Bioethics, culture and infanticide in Brazilian indigenous communities: the Zuruahá case

Cad. Saúde Pública, Rio de Janeiro, 26(5):853-878, mai, 2010

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Bioethics, culture and infanticide in Brazilian indigenous communities: the Zuruahá case

Bioética, cultura e infanticídio em comunidades indígenas brasileiras: o caso Zuruahá

1 Cátedra UNESCO de Bioética, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, Brasil.2 Programa de Pós-Graduaçãoem Bioética, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, Brasil.

CorrespondenceV. GarrafaPrograma de Pós-Graduação em Bioética, Universidade de Brasília.C. P. 04367, Brasília, DF 70904-970, [email protected]

Saulo Ferreira Feitosa 1

Volnei Garrafa 1,2

Gabriele Cornelli 1,2

Carla Tardivo 1

Samuel José de Carvalho 1

Abstract

This article analyzes the practice of infanticide in indigenous communities in Brazil. Taking as a reference point a specific case involving two chil-dren of the Zuruahá people, it takes a broader look at the issue and discusses how infanticide is understood among other indigenous peoples. A debate focusing specifically on this topic that took place during a public hearing held in the Brazilian National Congress in December 2005 has also been taken into consideration in this discussion. In view of the positions adopted as a result of the hearing, this paper seeks to identify the ethical problems and moral dilemmas relat-ing to the subject, by putting them into context and analyzing them in the light of respect for cultural pluralism. Seeking to contribute to the debate, the authors analyze the possibilities for intervention in the traditional practices of in-fanticide, while rejecting those positions that are not anchored in an attitude of profound respect for other people’s cultures or that do not create conditions for dialogue between individuals or groups with different moralities.

Introduction

There is a very wide diversity of Indian peoples in Brazil. According to data from the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics – IBGE (In-stituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. 2000 census. http://www.ibge.gov.br), it is estimated that there are around 240 ethnic groups within the country, with a population of 734,131 individ-uals. Although five centuries have passed since the arrival of the first colonizers to what now con-stitutes Brazil, there are many tribal groups that live with minimal contact outside the group, or even in complete isolation. These groups main-tain very little or no relationship with Brazilian national society.

Different traditional practices are part of the indigenous cultural diversity that is present in Brazil. Among these, the practice of “infanticide” has been under the spotlight as part of the na-tional debate about bioethics. At the end of 2005, the Evangelical Parliamentary Front, a cross-par-ty political lobby group, raised the topic at the Brazilian National Congress, through a public hearing session that resulted in the launching of the National Campaign in Favor of Life and Against Infanticide.

DEBATE DEBATE

Feitosa SF et al.854


Infanticide in indigenous cultures

The various motives

Throughout the history of the colonization of the Americas, there are records of the practice of infanticide among indigenous peoples. In Span-ish America, and particularly in Mexico, human sacrifice as performed by the Aztecs was heavily criticized by intellectuals in the Spanish Court. Prominent among these intellectuals was Ginés de Sepúlveda, a chronicler for the Emperor of Spain. He abhorred the practice and defined it as an act of savagery and inhumanity, thereby attributing to the Indians a degree of inferiority. However, even in those days, there were those who sought to understand moralities that dif-fered from their own. Thus, Bartolomeu de Las Casas, the bishop of the diocese of Chiapas, con-fronted Sepúlveda during an historical debate in Valladolid, in 1550. He took the stance of defend-ing the Indians and indicated that human sacri-fice was itself accepted within Christian religious beliefs, as shown in some books of the Bible 1.

Infanticide has often been identified with sacrificial rites, as in the biblical episode in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his only son. Nevertheless, in some cultures, it has always functioned as a means of birth control and even as a mechanism for adapting human life to adverse conditions of survival in certain hostile environments, especially under jungle conditions. In Brazil, it continues to be practiced among some indigenous communities for sev-eral reasons. For practical purposes these rea-sons can be grouped into three general criteria: the mother’s inability to devote the care and at-tention required for yet another child; the new-born’s capacity or incapacity to survive within the physical and socio-cultural environment into which he or she was born; and the prefer-ence for one sex over the other.

In the first case, care is taken by the mothers to avoid twin births or births within short spaces of time, since they would have difficulty in carry-ing out their daily tasks inside and outside their home while at the same time taking care of the children. For many indigenous peoples, moth-ers do not become pregnant while they are still breastfeeding. For this reason, there is usually an interval of at least two years between births. If a new pregnancy occurs earlier than expected, the mother may decide that the newborn has to die.

The second situation takes into consideration limitations of a physical, mental and/or religious nature. Included in this criteria are the following cases: newborns presenting physical deficiencies or retarded psychomotor development; situa-

tions in which the mother dies during or just after delivery; children who do not have a social father; children who are born from a father from another tribe, and so on. Included in this criteria are cases of abnormalities that would not apparently jus-tify sacrificing the child, such as albinism. Albino children must take great care to avoid exposure to the sun, and living in indigenous communi-ties without being exposed to the sun would be all but impossible: in such communities, lodg-ings are very open and sunlight penetrates easily, and people do not stay inside for long periods of time, because they see the earth, this “big house” that has the sky as its roof and is lit naturally by the sun, as their natural habitat. It is therefore extremely rare to find cases of albinos among Indians. Survival difficulties and fears about the color of albinos (which are generally considered to be associated with evil), cause them to be sac-rificed.

The third criteria used in this classification relates to sex-determined infanticide. Press re-ports generally state that male newborns are giv-en preference. Although this does occur in some cases when the first child is expected to be male, it is not always female children that are sacrificed. Among the Waiwái, for example, sex determina-tion is only adopted as a criteria when a newborn child is the same sex as their four older siblings, independently of which sex this may be 2.

Birth and the cultural constructionof the human body

During a seminar on Legal Pluralism held at the Graduate School of the Federal Union Prosecu-tion Office – ESMPU (Escola Superior do Minis-tério Público da União) in 2005, a federal attorney acting in the State of Roraima, Brazil, asked the foreign representative of the International Labor Organization (ILO) about how to proceed in re-lation to cases of infanticide among the indig-enous Yanomami people. The ILO representative replied that the universal nature of human rights should be respected. Intervening in the debate, the anthropologist Ivan Soares, of the Brazilian Federal Prosecution Office – MPF (Ministério Público Federal), disagreed. Speaking from his experience among the Yanomámi, he empha-sized that Yanomámi women had full autonomy to decide whether their children should live or not. The mother withdraws into the forest to give birth and if she does not welcome the child into her arms, it is as if the child had never been born. Thus, it is interpreted that, in that culture, there is also a “post-delivery birth”, in other words an act of being “culturally born”: when the mother does not welcome the newborn, she does not touch

BIOETHICS, CULTURE AND INFANTICIDE IN BRAZILIAN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES 855


it and abandons it in the forest. In this way, the child is not born into the community.

According to many indigenous peoples, the human body is the result of a cultural “construc-tion”. This is a complete process that stretches from birth to puberty, during which time the body receives the marks of the culture and goes on being culturally constructed: “The human being under construction is ‘naked’ and does not use paint or adornment” 3 (p. 35). From this per-spective, it can be assumed that in the beginning, there is a non-human body or at least one that is not completely humanized, and it becomes human through the “construction” rites for the body. The person is also the result of a cultural construction. The concepts of body and person are demonstrated very well in the following tran-script: “The expression ‘I am making’ [my son] is used by the Yawalapiti people to explain the ac-tions of a man in certain contexts that are crucial for producing new identities: (a) during the period in which the man constructs the body of the child in the mother’s body by means of repeated sexual intercourse; (b) during the period of reclusion at the time of puberty, especially at its outset, when the parents must abstain from sex, administer emetics to the recluse and care for his needs...” 3 (p. 33).

Acquiring an understanding of the place and role of the body within indigenous cultures, as well as their notion of person, is an essential pre-condition for understanding the significance and implications of infanticide within these cultures. The individual is produced physically with a de-fined and equally produced social purpose. Cor-porality is understood within a broad perspective of constructing persons: men and women who are socially acceptable and justifiable.

The Zuruahá people

The history of contact

The Zuruahá people maintained cautious iso-lation until 1980, when they were located by a pastoral religious team dedicated to indigenous people in the municipality of Lábrea, in the Ama-zon region. This team belonged to the Mission-ary Council for Indigenous Peoples – CIMI [Con-selho Indigenista Missionário], a body within the Brazilian National Bishops’ Congress – CNBB [Conferência Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil], that had been alerted to the existence of the Zuruahá through news of their conflicts with groups ex-ploiting natural resources of the region. Almost three decades since initial contacts, they contin-ue to live in isolation and have little contact with

Brazilian national society. They speak a language belonging to the Arawá family and have methods of social organization that meet their own needs.

Their geographic location is in the municipal-ity of Tapauá, in the State of Amazonas, at a dis-tance of 1,228km from Manaus along the rivers. Difficulties of access have helped them to main-tain a certain degree of control over their tradi-tional territory. This has prevented invasions by people interested in exploiting the natural wealth existing within their lands. By preventing inva-sion, they have also avoided intense contact with foreign cultures, thus ensuring that their cultural mechanisms have been maintained undisturbed. Kroemer 4 (p. 35), in relating his experiences with the Zuruahá people, argued that: “All Zuruahá people usually live in a single house, a longhouse settlement called an oda, in which as members of the same people, they recognized the same criteria for social relationships, the same cultural patterns of life and the same ways of interpreting their ac-tivities through their religious world”.

Soon after making contact with the Zuruahá people, the CIMI team realized that they were a tribal group capable of assuring their own self-sustainability and of keeping their culture alive, provided that they remained free from invaders. For this reason, CIMI decided that an attitude of no direct interference with the life of the commu-nity should be adopted and that a commitment should be made to fight for the demarcation and protection of the Zuruahá territory. That in fact was achieved soon afterwards, when the National Indian Foundation – FUNAI [Fundação Nacional do Índio] implemented this demarcation.

After the initial contacts, the team devel-oped a model for remote follow-up, thus avoid-ing setting up a residential presence in the area and reducing the impact of interference with the group’s life. The work of providing healthcare for the people in the community started, and a vacci-nation program was maintained to protect them from infectious-contagious diseases brought in by the white man’s activities in extracting natural resources, while respecting the people’s tradi-tional medicine.

Four years later, another religious group, the JOCUM evangelical mission (Jovens Com Uma Missão / Youths with a Mission), started to work among the Zuruahá people and decided to es-tablish a permanent base in the area. Today, the people receive assistance from both missionary teams, which have different types of understand-ings of and interventions in the area.

The present population of the Zuruahá is 143 individuals. Data from the CIMI indicate that, between 2003 and 2005, there were 16 births, 23 deaths due to suicide, two cases of infanticide



and one death by disease. On account of the high suicide rate, there was a 13% decrease in the population over this period. The mean age of the population in 2006 was 17.43 years; the percent-age of the population above 30 years old was 16% and only 8.6% were over 40 years old; the male to female ratio was, respectively 1.12 to 0.88.

Infanticide and suicide in Zuruahá culture

The high suicide rate mentioned above is an issue that has many correlations with infanticide, the primary interest of this paper. Although suicide is a phenomenon that is completely different to in-fanticide, given the assumption that an individu-al who committed suicide had the autonomy to do so, it is important to understand the relation-ship between infanticide and suicide within the cultural context of the Zuruahá people. Behind living or dying, there is an idea or conceptualiza-tion of what life or death is and whether or not it is worthwhile living.

Among the Zuruahá people, this conceptu-alization is very particular: “They conceive of hu-man existence along two distinct paths: kunahã agi, the path of those who die by poisoning; and mazaruru agi, the path of those who die natu-rally” 4 (p. 150). Thus, death is the scope of exis-tence. The consequences of this thinking are seen in numbers. Taking the reference point of the sta-tistical data mentioned above, it can be inferred that “the principal factors relating to mortality among the Zuruahá are eminently social: 7.6% of all deaths are caused by infanticide and 57.6% by suicide” 5 (p. 99).

