ABSTRACT
In this article we aim to analyze how the Iberian colonists behaved when they arrived in the New World and encountered native peoples of diverse cultures as well as how the colonizers completely ignored the native customs and traditions, making the “other” invisible. Furthermore, we propose to discuss and examine how the elements of the Portuguese popular culture were infiltrated and re-signified into Brazil, to understand how the “remains or rejected” were able to keep their cultural base alive. In order to go through such study, we will present the European legends of the Enchanted Moorish and the Crooked Moorish, which will be analyzed in comparison with the narratives of Indigenous myths, amongst them the myth of the Iara. We intend to demonstrate that the cultural melting pot was not and is not a one-way road but also that many of our mythological characters, found primarily in the forests of Brazil and other South American countries, rendered stories and sharpened the European imagination regarding the Amazon and all that can be reinvented in it. Decolonial thinkers such as Walter Mignolo, Aníbal Quijano, Frantz Fanon, Edgardo Lander, among others, will support our study.
KEYWORDS
Amazon; Colonist; Enchanted Moorish; Crooked Moorish; Iara; Enchanted