Colbacchini, Antonio (1881-1960)

Antonio Colbacchini (1881-1960), an Italian missionary who worked in Brazil from 1905, developed a privileged relationship with the famous Bororo, on whom he produced various monographs. The Salesian missionary’s texts, which reveal his transformation into a major ethnographer, are essentially descriptive and without compromise with the anthropological theories of the time. They remain an indispensable reference for the knowledge of a South-Amerindian context that only later came to occupy a central place in the anthropological debate, and has been the object of various ethnographic revisits.

Keywords: Ethnography | Christian missions | Missionary | Italy | Brazil | Amerindian studies | Bororo