Hunter and Hunted: The Jaguar as Kin
The short story “Meu tio o Iauaretê” (“My Uncle the Iauaretê”), published in 1961 by the Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa (1908–67), is a first-person monologue in which the human narrator, a mixed-race hunter, “matador de onças” (“killer of jaguars”), addresses an unnamed visitor and tells him his story. The visitor arrives at the hunter’s abode, where he is welcomed and invited to spend the night, as they (or, more accurately, the hunter) converses over a bottle of cachaça. The narrator reveals he was hired by another man, Nhô Nhuão Guede, to kill jaguars, becoming very successful at his trade:
Eu cacei onça, demais. Sou muito caçador de onça. Vim pra aqui pra caçar onça, só pra mor de caçar onça. Nhô Nhuão Guede me trouxe pra cá. Me pagava. Eu ganhava o couro, ganhava dinheiro por onça que eu matava. Dinheiro bom: glim-glim … Só eu é que sabia caçar onça. Por isso Nhô Nhuão Guede me mandou ficar aqui, mor de desonçar este mundo todo (Rosa 1969: 127).
1 I’ve hunted lots of jaguars. I’m a big jaguar hunter. I came here just to catch ’em, just for that. Mr. Nhuão Guede brought me here. He paid me. I got the hide, got paid for every jaguar I killed. Good money – ka-ching! I was the only one who knew how to do it. That’s why Mr. Guede told me to stay here, to unjaguar the whole world.The narrator’s description of his efforts to “unjaguar the whole world” (“desonçar este mundo todo”) constitutes a rich account of his experiences as a hunter, but also of the various species inhabiting the backlands of Minas Gerais. The narrative, whose complex linguistic structure will be explored in due course, displays a wealth of knowledge about the jaguar’s hunting, eating, and breeding habits. The narrator recounts dozens of anecdotes involving his observations of these animals, including a variety of species and concrete specimens, which he personalizes by granting them names (in particular, a female jaguar named Maria-Maria, with whom he has an ostensibly sexual relationship).
The narrator later discusses his own background as part-Indigenous and part-white, which is not insignificant, given the hybridity of the language he uses. He also describes how he eats jaguars and almost ritually rubs their fat over his body to mitigate his fear of them. As the narrative progresses, the onceiro confesses his regret at having killed and eaten jaguars because he feels an affinity with them. In fact, he identifies with them to the point of saying, “Onça, meu parente” (“The jaguar is my relative,” Rosa 1969: 129), “Eh, onça é meu tio, o jaguaretê, todas” (“Hey, Jaguar is my uncle, the jaguar, all of them,” 137), and “Eu sou onça … Eu – onça!” (“I’m a jaguar, I’m a jaguar,” 138). He also learns to speak jaguanhenhém, the language of the jaguar.
I concur with Ana Carolina Torquato’s analysis that the main character in the story clearly displays Viveiros de Castro’s notion of perspectivism:
Bacuriquirepa [the narrator] even refers to jaguars as “people,” and does not hold on to the frequent dichotomy of animal vs. human: “You want to know about the jaguars? Uh-hu, they’ve got such a temper, they don’t talk like other people …” (‘MUJ’, 312) The indigenous man clearly states that jaguars are to be seen as people or subjects. (Torquato 2021: 194)
The hunter’s ramblings, which mix Portuguese with words and morphology derived from Tupi languages, as well as some African languages, further strengthen the theme of transformation. As Haroldo de Campos has argued, Guimarães Rosa creates a hybrid of orality and erudite language, transforming Portuguese through the inclusion of Tupi language forms (Campos 1970). I agree with Torquato that this metamorphosis mirrors the transformation of the character into a jaguar:
The man’s monologue gets closer to becoming-animal, since it shifts in similar ways as his behaviour. The metamorphosis is not only apparent in content, but it also lies in language. The text starts with a Portuguese register permeated by some Tupi insertions that will frequently appear throughout the narrative: ‘Nhem’; ‘Nhenhem’; ‘Nheengava’; ‘Jaguanhenhém’, among others. Haroldo de Campos affirms that these are speech marks revolving around the Tupi word ‘Nhehê’ or ‘nheeng’, which essentially means “to speak.” Therefore, the more Bacuriquirepa becomes a jaguar, the more he speaks the language of the jaguars – jaguanhenhém – which is named in the story by using indigenous languages roots. (Torquato 2021: 197)
The mysterious visitor listens to his host’s meandering monologue, including his confession that, though apparently in a trance within which he became a jaguar, he also killed his human neighbors. The mood becomes increasingly tense, as the narrator keeps mentioning the revolver the visitor is holding. In the story’s dramatic ending, the visitor kills the onceiro, whose last utterances reveal a complete metamorphosis: “The final words are enigmatic, and they seem to be evidence of animal language since the character has given many signs throughout the novel that he was transforming into one” (Torquato 2021: 198). As the hunter has now been hunted, the story ultimately also reaffirms perspectivism’s idea that the powerful predator has, in this change of perspectives, becomes the prey.