The central object of this thesis is the diary of Antonio Callado s trip to the Xingu region in July 1956, a document discovered during research in the writer s archives at Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa. On that occasion, at the service of the Correio da Manhã newspaper, Callado witnessed for the first time the quarup, a Xingu ritual to honor the dead that, in the following decade, would appear as one of the central images of his novel Quarup (1967). Based on the diary, the thesis reconstructs the 1956 trip, placing it within the broader framework of the relationship that Callado maintained for decades with the Xingu, and investigates his role in the campaign for the Xingu Indigenous Park, created in 1961, a highlight of his lifelong militancy in defense of indigenous rights. In addition, it compares the diary with the article he published on the ritual and with the novel Quarup, analyzing central aspects of his work, such as the relationship between travel and writing and the productive transit between journalism and fiction. Finally, in a diary kept by the author of the thesis during a trip to the Xingu, it discusses the impasses in the representation of indigenous peoples and cultures by non-indigenous intellectuals.