RIGHTS-BRAZIL:
For Indians, Land Is Life Itself

Mario Osava


RIO DE JANEIRO,  (IPS) - Land represents the work of a lifetime for some; for others, it is life itself. For that reason, death is always a possibility in the property disputes between landowners and indigenous people that frequently occur in many parts of Brazil.

The latest outbreak of tension and warnings of bloodshed have occurred in the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, near the Paraguayan border, where just before Christmas, some 3,000 Guarani Indians invaded 14 ranches that they claim as part of their ancestral land.

In negotiations brokered by the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), the state agency in charge of indigenous affairs, the Guaranis agreed to pull out of 11 of the farms on Monday.

But they will maintain a presence on the three largest ranches, in order to press FUNAI to expand their reserve by incorporating the land on which the farms are located.

Anthropologists say the indigenous community has a legitimate ancestral claim to the property in question, under the Brazilian constitution.

But the ranchers have rejected the agreement, and want the Indians to withdraw from all of the farms. ''The size of a property does not define rights,'' and an invasion of land cannot be accepted just because a particular ranch is bigger than the others, said the president of the Mato Grosso do Sul Federation of Agriculture and Stockbreeding, Leoncio de Brito.

The Federation is planning a protest in the area next Saturday to demonstrate support for the ''friends who have been suffering the invasion for the last 40 days.'' The goal is to bring together 5,000 people in a ''peaceful demonstration,'' said de Brito.

But the press has reported rumours that the ranchers will hire gunmen to forcibly evict the Indians from the farms. Sebastiao de Souza, the mayor of Japorán, one of the two municipalities where the land occupations have taken place, warned of the possibility of a massacre.

The ranchers accuse the Indians of stealing and butchering cattle, and of destroying installations and infrastructure on the occupied farms.

The Guaranis, who belong to the Ñandeva sub-group, want to expand their legally demarcated property by adding 7,800 hectares from the occupied ranches to the 1,600 hectares already comprising their Aldea Puerto Lindo reserve.

The Dec. 22 land invasions were planned as a means of pressuring FUNAI to expand the reserve, as the Indians have long demanded.

Rubem Almeida, one of the two anthropologists who wrote the report that will serve as the basis for the demarcation of the territory by FUNAI, said the Guaranis are legally entitled to the land.

He pointed out that there is testimony and material evidence that the Guaranis traditionally lived on the property in question, as well as ''specific documents from 1927'' that confirm their legal claim to the land.

The ''usurpation'' of the property began in 1928, Almeida told IPS, when the government illegally sold the area to a farmer who grew ''maté'' -- a South American herb used to produce a beverage with properties similar to those of tea -- on a large-scale.

Under the Brazilian constitution, the local indigenous community has a right to that land, which cancels out the land titles reportedly held by the ranchers, who should be paid compensation by the state, said the anthropologist.

Of the estimated 34,000 Guarani Indians in Brazil, between 8,000 and 10,000 belong to the Ñandeva sub-group, according to the Socioambiental Institute, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to the research and support of indigenous rights. The Guarani are also present in neighbouring Argentina and Paraguay.

In Brazil, a country of 177 million, the Guaranis are concentrated in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

There is a high suicide rate among the Guaranis, and especially the young, in Brazil. Last year, 51 suicides were reported, similar to the annual average registered over the past 10 years, Jorge Vieira, local coordinator of the Indigenist Missionary Council, a Catholic Church group, said in a conversation with IPS.

Vieira and Almeida concurred that although scarcity of land is not the only factor underlying the high suicide rate, the expansion of the reserves is a basic condition for resolving the problem.

In the case of Aldea Puerto Lindo, there is ''a clear imbalance'' between the size of the local population and the 1,600 hectares comprising the reserve, said Almeida.

While only 600 Guaranis lived on the reserve 30 years ago, that total has risen fivefold since then.

The growth of the population of the reserve is one of the factors that prompted the Indians to take a more radical approach to their struggle to recover the land to which they have an ancestral claim, the anthropologist explained.

But on the other side of the dispute are the farmers and ranchers who claim to have documents proving that they are the legal owners of the land. In many cases, the people living on the farms today are the children or grandchildren of those who were originally sold the land by the government between 50 and 80 years ago.

During that period, the Brazilian government sold farmers land that according to the current constitution, enacted in 1988, belongs to indigenous communities if anthropological studies demonstrate that it formed part of their traditional homeland.

But enforcing that constitutional right involves a lengthy, complicated process which requires the formal demarcation of indigenous reserves, indemnification of farmers for the improvements, construction and work carried out on their property, and the relocation of farmers to other areas.

There are many properties in dispute in Mato Grosso do Sul, a state that is home to several indigenous communities whose reserves shrank as the agricultural frontier expanded.

Pío Queiroz Silva, a rancher who lives in the Mato Grosso do Sul municipality of Antonio Joao, is all too familiar with the problem. Part of his property has been occupied by a group of Indians since 1998.

Red tape and FUNAI's shortcomings have delayed a final solution, he told IPS in a telephone interview. ''If the land should belong to the Indians, okay, then they should just pay me the indemnification and I'll go elsewhere.''

Silva, 48, has spent his entire life on the farm that his father acquired from the government 54 years ago. The 4,500 hectares have now been divvied up between himself, his father and his brother.

Silva estimates that over the past five years, he has lost more than 300 head of cattle to the Indians living on his property.

He clarified, however, that ''I'm not against the Indians,'' and pointed out that he has set up a non-governmental organisation to help them, called Recové, which means ''living well'' in Guarani.

But he demands respect for his own rights as an individual and a farmer who also has a legal claim to the land.