Even though death always has an impact be-cause it is a human phenomenon, in this environ-ment it takes on a shape that differs from death in other cultures. It makes sense to live if life is good and peaceful, without excessive suffering for the individual and for the community. Thus, if a child is born with physical defects or without a father to protect it, there is no reason to live because life would be excessively heavy for this child, for its family and for its people.

In dealing with the topic of infanticide, Kro-emer 4 reported that newborn girls from a single mother are expected to be killed. Thus, while still with the placenta, the child is left in the thickets or in a basket until the mother herself or some relative kills it. This rejection of a new-born girl without a recognized father is, above all, a response to the cultural patterns of social relationships, in which it is inconceivable for a child without a father to become a new member of that society. However, when a boy without a father is born, society imposes on him a lower status in relation to other boys. His life may be

maintained solely because of the usefulness of men for society.

Nevertheless, there are reports of situations in which a mother who is prepared to take on the task of bringing up a daughter that will not be recognized socially by the community accepts the newborn outside of the longhouse. There was a case of a widow who brought up two children that, according to the community, should have been killed because they were the daughters of a single mother. Years later, both of them commit-ted suicide: one did it just after getting married and the other followed her, in a suicide pact 4. This example shows a certain relationship be-tween infanticide and suicide that is not inherent to these phenomena but results from a historical process and from a specific sociocultural envi-ronment. Suicide among the Zuruahá involves historical and religious characteristics and even social tensions and crises. It is seen as a form of human existence, such that only through death is it possible to attain true existence: “The Indians say that human existence only makes sense if its aim is suicide. Their guidelines for understanding life indicate that suicide is the highest of all values. The philosophy of the Zuruahá says that there are only two paths for human existence: the first, via suicide by poisoning, called kunaha, which leads to heaven for those who take the poison (...). Their rites, chants and prayers relate to and are aimed towards this true existence. The second path leads to death through old age; this is a path that today is considered arduous...” 4 (p. 78).

Given this understanding of human life, wait-ing to grow old is not synonymous with wisdom. For this reason, in this culture, old people do not have the status of venerable wise men, as is com-monly seen among other indigenous peoples. Here, they are called hosa, a word that means “useless” or “spent”. Moreover, most of them have already made attempts to commit suicide. To avoid a future of pain and disrespect in old age, children start from an early age to live with the possibility of committing suicide. In their games, boys and girls act out how they will die and what their funeral rite will be like. They all know about how to use timbó, a species of liana that contains a deadly poison. Using it is an act of courage. For this reason, “parents live with the conviction that one day their children will drink poison” 4 (p. 78).

Kroemer 4 concluded from his analysis that the practice of suicide among the Zuruahá was the consequence of a violent massacre that they had suffered around a century before contact made by the CIMI team. The survivors developed a psy-chiatric disease that he named “ethno-trauma”. At that time, all the shamans were killed, together with most members of the tribe. Those who man-



aged to avoid being killed in the massacre died as a result of colds and measles epidemics. The people responsible for this destruction were rub-ber extraction pioneers in the Brazilian Amazon region at the end of the nineteenth century.

The case of the two children

Two cases of infanticide avoided

In March 2005, two Zuruahá children were re-moved from the settlement by members of JOCUM, in an attempt to avoid their deaths. Together with them, another six people left the community, including their mothers. They stayed for some time at JOCUM’s premises in the city of Porto Velho, capital of the State of Rondônia, in the Amazon region, and then went to São Paulo.

The two children are girls, one who presents features akin to pseudo-hermaphroditism and the other, delayed psychomotor development, possibly due to cerebral palsy. Both girls’ diag-noses were made at the Hospital das Clínicas, University of São Paulo. At that time, the first one was two years old and the second was one year and five months. They will be referred to by the pseudonyms of Mãy e Yatakaminá, respectively, to protect their identities.

After Mãy had been identified as female, she underwent a surgery and was returned to her settlement. Since she requires continuing medication, she is receiving assistance from agents of the National Health Foundation – FU-NASA (Fundação Nacional de Saúde), a body concerned with indigenous health issues and housed within the Brazilian Ministry of Health. Her father is responsible for the treatment and she needs to go to Manaus every three months for a clinical review. Because Yatakaminá needs specialized multidisciplinary child rehabilitation treatment, she is receiving care at Hospital Sarah Kubitschek, in Brasília, which specializes in dis-eases of the locomotor system.

From information provided by the CIMI team working in the area, the community did not reject Mãy upon her return. Her parents are managing to keep up the required care, although they refuse to travel to Manaus every 90 days. With regard to Yatakaminá, the community’s expectation is that, when she returns, she will have acquired the mo-tor skills to allow her to walk.

The peculiarity of the two cases lies in the fact that the abnormalities were not easy to identify just after birth. Perhaps the late perception of the physical problems made it possible for them to survive. However, the sociocultural reality of the group to which they belong does not ensure that

they will be definitively accepted as members of the community. As described earlier, among the Zuruahá, life and death are intermingled in the way that are valued. In the last suicide pact that took place, in July 2006, all the brothers of Mãy’s father (i.e. her paternal uncles) committed suicide. Out of her family, her father is the only survivor.

The public hearing at the BrazilianNational Congress

The case was discussed at a public hearing at the National Congress on December 14, 2005, called by the Commission for the Amazon Region, Na-tional Integration and Regional Development (Comissão da Amazônia, Integração Nacional e Desenvolvimento Regional). The declared aim of the hearing was “to obtain clarifications re-garding an accusation of unauthorized removal of children from an indigenous settlement”. The congressmen responsible for requesting and holding the hearing were mostly members of the Evangelical Parliamentary Front, a group of con-gressmen that defend topics of interest to various evangelical churches, most of them Pentecostal. The hearing had been motivated by accusations published in the press that the children had been removed by missionaries from JOCUM without the knowledge of FUNAI and FUNASA, the of-ficial bodies of the Brazilian government.

The vice-president of FUNAI, the director of the Department of Indigenous Health of FUNASA and the national president and two missionaries from JOCUM took part as invited speakers in the debate.

As the debate developed, the discussion came to center on the issue of infanticide. The president of JOCUM, Bráulia Ribeiro, made it clear that in her understanding, the correct term to be used would be homicide: “The legal term... is homicide, because infanticide is when there is a problem with the mother. In this case, it is homi-cide. And we know that the custom of homicide is common among indigenous populations” 6 (p. 4). In making this affirmation, she referred to the Brazilian Penal Code, which defines the crime of infanticide as follows: Art. 123. To kill one’s own child under puerperal influence, during delivery or immediately afterwards: Penalty – imprison-ment of two to six years.

The representative from JOCUM was correct in the understanding that the prerequisite for “puerperal influence” defines the crime of infan-ticide. However, this condition is not necessarily identified in cases that occur among indigenous peoples. Among Indians, the decision to kill a child is not the mother’s but, rather, it is a deci-



sion by the social and cultural group to which she belongs. For this reason, there are no records in the history of Brazil of the prosecution of indig-enous women for this crime.

Seeking to demonstrate that infanticide is not restricted to the Zuruahá, she made reference to other peoples, such as the Yanomámi: “There are various reports of homicide against indigenous children, caused by traditional cultural practices (...). Among the Yanomámi... one of the main con-cerns of the healthcare team is to reduce the num-ber of cases of infanticide, which raised the coef-ficient of infant mortality from 39.56 to 121 per 1000 live births in the year 2003. In all, 68 children were victims of infanticide last year” 6 (p. 6).

She concluded her first intervention with the following affirmation: “Human beings have value because they are valuable. They have value be-cause they exist. Their value isn’t because they are Indian or because they are Brazilian. Life has more value than culture” 6 (p. 7).

The participating congressmen took up posi-tions along the same lines. Congressman Afonso Henriques, a member of the Human Rights Com-mittee of the Lower House based his position on the fifth article of the Federal Constitution of Bra-zil, which establishes the inviolability of the right to life. He advocated changes in indigenous cul-tures as a means of combating infanticide, start-ing always from values within the Christian faith. Other congressmen who were mostly also evan-gelical pastors, described encounters with some indigenous peoples and various experiences of evangelization that had changed these peoples’ lives for the better.

The representative from FUNASA limited himself to discussing the removal of the children. On the other hand, the vice-president of FUNAI took up the debate and made some points about respect for the values of indigenous cultures and particularly those of the Zuruahá people, em-phasizing their vulnerable condition: “The belief system of these Indians – and the anthropologists from JOCUM must know this – is closely bound up with the way their economy works and the basis of the social organization. (...) There is a striking inequality between the degree of complexity of our culture and the complexity of theirs, and be-tween our aggressiveness in our ways of persuad-ing people and working with them and the degree of fragility of their culture. There is no way they can resist the work of persuasion or catechism” 6 (p. 20).

In her response to this, the president of JOCUM advocated the creation of laws to crimi-nalize the cultural practice of infanticide: “The same government that legislates to criminalize or sanction abuses committed by our Brazilian na-

ture should also legislate to criminalize or sanc-tion those committed by these cultures, because they are not less than us as people” 6 (p. 58).

From these discussions, two trends could be seen: the perspective of criminalizing the cultural practice of infanticide; and the need to intervene in indigenous cultures to convert them to the Christian faith and the values of Western civiliza-tion. The arguments exposed echoed the same refrain: life and the right to it are above culture. On the other hand, the representative from FUN-AI highlighted the fragility of indigenous culture when exposed to confrontation with the domi-nant culture. It should be noted that, strangely, no space in the debate was given over to the cor-related problem of suicide, the greatest cause of death among the Zuruahá.

The criminalization of a traditional cultural practice among indigenous people is no less than the application of the ancient decrees of the times of colonial and imperial Brazil to the present day. Both in Brazilian legislation and in international legislation, there have been many advances over the last three decades, towards recognizing the traditional rights of autochthonous peoples. In Latin America, there have been a growing num-ber of discussions and experiences pointing to-wards legal pluralism, in which different rights are recognized. The conclusions from these dis-cussions are that indigenous peoples possess their own rights. Moreover, since different rights are recognized, different forms of justice should also be recognized.

The participants in the debate cited on sev-eral occasions ILO Convention No. 169. This is an instrument recognized for its importance regard-ing the defense of indigenous rights and which has already been ratified as a law in Brazil. Nev-ertheless, they did not take into consideration what its eighth article establishes: “In applying national laws and regulations to these people, their customs or customary rights shall be taken into due consideration” 7.

A quick glance at history would seem to dis-credit altogether the idea that the imposition of the Christian faith is the solution for indigenous peoples. The history of Latin America is full of examples in which forced conversion to Christi-anity, instead of promoting life, contributed to-wards exterminating many peoples.

However, it could be seen that the public hearing discussed here took place among a lim-ited group of interlocutors, almost all belonging to the same religious segment, and therefore they were not representative of Brazilian society. Most importantly, the hearing was unrepresentative because the party with greatest interest in it was absent: the Zuruahá. It must therefore be put on



the record that, although the debate had been promoted within an appropriate space for exer-cising democracy, it took place without the par-ticipation of the protagonists and the different sectors concerned with the subject.

In May 2006, the same Evangelical Parlia-mentary Front launched its National Campaign in Favor of Life and Against Infanticide, with the aim of continuing the discussion on infanticide among indigenous communities.

Discussing the morality of infanticide

No matter how abominable infanticide may seem to some moral communities, it has a differenti-ated status and may constitute a social obliga-tion [to others]. In this respect, Singer states that: “Infanticide has been practiced in societies that geographically stretch from Tahiti to Greenland, among a wide variety of cultures, ranging from nomadic Australian Aborigines to the sophisticat-ed urban communities of ancient Greece or Man-darin China” 8 (p. 182).

In the case of the two Zuruahá girls, there was no doubt that both would be destined to die. Because the JOCUM missionaries knew the customs of the Zuruahá, they removed the girls from their environment, with the aim of avoiding their deaths. However, from the viewpoint of the Zuruahá, the fact that someone knew their cus-toms could be sufficient reason for determining that the girls should not have been removed. Ac-cording to Singer 8 (p. 182): “In some of these soci-eties, infanticide was not only permitted but also, in certain circumstances, it was seen as a moral obligation. Failure to kill a sick or deformed baby was almost always seen as an error. Infanticide was perhaps the first type of population control, or the only means, in the case of many societies”.

