Crônicas de São Paulo (Chronicles of São Paulo, 2004), written by Indigenous Brazilian intellectual Daniel Munduruku, depicts the importance of rediscovering and visualizing Indigenous presences in the Paulista capital city. Evoking Tupi and Guarani place-names, Munduruku identifies native histories inscribed in this racialized space. In doing so, he traces an alternative cartography that resists the racial urban formation of the city of São Paulo that has persisted since its origins. The author affirms his intention as follows: “I cannot walk around São Paulo without looking for meanings. […] I remember the ancestors and the roads they constructed when they lived in this land” (2004, 12). Munduruku visits the localities of Jabaquara, Guarapiranga, Pirituba, and other cityscapes characterized by ancestral significance. For instance, he recalls that Tatuapé “was a place to hunt Tatus [armadillos]. Here, Indian hunters entered the forest to discover animal footprints” (2004, 16). He also recognizes the presences of old rivers such as Tietê or Anhangabaú, the sacred notions of lagoons and trees in Ibirapuera Park, and the histories of serpents in the Butantã or crickets in the Tucuruvi neighborhoods. By focusing on streets, parks, gardens, and other zones, the chronicles show how native codes or signs overwhelm Paulista geographies, which were constructed according to racial ideologies from the city's foundation until the present day.

I focus this chapter on Daniel Munduruku's Crônicas de São Paulo in order to make a central argument: this book proposes an antiracist spatial narrative based on two literary strategies. First, he reminds his readership of the meanings of Tupi place-names around Paulista avenues, activating memories and knowledges that historical discourses and practices of racialization have neutralized or annulled in this space. Second, Munduruku's walking across this megalopolis exemplifies how migrants like him defy racial prejudices that impose division between real and inauthentic Indians. In fact, in the opinion of many Brazilians, subjects such as Daniel Munduruku have to remain in Amazonian villages in order to prove they are authentic Indians, as will be explored in the following pages. Drawing on the definitions of toponyms and his own migrant experience, Munduruku confronts a system of hierarchical power that has cemented the inferiority of indigenes.