ABSTRACT
I met Raimundo one overcast afternoon in December 1978. I was surveying the Rua da Palha side of the town of Santa Terezinha, a Brazilian frontier settlement of almost 2,000 people located along the Araguaia River in the northernmost portion of the state of Mato Grosso. I had arrived in Santa Terezinha that past March and was planning to stay until the following March to collect data for my dissertation on Amazon frontier life.