Reinforcing this line of reflection, Meggers 2 (p. 139) took the view that “the absence of any alternative to the mother’s milk makes infanti-cide a humanitarian substitute for a slow death through hunger in situations in which the mother dies”. Statements like this help in understanding the significance of infanticide in the Zuruahá culture. One such example could be the report of a case that occurred among the Zuruahá in 1987, in which Kroemer and Têre, missionar-ies from CIMI, not only witnessed but also at-tempted to prevent what in fact happened: “We had to do something, and Têre, with a mother’s impulse, asked for the child. The Indians were unable to understand our attitude of wanting to save the child, which was subject to the ancient laws of the Zuruahá. Throughout the afternoon, we tried to convince the Indians to save the child.

But we spoke from our own cultural world and expressed our feelings in favor of life against a universe that acted according to concepts of life and death different to our own. The values we un-derstood and practiced were nullified: brought to nothing by other value models that governed and controlled the lives of the Zuruahá. There was no understanding on either side: each spoke in terms incomprehension of the other, the products of dif-ferent cultural contexts” 4 (p. 67).

This report reveals an attempt at dialogue be-tween moral positions foreign to each other that: “...did not share moral premises or rules of evi-dence and inference that were sufficient to resolve the moral controversies by means of a healthy ra-tional argument, or that did not have a common commitment towards the individuals or institu-tions with the authority to resolve the controver-sies” 9 (p. 32).

Continuing with the report, Kroemer 4 de-scribes how, unable to dissuade the community from its determination to rid itself of the unwant-ed child, he made an authoritarian intervention that he justified by the desperation he felt when he heard the baby crying, even taking the risk of suffering physical assault. But although he man-aged to get the child into his care, she died a few days later. This episode reveals that the case of Mãy and Yatakaminá was not the first attempt to intervene in this cultural practice. However, the lack of success in the first intervention may have softened the intensity of the impact it caused. On the other hand, if the child had survived, there would be no guarantee of a successful outcome. From this same community, there is a report of infanticide committed at a later stage, when the boy concerned had already reached the age of five. Thus, the ethics of a society is not only concerned with biological life but also, and es-pecially, social life. Interventions such as the one described above have a high likelihood of result-ing in the creation of a socially dead being.

The idea of a being that is socially dead fa-vours an allusion to Giorgio Agamben’s discus-sion on “life that does not deserve to be lived”, in his work Homo Sacer: O Poder Soberano e a Vida Nua I 10. The figure of the homo sacer, retrieved from ancient Roman law, embodies the proto-type for social death. This individual could not be condemned to sacrifice, but was so despicable that anyone could kill him without suffering any penalty. The greatest punishment for this indi-vidual would be banishment, and there was no chance that a penalty would be dealt.

Beyond the philosophical discussion gener-ated by the ambiguity of this legal figure, in which sacredness and “killability” reflect its ambiva-lence, it is important to reflect on the fact that



biological birth does not necessarily signify life, or rather, it does not ensure cultural birth, that means, social life. Even if Kroemer and Têre had been successful in their attempt to save the bio-logical life of the child, there would remain an-other task that is seemingly more difficult: to re-suscitate the child, because it was born culturally dead. Saving the biological body without saving the cultural body is the same as condemning the individual to banishment, i.e. to the condition of social death.

There are in fact some reports on children in indigenous communities that were condemned to social death after escaping from infanticide. Among the Katukína people, one way of socially killing an individual is to withhold giving that person a name: “Some newborn children are named quickly, while others remain nameless even up [to] the age of two. The latter are unde-sirable children and nowadays, since infanticide is no longer practiced, failure to give the child a name has become a way of indirectly exposing that child to death” 11 (p. 10).

In consonance with this, Erikson 12 (p. 334) stated that “among the Matís, also in the State of Amazonas, Brazil, after naming the child, the pos-sibility of infanticide is suspended”.

This question of social life and death will be taken up again later.

Abortion, infanticide and neonatal euthanasia

The prevalence of infanticide in a wide variety of cultures across different locations suggests that it was formerly preferred to abortion. The latter is not only far from being an aseptic pro-cedure but also puts the mother at risk of death and does not constitute an efficient birth control method because it is subject to failures. The im-portance given to infanticide over time has var-ied enormously. According to the status histori-cally attained by human life and in particular by the newborn, infanticide was accepted without great concern during some historical periods, while at other times it merited great attention because it constituted serious disrespect for the morality in force at that time, thereby leading to rigorous punishment for those who committed that act.

In ancient Greece, abortion and infanticide were performed as birth control methods. As in Rome, they were not considered crimes, since the child only existed legally from the time it was ac-cepted by the father. Although there was no ab-solute ethical condemnation of abortion, it was suggested to doctors that it should not be per-

formed and that the practice of infanticide should be favored. Aristotle justified both practices for genetic and demographic reasons, as presented in Politika 13 (p. 150): “With regard to knowing which offspring should be abandoned or should be educated, there needs to be a law that prohibits the feeding of all deformed children. Regarding the number of offspring (since the number of births must always be restricted), if the customs do not al-low abandonment and if certain matrimonies are so fecund that they go beyond the set birth limit, abortion needs to be provoked before the fetus ac-quires activity and life. In effect, it is only through activity and life that it will be possible to establish whether or not there has been a crime”.

In the sixteenth century, when Europe had already adopted a moral position that was most-ly against infanticide, the European colonizers and particularly the Portuguese were surprised to find, on arrival in the Eastern world, that this practice was accepted and frequently practiced. Nevertheless, some studies have indicated that infanticide was still recorded in Europe up to the end of the nineteenth century, occurring more among single women who were in a good finan-cial situation.

In a study on birth control practices in Bra-zil during the first half of the twentieth century, Fabíola Rohden analyzed medical reports, police inquiries and legal cases during that period that involved cases of infanticide and abortion. She observed that “in some legal cases, the categories of infanticide and abortion even came to be used indiscriminately by police officers and judicial agents” 14 (p. 127).

With the appearance of effective contracep-tion methods and women’s appropriation of their reproductive rights, the general capacity of indi-viduals to manage their sex lives has increased. This has resulted in a gradual decline in the num-ber of cases of infanticide in Western society. At the same time, the struggle to decriminalize abor-tion has advanced. Today, in approximately three quarters of the countries in the world, abortion is not considered to be a crime, but infanticide is.

Thus, a certain bioethical relationship be-tween abortion and infanticide can be outlined. In this light, Singer 8 (p. 198) overcame the distinc-tion between the moral acceptability of abortion and the unacceptability of infanticide: “Birth does not signal a morally significant dividing line. I do not see how it is possible to defend the point of view that fetuses can be ‘substituted’ before birth but newborns cannot be. Nor is there any other charac-teristic, for example viability, that could perpetu-ate the division between the fetus and the baby”.

Tooley 15, in his Abortion and Infanticide, suggested that people who accept abortion find



themselves obliged, for the sake of coherence, to accept infanticide. Likewise, he said, people who do not accept infanticide are also obliged not to accept abortion. The argument is evident: from a biological point of view, human life is not in itself a right. Nothing like a natural right to survival can be envisaged. The individual’s survival is in fact just one of the possibilities: this applies to all forms of life, including animals that are con-sidered to be “higher”. Thus, especially among humans, the neoteny that characterizes them, i.e. the newborn’s severe incapacity to provide for itself, obliges the community to take care of the newborn so it can survive. Thus, the right to life is something that society determines. It is a social right that defines that a certain individual of the species that has been born or is to be born will receive the right to life, i.e. will be welcomed to live within the community.

Abortion and infanticide end up being equiv-alent to each other, since they are results from a decision by the community not to give the right to life, either to a fetus or to a newborn, for a wide diversity of ethical reasons within the society in question. The right to life, in relation to both abortion and infanticide, is a social right.

The following two examples will show how this conceptualization has emerged.

In the year 1986, through a decision that be-came known as the Bowen vs. American Hospital Association ruling, the United States judiciary ac-cepted that “a newborn that suffers from mental retardation or physical deformity may be ‘denied assistance’, provided that this is with the parents’ consent, even if this denial of assistance leads to its death. Feeding is considered to be a form of assistance” 16.

More recently, the EFE news agency 17 re-leased the news on November 12, 2006, that the “Anglican church accepts euthanasia for severely ill babies”. This position adopted by the Angli-cans became public through a communication to the British press. According to EFE, the An-glicans presented humanitarian and economic reasons to justify their decision. In light of the suffering of such babies and the accompanying high public healthcare costs, when resources in-vested there could save other lives, suspension of medical assistance would become accept-able. Referring to declarations by the Anglican bishop Tom Butler, the agency stated that, in his view, “there may be occasions when Chris-tian compassion overlies the rule of preservation of life at all costs” and that one example of this was “disproportionate treatment just to prolong a life” 17.

Both the court decision in the United States and the recommendation by the Anglican church

make neonatal euthanasia possible, resembling a form of infanticide and, more precisely, a form resulting from not providing assistance to the baby. They emphasize that neonatal euthanasia is justified if the newborn is incapable of survival. Among indigenous communities too, the criteria of being incapable of survival is considered to be the determining factor for making the decision on infanticide. The difference lies in cultural con-ditions and possibilities of and existing resourc-es. What is not viable in one set of circumstances may be the opposite in another. The concept of being incapable of survival is also a culturally measured concept.

Thus, the categories of abortion, infanticide and neonatal euthanasia can be understood to be very close to each other. The choice between them is essentially determined by factors of a cultural, economic and legal nature and by the moral community that has to make the decision.

Possibilities for intervention

The capacity to dialogue with other, different peoples is a premise for enabling bioethical ac-tion. The reflection of a lay bioethical approach is thus marked out by taking the plurality and diversity of the collective and individual social players into consideration in each given context. In particular, with regard to Intervention Bio-ethics, the theoretical line of bioethical think-ing that was developed some years ago in Brazil, the practice of establishing dialogue is proposed as a means for transformation and inclusion. In this practice reflections result in concrete actions and attitudes that promote justice, co-responsibility and solidarity. For this reason, this theory is understood to be adequate to deal with the discussion on infanticide among indigenous communities. Although this issue is among the bioethical dilemmas of situations that can be called “persistent”, because of its historical na-ture, it is equally within the field of “emerging situations”, insofar as the debate on this issue is showing up again on the agenda at this point in the development of humanity, at the start of the twenty-first century 18.

Independent of whether or not the indig-enous peoples maintain contact with Brazilian national society, they do have nor exercise moral values recognized by their own “legal system”. This means that, even if they live in association with national political institutions, they practice indigenous law in parallel to Brazilian law. In this light, and from the viewpoint of bioethical analy-sis, one must ask what would be the meaning of an intervention aimed at abolishing the practice



of infanticide, considered as a crime by national legislation.

Intervention Bioethics takes human rights as its reference point. From October 2005 onwards, when UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Bio-ethics and Human Rights was adopted by 191 countries by consensus, the question of human rights was converted into a bioethical reference point of a universal nature. Since infanticide is considered to be a crime against human rights, it could be supposed at first sight that it is im-perative to be against it, independently of any cultural conditions. However, acting in this way would bring the risk of imposing imperialistic and centralist logic under the pretext of ethics and law.

We are faced with a situation in which both the general and the particular need be consid-ered. It is the classical debate between univer-salism and cultural relativism. Thus, on the one hand, the anthropologist Roberto Cardoso de Ol-iveira 19 (p. 183-4) in reflecting on this topic stat-ed that: “While the moral rules within the micro-sphere have a particular nature and can always be observed in the most intimate instances (like those regulating sex life, for example), the vital interests of humanity are to be found in the macrosphere, and the moral rules that incorporate these inter-ests gain a universal dimension (like those regu-lating human rights, for example)”.

On the other hand, dealing with the appli-cability of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to indigenous cultures, another anthro-pologist, Alcida Rita Ramos, took the view that “To condemn infanticide, as practiced in some indigenous societies, because it is contrary to the third article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man – ‘Every man has the right to life, liberty and personal security’ – would be to judge others by Western values” 20 (p. 7).

