The taste of others: salt and the transformation of bodies among the Karitiana in southwestern Amazonia

Abstract

This paper deals with the complex successes following the introduction of salt and other foodstuffs among the Karitiana in the state of Rondonia. Fast changes in indigenous peoples food habits, that goes with contact, are very use ful tools to approach the uprising of whites and the new ways of life in the company of them, as well as to understand the so called processes of becoming white. Starting from the double sense of the portuguese word “gosto” (flavor, taste, or habit, behavior), I suggest that contact can be described as the production of links between indigenous peoples and national societies by body metamorphosis promoted by changes in diet patterns, and the bigger settings that articulates /aring Of indians and the emergence of mecessity and dependency on new provisions. Largue that the great transformations we can witness among the Karitiana,
when conviviality with white men and acceptance of their food are settled, follows preexisting mythical and cosmological patterns. This process is not acculturation, and points towards the connections of desires, social practices and historical trajectories that shape histories of contact and inter-ethnic coexistence.