Bae-ja: To be young? among the Jotï of Venezuelan Guiana

Resumo

This work constitutes a first attempt to understand the notion of being young among the Jotï of Venezuelan Guiana, or even if such a conception exists among them. Jotï (jotö, jodï or hoti) is the name by which some 1,200 indigenous people of the South American jungle are known, whose territory extends between the southwest of Bolívar state and the northeast of the state of Amazonas. This essay is essentially ethnographic and not theoretical. Being young among the Jotï, and in general the usual categories with which one can describe stages of life are diffuse, intermeshed in gradients or inconclusive as the final point in a kind of ontological scale of being or being. Rather, being young or adult, are rather transformation processes articulated to ways of being in the cosmos. In addition to a minimal ethnographic context and final ideas