Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Mato Grosso do Sul
INDIGENIST MISSIONARY COUNCIL - CIMI
tume
not a God, but is wholly impregnated by religious experience". The
Earth is sacred as "Pachamama". She is created by our great Father,
Namandu, and is under the care of other divine beings who protect
and defend, together with humans and all other forms of life. In the
cosmovision the land extends and establishes herself in the present
and in the future. This implies that they must walk on her in order
to open new horizons. For the Guarani, "tekoha is an interrelation
of physical-social spaces".
The land gives the possibility of being able to practice reciprocity.
Just as the cross is symbol of equilibrium to achieve a harmonious
coexistence with the earth, so reciprocity is the practice of
dynamically manifesting the balance.
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Summarizing, we can say that the earth and not the human is
the center of Guarani life. Together with the wisdom the land is
the primordial foundation of interrelating to the creation with
its creator by means of the reciprocity (including dialogue). For
Guarani good living the fulfillment of life - will be possible in
the measure to which they live in harmonious community, on and
with the land, acting responsibly with wisdom and in reciprocity.
Everything has been created to live in a Land Without Evils; and
if the land is filled with evils, they are to raise themselves when
called by their prophet, and to walk and seek the land without evils.
Some Guarani translate good living as tekoporá (Mby'a) or tekokaví
(Western Bolivia).
Inter-relationship with Walking
According to Guarani thought we are between two worlds, the
divine and the human-terrestrial, with a strong interrelationship
between the two: "because the beings that we encounter in our
world have their true, perfect, incorruptible expression in that
space-time where God dwells". The myth of Maino'i reko ypykue
presents the Creator God body, Ñamandu, as model for the
creation of the human. It is possible for the earthly body to one day
identify with the divine, this entire distance is then abolished. On
this day the world will return to that original state from which it
has departed.
When a new creature is born, she is between the divine world
and the human world; her destiny, is a walk, in the human world,
toward the divine that already accompanies her.
According to Guarani cosmovision, the shaman, upon
prophesying the name of the being, the divine soul enters the body
of the child in a movement of descendance - ascension that relates
the human being with divine being. It is the time at which the child
will be capable of standing on their own feet, in which a human
being straightens and finds oneself at the center of the Earth with
the divinity, from which - erect - she assumes her destiny to walk.
Guarani culture created an entire ethos of walking (oguatá) on
earth. The land/earth is more than a place to reside and inhabit; it
is the place of a religious co-existence together with nature; which
forms part of their culture and is the place where Ñamandu reveals
his wisdom, his love and his sacred song (see: Myth of Ayuvu
rapytá). The land is a sociocultural space that gives the Guarani
the possibility of reproducing their way of being in coexistence
with her plants, animals, her air, her water, etc.. The land/earth is
the vital foundation of all Guarani who inhabit it; the Pai Tavytera
compare it with the mother, similar to the Andean Peoples:
"The earth gratuitously gives everything that humans need
for their life; we do not sell the air (breath of the Earth), water
and the plants. From its breast we extract the tubers, in its breast
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