“We’re Totally Worthless” – An Anthropological Approach to Incarcerated Indigenous Persons in the City of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas

Abstract

Prison conditions in Brazil have attracted the attention of social movements, the press, and researchers. The prison population grew 707% between 1990 and 2016, with no sign of slowing. This article does not seek to investigate the causes of this dramatic increase — a statistic that is nonetheless worth highlighting — but rather to describe the relation between the judiciary and a specific segment of society, indigenous peoples, evincing yet another point of tension in inter-ethnic relations. As such, this article analyzes the available Brazilian legislation and the practices of the criminal justice system as an official means of prosecution, conviction, and sentencing in the City of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in the northeast of the state of Amazonas, Brazil, and the impacts of state-imposed punishment on indigenous peoples.