The discussion therefore goes beyond the theoretical and political limits of universality or ethnicity as places for defining fundamental human rights. However, the affirmation of the difference cannot in any way dispense with the need for dialogue.

Habermas 21 sought discursive ethics that could be justified around the world and indi-cated communication communities as a means for making this dialogue possible. He established that the initial condition for validating the dis-cussions would be the competence of the com-munication among the people involved in the dialogue. For this, “all the participants in a dis-cussion must have the same opportunity to un-dertake acts within communicative speech: ini-tiating, intervening, interrogating and respond-ing” 21 (p. 153).

Nonetheless, the form of a dialogue like this one about infanticide, needs above all to be fair. In a proposal for intercultural dialogue between political agents belonging to Western society and political agents from indigenous societies, there will always be present a power relationship, de-rived from the reality of dominance of one cul-ture over the other, established since the outset of the process of European colonization. This was well recalled in the words of the vice-president of FUNAI mentioned earlier, regarding the fragility of indigenous culture in the face of attempted persuasion. It thus becomes a challenge to estab-lish a dialogue that is real and not a mere disguise for yet another authoritarian imposition of West-ern morality.

A process of dialogue needs to be developed in which the knowledge ecology can be experi-enced 22. Because this approach considers in-completeness to be inherent to all knowledge, it reduces the risks of pseudo-dialogue. Olivé 23 (p. 129) took a position along the same lines: “Dif-ferent groups of human beings may arrive at dif-ferent bodies of beliefs about the world that allow them to act appropriately within their environ-ment, and there is no absolute set of criteria or principles that makes it possible to settle the ques-tion of which of these different beliefs is correct, the only correct one”.

Intervention Bioethics actions have the pur-pose of enabling authentic dialogue, thus plac-ing such beliefs in a morally and ideologically defined position: “This theoretical proposal offers a concrete alliance with the more fragile side of so-ciety, including a new look at different dilemmas, among which: autonomy versus justice/equity, individual benefits versus collective benefits, in-dividualism versus solidarity; superficial changes versus concrete and permanent transformations; neutrality towards conflicts versus politicization of conflicts” 18 (p. 401).

Choosing to establish an alliance with the more fragile elements of society is an essential precondition for establishing the basis for devel-oping the process of dialogue. A priori, the inten-tion not to impose a unilateral decision is put for-ward. Nevertheless, this assumption will not in itself ensure the fair conditions for the dialogue. Because bioethics practitioners are themselves members of a part of Western society, they are not neutral. They carry the mark of the traumatic inheritance left behind by the conquest and by the heavy history of dominance.

Therefore, some criteria of fairness in the dia-logue must be observed to function as precau-tionary principles, thus seeking to avoid the risk that authoritarian practices might again come into use. First of all, respect for otherness needs



to be ensured and the sole purpose of the whole dialogue has to be the community’s welfare. In this respect, any agency that might have particu-lar interests, whether of a political, religious or economic nature, will already be compromising its impartiality in the process. Secondly, it is es-sential to have the deepest possible knowledege regarding the culture of the people with whom the dialogue will be established. Prior manifes-tation of interest in establishing this dialogue expressed by members of the community is still needed. Without at least respect for these criteria, dialogue will be an imposition and the ethical debate will give way to the violence of the law of the strongest.

In recent Brazilian history there is an ex-ample of an indigenous group who abandoned the practice of infanticide, following what can be considered to be the first experiment of such a di-alogue. This was the case of the Tapirapé people, located in the State of Mato Grosso, whose aban-doning of the practice seems to have occurred without trauma. In 1952, a team of nuns from the congregation of the Little Sisters of Jesus went to live among the Tapirapé people. At that time, the population consisted of 47 individuals. The nuns were followers of Charles de Foucauld, and they proposed to live together among the community without any intention to carry out catechism ac-tivities. They therefore adopted the perspective of a “silent mission”. Living continuously with the people of the community, they identified the existence of rigorous family planning, guided by birth control through infanticide. The nuns start-ed to be concerned about the possibility that the group might become extinct and, little by little, conditions were created for discussing this risk with the community.

However, the discussion only became pos-sible after the Tapirapé people identified the missionaries as their allies in the struggle against oppression caused by segments of the society to which the nuns themselves belonged. Thus, in-fanticide came to be discussed within an agenda that also included other topics of importance to the people: demarcation of their lands, expulsion of invaders from their territory, attention to indi-viduals’ health, etc. There was logic to this, since an increase in population depended on ensuring conditions of survival for everyone. At the time, the community faced serious problems result-ing from persecution and invasion of their lands. After some time, the Tapirapé people managed to demarcate their traditional territory, the practice of infanticide was abandoned and the popula-tion started to grow (although not necessarily in that order). Today, there are around 500 people and the Little Sisters remain with them. In the

anthropological literature, this case has become recognized as an experience of successful inter-vention.

The apparent success of this experience leads to the belief that similar processes might possi-bly occur among other peoples. There are even reports of isolated experiences in which certain individuals in indigenous communities decided not to sacrifice their children. Among the Zuru-ahá people, some individual attempts that did not work out have been reported, but there is in-formation from other peoples that, although they may represent exceptions, can point towards greater success.

In July 2005, technical experts from the Bra-zilian Agricultural and Livestock Research Com-pany – EMBRAPA (Empresa Brasileira de Pes-quisas Agropecuárias) and FUNASA drew up a technical communication on albinism among indigenous communities. They highlighted the case of an albino girl of the Kuikúru people, in the Xingu Indigenous Reserve. When they met her, she was at the start of puberty and had es-caped sacrifice because she was the couple’s first daughter. When she was born, her parents thought that she might change color with the passage of time. Their other three children born subsequently with the same anomaly were sac-rificed. The survivor’s skin presented recurrent wounds. She suffered discrimination and would certainly have difficulty in achieving marriage 24. It can be noted that, even after discovering later on that their first child would not change color, her parents did not sacrifice her. The authors of the technical report stated that the girl was in reclusion when they arrived there. Reclusion is a form of social and cultural inclusion: through this process, the teenagers prepared for adult life. Thus, even though she was suffering some kind of prejudice, the community was showing that it was overcoming other types of prejudice: in this specific case, by including an albino girl into society.

Conclusion

Going beyond the positive assessments of the an-thropological literature, we can in fact consider that, from a strictly bioethical point of view, the intervention of the Little Sisters was an experi-ence of relatively successful bioethical dialogue, at least for the following reasons:

The Little Sisters took a stance of non-author-itarian dialogue with the indigenous community that started from living in association with and acquiring profound knowledge of the other peo-ple’s culture and ethics;



The discussion on infanticide was undertaken within the broader context of defining strategies aimed at enabling the survival of a community threatened with extinction.

Nevertheless, from the point of view of inter-ventionist bioethics, it would not at any time be correct to consider abandonment of the practice of infanticide per se as a success. In this case, success would be measured in terms of achiev-ing a dialogue between morals foreign to each other, under conditions of profound respect for the other people’s culture and, in particular, un-der conditions of protecting the vulnerable in-digenous culture from the pressure of the domi-nant culture.

In theory, therefore, a dialogue established with great care, between the ethics of Western

culture that is today mostly contrary to infan-ticide, and the ethics of the Zuruahá people, could result in a better understanding among the westerners, of the particular reasons for the practice of infanticide and the nature of its eth-ics within these people’s reference ethical sys-tem.

From a perspective of intervention and dia-logue, it can in no way be considered bioethically acceptable to attempt to impose a standpoint on the Zuruahá people regarding infanticide, such as the Christian religious view that motivated the consequent removal from the community of individuals socially marked out to die. It is likewise unacceptable any attempt to criminal-ize the practice of infanticide within that cultural context.

Resumo

O artigo analisa a prática do infanticídio em comuni-dades indígenas brasileiras. Tomando como referência um caso específico envolvendo duas crianças do povo Zuruahá, focaliza o tema sob uma abordagem mais abrangente e discute como o infanticídio é interpreta-do em outros povos indígenas. Foram considerados, na discussão, os debates ocorridos durante a Audiência Pública realizada no Congresso Nacional Brasileiro, em dezembro de 2005, que analisou o tema, além de revisão bibliográfica. Diante dos posicionamentos as-sumidos naquela audiência, procurou-se identificar os problemas éticos e os dilemas morais, contextuali-zando-os e analisando-os à luz do respeito ao plura-lismo cultural. A fim de contribuir com o debate, os autores analisam as possibilidades de intervenção nas práticas tradicionais de infanticídio, recusando qual-quer opção que não esteja ancorada numa atitude de profundo respeito pela cultura de outros povos ou que não apresente condição de dialogar com indivíduos ou grupos com diferentes moralidades.

Contributors

S. L. Feitosa and V. Garrafa worked on all phases of the manuscript. G. Cornelli, C. Tardivo and S. J. Carvalho worked on the literature review and the revision of the text.



References

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Submitted on 04/May/2009Approved on 11/May/2009



Is an interethnic ethic possible? Reflections on indigenous infanticide

The discussion by Feitosa et al. in the article Bio-ethics, Culture and Infanticide in Brazilian Indig-enous Communities: The Zuruahá Case, exempli-fies the contra-hegemonic bioethical models that have emerged in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America. Epistemologically based on interdisci-plinary sharing of concepts and methods from distinct areas of knowledge, and philosophically structured not on principles, but on the norma-tive potentialities of language, the article offers an interesting channel for resolution of ethical conflicts related to life and generated in contexts of great moral pluralism and cultural diversity.

The authors clearly express their perception that the possibility exists for constructing an In-terethnic Ethic at some equidistant point between a dogmatic moral universalism, based on the ethnocentric interpretations of Human Rights, and an inoperable moral relativism conceiving cultures as watertight realities with no possibili-ties for interaction. In their article, historical and sociological knowledge on the colonization of in-digenous peoples and the current conditions of exclusion and discrimination is linked to anthro-pological knowledge on cosmology, concepts of life and death, symbolic construction of bodies, and the specific practice of infanticide in both Zuruahá culture and Western culture. Based on this well-structured link, the authors demon-strate the superficiality and impropriety of the arguments that define infanticide by the Zuruahá as a barbarian act against life and that propose both its criminalization and state intervention to solve the problem. Coherently, the authors thus refuse readymade solutions based on unilater-ally established values or rights and focus their efforts on proposing an intercultural, coercion-free dialogue.

However, I call attention to a fact not high-lighted by the authors, namely that the very un-derstanding of infanticide among indigenous peoples as a “problem” derives from a Western worldview, or at least a worldview generated on the borders in historically determined intercul-

tural encounters. This means that one cannot morally justify the cultural and biological risks involved in making contact with isolated indig-enous peoples with the purpose of establishing intercultural dialogues (no matter how free or truthful) concerning the practice of infanticide.

The authors cite some theoretical contribu-tions to the construction of interethnic dialogical spaces and some criteria for establishing “fair-ness in the dialogue”, including respect for other-ness, the community’s good as the exclusive end, and profound knowledge of the local culture. The theoretical contributions cited by the authors feature the notion of communication community developed originally by Habermas 1 in his clas-sic work Theory of Communicative Action, due to the latter author’s importance for contemporary ethical theory.

I intend to concentrate my main contribu-tions to the discussion on the possibilities for applying this theory as the basis for Intereth-nic Ethics. Habermas 2 announces his Ethics of Discussion as a reform of Kantian moral theory. Through the Ethics of Discussion, the universal standards of conduct are no longer proposed through isolated reflection by a single con-science that projects itself on otherness, as es-tablished by Kant’s categorical imperative, but are proposed through rational moral argumen-tation and mutual recognition of the validity of arguments among participants in a discussion. Ethical decisions should thus be the result of a joint construction of values and meanings, con-ducted in public spaces where all have the same right to speak. Habermas thus believes in hav-ing overcome the risk of ethnocentrism that the relativists see in every attempt to universalize norms. In addition, his concept of universality loses Kant’s abstract character and relates direct-ly to each and every one of those concerned in the conflict or action to be regulated.

