The Guarani Kaiowá in Brazil

The violence in the areas with an indigenous population in Brazil was also very widespread in the year 2006. A provisional survey by the Indian missionary council CIMI shows that at least 40 native inhabitants died a violent death, 20 of whom alone in the federal state of Mato Grosso do Sul. This federal state has for a long time been the hub of violence against the Indian population. The main reason lies in the unclarified land rights. Nowhere else in Brazil do the indigenous people own so little land.

The Guarani Kaiowá:

The situation is worst for the 37,000 Guarani Kaiowá. In 64 of their 87 territories the process of officially recognizing their land (demarcation) has not even begun. The majority of all Brazilian Kaiowá live today in the territories officially assigned to them in the south of the federal state of Mato Grosso do Sul, of which eight are government Indian reserves. The provinces under the control of the Kaiowá are the smallest, poorest and most densely populated indigenous areas of Brazil. They stand out with their malnutrition, illness, dirt, violence and alcoholism. Infant mortality has risen in recent years as a result of the increasing shortage of food.

One particularly disturbing phenomenon is also the increasing number of suicides among the Guarani. Since the late eighties there has been an increase in the number of suicides among young people. The reasons for the despair of the young people are varied and partly closely connected with their traditional culture. It is for example part of the world view of the Guarani that they received the mission from their ancestors to search for a "land without evil", in which to live. Since they cannot find this land in this life an increasing number of them decide to find their fortune in another life. So between January 2001 and July 2003 alone the government health authority registered 132 Guarani suicides.

Also very disturbing is the enormous increase in the number of acts of violence perpetrated by members of indigenous peoples amongst themselves. In Mato Grosso do Sul they were responsible for 10 of the 20 murders known to date in this state. Lack of land and a correspondingly insecure basis of life result in poverty and misery, but also despair and hopelessness. If the tensions inside a community become too large, according to the findings of the CIMI, these are then channelled into fights, alcoholism and also in murder within the communities.

The Brazilian government must at last take action!

In the view of the Society for Threatened Peoples it is essential that the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promptly and resolutely guarantees the land rights of all the 235 indigenous peoples and protects the areas concerned against the illegal entry of timber concerns, cattle breeders or soy planters. The government must at last take the dramatic situation seriously in the areas of the indigenous inhabitants and abide by its obligations laid down in the convention 169 of the International Labour Office ILO, which it ratified in July 2002: Full guarantee of the human rights and basic freedoms, implementation of the right to shape one´s own future, cultural identity and communal structures and traditions, land and resources, employment and suitable conditions of work, training and access to means of communication, participation in the making of decisions affecting these peoples and equality before the administration and the law.