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Jon Lee Anderson, em ritual de tribo Xavante, no Mato Grosso

Every day at sunset, the young men of Etenhiritipá gather in the center of the village, which they call the Circle, and begin an evening ritual, chanting and stomping their feet. In a ceremony during my visit, they paused the chanting so that the older men could speak. Jamiro moved to the center of the Circle, carrying a “talking stick,” a short club that conveyed the right to speak. “We are worried about our reserve—the reserve of the indigenous people,” he said. “Without the reserves, there is no air. So our concern is not just about us. It’s about everyone.” Jamiro directed himself as if to Bolsonaro: “You have to think better, Jair.” Turning to the men of the Circle, Jamiro said, “When he was stabbed, he said, ‘God saved me.’ But it was not God who saved him. It was the Devil that saved him. And the other one, too. What’s his name, the one with the white hair?”

Several men called out, “Trupi!”—their name for Trump.

Jamiro nodded. “That’s the one,” he said. He referred again to Bolsonaro. “He does not respect nature,” he said. “God created nature. That is how he sends us our food. We have to take care of nature. If nature is finished off, everything is going to burst.”