Guarani-Kaiowás are an indigenous people of Paraguay, the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul and northeastern Argentina.
In Brazil, they inhabit Nhande Ru Marangatu, an area of tropical rainforest.
This was declared a reservation in October 2004.
They are one of the three Guaraní sub-groups (the others are Ñandeva and Mbya).
Guaraní alongside Spanish is the official language in the latter country.
The Guarani were one of the first peoples contacted after Europeans arrived in South America around 500 years ago.
They mainly live in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and is estimated that more than 30,000 Guaranis live in Brazil, and in Paraguay the numbers reach about 40,000, making them the country’s most numerous tribe; not to mention thousands that live in neighboring Bolivia and Argentina.
The Guarani people in Brazil are divided into three groups: Kaiowá, Ñandeva and M’byá, of which the largest is the Kaiowá which means ‘forest people’.
Guarani children work on the sugar cane fields which now cover much of their people’s ancestral lands in Mato Grosso do Sul state.
They are a deeply spiritual people.
Most communities have a prayer house, and a religious leader, whose authority is based on prestige rather than formal power.
The Land Without Evil
For as long as they can remember, the Guarani have been searching – searching for a place revealed to them by their ancestors where people live free from pain and suffering, which they call ‘the land without evil’.
Over hundreds of years, the Guarani have traveled vast distances in search of this land.
One 16th century chronicler noted their ‘constant desire to seek new lands, in which they imagine they will find immortality and perpetual ease’.
This permanent quest is indicative of the unique character of the Guarani, a ‘difference’ about them which has often been noted by outsiders.
Today, this manifests itself in a more tragic way:
profoundly affected by the loss of almost all their land in the last century, the Guarani suffer a wave of suicide unequaled in South America.
The problems are especially acute in Mato Grosso do Sul where the Guarani once occupied a homeland of forests and plains totaling some 350,000 square kilometers.
Today they are squeezed onto tiny patches of land surrounded by cattle ranches and vast fields of soya and sugar cane. Some have no land at all, and live camped by roadsides.
The Story of Marcos Veron
‘This here is my life, my soul. If you take me away from this land, you take my life.’ – Marcos Veron
The killing of Guarani leader Marcos Veron in 2003 was a tragic but all too typical example of the violence that his people are subject to.
Mr Veron, aged around 70, was the leader of the Guarani-Kaiowá community
of Takuára. For fifty years his people had been trying to recover a small piece of their ancestral land, after it was seized by a wealthy Brazilian and turned into a vast cattle ranch. Most of the forest that once covered the area had since been cleared.
In April 1997, desperate after years of lobbying the government in vain, Marcos led his community back onto the ranch. They began to rebuild their houses, and could plant their own crops again.
But the rancher who had occupied the area went to court, and a judge ordered the Indians out.
In October 2001, more than one hundred heavily armed police and soldiers forced the Indians to leave their land once more. They eventually ended up living under plastic sheets by the side of a highway.
A Guarani community describe the threat posed by gunmen, hired by the ranchers who stole their land.
While still in Takuára, Marcos said, ‘This here is my life, my soul. If
you take me away from this land, you take my life.’
His words came
prophetically and tragically true early in 2003, when, during another attempt to return peacefully to his land, he was viciously beaten by employees of the rancher. He died a few hours later.
Veron’s killers have not been charged with his murder, but they were charged with lesser crimes related to the attack, following a court hearing in early 2011.
‘His voice is not silenced.’
In this emotional interview, Marcos Verón’s daughter-in-law tells Survival researcher Fiona Watson how she saw her father-in-law killed. At the end, Verón’s widow comes up to embrace Fiona.
Despair
In the last 500 years virtually all the Guarani’s land in Mato Grosso do Sul state has been taken from them.
Waves of deforestation have converted the once-fertile Guarani homeland into a vast network of cattle ranches, and sugar cane plantations for Brazil’s biofuels market.
Many of the Guarani were herded into small reservations, which are now chronically overcrowded. In the Dourados reserve, for example, 12,000 Indians are living on little more than 3,000 hectares.
The destruction of the forest has meant that hunting and fishing are no longer possible, and there is barely enough land even to plant crops. Malnutrition is a serious problem and since 2005 at least 53 Guarani children have died of starvation.
Sugar Cane Plantations
Brazil has one of the most highly-developed biofuels industries in the world. Sugar cane plantations were established in the 1980s and rely heavily on indigenous labour. Workers often work for pitiful wages under terrible conditions. In 2007, police raided a sugar cane alcohol distillery and discovered 800 Indians working and living in subhuman conditions.
As many indigenous men are forced to seek work on the plantations they are absent from their communities for long periods and this has a major impact on Guarani health and society. Sexually transmitted diseases and alcoholism have been introduced by returning workers and internal tensions and violence have increased.
Over 80 new sugar cane plantations and alcohol distilleries are planned for Mato Grosso do Sul, many of which are to be built on ancestral land claimed by the Guarani.
Trapped
The Guarani in Mato Grosso do Sul suffer from racism and discrimination, and high levels of harassment from the police. It is estimated that there are over 200 Guarani in jail with little or no access to legal advice and interpreters, trapped in a legal system they do not understand. This has resulted in innocent people being condemned. Many are serving disproportionately harsh sentences for minor offences.
