patri)multibilateral type, therefore the data disclose the existence of an ideal and a strong trend among the Kalapalo for the matrilateral marriage. Considering that the matrilateral exchange is not a common fact in indigenous Amazonia, where variations of the patrilateral marriage prevail, this characteristic of the kalapalo system leads us to question the multibilateral model considered for the upper-xinguan systems, and becomes a basic problem to investigate how these different structures combine in one same system. For that, a diachronical analysis of some alliance nets will be made, considering the conditions of production and redoubling of unions as well as the coexistence of two exchange structures (one patri and another matrilateral), what will lead to a definition of the kalapalo system as "complex" and to the association of the matrilateral marriages with the institution of chieftaincy.