When a public space entails openness to the lifeworlds of the agents of speech and conditions for mutual understanding established by sharing criteria for validation of arguments, such a space becomes a communication community. Feitosa et al. quite correctly view the power relations historically defined between Western political agents and indigenous leaders as difficulties for establishing interethnic communication com-munities. I would raise two further obstacles: the differences between the lifeworlds of indigenous leaders and common indigenous individuals and the peculiarities of various genres of indigenous discourse.

Lifeworld for Habermas is the backdrop for discourse. It consists of an interface between culture, society, and personality, based on which

Debate on the paper by Feitosa et al.Debate on the paper by Feitosa et al.

Cláudio Lorenzo

Faculdade de Medicina da Bahia, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, [email protected]



values are formed. There is thus a significant dif-ference between the lifeworlds of indigenous leaders, especially those who are more profes-sionalized, and the lifeworlds of common indig-enous subjects, more bound to the traditional forms of daily life in their cultures. This means that in discussions involving traditional values, communication communities need to be created based on discussion forums on the indigenous lands themselves with broader participation by the people. The institutional spaces for discus-sion formalized by the state, where the leaders have a seat, become less important.

In addition, the Habermasian model of dis-cursive Ethics was constructed through an intri-cate operation that links elements from the phi-losophy of language, in both its analytical and hermeneutic watersheds, to elements from prag-matic studies on daily forms of speech 3. Despite seeking some components that are considered universal in communicative acts, such as the rec-ognition (or lack thereof) of the content of truth in enunciates or the authenticity of the enuncia-tor, the studies were performed with Western speech genres as their object. It is thus impossible to guarantee that indigenous discourse can meet the requirements of argumentative validity 4. Indeed, the very concept of rationality as pre-sented by Habermas is also a Western construct.

Therefore, in order to construct procedural mechanisms for intercultural dialogue, which we refer to here as Interethnic Ethics, it is essential to have ethnolinguistic knowledge of the speech structure of the people in question. This contrib-utes to both the establishment of new joint crite-ria for validation of the speech acts and the evalu-ation of limits produced by the intermediation of translators during the dialogical practice between the various Western and indigenous agents in the discussion. The importance of these intercultural dialogical mechanisms extends far beyond the specific issue of infanticide and cuts across virtu-ally all relations between the Brazilian national state and indigenous peoples in Brazil.

In the field of health, for example, particu-larly relevant to Bioethics, in Brazil there is the National Healthcare Policy for Indigenous Peoples 5, the aim of which is to guarantee for the 225 peoples, with their 180 distinct languages 6, com-prehensive access to health in accordance with the principles and guidelines of the Unified Na-tional Health System. The planning and execu-tion of necessary health practices to meet these requirements obviously generate a wide range of ethical dilemmas stemming from the encounter between Western technoscientific practices and traditional knowledge concerning care for preg-nancy and childbirth, mental illness, and child

nutrition, to cite just a few. Approaching tradi-tional indigenous medicine from the same ratio-nale that proposes to criminalize the practice of infanticide will lead to the extermination of the wealth of traditional knowledge and practices in these cultures and the definitive industrial medi-calization of indigenous health.

We should not forget that in past centuries, Western civilization used this same rationale to claim its right to conquer, catechize, and colonize the “barbarian peoples”.

1. Habermas J. The theory of communicative action. London: Beacon Press; 1986.

2. Habermas J. De l’éthique de la discussion. Paris: Flammarion; 1999.

3. Habermas J. Verdade e justificação: ensaios filosó-ficos. São Paulo: Edições Loyola; 2004.

4. Ferreira LO. A dimensão ética do diálogo antropo-lógico: aprendendo a conversar com o nativo. In: VII Reunião de Antropologia do Mercosul – Desa-fios Antropológicos [CD-ROM]. Porto Alegre: Pro-grama de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; 2007.

5. Fundação Nacional de Saúde. Política Nacional de Atenção à Saúde dos Povos Indígenas. Brasília: Mi-nistério da Saúde; 2002.

6. Fundação Nacional do Índio. Povos indígenas: quem somos. http://www.funai.gov.br/index.html (accessed on 02/Jun/2009).

Luiza Garnelo

Instituto de Pesquisas Leônidas & Maria Deane, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Manaus, Brasil.Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Manaus, [email protected]

Bioethics and indigenous worlds: where do we situate ourselves?

The theme discussed by Feitosa et al. is not only highly relevant, but has received little attention in the scientific literature.

Undoubtedly, one reason is the concern by anthropologists to avoid controversial aspects of the indigenous way of life that can be used to stigmatize indigenous peoples and threaten their right to ethnic difference.

In parallel with this academic silence are pe-riodic movements by conservative religious and political groups attempting to regulate native behaviors which they consider offensive to non-indigenous world values. Those who issue such value judgments and positions of force tend to be exuberant in their manifestations of repulsion and condemnation, although rarely possessing qualified information on the cultural contexts



that have produced the behaviors they purport to repress.

This trend reappears in lobby groups in the Brazilian National Congress, seeking to pass laws to criminalize traditional indigenous cultures. Images of infanticide were recently shown on the Internet that purportedly provided a moral jus-tification for this movement, but even the proof that such images were fabricated was insufficient to deter the movement. In the accompanying e-text, the line of argument alternates between in-digenous people’s supposed inability to discern between what is morally right and wrong and the defense of the supremacy of universal human rights over particular rights linked to cultural difference. According to both alternatives, indig-enous people should be protected from them-selves through the adoption of Western values and customs. The latter provide the yardstick for measuring the paths to civilization, prescribed for or imposed on non-hegemonic cultures by the cross, by the law, or by education.

The authors have done a good job of prob-lematizing the issue, whether through the per-tinence of the current political moment or be-cause they raise relevant questions like the ten-sion between generic and universal ethics and the particular ethics of culturally differentiated societies. This problem has permeated the rela-tions between conquerors and the conquered throughout history.

In this sense, the cases they discuss are ex-emplary. Their analysis of the forced removal of children – potential victims of infanticide – from the Zuruahá village, of the transitional status of Yanomámi newborns, and other situations in the study, lead us to reflect on the relativism of the cultural construction of the human condi-tion, whether in those societies or in our own. Beyond the so-called “traumas of contact”, the directions of life and death through suicide, abortion, or infanticide in the Zuruahá world reveal our own contradictions, grasped by the text’s keen insight. If there is apparent consensus among the Zuruahá concerning who merits the human condition and is a member of society, the same appears not to hold among ourselves. While Western society unanimously condemns infanticide, many Westerners support abortion. As the authors demonstrate, these situations are structurally similar but are treated unequally in our world.

Meanwhile, although we are morally outraged at the threat of biological death, no similar trend is observed towards the social death of persons marked by hunger and physical and psychologi-cal violence, as occurs for example with “street children”. We may thus be against abortion and

infanticide, but socially indifferent to the dire liv-ing conditions faced by young people that have managed to survive an adverse birth. It is as if we valued the concession of life, while relegat-ing daily care for it to a secondary plane. Mean-while, social death appears to bother indigenous peoples more than the biological death of beings that have still not been socialized. We thus have a symmetrical opposition between worldviews expressed in these value judgments.

This raises another relevant issue for the discussion. The challenge of analyzing and de-scribing the Other (the different and the exotic) repeatedly tempts us to compare the Other with our own self-image. This apparently obvious ap-proach entails a high risk of hasty generalization, given the tendency to ignore the infinite variety of indigenous worlds, as well as the internal dif-ferences in our own society. The theoretical and practical risks are magnified by the scarcity of em-pirical data that would allow analyzing the theme with the necessary rigor, whether to construct a consistent panel on the ethical foundations of indigenous societies or to map the variations in ethical norms and values circulating among our own non-indigenous society.

Given the lack of this background, the temp-tation to make comparisons tends to make one slip into a uniform treatment of indigenous worlds, transmuting them into caricatures inca-pable of expressing their intrinsic wealth. Like-wise, to ignore the class, gender, and age-group contradictions expressed in our ethical values also proves to be an imprudent option. Many scholars have failed in their attempt to compare such distinct realities, using our own ethos as a mirror to illuminate other worlds. Lévi-Strauss 1 was one of the few successful cases in this un-dertaking.

Although generalization is an inherent ambi-tion in scientific thinking and positivism, despite its limits it has taught us the value of induction supported by data based on particular realities. Speculative deduction may be acceptable when the qualitative and quantitative accumulation of information proves capable of sustaining uni-versalizing flights. But we lack such accumulated information on the issue of infanticide among indigenous peoples. And we lack the substance for qualified and culturally sensitive decisions on legal and political procedures to deal with it.

In this sense, the authors take a cautious stance by recommending dialogue, listening to singularities, and avoiding hasty generalizations. Although this position is sensible, its argumenta-tive basis is weak, not because of its internal co-herency, but because of the philosophical foun-dations sustaining bioethics.



The universalizing pretention of philosophy is conditioned by its production, namely by the Western cogito 2. Few philosophers have taken interest in the thought systems of non-Western cultures, thereby limiting their ability to grasp the human condition as a synthesis of the singular and the universal.

Ethics also appear in a similar condition. When we speak of ethics, to which ethic are we referring? An ethic capable of encompassing the multidimensionality of human values or that instituted by hegemonic cultural production in given historical moments? In addition, as the authors have endeavored to demonstrate, the historical change of ethical principles is inher-ent to their very existence. In practical terms, this translates as the coexistence of old and current values in subjects’ daily lives, often involving a mutual contradiction of simultaneously prevail-ing ethical principles in social life. In this case, what would define the ethical model that should prevail?

The definition of a universal ethical impera-tive cannot be dissociated from the economic and technological power of those that impose their standards for judging reality as parameters that are applicable to all contexts. In the final analysis, the issue is not ethical, but one of power. As Bourdieu 3 would say, the issue is the power to make others see and to make others believe in what is defined as social reality. Note that we do not defend infanticide. We only attempt to prob-lematize the relativism of the ethical conventions behind the attempts to impose what are offered as universal values on groups living in unique conditions of human existence.

1. Lévi-Strauss C. O pensamento selvagem. São Pau-lo: Companhia Editora Nacional; 1962.

2. Sartre JP. O existencialismo é um humanismo. In: Sartre. São Paulo: Editora Abril Cultural; 1978. p. 2-32. (Coleção Os Pensadores, 45).

3. Bourdieu P. O poder simbólico. Rio de Janeiro: Edi-tora Bertrand Russel; 1989.

Reinaldo Ayer-de-Oliveira &Gabriel Oselka

Faculdade de Medicina, Univer-sidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, [email protected]

Feitosa et al. objectively and sensitively present and discuss an emblematic theme for bioeth-ics: the conflicts between a people’s culture and practice. Issues related to the gestation and birth of human beings are certainly among the major dilemmas in the passage from the culture of what is considered a primitive people to the cultures of so-called “civilized man”. The authors coher-ently express the importance and controversies of the concept of autonomy. The authors have painstakingly studied the occurrence of infanti-cide and suicide among the Zuruahá.

We believe it is relevant to report a similar case, submitted to the São Paulo State Medical Board (CREMESP) with a request for its expert opinion and discussed in a recent publication by the Board 1.

A physician working in the far North of Bra-zil was involved in the following situation: a lo-cal program for the protection of Indian tribes referred a pregnant woman expecting twins to the private clinic where he works (in charge of emergency treatment for Indians and company employees), requesting that he hide one of the newborns from the mother, and expressing the plan that this second twin be raised far from the biological family.

The reason for the request was that accord-ing to the local indigenous culture, infanticide – by asphyxia, drowning, or direct head trauma – is “the solution” for exterminating what is con-sidered the “evil” twin, with the right to survival reserved for the “good” sibling. Infants are also eliminated in other circumstances, such as con-genital malformations, Down syndrome, or when the child has not been fathered by the woman’s husband.

The plan to hide the child posed a major ethi-cal dilemma for the physician, reinforced by a previous episode. Six years previously, he had ad-mitted premature twins, with the smaller of the two suffering life-threatening complications. A week after giving birth, when the mother learned that this twin was out of danger, she attempted to kill it in the nursery. The nursing staff found the infant in “arrest”, with profuse bleeding from the anus, eyes, and mouth, and with bruises covering its body.

