Assuming momentarily the tendency to narrate life as a theater scene, I also propose an image, by which to establish a brief dialogue: in the scene imagined, if possible to see a familiar place, a recollection from our infancy, with sounds, smells, colors, forms that we immediately recognize. In this place we feel sheltered and secure because we are at home!  Feeling the absence of this, the will to return and partake of the peace that it sustained are sentiments that perhaps assault us, in a devastating way, if we have been living now in precarious and unsustainable conditions. But, what if this place, which is our refuge, has been unduly occupied or incorporated in a territory of a neighboring country? Causing us to become strangers in the land in which we were born? And if we decide to return, will we then be invaders?

Toward a media–savvy perspective

This might seem strange to us, but it is a perspective similar to that glimpsed today by the Guarani-Kaiowá of the traditionally occupied lands in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but which, for historic reasons, that can only be explained by relations of power, were broken into parcels, sold and unduly titled. In these lands, the refuge of the indigenous peoples, places of wellbeing, places where their ancestors lived and where the spirits protect them, the Guarani are considered intruders, invaders, strangers. Their presence, scattered between more than 20 encampments at the sides of roads and highways, serve to remind us that someone seized the lands that were theirs and “legally” established fences and divisions on them, but that expropriation is neither forgotten, nor does it eliminate the right of the Guarani to struggle for recovering them.

These are fragments of the traditional lands that the Guarani-Kaiowá reclaim in a struggle that is not just beginning, but began decades ago, when they started the long and punishing journey in search of a right that they were denied by means of official policies of all of the governments, including the present government. In these uncertain times painted over with media resources, the Lula government treats the serious land problems as minor questions and proposes palliative and assistance measures to ameliorate the marks of indigenous suffering. Thus it deals with the symptoms so as not to have to confront the causes of this social injustice.

If we go back to construction of that image of the “good place to live”, in which we feel safe and secure, we will understand the reasons for the retaking made nearly two years ago by the Guarani-Kaiowá families, of the village of Laranjeira Ñanderu. We are able to feel, with them, the desire for the assurance of life and future for the more than 60 children who compose this community. However, on September 9, these families were surprised with the court order for reintegration of possession to the title-holder, and with it the immediate dispossession. Without alternatives, they returned to live at the edge of BR-163, near the municipality of Rio Brilhante. The families transported part of their belongings on bicycles, nearly four kilometers, and were not permitted to return for what was left behind, because the title holder, a farmer, closed the access gate and gave orders to prevent the transit of the indigenous peoples.

Contextualizing terrorization

It was then that, terrorized, on September 14, the Guarani watched the burning of the homes they had constructed, the animals and belongings they were arbitrarily prevented from rescuing. As a form of threat employed by the farmers, they drive around in their cars, at high speeds, near the tents where the indigenous families are camped, generating apprehension and fear. As if this were not sufficient, they are now impeding them from getting water in a river situated outside of the farm.

Unfortunately, occurrences like this are routine in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul and there has been no decisive action on the part of the Ministry of Justice, in the sense of cohibiting the violence and aggressions being practiced. In the early morning hours of September 18, the Guarani Kaiowá community of Apika’y also saw moments of horror, when approximately 10 armed men, on orders of the farmers, burned their homes while they slept. One Guarani was injured in the leg, struck by a bullet, and several women who left in desperation were attacked, punched and kicked.

Acts such as these cannot be allowed in a democratic state, which should act in defense of life. How can the public powers permit the Guarani Kaiowá to again be placed at the sides of the highways and a policy of terrorization be established against them? It must at least be remembered that the Federal Constitution defines, as responsibility of the State, the life and protection of the indigenous peoples and all of their belongings (Art. 231).

In the cases reported here, the technical studies to verify the traditionality of the lands were begun in 2008, but were suspended by a court order by appeals court judge Luiz Stefanini, of the Tribunal Regional Federal, 3^rd Region, on 4 August of 2009. The court decision, which benefited the regional economic and political sectors that seek to make unviable those technical studies for recognition and confirmation of Guarani lands in Mato Grosso do Sul, were later reinstated by the 1^st circuit of the TRF-3, which determined for the resumption of the works of the technical groups.

