ABSTRACT
In 1931, Catholic missionaries who had been working in this remote region for several decades built a modest church on a sandy hill overlooking the Araguaia River, a tributary of the Amazon. At first the settlement was known as Moro de Areia, or sand hill. Later it was named Santa Terezinha in honor of its patron saint, Saint Teresa. Consistent with the Brazilian urban ethos so well described by Marvin Harris, Santa Terezinha is often proudly referred to, especially by the local elite, as an "urban nucleus," even though to North American eyes it appears to be a village or, at best, a town. Roughly speaking, proximity to the main street correlates with the amount of time a person or family has lived in Santa Terezinha. Santa Terezinha, Dona Flora explained, stayed dry throughout the rainy season and already had most of the commerce and a couple of boardinghouses where women could find work cleaning, cooking, or washing clothes.
