Tuíre's machete gesture, visibility and gender among mebêngôkre women

Abstract

The 11 March 1989 cover of Manchete magazine featured Tuíre Kayapó with a machete in hand, announcing ‘Indians go to war’. Little in the collective imagination fills in what precedes or follows this scene. The aim of this article is to reclaiming (Stengers, 2012), to retell, retake and re-elaborate the gesture of the machete with attention to what precedes and what comes after, taking mass media narratives to think with Tuíre and her gesture about other stories that are parallel and simultaneous to the image of the indigenous woman with her machete in the face of a non-indigenous man, José Antônio Muniz Lopes, Director of Infrastructure at Eletronorte. As Silvia Cusicanqui inspires us to think: ‘images are an allegorical way of understanding a society of silences and half-truths’ (2016). Belo Monte was postponed but not prevented. Reactivating images becomes urgent. This is an article in honour of the struggle and life of Tuíre Kayapó, who passed away in August 2024, but lives on in the gestures of this and future generations.