Bororo (Brazil)

Borôro

Bororo-Boe man from Mato Grosso at Brazil's Indigenous Games, 2007
Total population
1,571 (2010)
Regions with significant populations
Brazil ( Mato Grosso)  Bolivia
Languages
Borôro, Portuguese
Religion
traditional tribal religion

The Bororo are an indigenous people of Brazil, living in the state of Mato Grosso. They also extended into Bolivia and the Brazilian state of Goiás. The Western Bororo live around the Jauru and Cabaçal rivers. The Eastern Bororo (Orarimogodoge) live in the region of the São Lourenço, Garças, and Vermelho Rivers. The Bororo live in eight villages. The Bororo (or even Coroados , Boe , Orarimogodo ) are an ethnic group in Brazil that has an estimated population of just under two thousand. They speak the Borôro language (code ISO 639 : BOR) and are mainly of animistic belief . They live in eight villages in the central areas of Mato Grosso. A famous exponent of this group is Cândido Rondon, Brazilian army official and founder of Fundação Nacional do Índio (or even FUNAI). Bororo's culture was closely studied by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss during his expedition to Amazonia and Mato Grosso (1935–1936), described in his famous book Tristes Tropiques (1955).

The Bororo, whose name means "village court" in their language, are also known as the Araés, Araripoconé, Boe, Coroados, Coxiponé, Cuiabá, and Porrudos people.

The first contact with the European colonizers took place in the seventeenth century with the arrival of the Jesuit missionaries. In the 18th century, mining sites for the extraction of gold began in Mato Grosso. Thanks to the pressure of the garimpeiros, the gold seekers, Bororo divided into two groups, those of the East (Coroados) and those of the West (Campanhas), which once separated never returned to be united. The Bororo of the West disappeared in the second half of the 20th century in Bolivia. The Eastern Bororo, however, remained isolated from the world until the middle of the nineteenth century when a road was built connecting the Mato Grosso region to São Paulo and Minas Gerais. This road passed through the São Lourenço valley, where Bororo lived. This was the reason why the most violent conflict was triggered in the history of the conquest of Mato Grosso. After fifty years of war, Bororo surrendered to the state and after that apparent truce came the diamond seekers who also exploited and severely damaged the territory. After these conflicts, the Bororo people saw some peace with the mission of pacifying the Salesian missionaries. Their "Christianization" was, in any case, another event that contributed to almost completely extinguishing their linguistic and cultural heritage. In other words, we can say that all the meetings with the white man resulted in a considerable loss of territory by the Bororo, and also to the almost total extinction of the people themselves. In fact, it is estimated that the Bororo population was affected by the ten thousand individuals in the nineteenth century. In 1979, however, the number was reduced to 626. Obviously today the situation of Bororo seems less critical than the past. However, considering their small numbers and the socio-cultural phenomena that pass through our time, it is worth noting that the dangers for this ethnic group have not yet come to an end.