ABSTRACT
It was with considerable anticipation that I climbed down from the little plane at the Santa Terezinha airstrip one hot afternoon in early November 1987. It was almost nine years since I had sold my hut, packed my fieldnotes, and left the town. During the intervening years, I had received only a handful of letters with scant news from informants; but this was not surprising given the general lack of literacy and the absence of postal service in the region. I wondered what I would find now.
