My english SiL lives in Spain where she met a nice Argentinian. They’re planning on taking a visit back to his home land and taking a coach trip to Brazil, roughly a six day round trip, plus any days spent in Brazil.
My SiL has been warned that cannibals in the jungles are a real and present danger by her SO.
As he’s from Argentina this reeks to me of rumor / urban legend. Somthing that Argentinians say about Brazil. But the Boyfriend says he’s personally seen “Beware the Cannibals” road signs in the country. I’ve asked her to snag me one if possible coz that’d look very cool mounted on the wall outside my house. That’ll keep those dam kids from playing near the car.
Oh, the actual question is: Is it true? I wasn’t aware there was any proper evidence for cannibalism in Brazil even in the past, let alone today.
There is, or was, a Brazilian Indian tribe called the Wari who purportedly indulged in the ritual consumption of their dead relatives. A Vanderbilt professor of anthropology has written a book about it.
Maybe that’s the same reason the Brazilian jungle inhabitants put up the road signs? “That’ll keep those damn tourists from pestering us on their stupid tours!”
This, as it stands, is complete bullshit. Most indigeneous groups in Amazonia these days are in direct or indirect contact with outsiders. There may be a few small family groups that still avoid outside contact (among the Waorani, for example) but the idea that the jungles are frequented by large numbers of lawless tribespeople out of government control is ridiculous. If outsiders were being regularly murdered, let alone eaten, there certainly would be a lot of attention paid to it by the government.
If such signs exist, they are akin to those saying “Jackalope Crossing” in Wyoming.
Certainly some groups in the early days of colonization like the Tupinamba were accused of cannibalism. This article discusses some of these early accounts and concludes that the question of whether or not the Tupinamba were cannibals remains open. I am not sure what the status of the evidence is on Amazonian groups. (The Tupinamba were on the east coast, not Amazonian.)
I wouldn’t say that Cecil exactly “pooh-poohed the whole idea” of cannibalism. At the end of the column he states:
Arens, I think, greatly overstated the case against cannibalism. Certainly it occurred in some areas such as the Pacific Islands and elsewhere. However, Arens was probably right in that the frequency may have been exaggerated.
The link above has this to say about Arens and the Tupinamba:
