The Cultural Politics of Visibility: The Pankararu in the city of Sao Paulo

Over the last 60 years, the indigenous Pankararu migrate from Pernambuco to the city of Sao Paulo and now number more than 2,000 people in this town. Due to their autonomous organization, they were the first native migrant group of the Northeast to receive some assistance of organs such as FUNAI and FUNASA, in Sao Paulo. But, for that, the Pankararu started to promote presentations of an ancient religious tradition hitherto restricted to their villages in Pernambuco: the mask praia. This article presents the context of construction of the visibility of the Pankararu in Sao Paulo and the legitimacy of this ethnic characteristic through the presentations of the praias like a paradigmatic element that characterizes the "way of being indigenous" Pankararu.