The Ethnic Identification of the Pataxó of Barra Velha. Homage to Pedro Agostinho

Abstract

The Anthropológicas Journal asked the two coauthors to prepare
an homage to Pedro Agostinho, a Portuguese and Bahian anthropologist who passed on in 2022. The Journal presents this homage because of the indelible mark he left upon the history of Brazilian ethnology and, especially, the ethnology of indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Northeast. Here we publish an homage in two Parts. In Part II, we reproduce the first published text by Pedro Agostinho on the ethnology of the Northeast and, hence, a founding and institutive text that initiated a whole academic, collective and systematical anthropological effort which will create a totally new and
innovative ethnological production. The text unites all of the available data in order to establish the ethnic identification of the Pataxó indigenous population of Barra Velha. This population used to be totally unknown, just like the entire Northeast was, with a few valuable exceptions, almost anethnographic and ethnological vacuum. To appreciate the historical place and value of the text, from 1974, we need to contextualize the text at the time of its publication. In Part I, our introductory text aims to explain and evaluate the importance of this initial moment by placing it the contexts of the ethical and anthropological commitments of Pedro Agostinho that, in December 1971, motivated the foundational field-trip to Barra Velha.