Media jargon feeds extermination policy

Unfortunately, in hardly competent and impartial acts, some communications media still repeat the jargon of excess that “it is a lot of land for a few indians”, reiterated by those who have economic interests over the areas of these peoples. But, specifically in Mato Grosso do Sul, where the second largest indigenous population in Brazil lives, “much land” is an expression that applies to farmers and large land owners who have title to the best areas. The indigenous peoples, especially the Guarani-Kaiowá are confined in small parcels of land, the reserve of Dourados for example, where 13 thousand persons live on 3.6 thousand hectares. Under these circumstances, it is possible to speak in terms of a deliberate extermination policy, in view of the fact that the indigenous population lives there, submitted to delay, omission, violence and to inhuman conditions that transform their daily life into a field of aggravated disputes and a scenario of continuous violence.

For the Guarani, when a situation is shown to be unsustainable, it is necessary to move forward, in a continuous path that joins the material with the spiritual. One of the ways of moving forward appears to be suicide, practiced by 147 of the Kaiowa Guarani between the years of 2003 and 2008. Suicide marks the impossibility of glimpsing, in this life, the conditions adequate for living with dignity and facing this, some opt for continuing to a world where they do not have to suffer. Another attitude that demonstrates the way of being Guarani is mobility. In this way, they come to live in encampments, which need to be transitional shelters until they arrive in the place in which wellbeing is effected, that is, in the traditional lands that they yearn to win back. But that which should be provisional is prolonged indefinitely, swallowed by burocracy of the governmental agencies responsible for identifying and demarcating the lands or by magistrates who partially grant the right to decide over the life and destiny of the peoples and communities. In Mato Grosso do Sul hundreds of Kaiowá Guarani families live in encampments, without any type of protection, without the basic resources for survival and, even worse, without the support of the government and society, when they take the initiative to occupy a part of their traditional lands.

Budgeted funds pilfered

The inefficacy of the government is often times justified by lack of financial resources for the demarcation of the indigenous lands. This is one more fallacy and reveals lack of political will to resolve the situation in an agile manner, once budgetary designation of resources is provided to the interests involved under each rubric. In the Lula administration for example, there are resources to finance the projects of the Accelerated Growth Program (PAC), or for saving banks and private companies in moments of crisis (currently it is worth noting of extremely poor management, as well as much corruption), while the resources for the demarcation of indigenous lands are pilfered, as are budgets designated for health policies, education, social security for the majority of the Brazilian population that live in precarious social conditions.

Selective elimination by media image

In this world of images that we are habituated to glimpse by means of the lens of sophisticated cameras and by ever more subtle technological recourse, there being no place for the cruel reality being lived by the Guarani –Kaiowá. In an individualized society, according to Bauman, we order the things of our life as does a gardener who selects the plants for his garden and eliminates those he considers “damaging plants”. In the state of Mato Grosso do Sul the Guarani Kaiowa are seen as “damaging plants” – it is irrefutable that they were there before the current “gardens of the latifundios” were even imagined and that, so that the planned “gardeners of progress” become concrete, they were banished or expulsed from the lands and today continue to be continually eliminated – physically and socially.

The slow and gradual death of the Guarani Kaiowa has been promoted by means of both physical violence and symbolic violence, while their social rights are denied relegating them to marginalized conditions. They are positioned at the margin of the system of domination and in this way, become “invisible”, in their tents improvised at the side of the highways, as are also other invisible segments considered “residue”.

We look at them, but we do not see because they do not satisfy a vision accustomed to the purity of the media image. In the context of social policies they disappear from the field of vision, melting into the landscape, the only place they now have the right to occupy. So near to us, and at the same time, so distant, the Guarani-Kaiowá and their interminable martyrdom is not made part of the urgent roles of the current government, because this preferred to link itself to the sectors that traditionally promote the exclusion and violence against the indigenous peoples in Brazil.

While impunity prevails, the Guarani and many other peoples will be terrorized and disrespected in this country. Meanwhile, the president of the republic spends public resources on trips designated to inaugurate works not yet begun, as occurred in Sapucaia do Sul (Rio Grande do Sul). The Minister of Justice, Tarso Genro, who was due to have been making provisions to take care of the violence practiced against the indigenous communities, also occupied the platform. The reason for his presence unknown, but that it dealt with the solemnity of the launch of a highway project. For this event, the television media and writers dedicated generous space in their newspapers and news. Yet for the indigenous peoples…

Iara Tatiana Bonin, PhD, Education

Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul