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Brazil |
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The Bororo or Bororo-Boe people live in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil; they also extended into Bolivia and the Brazilian state of Goiás. The Western Bororo, now extinct, lived around the Jauru and Cabaçal rivers. The Eastern Bororo (Orarimogodoge) live in the region of the São Lourenço, Garças, and Vermelho rivers.
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Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss lived for some time among the Bororo during his first stay in Brazil (1935–1939). Their mythology features extensively in his book The Raw and the Cooked.
Marshal Cândido Rondon (1865–1956), who was to become the first director of Brazil's Indians Protection Bureau (SPI/FUNAI) and creator of the Xingu National Park, was the son of a Bororo woman. His first major success after joining the Army was the installation of a telegraph line to Mato Grosso. He not only was able to pacify the Bororo, who had blocked previous attempts to set up that line, but even recruited their help to complete it.
The Bororo associate body odor with a person's life-force, and breath-odor with the person's soul.[1]
The Bororo people call their original language Boe Wadáru. The majority of the population today speak Portuguese and Bororo language,[2] also referred to as "Boe".[3]
The Bororo are notable because they all share the same blood type: Type O blood. This is very uncommon in other populations.