Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Mato Grosso do Sul
+ INDIGENIST MISSIONARY COUNCIL - CIMI
the studies were not carried out until the work was nearly finished.
The satellite image below, in and of itself, substantiates the
argument of the community that the plant situated between the
two villages "just undermines the demarcation of the land". The
choice of construction location for a plant is a decision that is not
simply economic. Political factors are also preponderant.
There is no reason to believe it a mere artifice of chance that
the Cosan plant was sited, precisely there; after all, businesses
Guyaroka
Approximate location of Usina Cosan
Rancho Jac
Takuara
©2011 Inay Diem SRL
2011 MapLink Telles
image © 2011 Geofye
22:35:37883543050 380 1291
Ta
Google Earth Image. Free version. Captured on: August 7, 2011.
Google
are installed in one place over another as a function of economic
and political incentives. Other factories already installed, and in
the process of installation in Mato Grosso do Sul, appear to obey
the same logic: the occupation of the spaces being demanded
by the communities with the large enterprises, prior to the
lands being finalized as indigenous. The Brazilian State has, in
the past, frequently been accused of having been tutelary and
integrationist. In the 1950s it promoted, in one of its arrogant fits
of authoritarianism, the project of occupation of spaces, which
culminated in the removal of the Guarani Kaiowá and Ñandeva
from their traditional lands of occupation - the well-known case of
the deployment of the National Agricultural Colony of Dourados
(CAND). In its current PR spin, it is today represented as democratic
and multicultural, attracting large corporations with globalized
capital. Incentivized to come to the Southern Cone of Mato Grosso
do Sul, the cane factories compete with communities struggling to
have their lands recognized. The arrivals of the enterprises, with
the incentives of a Schizophrenic State make the regularization of
the indigenous lands increasingly time-consuming and intangible.
The result of this violence of the State9 that, when not
contributing, undermines and even prevents the regularization of
the indigenous lands in Mato Grosso do Sul, has had, as a result,
other forms of violence, more visible and quantifiable, as evidenced
in the elevated rates of childhood malnutrition, in the high rates of
infant/child mortality, in the absence of safety in densely populated
villages, in the growing number of homicides and suicides, in the
scale of the racism and inter-ethnic hatred, in the hunger for food
and in the hunger for justice.View entire presentation