Between structure and event:

from just war as a structuring mode of the Portuguese Overseas Empire to the Kayapó war as a symbolic regime of predation of otherness

Abstract

This essay aims to present just war as a structuring mode of the Portuguese overseas Empire, with the effort to indicate, based on historical documents, how this ideal is transformed by the contingency of historical events, when applied against those known in the documents as Southern "Cayapó", occupying groups of the regions that today comprise the Triângulo Mineiro, north of São Paulo and south of Goiás between the 18th and 19th centuries. On the other hand, from offices, chronicles, travelers' memories, reports, official documents, read in the light of Ethnology, we seek to demonstrate how war was the structuring way of the Southern Cayapó in contact with the agents of colonial power , an equally evaluated practice when put in the light of new contexts, when they reevaluated their policies of predation of otherness, opting for alliances, pacts, in a kind of prolongation of the war. Observing how in both cases, there is a transition from a practice of the structure to a structure of practice.