Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Mato Grosso do Sul
+ INDIGENIST MISSIONARY COUNCIL - CIMI
Kaiowá Guarani and Terena indigenous lands, until the end of the
1970s. Faced with the expulsion of the last indigenous groups from
deep within the large scale land holdings of the fazendas, known
as areas of refuge, and of the total omission by the government
in demarcating and guaranteeing the traditional lands of this
people, their tekoha, the only remaining option for the expulsed
communities was the retaking of these lands by their own initiative.
It was from then on that they initiated the process of retakings that
persists even today.
The consequences were dire in that the fazenda owners with
their gunmen reacted immediately and often times by calling in the
police force. Kaiowá anthropologist Antonio Benites, describes the
reaction of the fazenda owners facing the struggle of the Kaiowá
Guarani for their lands and territories:
"The movement for retaking/reoccupation of traditional
Guarani territory became the focus undertaken intensely at the
end of the decade of 1970, during the period in which the fazenda
owners organized and initiated two instances of oppositional
forces to restrain and to extinguish the movement for retaking of
Guarani Kaiowá land. The first sphere of action is the organization
of an armed group, known as "gunmen of the fazendas."
This feared organization found, for more than three decades, in
the exclusive service of the fazenda owners of MS for the purpose
of emptying the places reoccupied by the indigenous peoples, in
addition to assassination, massacre, for the torture of children,
women and indigenous elders. This armed group has acted and
continues to act in an identical form in all the indigenous lands
retaken in the last 30 years. The perpetrators of these homicides
and the contractors of this group have yet to be brought to justice
Matam nossas crianças e jovens
as jamais matarão nossa ESPERANÇA
EXIGIMOS JUSTIÇA
DEMARCAÇÃO JÁ!!!
and punished.
The second sphere of action is the ordering of dispossession of
the indigenous peoples by the police force, requested by fazenda
owners through the Federal Court. This in fact also occurred in all
lands claimed by the Guarani.
In this context of retaking of part of the Guarani territory, when
the gunmen did not succeed effecting dispossession and brutally
murdered the indigenous peoples, the fazenda owners retained
lawyers to obtain the eviction order from the Court. It is important
to observe that the when an eviction order of the indigenous peoples
is carried out in MS, police agents acted and act in a mode similar
to that of the gunmen, in their use of heavy weapons; they burn
the Ocas (traditional dwellings), they threaten and they terrify the
children, women and elderly. For this reason, in the understanding
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