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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY— PUBLICATION NO. 12 



the sub-delegado, "a man drinks a little too much 

 and then he may strike another man or shove him 

 around a bit. So I tell the sordado to put him in 

 the jail. But if he has a wife and children, I have 

 him brought to me as soon as he's sober and I say 

 to him, 'Now this is not right! You ought not 

 to do things like that ! You should do thus and 

 so,' and then I send him home." 



There is no organized prostitution. Although 

 a married woman and two widows are known to 

 receive the attentions of men for pay, they are in 

 no sense outcasts in the community. The other 

 women treat and speak to them with tolerance, 

 except in the event a husband becomes emotionally 

 involved. 



Divorce does not exist in Brazil, a proscription 

 which is supported in the local mores. "Marriage 

 is for life," a village woman remarked, "and one 

 should stick to it, come what may." Desertion 

 rarely occurs. No man is known to have deserted 

 his wife and family."' During recent years three 

 local women, none of whom now lives in the com- 

 munity, have left their husbands. The husband 

 of one is feeble-minded. The second woman left 

 her husband and small child and went away with 

 another man. "She put her face out into the 

 world and we never heard from her again," says 

 the mother of the husband, who took the child to 

 rear. The third woman is said "to have been false 

 to her husband. When he objected to her con- 

 duct, she left." 



Poverty is extensive; but destitution is always 

 avoided by the sharing, on the part of relatives, 

 friends, and neighbors, of their means of sub- 

 sistence, even though meager, with the especially 

 unfortunate. 



There is one actual case of insanity in the vil- 

 lage and two other persons are referred to by 

 villagers as "insane." In each case, however, the 

 abnormality appears to be due rather to biolog- 

 ical than to social circumstances. The person 

 who is insane is a woman, 35 years old, who lives 

 with her 72-year-old mother, a feeble-minded 

 brother of 51 years, and the latter's 17-year-old 

 son. She has been insane, it is said, since birth. 

 She occasionally appears at the door of the house 

 or is seen through a window, walking back and 



forth or in a circle, and suddenly raising her arm; 

 over her head, distorting her features, and crying 

 out in unintelligible sounds. The two daughter! 

 of one of the village storekeepers, aged 35 and 1< 

 years, respectively, are referred to in the village 

 as loiccas (insane) but appear rather to be feeble 

 minded, as well as epileptic. 



Four suicides are remembered by present resi 

 dents in the village. About 30 years ago, a mar 

 was found one morning hanging in a tree. A 

 villager recalls the event vividly : 



That day the fellow had gone to Boa Vista on foot 

 It was dark by the time he got back. As he was coming 

 along the road, he saw two black things there jumping 

 around in front of him. He couldn't make out what 

 they were. He kicked at them and he yelled, "Get awaj 

 from here ! Don't bother me !" Finally, he got back tc 

 the village and went to the house of his cousin tc 

 spend the night. After he had gone to bed, someone 

 heard him call out, "Go away ! Quit bothering me !" 

 When, a little later, they heard him say again, "Go away ! 

 Quit bothering me !" they got up and went to the room 

 where he was sleeping to see what was wrong, and he 

 said, "There's some kind of an animal that keeps bother- 

 ing me." They looked around everywhere but found 

 nothing, and finally they went back to bed. A little 

 later, they heard him call out, "Let's go ! Let's go !" 

 Several hours later, someone heard him get up and go 

 outside the house and the next morning they found him 

 hanging from the limb of a tree. 



About 25 yeai-s ago, a man hanged himself in 

 a house at the edge of the village. He was a 

 Negro, new to the community and alone, without 

 family.^^® About 6 years ago, a farmer, who 

 drank heavily and who had turned Protestant, then 

 again Catholic, hanged himself at his home sev- 

 eral miles from the village. More recently, a 

 young man, 28 years old, married and the father 

 of three small children, following a scuffle with 

 a friend in which he had accidentally cut the 

 friend's hand and had been severely reprimanded 

 in public for his carelessness by his father, a 

 village leader, took his life by drinking insecticide. 



The usual difficulty in determining the chain of 

 circumstances which, in a given case, lead to sui- 

 cide, is obviously increased in these cases, where 

 the only knowledge of the circumstances involved 

 is to be obtained from the memories of persons who 

 are not given to the precise registering of events. 



"' A young man who some years ago was forced to marry an 

 unmarried mother of whose child he denied being the father, never 

 lived with his wife. 



'^ Some time later, a villager made a prometsa that "If things 

 would get better" for him. he would put up a cross at the side 

 of the road near this house as an aid to the unshrlven alma (see 

 Almas and the Santa Cruz, p. 169) of the suicide. The cross 

 Is still standing. 