Alarmed, the physician requested that the woman be removed from the clinic, omitting the fact that the child had survived after intensive care. He agreed with the white people in charge of the Indian reservation that “the best thing” would be to hire an employee to raise the infant far from the tribe, unbeknownst to the family.



What nobody expected was that this informa-tion “leaked”, and as soon as the mother learned that this second twin had survived, she killed the one she had kept.

According to the physician, “The surviving child is five years old and lives with the maternal grandmother. He has no physical sequelae, but is rejected by everyone. Whatever is given to him is taken away by the others, and he feeds on scraps”.

In short, the physician asks: what should be done now, if this other pregnant woman may enter labor at any moment? Hide the twin birth, showing the mother only one of the newborns, as the Indian affairs program suggests? What are the criteria for choosing? Is it fair to risk the life of the infant that lives with the mother (in case she learns that the other has survived)? Or would it be best to show her both infants, even knowing that one of them will be killed at the first oppor-tunity?

The initial argument is that according to Bra-zil’s Penal Code 2, “non-adapted forest-dwellers” – as they are referred to in this case – are consid-ered “not criminally liable”: according to Article 26, they are exempt from prosecution since they are “incapable of understanding the illicit nature of their acts”. However, “acculturated Indians” are criminally liable.

According to the official discourse, “accul-turated”, “integrated”, or “adapted” Indians are defined as those that can speak Portuguese and perform practices and jobs normally adopted by “the white man”, besides assimilating his habits. Houaiss (the standard reference dictionary for Brazilian Portuguese) defines “acculturation” as the cultural modification of an individual, group, or people that adapts to another culture or ex-tracts significant traits from it, or even a fusion of two or more cultures resulting from permanent contact between them.

If one draws a parallel with the “white man’s culture”, the Indian mother that killed her child would be violating Article 121, which safeguards the right to life (with a sentence of six to 20 years in prison). Theoretically, Article 121 would give the physician some “argument” to counter the culture of infanticide defended by the tribe.

According to the moral code of practically all religions (especially Judaism and Christianity), to kill is wrong.

According to Article 6 of the Brazilian Code of Medical Ethics (Basic Principles), “Physicians should show absolute respect for human life, al-ways acting in the patient’s benefit. They should never use their knowledge to cause physical or moral suffering, for the extermination of human beings, or to allow attempts on the patient’s dig-nity or integrity” 3.

The ethical dilemma discussed here relates to the possibility that the Indian woman, pregnant with twins, might commit what our “white” cul-ture defines as the crime of infanticide. According to the “indigenous culture”, the Indian woman views the elimination of one of the twins as the “solution” to exterminate “evil” infant, with the right to survival reserved for the “good” sibling.

A solution with an unpredictable outcome would be to inform the mother of the existence of twins and allow her to decide what to do after giving birth.

The Brazilian National Constitution of 1988 gave the Federal government the exclusive ju-risdiction to legislate on Indian affairs (22, XIV), establishes Federal court jurisdiction for trying and ruling on disputes concerning indigenous rights (109, XI), and acknowledges indigenous social organization, customs, languages, beliefs, and traditions (231, caput) 4.

However, we know of no court ruling on the infanticide practiced by some indigenous groups in cases of twin births or newborns with malfor-mations.

One could argue that in a plural society, all human groups are fully capable and autono-mous. Their decisions must be respected and even occasionally tried in court, as long as they are previously informed of all the consequences. To hide the birth of one of the children means treating the problem paternalistically, thus vio-lating the Brazilian legal order 5.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian Code of Medical Ethics, Article 6, sustains the physician’s conduct in hiding the twin birth, since it states explicitly that “Physicians should show absolute respect for human life, always acting in the patient’s benefit. They should never use their knowledge to cause physical or moral suffering, for the extermination of human beings, or to allow attempts on the pa-tient’s dignity or integrity”.

As for the child, such conduct is sustained precisely by the value of preserving life in its in-tegrity and dignity. However, in relation to the mother, the decision to protect the child, hiding its existence and isolating it to live outside the village, has repercussions that are difficult to as-sess.

Thus, the unavoidable question is: what about the mother’s right to decide?

If we prioritize the culture of that specific vil-lage (which has a complex organization of prac-tice and belief, relating ways of understanding and action that are peculiar to this culture/be-lief), the conflict can only be resolved by referring the Indian woman (with her twins in utero) back to her “natural habit”, in order for the pregnancy to play out according to her own tradition.



Importantly, modern non-indigenous society views autonomy as a good to be preserved. A fair and just society morally preserves and sustains each person’s right to live as an autonomous indi-vidual. We would add that autonomy is a concept related to freedom.

Thus, if we accept that the indigenous moth-er’s values emanate from her culture/belief, the question arises: is she free to decide on her chil-dren’s fate, i.e., that one twin should be elimi-nated?

Cultural traditions rooted in given cultures are not always easily accepted by others. An ex-ample is “clitoridectomy”, a tradition in some Af-rican tribes.

Based on values emanating from the culture/belief of these tribes, this tradition allowed (and in some societies still allows) the excision of the clitoris in young girls in early puberty, by means of mutilating practices and with a high risk of morbidity and mortality. This extirpation was (or is) performed by women that traditionally detain the necessary practical knowledge. De-spite respect for cultural traditions, the custom became the target of an international campaign of condemnation and disapproval when it came to the knowledge of people from elsewhere in the world.

In the case discussed here, if ones chooses physician’s autonomy as the priority (with the understanding that this helps define the full exercise of the human condition, without any tutelage), the conflict is resolved by hiding the unborn child and subsequently isolating it from the village.

Crucially, if the physician chose to perform the delivery and hide the infant, he would face ethical risks, doubts, and dilemmas. There would definitely be a need for sedation (analgesia) of the mother, since transvaginal or caesarian deliv-ery without her active participation could result in birthing complications.

There would also be doubt about recording information on the patient chart, and especial-ly about preserving secrecy, since information would be shared by all the persons participating in the act of hiding one of the twins.

Finally, the case highlights the possibility of the debate on autonomy as a fundamental idea, as follows: “In deliberation pertaining to action, we should not only examine the prudence of such action in order to know whether it is an appro-priate means for obtaining a desired end, but we should determine whether it is intrinsically fair and morally correct”.

1. Ayer-de-Oliveira R. Índia. In: Oselka GW, coorde-nador. Bioética clínica, reflexões e discussões so-bre casos selecionados. São Paulo: Conselho Re-gional de Medicina do Estado de São Paulo; 2008. p. 187-90.

2. Brasil. Decreto-Lei nº. 2.848, de 7 de dezembro de 1940. Dispõe sobre o Código Penal. http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Decreto-Lei/Del2848-compilado.htm (accessed on 15/Apr/2008).

3. Conselho Federal de Medicina. Resolução nº. 1.246, de 8 de janeiro de 1988. Dispõe sobre o Có-digo de Ética Médica. http://www.cremesp.org.br/library/modulos/legislação/versão_impressão.php?id=2940 (accessed on 08/Apr/2008).

4. O direito dos indígenas na Constituição. http://www.viomundo.com.br/opiniao/o-direito-dos-indigenas-na-constituicao/ (accessed on 28/Jul/2008).

5. Brasil. Lei nº. 10.406, de 20 de Janeiro de 2002. Código Civil. http://www.planalto.gov.br/Ccivil_03/LEIS/2002/L10406.htm (accessed on 23/May/2008).

Fermin Roland Schramm

Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sergio Arouca, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, [email protected]

The morality of infanticide at the crossroads between moral pluralism and human rights culture

The article Bioethics, Culture and Infanticide in Brazilian Indigenous Communities: The Zuru-ahá Case defends the idea that the morality of infanticide must be viewed in its specific cultural and social context, since in the case in question the newborn only begins to exist socially if the mother accepts it, and if it has not only a bio-logical life, but a cultural identity, without which the new being would be no more than “a socially dead being” (p. 856). Thus, based on this symbol-ic-imaginary inscription, the actual practice of infanticide would be morally justified, consider-ing that for the Zuruahá community, “If a child is born with physical defects or without a father to protect it, there is no reason to live because life would be excessively heavy for this child, for its family, and for its people”. In short, infanticide among the Zuruahá must be inscribed in the people’s Weltanschauung, which includes moral norms that are distinct and different from others around it. But, accepting the arguments that lend legitimacy to Zuruahá infanticide logically ques-tions the “universal nature” of human rights, ac-cording to which “infanticide is considered to be a crime against human rights,” (p. 862), and one can assume “at first sight that it is imperative to be against it” (p. 862), but thereby running the



risk “of imposing imperialistic and centralist logic under the pretext of ethics and law” (p. 862).

Obviously, the practice of infanticide is mor-ally controversial if one compares: 1) the set of values from the tradition that abolished it – represented here by the National Campaign for Life and against Infanticide and the case of the two Zuruahá infants removed from the village to avoid their deaths and 2) the view of what we could call contemporary morality, which is es-sentially secular, pluralist, and without canonic morals accepted by all, represented here by the defenders of Zuruahá identity and its practice of infanticide in the name of respect for differences. At first glance, the two views appear antitheti-cal, since the former does not allow infanticide in any case, while the latter allows it in specific cases. However, taking a closer look, the latter is more subtle, since it appears to allow at least two types of stances towards the complexity of a morally plural world. The first of these is respect for the prevailing value systems in the various moral communities existing in society or coun-try – as in the case of Brazil, characterized among other things by a “a very wide diversity of Indian peoples” and “many tribal groups that live with minimal contact outside the group, or even in complete isolation, [maintaining] very little or no relationship with Brazilian national society” (p. 853) and in which traditional practices like infanticide persist.

The main potential critique of this stance (respecting the differences and beliefs of the various communities constituting a country) is that it results in a moral relativism which would virtually rule out any possibility of shared values, such as those represented by human rights. As such, these rights are universally applicable and explicitly include the right to life and implicitly encompass the prohibition of infanticide. Moral relativism also implies the impossibility of even valuing behaviors and thus leads to amorality. However, moral pluralism is not necessarily a synonym for moral relativism, since the former implies respect for cultural differences and their existing value systems, which is quite different from amorality, which does not imply any respect whatsoever. Indeed, the latter type of stance im-plies establishing agreements in order to resolve a moral conflict such as that posed by infanticide, as long as the moral agent external to the com-munity has sufficient understanding of (and re-spect for) the values that allow infanticide, which can be viewed as a necessary condition for dia-logue to occur. This dialogical stance – defended by the article’s authors – belongs to the field of procedural ethics of discussion – developed by Apel and Habermas – and essentially consists

of real attempts to find (on the symbolic level) agreements between conflicting actors and val-ue systems, but presupposing that the conflict-ing parties admit a priori that they wish to reach an agreement (also known as a transcendental condition in any dialogical confrontation); the principle of informed consent by all the morally competent parties in cognitive conflict and; and, I would add, the principles of consistent charity in presupposing that all the parties “are playing clean”. As the authors write, in this case “it is es-sential to have the deepest possible knowledge re-garding the culture of the people with whom the dialogue will be established” and “prior manifes-tation of interest in establishing this dialogue,” otherwise “the ethical debate will give way to the violence of the law of the strongest” (p. 863). The Texan bioethicist Engelhardt Jr. summarized this condition of moral agent in the contemporary, secular, and pluralist world quite well, stating that “there are no decisive secular arguments to establish that one concrete view of the moral life is better morally than its rivals, and since all have not converted to a single moral viewpoint, secular moral authority is the authority of consent (...) the authority of the agreement of those who decide to collaborate (...) without fundamental recourse to force” 1 (p. 68).

In other words, the authors approach the ar-guments for and against infanticide as it relates not to societies which, as stated by Agamben, consider the “sacredness of life, which is invoked today as an absolutely fundamental human right in opposition to sovereign power [over life and death]” 2 (p. 91), but to communities in which, as the authors contend, “[infanticide] has always functioned as a means of birth control and even as a mechanism for adapting human life to ad-verse conditions of survival in certain hostile en-vironments, especially under jungle conditions” (p. 854). In the latter, there would be “good rea-sons” for infanticide, such as “the mother’s in-ability to devote the care and attention required for yet another child; the newborn’s capacity or incapacity to survive within the physical and socio-cultural environment into which he or she was born; and the preference for one sex over the other” (p. 854). These reasons, with perhaps the exception of the third, may in fact be sustained by the concept (central to evaluating the morality of human practices) of “quality of life”. According to Mori, this concept is the principal characteristic of the bioethical paradigm, in which “morality is a social institution, consisting of values and norms which, in various historical circumstances, guarantee (...) the necessary social coordination to ensure an adequate level of ‘quality of life’” 3 (p. 102).



