Police, prison, court, judge, penal code, latinorum. These institutions rarely punish crimes committed against indigenous peoples. Because of this, the Guarani have no confidence in the justice of the whites. Known as the ‘theologians of the forest’, they believe only in prayer – porahei, from which they draw their strength and organization. Before an altar in a house in Pirajú, Mato Grosso do Sul, they produce the penetration sound of mimby –  a wind instrument, they dance jeroky and intone sacred canticles, repeating thousands of times, without stopping, as in a litany recital: – Ore roimé nderehe’y! Ore roimé nderehe’ym…

 

In English this means: “We miss you”. The prayer is in a language the appeals court judges ignore, but that the Nhanderu (Our Father) understands very well, because Guarani is the language of faith, for praying, singing, praise. In prayer they converse with Nhanderu and with the spirit of the Guarani teachers – Rolindo Verá and Genivaldo Verá – murdered by gunmen in Paranhos (MS), on the frontier with Paraguay.

 

The absence of the two teachers was felt in the first National Conference on Indigenous Education, convened between Nov 16-20 in Luziânia, on the periphery of Brasilia, when they were honored with a moment of silence by more than 700 participants who discussed the organization of a responsible educational system, today, for more than 2700 indigenous schools throughout Brazil. In one of them, with more than 480 students, the children feel the absence of their teachers and they also pray: Ore roimé nderehe’ym.

 

The last lesson

 

Why are indigenous people armed only with chalk and eraser murdered? The question was posed to Guarani professor Avá Guyrapá Mirim, attending the Conference. He was friend of Genivaldo and Rolindo and their colleague in the Adriano Pires Municipal School. He said that on October 29 they were with the group that tried to retake the indigenous land Tekohá Ypo’í, where their grandparents are buried and that today is called the Fazenda São Luís, occupied by the landowner Firmino Escobar. This was the last class they taught.

 

With this class, they taught a lesson written with their own blood: the indigenous people need to struggle for their rights. Circa 3,000 Guarani today live surrounded in the village of Pirajú – a small area of 2,118 hectares. Because of this, for the past two years, they have been seeking, in the Justice system, the possession of ancestral territory of which they were robbed. But process does not move because the titleholders threaten the technical groups from the National Foundation for Indigenous Affairs (FUNAI), charged with completing the identification studies for demarcation, and also by pressuring the governor of the state, André Puccinelli (PMDB – Party of the Brazil Democratic Movement,vixe, vixe!)

 

The entry of the Guarani into the indigenous area occupied by the fazenda sought only to accelerate the anthropological study, which represents the only way to prevent the conflicts, because it determines which are and are not indigenous areas. However, gunmen expulsed the indigenous peoples: “They arrived shooting rubber bullets. They knocked the people to ground, beat and kicked them yelling: Here the land is not for bugres, this land is owned”.

 

Prevented in this way from honoring their dead who are buried there, the Guarani dispersed into the forest. Nearly all returned to the village of Pirajú, with injuries and hematomas on their bodies; minus the two teachers who were disappeared. On November 7, the cadaver of one of them, Genivaldo, was found in the Ypo’í creek, wound around the branch of a tree, with two perforations in his body. The other, as of today, still has not been located.

 

The indigenous people delivered a document to the Ministério Público Federal (MPF), reported yesterday, November 21, in the virtual community ‘indigenous literature’, by Guarani Chamirin Kuati Verá, denouncing “the armed violence of the  farmers” and indicated to the prosecutor Thiago dos Santos de Luz the names of the criminals: Joanelse Pinheiro, Toninho and Blanco. While they await the response, they chant and pray Ore roimé nderehe’ym.

 

The farewell

 

What follows was told by Avá Guyrapá Mirim, in conversation during the breaks at the National Conference on Indigenous Education in Luziânia. He asked that his Portuguese name not be published to avoid reprisals. He provided more information.

 

Genivaldo, 21 years old, married, father of one child, taught communications sciences. His cousin, Rolindo, 28, with four children, was a forth grade teacher. Both were concluding the Ará Verá Guarani-Kaiowá Masters Course. Their respective wives were both in advanced stages of pregnancy. One day, they visited the graves of their grandparents, within the farm, and began to dream of recovering the land to live there with their families. One of Rolindos daughters, 10 years old, accompanied the father on the visit to the grave and on the retaking of the land.

 

In a message written on a page in the notebook, in Portuguese, his second language, Rolindo described himself: “I am a Guarani indian, a person of many questions, I like to hear the elders, the counselors, the stories of the lives of the elder people brought from the time that the fazendeiros arrived in the place which they inhabited. To be happy today, all of these thoughts, which is our reality need to be registered or written on paper so that the children are able to at least hear, to remember or fully master it”. The quote was part of a banner denouncing his death.

 

 His Guarani Kaiowá teaching colleagues wrote a message of farewell, read in the Conference in which they said: “The two disappeared. They will not live in the lands that they wanted to live in, they will no longer produce gardens to feed their children, they will no longer educate their children, they will no longer dance quaxiré (Guarani ritual feast), they will not create new prayers, they will not be Tamõi (grandparents/elders). They will not see the law fulfilled. Because much, much more is delayed by the bullet that took their lives”.

 

The Silence

 

What is still surprising is the shocking silence, nearly complete, in the national media, about the murder of the Guarani teachers as much as regarding the National Conference on Indigenous Education, which drafts directives for indigenous schools, in an event in Brasilia, opened by the Minister of Education Fernando Haddad, with the presence of hundreds of indigenous peoples, speaking scores of different languages. If this is not news, I do not know what journalism is.

 

The Conference approved creation of what are referred to as “ethno-educational territories”, which reorganizes bilingual and intercultural school education in new bases, respecting the territoriality of the indigenous peoples. As to Guarani territory, below is transcription of the words of Avá Guyrapá Mirim, from our conversation:

 

“We are going to continue to struggle for the land that is already in our spirit, we believe in the force of prayer, in the dance, in the chant. Our greatest hope now is Nhanderu, who is going to orient us and give force for recuperating the land. The two died, but the dream of the Guarani never disappears”.

 

The Brazil of generosity and solidarity needs to manifest its indignation, demanding the punishment of the criminals and supporting the struggle of the Guarani for recuperation of their lands. The voices of Brazil in solidarity need to suffocate the truculence of the other Brazil: the Brazil of cowardice, the indifferent Brazil, the cynical Brazil, the Brazil of omission, the Brazil that continues to treat the indigenous population in a colonialistic way.

 

According to information from Avá Guyrapá Mirim, eight days after the murder of Rolindo, his wife, pregnant, gave birth to a son. One week later, Genivaldo’s wife brought a child into the light. The two orphans, still unnamed, bring a message of hope, that the Guarani people will not be swept from the face of the earth.