Constructing a Supernatural Landscape through Talk: Creation and Recreation in the Central Amazon of Brazil JANET CHERNELA University of Maryland PATRICIA PINHO University of California, Davis This study considers narratives collected among fishing populations, known locally as caboclo, in the central Amazon of Brazil. The article utilizes these narratives to oppose prevailing conceptions of the riverine populations of Amazonia as derivative of former aboriginal cultures. The issue raises the larger problematic of identifying any group as “a culture,” defined as a col- lectivity that recognizes a shared set of meanings. Such a definition presents a “culture” as a perceivable and tangible entity, having inflexible features and boundaries. It raises implicit assumptions among anthropologists that mystify and simplify ethnogenesis as a finite process, fixed in time and space. As Ama- zonian caboclo society has always invented and reinvented itself, it is a clear example of the ongoing historic processes of social formation. The narratives collected here reference this very dynamic. Just as these narratives recount for- mations and transformations in a landscape undergoing infinite permutation, the narratives stand for caboclo society itself—likewise undergoing perpetual change. The study argues that the application of the concepts “traditional” and “native” are misapplied and limited. As the caboclo case so well illustrates, Journal of Latin American Lore 22:1 (Winter 2004), 83–106 Printed in U.S.A. 83 JLAL(V22,N1,D) Chernela 7/24/04 11:25 AM Page 83