LAURA R. GRAHAM University of Iowa Quoting Mario Juruna: Linguistic imagery and the transformation of indigenous voice in the Brazilian print press ABSTRACT In this article, I reveal the textual mechanisms that influential news editors employed to manipulate popular understandings of Mario Juruna, a Xavante leader who played an important role in advancing democracy during Brazil’s military dictatorship and became the first Indian elected to national office. I argue that editors used the implicit messages of represented language to initiate shifts in the public’s perception of the Xavante leader and thereby to change its opinion of him. Juruna’s case illustrates that linguistic resources are powerful tools that hegemonic institutions, such as the press, and other dominant parties may employ to advance their own interests and influence public opinion on matters of political and social import. [language politics, linguistic discrimination, politics of representation, textualizing practice, print media, indigeneity, Brazil] D uring the 1970s, a central Brazilian Xavante leader named Mario Juruna pioneered the strategic use of indigenous culture to at- tract the attention of the mainstream Brazilian press and used the celebrity and publicity he achieved to advance Xavante claims to land. He also initiated the use of new media tech- nologies within Brazilian indigenous struggles for rights. In 1982, he was elected to Congress, becoming the first (and so far only) native Brazil- ian to be elected to national office. Remarkably—although Juruna was an eloquent orator when speaking his native Xavante (a central Brazilian Gˆ e language)—he had only elementary control over Portuguese, the language of national political discourse. Juruna’s Portuguese speech, especially me- dia representations of it, played a major role in public perceptions of the Xavante leader and his political career. At the same time that Juruna was creatively using new media technolo- gies and the press to bring attention to the Xavante fight to recoup lands, the press was using Juruna to advance the agenda of business elites to oust the military government. When the Xavante leader debuted on the national scene, boldly issuing public critiques in his dysfluent Indian Portuguese of government officials who lied about the return of stolen Xavante lands, the privately owned mainstream press (known in Brazil as the imprensa grande) was subject to harsh censorship. Although its voice, like other op- position voices, was muted out of fear of violent reprisal, including death threats against newspaper staff (carried out in some cases, such as that of journalist Vladimir Herzog, who was killed in October 1975), the main- stream press used Juruna—particularly his defiant declarations against the state—to signal to the general public the existence of civil dissent. Then, when political circumstances changed and Juruna’s criticisms of the Brazil- ian government ceased to advance elite interests, mainstream media spun its influential representational weight 180 degrees to turn Juruna’s positive image on its head. These two disparate media depictions invoke the oppos- ing tropes of the colonial Noble Savage narrative. In one political context, AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 164–183, ISSN 0094-0496, online ISSN 1548-1425. C  2011 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01299.x