The bloody colonization, that decimated a great part of the indigenous population, also dispersed the communities and reduced in a drastic way the size of the indigenous territories. Because of this the Guarani people are far away from their tekoha, confined in small parts of land, or even worse, without any land at all.
With the lands invaded, the Guarani people of the whole Continent see farmers and multinationals profit by the exploration of the natural resources of their territories, harvesting billionaires crops of soy, cane and cellulose, taking ores and privatising the nature for tourism, while they live in situations classified by international organisms as genocide.
In spite of being the largest indigenous population in Brazil, it is also one entitled less recognized by the State, mainly their right for land. There is an average of less than half a hectare for each Guarani. Throughout Brazil, they still lack 95% of the traditional Guarani lands to be recognized.
Without having lands to cultivate and from where to remove their alimentation, only from 2003 to 2005, the Guarani people saw 183 of their children under five years die, due to malnutrition. The highest number among the indigenous peoples in Brazil.Living in improvised huts besides the highway or confined in small parts of lands, episodes of every type of violence explode. The cases that got more attention are the murders and suicides in Mato Grosso do Sul.
Survey of the Missionary Council on Indigenous Issues (CIMI) from 2003 to 2005 counted 68 suicides; according to anthropological studies these suicides are also linked to the lack of land and perspective for life of the younger people. In this period 60 murders were registered among the Guarani.
The murders, in general, are deaths of leaders ordered by farmers and internal conflicts among the Guarani, who disputes the leadership of the communities and the small parts of land where they live. These conflicts are stimulated by economical interests of groups of invaders, occupying the traditional lands of the people Guarani and refusing to leave those.
The Guarani teachers have an important role in the current process of the fight of the Guarani. It is them that help to interpret the involving world and to form, through intercultural education, new leaders, conscious of their history, culture and rights guaranteed in the Federal Constitution.
In Brazil, the Guarani use traditional ways of organization in their fight for rights. The re-takings of the lands are made with participation of the whole community. Many times the women, because they are in daily life most affected by the needs due to lack of land (like the child malnutrition), lead the struggle for land.
Everywhere where they are, the Guarani are tireless in their resistance to stay in their territories, like the re-takings of the lands Morro dos Cavalos in the state Santa Catarina, Nhanderu Marangatu in Mato Grosso do Sul and the Tupinikim/Guarani in Espírito Santo.“Our lands are invaded, our lands are taken, our territories are decreased, (and) we don't have any longer conditions to survive. We want to tell Your Sanctity about our misery and about our sadness for the leaders that have been murdered frigidly by those that take our land. Land, that represents for us the life and survival in this great Brazil, called a Christian country.”
“Santo Padre, we place a great hope and trust in your visit to our country. Take our shouts, our voice, with you to other territories that are not ours, so that the people listen to us, a more human population struggles for us, because our people, our indigenous nation, is disappearing in Brazil.”
Speech by Marçal Tupã-i to Pope John Paulo II, in 1980, in Manaus. Important Guarani leader in the fight for land, who was murdered three years later in the Marangatu area, in the state Mato Grosso do Sul, by gunmen of a farm. Until today nobody was punished for the crime, nor the Marangatu area for which Marçal was fighting, has been recognized definitively by the Brazilian State.
