The telegraph pole, the Christian cross, and the rifle arrived all at once for the Bororo people of Mato Grosso. The rifle of the soldier and the settler served to seize the Bororo's land in the name of industry and progress, the cross "pacified" and "civilized" them, and the telegraph integrated them into the rest of the newly wired Brazilian republic in the mid-nineteenth century.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 21