The response of this deeply spiritual people to the chronic lack of land has been an epidemic of suicide unique in South America. Since 1986 more than 517 Guarani have committed suicide, the youngest just nine years old.
Fighting Back
Crowded onto tiny reservations, with appalling social consequences, many Guarani communities have attempted to recover small parcels of their ancestral land.
These ‘retomadas’ (literally ‘re-takings’) have been violently resisted by the powerful and ruthless farmers who now occupy the region.
The ranchers frequently employ gunmen to defend ‘their’ properties, and countless Guarani have been killed during or soon after the retomadas.
The small community of Ñanderú Marangatú is typical. Despite the fact that the community is entitled by law to live within a 9,000 hectare reserve, they were evicted at gunpoint by ranchers in 2005. With incredible bravery, the community returned.
They now live on a tiny fraction of what is legally theirs, and the area immediately surrounding their settlement is patrolled daily by the rancher’s gunmen, who have also raped two of the Guarani women and fired bullets into the house of one of the community’s leaders.
170 Indians Collectively Commit Suicide
His threat is the greatest act of dignity they have left, have been robbed, massacred, their leaders killed and beaten with a cynical prosecution could not win.
How could defend their rights?
Some guys in loincloths against incestuous system of power and politics.
I burn this injustice rage while I turn on the heart of pride in knowing their courage.
A letter signed by the leaders of the indigenous Guarani-Kaiowá of Mato Grosso do Sul, announces the mass suicide of 170 people (50 men, 50 women and 70 children), if done effectively the Federal Court order to deprive to the tribe of the 'cambará farm' where are temporarily camped.
The territory, which they call 'tekoha', meaning 'ancestral graveyard', has been planted with large plantations of sugar cane and soybeans , and ready for breeding.
Penalty To Live On Their Land
In the event that the Indians did not vacate the farm federal order stipulates that the National Indian Foundation (Funai) have to pay a fine of approximately $250 for each day you stay there.
"We Indians have the constitutional right to occupy our land, and we will keep fighting " Guarani tribal chief, Vera Popygua which demanded respect for his people, because" it has been slaughtered ." "They killed our leaders, and that is sad and unacceptable. We are an advanced society living in the XXI century. This can not happen, should not happen," he says.
If the court order is not revoked, the Indians threatened to kill himself before the court itself Brazilian, after which demand to be buried in sacred territory along the river Hovy.
The Indians asked several years the demarcation of their traditional lands, now occupied by livestock and guarded by armed men. The leader of photovoltaics in the Chamber of Deputies, Sarney Filho , sent this letter to the Minister of Justice for action to prevent the tragedy.
Letter of the Indians (Review)
Community Charter of the Guarani-Kaiowá Pyelito Kue / Mbarakay-Iguatemi MS-for Government and Justice of Brazil
We (50 men, 50 women and 70 children) Guarani-Kaiowá communities from tekoha Pyelito kue / Mbrakay, write this letter our present historical situation and a final decision before the dispatch order expressed by the Federal Court Ashland, MS, as Case No. 0000032-87.2012.4.03.6006, the September 29, 2012.
We have received information that our community will soon be attacked, raped and thrown into the river by the Federal Court, Ashland, MS.
Therefore, it is clear to us that own Federal Court action generates and increases violence against our lives, ignoring our rights to survive the river Hovy and around our traditional territory Pyelito Kue / Mbarakay.
We understand clearly that this decision of the Federal Court Ashland-MS is part of the action of genocide and extermination indigenous historical, indigenous native and Mato Grosso do Sul, ie, the action itself is violating the Federal Court and exterminated and our lives.
We want to make clear to the Government that the Federal Court and, finally, we have already lost hope to survive with dignity and without violence in our old territory, no longer believes in the Brazilian Justice. Who we denounce acts of violence committed against our lives? For Justice of Brazil? If the Federal Court is being generated and fueling violence against us.
We have evaluated the situation and concluded that all going to die very soon, and we have no have the prospect of a dignified and fair, both here on the bank of the river as far away from here. We camped here 50 meters from the river and Hovy where there were four deaths, two by suicide and two because of the beating and torture of gunmen farms.
Hovy live in the river for more than a year without any help, isolated, surrounded by armed men and resisted until today. Eat once a day. We spent all this to recover our territory Pyleito old Kue / Mbarakay. In fact, we know that at the heart of our ancient land are buried many of our grandparents, great-grandparents and great-grandparents, are the cemeteries of our ancestors.
Aware of this fact of history, we are and want to be dead and buried along our ancestors here where we are today, so we ask the Government and the Federal Court did not order the eviction / expulsion, but ask enact our collective death and bury us all here.
Please once and for all, to enact our annihilation and extinction as well as sending several tractors to dig a big hole to play and bury the body. This is our appeal to federal judges. Now we await the decision of the Federal Court. We declare our collective death of Guarani and Kaiowá Pyelito Kue / Mbarakay and bury us here. Since we decided not to leave here completely alive nor dead.
We know we have a better chance of surviving with dignity here in our ancient land has already suffered a lot and we are all dying massacred and good pace. We know that will be driven away from the river's edge for justice, but we're not out of the river. As an indigenous people and indigenous history, collectively decided to just die here. We have no other option is our last dispatch before the unanimous decision of the Federal Court Ashland, MS.
Honestly, Pyelito Guarani Kaiowá Kue / Mbarakay
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