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The official contact with the white people, happened in 1969, at that time when the construction of the highway 364 began, in Rondônia, it doesn’t bring good memories to the Suruís Indians. According to the cacique Itabira Suruí, until that date, his people lived without problems.
According to Itabira, the people’s emersion working in the workmanship would have left the Indians afflicted. Certain that the movement would bring them problems; they began to cut the wire of the telegraphic line and to do everything that was possible to disturb the course of the works. “In that time the war began. A people killed the other. I lost my father and my mother in this fight” – the cacique remembered excited, that in that time he was 18 years old.
Another very harmful factor, in the cacique’s opinion, were the diseases transmitted to the Indians by the white people. He explained that the Indians were weak to the diseases of the white people and consequently they were contaminated by evils as influenza and pneumonia and they ended up dying. ” Before the contact, the disease that we knew was the malaria and to that one we had medicines. The death was only caused by age”, he said.
According to Itabira, in 1969 the Suruís population was about 5 thousand people. A measles epidemic appeared after the contact, it would have reduced it to 290. At that time, not even the employees of the National Foundation of the Indian (Funai) could arrive at the villages. ” They only got to know about the disease because one of Suruís told them”, he said.
Before the contact, the Suruís survived of the hunt, of the fishing and of the corn, yam, potato, fruits and honey cultivation. Besides the feeding, the concern was just with the parties. Today, according to the cacique, they go by a lot of difficulties. The feeding was almost totally changed. Instead of fruits and other native victuals, they started to eat rice and bean. “To live in the city we needed to pay water and energy and with the agriculture we just earn money to get dressed. Therefore I find very difficult our life “, complained.
The area of land of Suruís was demarcated in 1980. They are 247 thousand hectares. Nowadays Suruís add up about 1100 Indians. They are divided in four clans. Each one form an association that looks for means to survive.