US AND THE OTHERS: NOTION OF PERSON IN THE NATIONAL CONGRESS DEBATES ABOUT INDIGENOUS INFANTICIDE

Abstract

This essay reflects upon the contrasting conceptions of personhood which pervade the legal debate surrounding indigenous infanticide. For the defenders of the Muwaji Law - as the Project of Law 1057/07 became known, which proposes the criminalization of indigenous infanticide - the concept of personhood appears as synonymous with the concept of life, understood solely and exclusively through the gaze of Western society. In this way, by contrasting Western notions of personhood with different Amerindian concepts, beyond presenting the causes of interruptions to life, I aim to demonstrate the importance attributed by indigenous peoples to social birth and corporeality as constitutive elements of personhood. Moreover, given the insufficiency of data regarding the occurrence of cases of indigenous infanticide, it is suggested that such cases are thought of as a political and judicial allegory, used to legitimize the authoritarian intervention of the state in the everyday lives of indigenous communities, and in this way to justify and reaffirm the judicial powers which were never entirely dissolved.