Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Mato Grosso do Sul
INDIGENIST MISSIONARY COUNCIL - CIMI
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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL:
THE APIKA'Y COMMUNITY'S LONG AND PAINFUL
STRUGGLE CONTINUES 18
"The struggle will go on, even if I die, because I have many
grandsons", Damiana, leader of the Apika'y community"
The Apika'y community, in the region of Mato Grosso do
Sul, Brazil, is a powerful symbol of several problems that affect
the Guarani- Kaiowá and other Indigenous peoples in Brazil.
Disappointed with the sluggish land demarcation process, the
Guarani Kaiowá began to reoccupy their ancestral lands in the
1990s.
In September 2013, around 60 Guarani Kaiowá people from the
Apika'y community and other villages occupied the land currently
farmed for sugar, which they claim belong to them. They have been
living beside a highway, in front of the farm, since 1999 when the
landowner issued them with an eviction order.
"We left the highway. Now we are already here, in this land,
and we will remain here forever", Damiana, leader of the Apika'y
community.
The community has reported that armed private security
guards working on the sugar plantation have threatened to kill
them, burned parts of the settlement, and also prevented them
from collecting water in a stream that runs through the sugarcane
plantation. Employees of the security company have been charged
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INTERNATIONAL
with offences before, including two ongoing murder cases. The
federal prosecutor has claimed that the company conducts
"incontestable illicit activity" and is calling for the "suspension of
its activities".
The National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) signed a Conduct
Adjustment Agreement with the Ministry of Justice, the Federal
Public Prosecutors and 23 indigenous leaders in 2007 in which
it promised to demarcate the lands of the Apika'y community by
2010. But the agreement was never implemented, due to the lack
of resources by FUNAI.
Brazil's sustained economic growth over the past decade has
transformed the country into a major world economy. However,
more than 39.9 per cent of Indigenous people live in extreme
poverty - more than double the percentage in the general
population.
Mato Grosso do Sul contains some of the smallest, poorest and
most densely populated Indigenous lands in Brazil: pockets of rural
poverty surrounded by large soybean and sugarcane plantations
and cattle ranches, where life is plagued by ill-health and squalid
living conditions. What were hectares of forest with incredible
diversity are now fields of sugar cane and soy beans. For over a
century their communities have been driven from their lands by
the expansion of large scale agriculture - a process that continues
to this day. The consequences for affected communities can be
devastating.
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18 Report: Indigenous peoples' long struggle to defend their Rights in the Americas. Published by Amnesty International, visit in full at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/
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