In conclusion, in taking a stance between mo-rality and moral pluralism, the authors contend that “an alliance with the more fragile elements of society is an essential precondition for establishing the basis for developing the process of dialogue” (p. 862). Thereby, “respect for otherness needs to be ensured and the sole purpose of the whole dialogue has to be the community’s welfare” (p. 862-3). The argument is polemical, but pertinent.

1. Engelhardt, Jr. HT. The Foundations of Bioethics, 2nd Ed. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1996

2. Agamben G. Homo sacer. I. O poder soberano e a vida nua. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG; 2002.

3. Mori M. Il caso Eluana Englaro. La “Porta Pia” del vitalismo ippocratico, ovvero perché è moralmen-te giusto sospendere ogni intervento. Bologna: Edizioni Pendragon; 2008.

César Soares Jardim

Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social, Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, [email protected]

I suspect that, among other effects, the article will produce a feeling of anachronism among readers that have accompanied the recent developments in the ethnology of South American indigenous cultures, if they indeed read it. It seems to me that this failure, certainly attributable in part to the limitations of perspective that constitute one of the prices and risks of disciplinary specialization, does not fundamentally jeopardize the position defended by the authors towards the public de-bates concerning infanticide practice among in-digenous peoples. On the contrary, I even think that the type of intervention they defend gains relevance by offering a counterpoint to the an-tinomies entailing the contraposition of cultural-ist and universalist stances which had informed the discussion on the matter. However, given the limitations of space here for analyzing the article, I choose to offer only one a ethnological critique of the interpretations given by the authors, in re-lation to the ethnographic data presented in the article – a critique which I hope will be received as an incentive for future reevaluations of their arguments.

When I refer to the feeling of “anachronism” that a possible reader may when reflecting on the article presented here, I have in mind the pos-tulate, openly recognized by the authors them-selves, that an understanding of the cultural rea-sons for indigenous infanticide practices must be the point of departure for any debate focusing on indigenous infanticide. However, it seems to me that indigenous infanticide practices are not

only better understood than the authors allow us to see, but also – and this is the main point – that they are understood in a significantly different way than that backed by the perspective in which the article situates them. In a quite event way in the typological grouping of motivations for in-fanticide with which the authors begin their ar-gument (a quite generalist typological construc-tion lacking explicitly cited ethnographic sources in its argumentation), but in fact, the article repeatedly reduces indigenous infanticide to a kind of birth control method and adaptation to adverse conditions for survival. The more general and evident implication of the reiteration of this type of procedure is the establishment of a func-tionalist image of indigenous societies, based on which exotic or horrific customs (according to the criteria of our own cultural sensitivity), like infanticide, are interpreted in terms of their prac-tical usefulness for the given community.

One can perceive the spinoffs of this image in various parts of the article. Taken together, they appear to manifest a view of indigenous infanti-cide practices as functionally performing a kind of “social selection” of the “fittest” members, with the social group actively destinando to misfor-tune and death those infants and children whose existence proves problematic for the commu-nity. It would be unfair to claim that the authors take this procedure to the extreme, performing an absolute reduction of the reasons for practic-ing infanticide to a calculation of social utility, as it were. Still, even when they appear willing to grant space in their argumentation to the terms in which the native thought systems themselves understand infanticide practices, the authors end up conceiving such practices as a mixture of “utilitarian calculation” and “cultural reason” – as exemplified by their explanation for the in-fanticide of albinos, which they base on both the feelings of supernatural horror they raise and the allegation of “difficulties for survival”. The rep-etition of this reductionist procedure throughout the article appears to be due less to a theoreti-cal propensity by the authors towards utilitarian, functionalist, or adaptive explanations for infan-ticide practices, and more to an inability, in both the argument’s general economy and their spe-cific interpretations of given ethnographic data, to draw out the cultural reasons per se that shape these practices (reasons that are irreducible to a mere calculation of adaptability to the environ-ment or social utility).

In only one of the three types of infanticide they distinguish, the authors explicitly recog-nize a situation which in their words “takes into consideration limitations of a physical, mental, and/or religious nature” (my emphasis) (p. 854).



However, as mentioned, even in these cases, the infanticide is conceived as a mixture of utility or adaptability and “cultural reason” (“limitations of a religious nature”). I suggest that, taking the op-posite path from that of the authors, one should extend and emphasize precisely the motivation for infanticide practices and that were subsumed under the category of “limitations of a religious nature” – and that involve what appears to me to be better worded as ontological presuppositions on the nature of the world and ontogenetic prop-ositions on the nature of persons – to the other types of infanticide listed, as well as (insofar as possible) to the interpretations offered for the par-ticular situations presented by the ethnographic data that were cited. The authors themselves ap-pear to be aware of this point’s importance, judg-ing by a generic commentary on indigenous con-ceptions associated with birth and the processes of bodily construction (conceptions which are in fact among the most important associations to consider in understanding infanticide prac-tices). However, they definitely appear to have overemphasized the merely utilitarian aspect of infanticide, overlooking a deeper explanation of the association between indigenous infanticide practices, native theories of ontogenesis, and the negative values that many indigenous peoples ascribe to given types of birth – especially those involving twins, newborns with apparent physi-cal malformations, children of undetermined fathers, or those whose origin is attributed to adultery etc.

The reduction of infanticide practices to a functionalist or utilitarian logic could have been prevented by a more substantive incorporation of the recent theoretical development in South American ethnographic studies. Some types of infanticide discussed in the article, like that af-fecting twin births, for example, and which the authors explain by the difficulties that would raise for the mother in performing her daily chores, received the now-classic treatment of Lévi-Strauss. The dualism in perpetual disequi-librium that he identified as one of the distinctive traits of the Amerindians bipartite ideology, and which can be summarized, broadly speaking, as the impossibility of indigenous thinking to estab-lish a relationship of equality between two halves of a virtual duality that is actualized, is strictly associated with both the sinister and malefic value ascribed by many peoples to twin births, and the cases in which infanticide is determined by the preference for children of a given sex 1. On another note, various ethnographic studies on the construction of kinship have revealed the ambivalent nature of the identity of the bodies of infants and children, resulting from ascribing a

statute of otherness and animality to newborns 2. Consideration for this association between new-borns and animality, as well as the need it implies for a “hominization” of bodies through the con-struction of kinship, two motifs that are widely publicized and reported by contemporary ethno-graphic literature, opens another level of intelli-gibility for cases of infanticide in which the new-borns or children that present apparent physical malformations are targeted, making these cases refractory to explanations in terms of utility, function, or adaptation (“survival difficulties”, “limitations of a physical nature”, “usefulness to society”, a “weight” for the family or group, etc.). And this lack of a more in-depth consideration of the problems that contemporary South American ethnology recognizes as underlying or associated with infanticide practices jeopardizes not only the way the authors grasp indigenous infanticide, but also the overall image of society and the ratio-nality projected on indigenous peoples.

In short, we are left with the impression that infanticide was grasped by the authors mainly by means of an analogical extension of our associa-tions in relation to the idea of abortion – that is, as a kind of rejection of an untimely child, yet perpetrated not exclusively by the mother but by the community as a whole. For me, it appears symptomatic of this perspective’s ethnocentric bias that the authors seek to establish some re-lationship of continuity between indigenous in-fanticide practices and the modern practices of abortion and neonatal euthanasia, which make explicit all the ambiguities of our own concep-tion of the person. I hope that this critique will offer a stimulus in order for future meditations by the authors to more substantively incorporate the ethnological studies, allowing a more com-plex appreciation of indigenous infanticide to the extent that it is closer to the native point of view. (For a more recent bibliographic review of some of the themes discussed in this commentary and their connections to indigenous infanticide prac-tices, see Holanda 3. The latter author does not limit her analysis to examining the position of these practices in indigenous thought systems, but also includes as the object of her investiga-tion the legal and ontological controversies sur-rounding this matter.)

1. Lévi-Strauss C. História de Lince. São Paulo: Com-panhia das Letras; 1993.

2. Vilaça A. Making kin out of others in Amazonia. J R Anthropol Inst 2002; 8:347-65.

3. Holanda MAF. Quem são os humanos dos direitos? Sobre a criminalização do infanticídio indígena [Dissertação de Mestrado]. Brasília: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social, Universi-dade de Brasília; 2008.



Rita Laura Segato

Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, [email protected]

Leaving behind cultural relativism to endorse historical pluralism

Feitosa et al. discuss one of the most difficult themes in the fields of both ethics and rights, since the practice of so-called “indigenous infan-ticide” constitutes an issue at the limits of legal reasoning. The article is not only a theoretical reflection, but also takes place in a national sce-nario in Brazil where the issue is on the agenda of the National Congress and in the news me-dia, sparking intense controversy between those pushing to pass a bill specifically criminalizing the practice and those that consider the bill inap-propriate and even irrelevant.

Despite the enormous difficulties in build-ing the argument defending the difference be-tween peoples, even when involves the practice of infanticide, but without defending the practice itself, the authors do so efficiently and appropri-ately. They employ an argumentative strategy that can be described as “repatriation of the critique”, i.e., showing how in various historical situations the accusation aimed at indigenous peoples can be reversed to accuse the West of also having been stage to the practice, of having promoted or disguised it, even in the founding Biblical ac-count itself. This strategy of showing that we are all infanticidal becomes highly convincing, since it exposes our widespread tendency to view other peoples as cruel and defective, judging them with a rigor that we fail to apply to what we consider our own world. I especially appreciate the infor-mation and analysis in the final sections: Abor-tion, Infanticide and Neonatal Euthanasia and Possibilities for Intervention.

However, I now offer some observation that could lead to retouching some aspects of the essay.

One of the paper’s problems is that it gives the impression that infanticide is highly frequent, when in fact the practice is rare, increasingly less frequent in the societies in which it occurs, and practiced in fewer and fewer societies. It is prac-tically in extinction, and where it does occur, it is surrounded by intense controversy among the community’s members.

In dealing with the reasons that determine the practice of infanticide of various indigenous societies, the authors overlook a fundamental is-sue, namely the normative differences concern-ing who makes the decision in relation to the practice. This omission leads to the deepening of an important and quite widespread mistake, namely to believe that we are dealing with the

same type of act across various societies, when that is not the case. In fact, there are societies in which the reasons for a newborn’s life not be al-lowed to thrive, or even to prevent it from doing so, are of a cosmological order, and the decision to apply the rule and make sure that it happens lies with the community. And there are other societies in which the reasons are of a practical order, and in these the mother has the autonomy to make the evaluation and the decision. These are the two main tendencies, and based on them there is a wide variety of modalities.

Meanwhile, to refer to the practice, the phrase “Among Indians, the decision to kill a child...” is incorrect. If, as the authors note quite well, “the human body is the result of a cultural ‘construc-tion’” (p. 855), then no “child”, that is, no human life, can be killed before it is “constructed”. Since the definitions of human life, including the no-tion of “infant life”, are different, one cannot kill what has still not acquired existential status 1. The missionary discourse makes this mistake in its representation of the phenomenon, but the authors cannot allow themselves to commit the same error, and thus a better grasp into the an-thropological reflection on the depth of the dif-ference in the conception of life and death would have been indispensable for the argument.

Along this same line, the authors do not suf-ficiently elaborate on the contradiction between the positions of the two anthropologists they cite. Thus, these citations appear to be used to legiti-mize the text, i.e., through an obligation that is foreign to the argumentation, since the two au-thors differ; this difference is not analyzed, nor is a way found to mediate or interpret this dif-ference.

