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As he was about to leave Koimelemong to visit the great Mount Roraima, Theodor Koch-Grünberg was contacted by Mayuluaípu, a Taurepang Indian “dressed in a clean linen suit” (Koch-Grünberg 1928, 138). Mayuluaípu (or José, his Brazilian name) offered the German naturalist his services, which included his wide knowledge of different Pemon dialects and a good command of Portuguese. A few weeks later, the expedition would gain yet another important member: Mõseuaípu, better known by his nickname Akúli (agouti or cutia, a small rodent), a young Arekuna shaman who could not speak a word of Portuguese. This encounter between the two Carib Pemon Indians and the German naturalist would later play an important part in the Brazilian literary scene: the stories that Mayauluaípu and Akúli told Koch-Grünberg, collected in the second volume of the naturalist’s Vom Roroima zum Orinoco (1924), became the basis of Mário de Andrade’s 1928 Macunaíma, a turning point in the history of Brazilian contemporary narrative.
Macunaíma is the biography, so to speak, of its eponymous protagonist, “a hero with no character” (sem nenhum caráter), as the subtitle has it. He is born in the region of Roraima, near the Uraricoera river, into the Tapanhumas, a native Amazonian tribe with Carib name yet unusually dark skin which was described by the German traveler von den Steinen. The hero reveals his special nature from birth and in childhood adventures with his mother, brothers and their wives, setting up sibling rivalries that run through the novel. He marries Ci, the Mother of the Forest, who died of sadness upon losing their only son: before dying, Ci gives him a green stone amulet or muiraquitã, which brings him power as “Emperor of the Forest” as well as luck; but the amulet then falls into the river to be swallowed by a turtle. Macunaíma and his brothers then embark on a journey south to São Paulo in order to recover the amulet, which had fallen into the hands of the Peruvian (with an Italian name) Wenceslau Pietro Pietra, also known as the ogre Piaimã. After many adventures in the metropolis, with its strange language and customs, they recover the amulet and go back north to the Amazon. Back home, Macunaíma finds his people gone, gets into a new dispute with his brother Jiguë, who changes into the vulture-king, and destroys all members of the family, except for Macunaíma. Plagued by Vei, the sun, for having spurned one of her daughters, he loses his right leg and is badly mutilated. The amulet is again swallowed by a water beast, this time for good. Lonely, and “tired of this life,” he decides to become a star, but not before telling his life story to a parrot, who tells it to the author of the book.
(Fragment from “Makunaima and the native tricksters”, by Lúcia Sá, Brazil Institute Special Report, Washington, November, 2008, http://wilsoncenter.org/brazil)
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