05/02/2009 – 19:10 – Newsletter n. 852: III Guarani Continental Encounter highlights lack of lands for the indigenous of southern Brazil

 

The lack of land for the Guarani communities in the southern states of Brazil was the main question debated in the III Continental Encounter of the Guarani, occurring between February 5 and 7, in São Gabriel, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. About 150 Guarani participated in the event, which recalled the massacre of Guarani leader Sepé Tiaraju, 252 years ago.

 

Indigenous leaders of the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná were present at the meeting. The Guarani from the region will debate the principle problems that affect them, with emphasis on the territorial question. “Some families are living on the side of the road for lack of land, with risk of the people being run over”, warns the leader Maurício Guarani, of the Estiva land, in Viamão, Rio Grande do Sul.

 

As a result of this encounter, the Indigenous intend to pressure the National Foundation of the Indian (Funai) for the creation of new Working Groups (Grupos de Trabalho, or GT) for identification of land. Recently the Guarani won the creation of one GT to identify three lands in Rio Grande do Sul. On February 6 representatives of Funai, Federal Public Ministry and National Foundation of Health (Funasa) will hear the indigenous demands.

 

The participants of the Encounter also intend to organize, still in 2009, a reunion with the Guarani of Argentina and Paraguay to intensify the continental articulation of the people, initiated in 2006 in the first Continental Guarani Encounter.

 

In memory of Sepé

On February 7, the pajés celebrated the memory of Sepé Tiaraju. He led the Guarani uprising of the Seven Peoples of the Missions against Treaty of the Limits between Spain and Portugal, which expulsed the indigenous to the other side of the Uruguay River. Sepé was killed in 1756 in the place today known as Sanga da Bica, located within the city of São Gabriel. Three days later, more than 1500 Guarani were massacred by invading armies in the place known today as Coxilha do Caiboaté.

 

“This is an important moment to reflect upon in our history, our struggle, our people”, explains Maurício. According to the leader, since the 1^st Continental Encounter of the Guarani, in 2006, there have already been important advances such as the creation of the Commission of Guarani Lands and the increased dialogue with Funai about the lands of the Guarani people.

 

 

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05/02/2009 – 17:56 – Adão Pretto: troubadour of the future

 

The Missionary Indigenist Counsel (CIMI), in fraternity with the other entities of Via Campasina and with social militants of all the nation, profoundly lament the loss, this mornng, February 5, of our fellow Adão Pretto, federal deputy for the Workers Party of Rio Grande do Sul and one of the founders of the National Movement of the Rural Landless Workers (MST).

 

Born in the city of Coronel Bicaco (Rio Grande do Sul, RS), in 1945, raised in Miraguaí (RS), Adão Pretto participated in the Church Base Communities (CEBs), of the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT), was president of the Union of Rural Workers of Miraguaí and founder of Central Ünica dos Trabalhadores (CUT) in the state. In 1991 he was elected federal deputy for the first time and, currently, was exercising his fifth consecutive term. Adão Pretto left a wife and and nine sons – and an infinity of men and women among fellows and friends.

 

In 2008 he presided over the Commission on Participatory Legislation (CLP), in the House of Deputies, where space was opened for the participation, in that House, of the social grass roots movements, indigenous peoples, quilombolas, women and many other sectors, receiving denunciations about the criminalization of the movements and their leaders, debating their problems, listening to their demands and delivering their proposals for a truly plural, just and democratic  society.

 

Adão Pretto was an example of integrity and coherence. When he spoke, it was possible only to listen and agree, because he expressed always the concrete truth lived by the people in the field. And he spoke with shining eyes, with a serene certainty of one who was only a spokesman of something much greater: the hard history, the quotidian life, the sufferings and the hopes of an entire people.

 

And Adão was a poet. He wrote and recited verse, in the great assemblies and marches with rural agrarians, poems that razed the latifúndio, that explained the injustices and that announced a better world, created from the struggles of the working men and women, a just world.

 

                                                            ****

 

Brasília, 5 de fevereiro de 2009

Cimi – Conselho Indigenista Missionário