La « Terre sans Mal ». La trajectoire historique d'un mythe guarani et d'un mythe anthropologique

Abstract

This article aims to reconstruct the historical trajectory of the Guarani and anthropological myth « Land without Evil » formulated for the first time by the ethnologist Curt Nimuendaju in 1914. From the dialogue between ethnographic data provided by Curt Nimuendaju about the « Land without Evil » and historical sources that reflect the colonial expeditions (called « Itinerary ») performed by baron de Antonina between 1840 and 1860, it is shown that these stories can be read as two different versions of the same historical event and therefore they can be read and thought recursively, one as the negative image of the other. Returning to the context of production and returning to the sources that led to the development of the research hypothesis of the « Land without Evil », it is to show that behind the general concept of Tupi-Guarani « messianism » and « prophetism » lurk multiple sociocultural processes with heuristic value for contemporary guaranologie.

Keywords

• Guarani
• Curt Nimuendaju
• Land without Evil
• João Henrique Elliott
• indigenous policy XIX century