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BRAZIL: Lack of Land Rights is Killing Indigenous Children, Say Activists

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 14 2005 (IPS) - “We don’t want charity or paternalistic projects,” stressed the leaders of the Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous community in the midwestern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where at least eight children have died so far this year from malnutrition.

News of these deaths and of hundreds of other indigenous children suffering from severe malnutrition has led to increased demands over recent weeks for the government authorities to take measures to confront this crisis.

The tragedy of the Kaiowá, a subgroup of the Guarani aboriginal people scattered throughout various parts of Brazil, as well as Paraguay and Argentina, is even more troubling in light of the fact that this same ethnic group came to international attention ten years ago following an upsurge in suicides, especially among the younger generations.

“We need a structural project,” Anastacio Peralto, a member of the Kaiowá Indigenous Rights Commission, told IPS.

The Commission issued a declaration on Sunday stating that the root cause of the malnutrition threatening the community is “the loss of land, which has led to a breakdown in our economy.”

While land is the first priority, other essential factors also play a role, like the need to create the conditions “for a return to our traditional crops,” such as mandioca, corn and plantain, along with technical assistance, reforestation, housing and bilingual schools (with teaching in both Portuguese and Guarani), said Peralto.


“They gave us tractors, but nobody knows how to operate them,” he noted, emphasising that without training, it is impossible to incorporate the new technologies that are now indispensable for agricultural production.

The deaths of the Guarani children have opened the eyes of the press and the authorities to a drama that reportedly extends to many other indigenous communities in the country, some of them with even higher mortality rates.

For his part, however, Brazilian Health Minister Humberto Costa maintained that “these deaths fall within the figures that are normally reported,” and are no more numerous than in previous years – a comment that shocked and angered many observers.

The National Health Foundation (FUNASA), a branch of the Health Ministry, attempted to present the statistics in a different light, stressing that infant mortality among indigenous Brazilians as a whole dropped from 112 deaths per 1000 live births in 1999 – when FUNASA took responsibility for assistance to this sector, through the Indigenous Health Department – to 47 per 1000 last year.

Nevertheless, the rate remains much higher than the average infant mortality rate for Brazil in general, which was 27 deaths per 1000 live births in 2003.

Local FUNASA coordinator Francisco Kickmann also stressed that the proportion of indigenous people suffering from malnutrition in Mato Grosso do Sul has also been significantly lowered since 2003, from 26 to 16 percent.

In addition to the eight deaths officially attributed to malnutrition, another eight indigenous children in the state of Mato Grasso have died since January of other causes, including diarrhoea and respiratory problems, although doctors admit that dietary insufficiencies could have aggravated the effects of these diseases.

In Dourados, the municipality where the crisis is most severe, the conditions of close to 2,000 children aged five and under have been closely monitored since January, and 294 have been placed under treatment for malnutrition.

Forty-six of these children are currently hospitalised, and FUNASA has announced that another 20 beds in the local University Hospital will be made available as of Monday to attend to new cases.

“Indigenous people often don’t eat properly because they have nowhere to grow food,” since their land has been gradually taken away from them over a century, due to “an accumulation of government errors,” anthropologist Rubem de Almeida told IPS. De Almeida has been studying the tragedy facing the Kaiowá for a number of years.

There are roughly 35,000 Guarani Indians, divided into the Kaiowá and Ñandeva subgroups, living in different parts of southern Mato Grosso state, on a total combined area of some 40,000 hectares.

This is a very limited amount of land, especially since the surrounding areas have been deforested through the advance of cattle farming and agriculture, particularly over the last 30 years, de Almeida noted.

This indigenous group’s struggle to achieve the conditions needed for a return to their traditional way of life, even if only partial, could now be faced with further obstacles.

Peralto reported that a Kaiowá community of roughly 200 families is in danger of losing most of the 500 hectares it occupies in Cerro Marangatú, located in the municipality of Antonio Joao, 230 kilometres from Dourados. A court has ruled that this land is the property of private landowners and ordered the eviction of the indigenous families.

According to Egon Heck, local coordinator of the Catholic Church-sponsored Indigenous Missionary Council, successive governments have granted large tracts of land in Mato Grosso do Sul to private owners over the last 70 years to promote the expansion of the agricultural frontier.

This has resulted in a loss of land for the indigenous communities and deforestation. Although the 1988 Brazilian constitution recognised the rights of aboriginal peoples over the lands they traditionally occupied, allowing for the recovery of some of those lands, the process gave rise to often bloody conflicts throughout the country.

In the case of Cerro Marangatú, an appeals court judge extended the eviction order issued to the Kaiowá until Mar. 31, with the intent of giving the government time to find a solution to prevent a confrontation and potential tragedy.

It is now up to leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to provide that solution.

Almeida coordinated a study that delineated the traditional Nhande Ru Marangatu indigenous territory, which would expand the area under Kaiowá control to 9,300 hectares if officially enforced. The project was completed two years ago, and all that is needed to put an end to the legal dispute is the president’s ratification.

The wide media coverage of the critical state of indigenous communities in Mato Grasso is one more source of pressure on Lula, whose hesitation to conclude the process of officially delineating indigenous territory has led to disappointment and criticism on the part of aboriginal rights activists and environmentalists.

 
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