Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Mato Grosso do Sul
INDIGENIST MISSIONARY COUNCIL - CIMI
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Distributing themselves in small nuclei consisting of one or
more kinship groups, under the leadership of the nanderu or
tekoharuvicha, leaders of a markedly religious character, whose
power was supported in the prestige bestowed by their kinship
group, capacity of convincement and generosity and not in force
or physical ability. Guarani identity remits, directly, to the idea of
belonging and to kinship relations.
Between the years 1915 and 1928, the Federal Government
demarcated eight reduced and dispersed extensions of land for
Guarani and Kaiowá occupation, bringing the total to only 18,124
hectares. It is important to note that with the demarcation of these
eight reserves, more than guaranteeing Guarani and Kaiowá lands,
the government objective was to free-up lands for colonization,
also already being concerned about the occupation of the borders.
The reserves demarcated by the SPI further constituted an
important strategy of disorganization of indigenous economic and
social organization and subsequent submission to the projects
of occupation and exploration of natural resources by non-
indigenous fronts. Ignored in the demarcation of these reserves
were the indigenous patterns of relationship with the territory and
its natural resources and, primarily, their social organization.
The historical process of territorial reduction and confinement
interior to the small extensions of the Kaiowá and Guarani land
reserves, generated innumerable changes in their daily lives,
especially creating new challenges for their social organization.
This is pointed out by researchers and indigenous representatives
as cause of the innumerable problems they experience today,
particularly the problems of violence and exacerbation of the
practice of suicide. Confinement and overpopulation within the
reserves reduced available space, causing exhaustion of natural
resources important for quality of life in a Guarani and Kaiowá
village and compromised indigenous agriculture.
With sustainability made profoundly precarious for the
indigenous peoples located in them, they became increasingly
dependent on food security policies of the government and on the
provision of external resources. Peoples were transformed from
centuries of producing foods not only sufficient but abundant, as
historical documents attest. Today they are dependent on being
supplied with basic food baskets and all sorts of external aid.
Peoples who were an important work force and contributed to
the establishment of a large part of the agricultural, livestock and
public enterprises such as railroads and streets, in Mato Grosso do
Sul, today can no longer provide subsistence for themselves and
their children.
But in addition to the consequences for the indigenous economy,
this process of confinement created problems for their social
organization, obliging scores of villages, previously autonomous, to
seek shelter in the reserves demarcated by the SPI. To administer
these "bringing together" of indians and villages, the figure of
the 'captain' was created. Indigenous leaders more familiar with
the western way of life, these were arbitrarily nominated and
the maximum leaders interior to these spaces. To aid them in the
exercise of power and to maintain order, over whom no one had
any power, were the indigenous police. In this way, these macro-
familial groups, in addition to having to coexist with other groups
having to dispute small portions of land being increasingly reduced,
they had to submit to the authority of foreign leadership.
It is important to highlight that in the confinement process that
brought the installation of Evangelical schools and churches in the
indigenous communities - Missão Kaiowá arrived in 1928, a period
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