Stop killing us. Indigenous lives matter
The last 20 days – better to say, last four years – have been very sad and sad for the indigenous people and for those who get involved, think, elaborate and interact with them. In 2018, the current president of the Republic, in the political campaign in the city of Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul, said: “It is assumed that [the Presidency of Brazil] will not have more than one centimeter for indigenous land.” (Dourados (MS), 02/08/2018) Dito e feito: paralisou as demarcações de terra e vem attempting to liberate, facilitate, “passar a boiada” and approve legal norms in the National Congress, to allow mining, leasing, soybeans, livestock, religious missões in native territories. Since then, we have not had a day of peace!
The year 2022 began with terrifying news, in April it was reported that two Yanomami girls were raped, one dead and one missing, in one of the indigenous lands most threatened by garimpo, located between the states of Amazonas and Roraima, in the Amazon (Yanomami Indigenous Land). Recently, on June 05, indigenous man Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Philips were brutally killed in two many meanders that are formed along the Itacoaí River, in the Javari Valley, also in the Amazon. These various crimes reveal the total absence of the Brazilian State for the indigenous peoples of Nature. Crimes like esses do not exist now, they will always exist. In Mato Grosso do Sul, for decades, centuries, women and men Guarani Kaiowa have been cruelly murdered people who have their name and righted it – or the State, by its police, and farmers – for retaking its traditionally occupied lands.
According to the female leadership that found two bodies of Guarani without life – as “guts for the future”, as well as physicality with Bruno and Dom – the attacks began at 4am on the 6th day, June 24, and continued until 16pm. There were shots from all sides, by helicopter (helicopter) and on the ground. A note from Aty Guasu (Jun 24, 2022) records that police mixed with gunmen foram ao Tekoa Gwapo'y Mi Tujury, in the municipality of Amambai, to make the reintegration of the posse, without presenting any official document and without any mandate or judicial document that commits to the operation and a new year of força descabível to attack the indigenous people and kill two of them. Aty Guasu counted 29 injured people who were “tortured inside two hospitals by police.”
These crimes are not reported by the national press on the night. Passou unnoticed for thousands of viewers. What communication vehicles show is that indigenous people are responsible for their own deaths. They were “invading private property.” I do not teach “Violência, mourning, politics”. Judith Butler asks: "...what counts as human? Quais lives as lives? [...] or what grants a life to be passível of mourning" (2020, p.40). The author teaches us that human lives and their physical bodies are connected in some years, are interdependent, and are physically vulnerable in some years. She argues that “the mourning provides a sense of political community of a complex order, primarily to trace the relational ties that imply theorization of fundamental dependence and ethical responsibility” (ibid, p.41). In affirming that the bodies are physically vulnerable in other years, Butler traces the light to violence, seen as “a way to expose, in a more terrifying way, the primary human vulnerability to other human beings” (2020, p. 49). And, in this sense, we need to pay attention to the fact that certain human lives are more vulnerable than others. Certain lives are protected and others annulled. The lives annulled are only those seen as “unreasonable,” not to mention Butler. Violence against these lives and bodies is permitted and not worthy of mourning.
The Guarani bodies and lives – like Mbyá, Ñandeva, Kaiowa – are not important in the eyes of the State. In the words of a leader Mbyá Guarani, “a nação Guarani is the largest part of America […] we are supported by five countries: Paraguai, Uruguay, Argentina, Bolívia and Brazil. […] we are the least demarcated, regularized land” (May 2021). The Guarani are cross-border, they do not recognize the borders created by the National States, and they continue to identify themselves as a unique population on any side that this border is. The large Guarani territory is a wide space of mobility, intertwined with social organization, and there is constant communication between people through a wide network of kinship relationships. Not “foreign, Paraguayan Indians” as anti-indigenous social allegations.
In Mato Grosso do Sul the Guarani are trapped, surrounded by soy and poison on all sides; On the margins of the roads, in camps. Their prayer houses were repeatedly burned and their bodies violated. We suffer from public policies (education, health); de fome. In 2013, a socioeconomic and nutritional investigation, with a human rights approach, carried out by FIAN demonstrated that the food insecurity index, which measures the difficulty of accessing food in adequate quantity and quality, was 100% among the Kaiowa. Three years later, in 2016, a delegation from the National Food and Nutrition Safety Council (Consea), with representatives of the federal government and civil society, visited the Guarani and Kaiowa indigenous communities, in seven MS municipalities, with the objective of ensuring safe space for the communities (camps and reserves), on Occurrences of violation of the Human Rights of Adequate Food and Nutrition (DHANA) and territorial rights, as well as how to debate with public bodies the challenges and proposals to guarantee these rights.
The retaking of native territories consists of a process of recovery, of indigenous peoples themselves, of areas occupied by them and found in the possession of non-indigenous people. Only political actions developed collectively. The country's capacity, from North to South, has been taken up in view of the failure of the State to guarantee constitutional rights (art. 231 and 232). They have been violently repressed by the State. The reasons for these retakes vary, and are not limited to forms of political pressure for the demarcation of land by the State. I say respect for the reaffirmation of ethnic identities that are denied, extinguished, made invisible, allowing them to be seen as political subjects, as a way of guaranteeing express rights in the Federal Constitution of the City of 1988.[1]; guarantee continuity of work; to reconnect with our ancestors, “as the spirits of life and nature, as the meaning of our life for ourselves and for our world”[2].
The Guarani are intrinsically linked to the earth, which is not a mere object. It is impressed by the relationships with Nature and with all the beings that inhabit it and the way we are involved with it. The loss of land – territory, is revealed in physical and spiritual gifts at first. As territorial recovery actions are a way to heal 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.
BUTLER, Judith. Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. 2020.
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.
