Abstract
This article describes how the Mbyá-guarani understand the drunkenness caused by sugar-cane spirit (cachaça). I focus on the Mbyá description of drinking behaviour in their bailes (feasts) as well as in the relationship of cachaça to the spirits of the dead (ãgue). I use the expression "other joys" in order to describe the happiness of the Mbyá during their feasts in opposition to the happiness that is experienced in the ceremonial house (opy). However, the idea of "other joys" has an immediate counterpart in that of "joyous-otherness", for when drinking leads to excessive and violent behaviour towards kinspeople, the dead emerge as primordial figures in the alteration that cachaça enables. The relationship of the Mbyá-guarani experience with cachaça is then compared to other Amerindian ethnographies where maize beer (cauim) is drunk, revealing both similarities and differences. For the Mbyá-guarani, drinking cachaça is a joyous experience that can result in alteration, bringing the spirits of the dead closer to the living, who thereby risk seeing their kinspeople as foes.
Key words:
Mbyá-guarani; Feast; Drunkenness; Sugar cane liquor