Debate on the paper by Feitosa et al. Is an interethnic ethic possible? Reflections on indigenous infanticide.

The discussion by Feitosa et al. in the article Bio-ethics, Culture and Infanticide in Brazilian Indigenous Communities: The Zuruahá Case, exemplifies the contra-hegemonic bioethical models that have emerged in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America. Epistemologically based on interdisci-plinary sharing of concepts and methods from distinct areas of knowledge, and philosophically structured not on principles, but on the norma-tive potentialities of language, the article offers an interesting channel for resolution of ethical conflicts related to life and generated in contexts of great moral pluralism and cultural diversity. The authors clearly express their perception that the possibility exists for constructing an In-terethnic Ethic at some equidistant point between a dogmatic moral universalism, based on the ethnocentric interpretations of Human Rights, and an inoperable moral relativism conceiving cultures as watertight realities with no possibilities for interaction. In their article, historical and sociological knowledge on the colonization of indigenous peoples and the current conditions of exclusion and discrimination is linked to anthro-pological knowledge on cosmology, concepts of life and death, symbolic construction of bodies, and the specific practice of infanticide in both Zuruahá culture and Western culture. Based on this well-structured link, the authors demonstrate the superficiality and impropriety of the arguments that define infanticide by the Zuruahá as a barbarian act against life and that propose both its criminalization and state intervention to solve the problem. Coherently, the authors thus refuse readymade solutions based on unilaterally established values or rights and focus their efforts on proposing an intercultural, coercion-free dialogue. However, I call attention to a fact not highlighted by the authors, namely that the very understanding of infanticide among indigenous peoples as a " problem " derives from a Western worldview, or at least a worldview generated on the borders in historically determined intercul-tural encounters. This means that one cannot morally justify the cultural and biological risks involved in making contact with isolated indigenous peoples with the purpose of establishing intercultural dialogues (no matter how free or truthful) concerning the practice of infanticide. The authors cite some theoretical contributions to the construction of interethnic dialogical spaces and some criteria for establishing " fairness in the dialogue " , including respect for other-ness, the community's good as the exclusive end, and profound knowledge of the local culture. The theoretical contributions cited by the authors feature the notion of communication community developed originally by Habermas 1 in his classic work Theory of Communicative …