Table of Contents
The name “bororo” is a name given by non-indigenous people, arising when explorers asked “what is the name of the people”, and the indigenous people understood “what is the name of the place where they were”: they were in the bororó , which, in the bororo language, means “village courtyard”.
The Western Bororo people lived on the eastern bank of the Paraguay River , where Spanish Jesuits founded missions . Very friendly, they served as guides to non-indigenous people, worked on the region’s farms, and were allies of the bandeirantes (Portuguese explorers/slave hunters ). They disappeared as a people due to both contracted diseases and intermarriage with non-indigenous people.
The people adhere to a rigid social organization. The village is divided into two parts – eceráe and tugarége – which, in turn, are subdivided into clans with very well-defined duties. They recognize the leadership of two hereditary chiefs who always belong to the eceráe half
Circular villages
With the founding of the first Bororo village in the 18th century, a major cultural shift occurred. The Uru settlements were large, circular villages that could reach up to 1000 inhabitants, organized in rings, one inside the other. By the end of the 12th century, they showed an evolution in ceramics, with ovens possibly created to meet the need for storing more food.
Myth M134 – Pleiades
Myth M134, analyzed in Part Four (“Well-Tempered Astronomy”) of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s The Raw and the Cooked, provides one specific variant linking a violent earthly event to the origin of the Pleiades constellation and seasonal fish abundance. Lévi-Strauss uses it to demonstrate structural transformations in myth, where raw elements (bodily matter, excessive desire, violence) convert into ordered celestial and natural phenomena.
Narrative outline of M134
A man desires his brother’s wife, creating an excessive and improper union. He kills his brother, dismembers part of the body (such as cutting off an arm), and presents it to the wife. The wife eventually discovers the truth through her husband’s ghost and rejects the killer. The man then confines the wife and her children in a cave and kills them.
That night, the murdered brother’s ghost appears. The ghost forgives the acts, explains that the wife and son have transformed into animals and are now safe, and gives instructions: construct a grave, scatter the internal organs of the remaining body, and bury only the rest of the corpse. In exchange, this act will bring an abundance of fish.
When the man follows the instructions, the scattered internal organs rise into the sky and become the Pleiades star cluster. As a result, every year when the Pleiades become visible, large numbers of fish enter the river.