Likewise, I believe that they fail to reflect on the missionary critique of indigenous infanti-cide, insofar as the latter contends that “life has more value than culture”, immediately asserting that “life and the right to it are above culture” (p. 858). It is not culture that is at stake, but life itself, i.e., life as it determines all other forms of human life: physical life, material life, that of a people, a collectivity. It is life’s capacity to reproduce and last. There is no individual life outside collective life. In some cases, in transhumant societies and those that do not accumulate a surplus, a single additional individual life jeopardizes the life of the entire collectivity, or at least, that of his or her immediate family – that of the siblings already born and preserved, also small and without au-tonomy in relation to maternal care 2.

The authors invoke Convention 169 to em-phasize that it demands respect for customary rights by applying the national law to indigenous peoples, but they forget that despite giving access



to the principles of legal pluralism, it safeguards the principles laid out under international hu-man rights legislation and affirms respect for the internal law of peoples whenever human rights (as well as each national state’s legislation) are not violated. Thus, the argumentation relying on this safeguard is only relatively effective. It would be more effective to draw on Brazil’s commitment, assumed by ratifying this Convention, but also more recently by signing the Declaration of the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to not leg-islate for indigenous peoples without their own participation in the decision-making process on norms that will affect their lives.

Further considering respect for each people’s own law, I have argued at length that the discus-sion of infanticide does not involve this issue, but another area which I find central for dealing with such extreme dilemmas as infanticide: the state’s responsibility to protect each people’s internal de-cision-making capacity, and in keeping with this,

safeguarding each people’s autonomy to build its own history. Through its own history, woven from the internal debate, and not the preservation of customs from an essentialist perspective of cul-ture, each people will build its own particular dia-logue with the common sphere of human rights. This has been my stance, and I believe that it al-lows us to efficiently transcend the paralyzing di-chotomy between relativism and universalism 3.

1. Holanda MAF. Quem são os Humanos dos Direi-tos? Sobre a criminalização do infanticídio indíge-na [Dissertação de Mestrado]. Brasília: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social, Uni-versidade de Brasília; 2008.

2. Sánchez-Botero Esther. Entre el Juez Salomón y el Dios Sira. Decisiones interculturales e interés su-perior del niño. Bogotá: University of Amsterdam/UNICEF; 2006.

3. Segato RL. Que cada pueblo teja los hilos de su his-toria: el pluralismo jurídico en diálogo didáctico con legisladores. http://www.cimi.org.br/?system=news&action=read&id=3594&eid=259.

The authors replyOs autores respondem

Saulo Ferreira Feitosa, Volnei Garrafa, Gabriele Cornelli, Carla Tardivo, Samuel José de Carvalho

Moral pluralism: multiple views in a single search

Seeking greater clarity and possible understand-ing, the replies to the critiques formulated in the six commentaries on our article are addressed to each author individually, in the same order that we received them.

Lorenzo quite properly identified how chal-lenging the postulate is to construct an Intereth-nic Ethic that can help establish possible dia-logues between moral communities with appar-ently insurmountable cultural barriers. Begin-ning with this understanding, he highlights some difficulties (beyond those we demonstrated) in the possible construction of interethnic commu-nication communities that could be conceived on the basis of Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action, as we ourselves indicated. Although he agrees with such a possibility, he identifies two

obstacles to overcome: “the differences between the lifeworlds of indigenous leaders and common indigenous individuals and the peculiarities of genres of indigenous discourse”. We totally agree. When we referred to the Habermasian perspec-tive, we did so based on a deliberate bioethical discourse 1 – proper to the argumentative com-munity – like that of intervention bioethics. But we are fully aware of the difficulties, even be-cause, as Lorenzo warns, the perception of in-fanticide as a problem “derives from a Western worldview”.

Garnelo highlighted the uncertainty of con-ditions for philosophical production which, by imposing the “Western cogito”, undermine the basis for philosophically sustaining bioethics, thus undermining as well the very argumenta-tion we have proposed. We see no reason for this disagreement, since we assume such a challenge, even recognizing the epistemological confronta-tion, now approaching the model of hypercritical bioethical discourse 1 which puts us in a position of vigilance towards the possible misconstruc-tions and asymmetries that discursive practices can contain. We place ourselves in the condition of moral strangers, alongside those that do not share the moral premises or rules of evidence and inference 2 (p. 32), but who need to build agree-ments, given that moral strangeness does not necessarily mean the impossibility of establish-ing friendly relations.



The case report by Ayer-de-Oliveira & Oselka on the twin pregnancy made a major contribu-tion to our debate. The dilemma experienced by the attending physician in the case gives us an idea of the huge daily challenges faced by health professionals serving indigenous communities. This further reveals the need for greater and better professional qualifications, adding new knowledge to their technical training. The infor-mation on the “prior history” of an unsuccessful intervention in a similar case reveals all the care required for any intended intervention. Impor-tantly, the physician in question proved to orient his approach according to ethical references; if another professional had not proceeded likewise, he certainly would have caused unimaginable damage with his undue intervention.

To contextualize the case, various approaches were taken, even to the point of consulting Brazil-ian Penal Law. Here, we take the liberty of mak-ing a slight correction. It is not true that Indians are not liable for their acts. On the contrary, the indigenous prison population in Brazil is rela-tively high. Thus, indigenous women can also be charged with the crime of infanticide. Article 26 of Brazil’s Penal Code, quoted in the commentary, does not apply to Indians, but to individuals with “mental illness or incomplete or delayed mental development”, considered “entirely incapable”. The confusion probably stems from the case law that was consulted, since nothing in the cur-rent or previous penal code refers to immunity from criminal liability for indigenous persons, and many judges, moved by their high levels of prejudice and racism, and unable to perceive the Other and recognize him or her in his or her dif-ference, have equated indigenous persons with the “incapable” (sic). Thus, indigenous persons are purportedly unable to “understand the illicit nature of their acts”, a position that proves false given the enormous number of criminal charges brought against many indigenous peoples, even those in more recent contact with Brazilian na-tional society, as in the case of the Cinta-Larga in the State of Rondônia and numerous other peoples victimized by the strategy of criminaliza-tion perpetrated by their executioners. For fur-ther clarifications on this point, we suggest the elucidative work by Lacerda 3.

We emphasize the relevance of the case re-port, especially since it reveals that the conflicts raised by indigenous infanticide practices are not limited to the villages, since the Indians establish various forms of relations with the outside world and use various public services, both in health and other areas. Finally, we highlight the appro-priate discussion and caution adopted by Ayer-de-Oliveira & Oselka in their analysis, pursuing

the broadest possible scope. Such procedures contribute to the search for more adequate solu-tions to the various moral conflicts.

Schramm, in disagreeing with the theoreti-cal perspective we postulated, took the care to explain the differences between moral relativism and moral pluralism, making clear our option for the latter, justified by its defense of “respect for cultural differences and their existing value systems”. Corroborating the dialogical stance he defends, he referred to the “authority of con-sent” defined by Engelhardt 2 as the “secular moral authority”, added the bioethical focus of quality of life, and concluded on the argument’s pertinence, despite the controversy it raises. As Schramm himself warned 4, when we face the dual challenge of respecting the specificity of the particular conflict and at the same time consider “the universalist tradition of moral discourse”, we should remain constantly alert in order not to promote “cynical discrimination against vul-nerable individuals and populations”. This is the complexity that makes the argument controver-sial. Although in the case of indigenous peoples the concept of vulnerability is controversial, we use it here considering the historical process of territorial invasion and massacres to which they have been systematically submitted by the domi-nant society.

The critique by Jardim, with the peculiar acu-ity of an anthropologist, highlights the article’s limitations in its reflections on the ethnograph-ic data presented, making suggestions that we will certainly incorporate in future work. While clearly agreeing from the onset on with the limits identified in the area of ethnography, and recog-nizing our inability in ethnographic interpreta-tions (even because none of the article’s authors has training in the field), we will make some brief remarks concerning his critique.

We begin with a mea culpa for not having clarified two reasons which, in our understand-ing, give cause to the motivation of infanticide among indigenous peoples – namely cosmologi-cal and practical – as correctly observed by Segato in her commentary. We focused more on practi-cal reasons, while we are aware that reasons of a practical nature persist within the cosmological reasons, despite the cosmological explanation given by the respective indigenous peoples. Still, there was no justification for our reductionism in translating the ontological reasons as being of a “religious nature”; our intention was to simplify, but we ended up limiting the reflection. We also understand now that the paper was jeopardized by not referring to Lévi-Strauss, whose quote is familiar to us. We thank Jardim for having done so. Concerning the indication of Holanda as an



updated bibliography, we agree and consider it a relevant study, with a beautiful ethnographic approach and enviable philosophic detail that require a close reading. We know the work, the author, and her thesis supervisor, Professor Rita Segato, an outstanding reference on the subject in debates held by the Brazilian Congress as well as the author of a widely acknowledged and rel-evant article on the theme. We maintain a fre-quent dialogue with Segato and Holanda and share common understandings. Unfortunately our article was prepared before their work cited in the critique, which prevented us from taking advantage of their valuable contributions.

As to the suggestion of an intent “establish some relationship of continuity between indig-enous infanticide practices and the modern prac-tices of abortion and neonatal euthanasia,” we wish to clarify that it is not a matter of “conti-nuity”, but of analogy, since we understand such practices as persistent moral dilemmas and com-mon to a wide variety of cultures, without over-looking “the ambiguities of our own conception of the person” or the ambiguities of our moral strangers. There, we do not see the “ethnocentric bias” alluded to by Jardim. Since this was not an ethnographic study, we cannot agree that it could trigger a “feeling of anachronism” among ethno-logical scholars of indigenous cultures. They will certainly be able to distinguish between this ar-ticle and a study from their own field.

Segato, from a complementary perspective, makes important suggestions for the text in dem-onstrating a concern over avoiding misunder-standings related to what was not said or what should have been explained better. We share her view that the practice of infanticide is limited to few indigenous peoples, especially those with less time in contact with Brazilian national soci-ety, as well as the low and decreasing frequency of infanticide cases. However, we did not intend to give a different impression. We also accept the criticism that prioritizing one type of infanticide – that due to practical reasons – leads to general-ization. We already referred to this in relation to the comments by Jardim.

Our use of the expression “to kill a child” re-veals the difficulty in identifying an appropriate form of language, but we acknowledge the con-tradiction and the incorrectness when we admit that “the human body is a cultural construction”. Obviously, since this construction process is not concluded, this body will not have acquired “ex-istential status”, and there is no reason to speak of death or killing. On the other hand, the article also contemplates the idea of a dual birth – biological and cultural – which can lead to a certain ambi-guity: a biological death is possible, since the first

birth has occurred. The observation serves as a warning for us to avoid this dualism.

As for the divergence between the two an-thropologists, we really had no intention to go into depth on their positions, since our stance al-ready indicated the path to follow. The same oc-curred in relation to the missionary critique. But this does not mean that our choice was correct.

The fact that we invoked Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) re-flects a conscious and politically justified choice. First, because of the Convention’s political weight and legal value (having become law in Brazil since 2004). Second, because it has been used improp-erly by those who defend the criminalization of infanticide to justify their positions. Concern-ing the criticism that we failed to cite the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the declaration was only approved by the 107th Plenary Session on September 13, 2007, when we had already concluded the paper.

1. Siqueira JE. Comentário ao texto de Guillermo Hoyos Vásquez. In: Garrafa V, Kottow M, Saada A, organizadores. Bases conceituais da bioética: en-foque latino-americano. São Paulo: Gaia/Fundo das Nações Unidas para a Infância; 2006. p. 181-8.

2. Engelhardt Jr. HT. Fundamentos da bioética. 2a Ed. São Paulo: Loyola; 2004.

3. Lacerda RF. Diferença não é incapacidade: o mito da tutela indígena. São Paulo: Baraúna; 2009.

4. Schramm FR. Bioética sem universalidade? Justi-ficação de uma bioética latino-americana e cari-benha de proteção. In: Garrafa V, Kottow M, Saada A, organizadores. Bases conceituais da bioética: enfoque latino-americano. São Paulo: Gaia/Fundo das Nações Unidas para a Infância; 2006. p. 143-57.

Bioethics, culture and infanticide in Brazilian indigenous communities: the Zuruahá case

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