Anthropophagist

The want of food became so urgent, that flesh was torn from dead human bodies; children were strangled by their parents, for the purpose of feasting on their flesh; and bands of express anthropophagists traversed the whole country.

The Atákapa of old were a well-made race of excellent hunters, but had, as their name indicates, the reputation of being anthropophagists (Cha'hta: hátak, hattak person, ápa to eat).

The notorious anthropophagist, Blaize Ferrage, called Seyé, seemed to have served the Marquis as a model.

The anthropophagists were out to celebrate life. They rejected the oppressive theories of Freud and advocated a reality "sem complexos, sem loucura, sem prostituições" ("Manifesto antropófago", Revista de Antopofagia, I) ["without complexes, without madness, without prostitutions"].

In his essay “Brazilian Anthropophagy Revisited,” Sérgio Bellei makes similar claims. He suggests that the anthropophagists have a kind of split consciousness, being aware of both the "superior" European culture and the material backwardness of their own culture; the "purpose" of the anthropophagists, according to Bellei, was to dissolve the borders between the two.

Reversing the cultural cannibalism practiced by the colonisers, the anthropophagists, as de Andrade envisages them, adapt the strengths of European culture and 'incorporate [..] them into the native self'.