Stop killing us. Indigenous lives matter.
The last 20 days—or rather, the last four years—have been filled with immense pain and sorrow for Indigenous peoples and for all those who engage with, think about, create, and interact with them. In 2018, the current President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro, during a political campaign in the city of Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul (MS), declared: “If I assume [the Presidency of Brazil], there will not be one more centimeter of land for Indigenous people.” (Dourados (MS), February 8, 2018). And so it has come to pass: he has halted territorial demarcations and attempted to facilitate, “move the cattle” through, and pass legislation in the National Congress to allow megaprojects involving mining, land leasing, soy farming, cattle ranching, and religious missions on Indigenous territories. Since then, we have not had a single day of peace!
The year 2022 began with horrifying news. In April, newspapers reported that two Yanomami girls had been raped, one killed and the other missing, in one of the Indigenous territories most threatened by mining, located between the states of Amazonas and Roraima in the Amazon (Yanomami Indigenous Territory). More recently, on June 5th, Indigenous rights activist Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Philips were brutally murdered in one of the many bends along the Itacoaí River in the Vale do Javari, also in the Amazon. These various crimes reveal the complete absence of the Brazilian state toward Indigenous peoples and nature. Crimes like these are not new; they have always existed. In Mato Grosso do Sul, for decades, even centuries, Guarani Kaiowas men and women have been cruelly murdered by people with names and addresses—the state, its police, and landowners—for reclaiming their traditionally occupied lands.
According to the leader who found one of the Guarani bodies—with its entrails spilling out, just as they had done with Bruno and Dom—the attacks began at 4:00 a.m. on Friday, June 24, and continued until midnight. Shots were fired from all sides, from the air (helicopter) and the ground. The Aty Guasu report (June 24, 2022) states that police officers mixed with gunmen went to Tekoa Gwapo'y Mi Tujury, in the municipality of Amambai, to carry out the seizure, without presenting any official documents or any warrant or court order justifying the operation. In an act of unreasonable force, they fired on the Indigenous people, killing two of them. Aty Guasu reported 29 wounded who were “tortured inside hospitals by the police.”
These crimes were not reported in the national press. They went unnoticed by millions of viewers. And what the media did show was that the Indigenous people were responsible for their own deaths. They were “invading private property.” The bodies and lives of the Guarani—whether Mbyá, Ñandeva, or Kaiowa—are not important in the eyes of the State. In Mato Grosso do Sul, the Guarani are cornered, surrounded by soy and poison on all sides; along the roads, in their camps. Their houses of worship are constantly burned and their bodies violated. They suffer from the absence of public policies (education, health); from hunger.
In 2013, a socioeconomic and nutritional study, with a human rights approach, conducted by FIAN, demonstrated that the food insecurity index, which measures the difficulty in accessing food in adequate quantity and quality, was 100% among the Kaiowa. Three years later, in 2016, a delegation from the National Council for Food and Nutritional Security (CONSEA), with representatives from the federal government and civil society, visited the Guarani and Kaiowa indigenous communities in seven municipalities of Michoacán, with the aim of providing a space to listen to the communities (in camps and reserves) regarding violations of the Human Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition (DHANA) and territorial rights, as well as to discuss with public agencies the challenges and proposals for guaranteeing these rights.
The reclaiming of ancestral territories consists of the process of recovering, by Indigenous peoples themselves, areas they once occupied but which are now in the possession of non-Indigenous people. These are collectively developed political actions. Throughout the country, from north to south, these reclaimings have taken place due to the State's failure to guarantee constitutional rights (articles 231 and 232), which have been violently repressed by the State. The reasons for these reclaimings are varied and are not limited solely to forms of political pressure for the State to demarcate lands. They represent the reaffirmation of ethnic identities that have been denied, erased, and rendered invisible, allowing Indigenous peoples to be seen as political subjects in order to guarantee the rights enshrined in the 1988 Federal Constitution.[1]; to guarantee the continuity of a people; the reconnection with the ancestors, “with the spirits of the forest and nature, with the meaning of our life for ourselves and for our world”[2].
The Guarani people are intrinsically linked to the land, which is not merely an object. Their relationships with Nature and all the beings that inhabit it, and the way they engage with it, are imprinted upon it. The loss of land—territory—manifests itself in physical and spiritual illnesses for them. Territorial recovery actions are a way of healing their ancestral territory (Alarcon, 2019).[3]
[1] https://cimi.org.br/2022/04/retomada-indigena-maranhao/
[2] https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2021/11/14/retomadas-em-todo-o-pais-indigenas-ocupam-suas-terras-ancestrais-ainda-que-sob-ataque
[3] References: Alarcon, Daniela Fernandes. The return of earth. As resumed in the village of Tupinambá in the Serra do Padeiro, south of Bahia. São Paulo: Elefante, 2019.
CONSEA. Tekoha: direitos dos Povos Guarani e Kaiowá: visit of the Consea to Mato Grosso do Sul. – Brasília: Presidency of the Republic, 2017.
FIAN Brazil. The human direction to adequate food and nutrition of Guarani and Kaiowá people: a holistic approach. Brasilia. 2016.
June 28th, 2022
CLACSO Working Group
Epistemologies of the South
NuSUR (South-south core of postcolonial studies, performances, Afrodiasporic identities and feminisms) IDAES/National University of San Martín
This statement expresses the position of the aforementioned Working Group and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.
