The Guarani Need You

Brazil's Guarani suffer at the hands of violent ranchers

For the Guarani, land is the origin of all life. But violent invasions by ranchers have devastated their territory and nearly all of their land has been stolen.

Guarani children starve and their leaders have been assassinated. Hundreds of Guarani men, women and children have committed suicide.

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Crowded onto tiny reservations, with appalling social consequences, many Guarani communities have attempted to recover small parcels of their ancestral land.

These ‘retomadas’ (literally ‘re-takings’) have been violently resisted by the powerful and ruthless farmers who now occupy the region.

The ranchers frequently employ gunmen to defend ‘their’ properties, and countless Guarani have been killed during or soon after the retomadas.

The small community of Ñanderú Marangatú is typical. Despite the fact that the community is entitled by law to live within a 9,000 hectare reserve, they were evicted at gunpoint by ranchers in 2005. With incredible bravery, the community returned.

They now live on a tiny fraction of what is legally theirs, and the area immediately surrounding their settlement is patrolled daily by the rancher’s gunmen, who have also raped two of the Guarani women and fired bullets into the house of one of the community’s leaders.