04/11/2009 – Circa 50 Guarani occupy Funai offices in Passo Fundo
The encampment is located at the edge of the railroad tracks that link Passo Fundo to Marcelino Ramos, in the municipality of Erebango, north of Rio Grande do Sul. They live in a precarious situation with little food, firewood and total absence of infrastructure to meet intemperate weather. The children must dislocate to the municipal seat of Erebango to attend school. Health care is sought at the health post of the same municipality. The community faces many difficulties because the survival of the families depends on food assistance programs. There have been cases of malnutrition among the children.
The community is small, though cohesive and fully aware of the traditionality of the Guarani territory, thus they are untied and strengthened in the struggle through mysticism, which maintains access to the call for hope in demarcating of the 4,019 hectares identified by the anthropological study. The children, together with the teacher have already chosen a name for the community: “Tekohá Arandú Verá” (The Brilliance of Wisdom).
On the other side, the administrative process of demarcation has hardly advanced. It has been delayed. There have been attempts to reduce the Guarani land to 223 hectares and there is strong resistance, from the responsible agencies themselves, in demarcating the studied land. Nonetheless the Guarani remain firm in their demand. The Funai is under legal obligation to have published the detailed report by September of 2009, however the Guarani have yet to obtain a response. It is for this reason that the Guarani community of Mato Preto undertook the mobilization action demanding their rights.
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Guarani Campaign in RS: PAC projects threaten survival of Guarani Mbyá
An important meeting of the Mbyá Guarani was held from October 5 to 7 in the village Tekohá Porã to discuss the effects of the widening of the highway BR-116, which impacts 12 communities. The meeting also raised the opportunity to talk about the campaign “Guarani People, A Great People”.
The symbols of Mbyá resistance, which extend along the existing 60-mile stretch of highway, are represented in part by numerous small displays of extraordinarily beautiful artisan crafts. The sale of this work is a primary source of subsistence income for the villages and encampments.
The villages impacted are Tekoha Porã (Coxilha da Cruz), Jataitý (Cantagalo), Nhundy (Estiva), Arasaty (Petim), Nhu Poty (Passo grande 1); Varzinha; Lami; Agua Grande; Anhetenguá (Lomba do Pinheiro), Irapuã, Pacheca and Passo Grande 2.
The purpose of the meeting was to gather the communities, leaders and indigenous support organizations to decide on a form of resistance and struggle in facing impacts that are already a reality.
Laws and promises not fulfilled
The slated highway expansion from Guaíba to Pelotas would affect not only the encampments, but also the villages awaiting demarcation of traditional territory, the life and future of the families in this area located approximately one hour from Porto Alegre. The contractor responsible for the project is the National Department of Infrastructure and Transport (DNIT) and is already in the licensing phase. This in itself marks a direct impact, in that there had been no concrete response from either the FUNAI or the DNIT to the Guarani that satisfy the land concerns.
Already impacted by the rapid expansion of large estates raising cattle, as well as eucalyptus and rice monoculture plantations, the biodiversity of the traditional lands is fast losing its exuberance traditionally stewarded and sacred to the Mbyá. The pressures represented by highly capitalized industrial agriculture and large estates become incursions into these various biomes known as ‘tekohá guasu’ (Mbyá Guarani traditional territories). The federal Program for Accelerated Growth (PAC) of the Lula administration implementing projects like the widening of the highway, introduce a situation of extreme gravity. Many of the approximately 2, 500 Mbya Guarani in the region survive in encampments in constant battle for their constituent rights to prior and informed consultation and Constitutional rights as set forth in Article 231 of the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988.
With the government failure to engage the right to prior and informed consultation as established by the Convention 169 of the UN ILO, the Guarani are increasingly forced into situations of dependency on state programs. This in turn has repercussions in racist derision of the fact of dependency and in some regions a rationalization for violence on the part of powerful interests opposed to indigenous rights. In years past, one researcher had warned of the ‘politics of the consummate fact’. This denial of rights illustrates part of the institutionalized political mechanism active in cases of ethnocide and genocide. There had been no consideration of the social and environmental costs to the land areas traditionally occupied by the Mbyá in the environmental impact report, despite common knowledge of the existence of the Mbyá Guarani presence.
The 3 day October meeting included representatives from 12 villages and encampments, the presence of Funai representatives, and sectors that support indigenous peoples such as the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), the Centro de Trabalho Indigenista (CTI) and the Federal Public Ministry. The struggle for land organization among the indigenous people seek to prevent a great and irreversible impact for themselves and the environment
One proposal from the Guarani was to purchase the land requiring no less than 100 hectares for each community. The DNIT was opposed to the proposal, which would lead to limits imposing untold suffering of the Mbyá. On the other hand, the presence of the Technical Working Groups engaged in the land studies for demarcation raises an institutional obstacle. Supposedly, it is not possible to purchase land in traditional territories that are the object of the identification process.
Therefore the Mbyá Guarani groups call for a definitive response on the land question. They also decided to not permit the advance of the highway project along the 60 kilometer stretch of BR116 where there is the presence of the indigenous villages and encampments, without there being resolution of the central claim which is that of territorial restitution.
Resistance and Impacts
Mauricio da Silva Gonçalves, coordinator of the Council of Articulation of the People of the Guarani Mbyá (CAPG), pointed out that the struggle by his people for demarcation of the traditional lands is large and that it is not just in Rio Grande do Sul. They face the same problems in six southern coastal states of Brazil. “We have a broader articulation in the National Commission of Guarani Lands Yvy Rupa, and for fifteen years we have been struggling for our land because the Mbyá are forgotten by the government. The Funai forgot that the Mbyá people exist. Now we are struggling for recuperation of our lands and here in RS we have 22 villages that need to be recognized and demarcated”, the leader stated. He also pointed out that the Mbyá do not practice a politics of direct confrontation and this has prevented a great deal of violence, but they know that the estate owners are powerful and that they are opposed to demarcation.
Leader Santiago Franco noted that the widening of BR-116 would lead to “more destruction for the Mbyá people”. He said that the enterprises in indigenous lands destroy the spaces for living, the forests and the water springs. And that they also effect the encampments, the villages, and the sources of subsistence of the Mbyá-Guarani people.
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