In Brazil, the situation for the Guaraní, the most numerous indigenous people, is dramatic: stripped of their ancestral lands and murdered with impunity by landowners.
The Guaraní had lived in the rainforests of South America since time immemorial, drawing from the fertile embrace of the forest everything they needed to live in a way that was always the same and always different, like the changing of the seasons. At least until the arrival of the Europeans — at that time the Guaraní numbered more than one and a half million people, spread across Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina. Today, a few centuries later, only a few tens of thousands survive. The Brazilian Guaraní are divided into three groups; the largest is the Kaiowá, who live in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, in the centre-west of Brazil.
The Guaraní of Brazil have been almost entirely deprived of their ancestral lands, cleared and seized by ranchers and farmers, and are forced to live in cramped government-established reserves on the outskirts of towns. These tiny parcels of land are not sufficient to sustain them; children suffer severe forms of malnutrition and the area records one of the highest suicide rates in the world (since 1986, more than 517 Guaraní have taken their own lives, the youngest victim just nine years old). The Guaraní Kaiowá tribe cannot live away from its forest — Kaiowá means, not by chance, "forest people" — and, tired of negotiating and waiting in vain for government intervention, has decided to peacefully reclaim its own lands, even though they have been ravaged by an extensive network of cattle ranches and sugar cane plantations. But the response to the retomada, the reoccupation of the lands, has been merciless, and the indigenous people are the victims of violent reactions from landowners and their hired gunmen. The leaders of communities that reoccupy their territories are systematically killed.
Today the Guaraní are the victims of a true genocide taking place in a deafening silence. In a few years, probably, when the children of the forest have disappeared from the planet, we will commemorate their memory as we are accustomed to doing — with words bloated with rhetoric and warnings that similar episodes must never happen again, at least until the next one. But the Guaraní neither must nor wish to become yet another monument to humanity's inability to escape the cyclical repetition of history and its own mistakes. It is precisely for this reason that indigenous leader Ládio Veron, spokesman for the Guaraní Kaiowá of Brazil, has come to Europe — to make the abuses suffered by his people known to others, a people whose situation could deteriorate even further with the adoption of a constitutional amendment known as Pec 215. We met him in Milan thanks to Survival, the global movement for the rights of indigenous peoples. His voice is deep and ancient, and seems to take root deep in the fertile soil of the Mato Grosso rainforest, betraying an unbreakable bond with the jungle — because, as Ládio Veron himself admits, "we Guaraní are the forest."
Why is the forest so important for the survival of the Guaraní?
The life of an indigenous person has no meaning without the forest. We live in the forest, we are nature, we are the forest, we speak with the trees and treat them as members of our family. For us, the forest means life and home. We and the forest are the same thing; we cannot exist separately.
What consequences would Pec 215 have for Brazil's indigenous peoples?
If it were to be approved, this amendment would further weaken our control over the lands we depend on to survive and could prevent us from recovering the land that has been taken from us.
The Guaraní are victims of violence and reprisals from landowners — does the government not protect you?
Absolutely not, because what the government wants is our ancestral lands.
The Guaraní Kaiowá are the descendants of those indigenous people who, at the end of the seventeenth century, refused to enter the Jesuit missions. Despite centuries of contact with outsiders, you have maintained your identity. How have you managed?
Our people have always passed down their culture and customs from father to son — the way of living, the way of praying, the way of singing, the way of being Guaraní. We do not want to live any other way; this is what we were and this is what we want to continue to be.
Your culture is characterised by non-violence and a strong spirituality — how do you manage to endure the violence you are subjected to?
There is no way to face this situation, all this violence. The landowners have our leaders killed, and the most vulnerable and innocent part of our community — the children. We only want to live in peace on our land, and the government wants to take it away from us; and to do so, it targets our leaders and our children.
What drives you to keep fighting, knowing that your life is at risk?
I am the son of a leader who was murdered — Marcos Veron. I carry on this struggle because it is my mission; it is the legacy I received from my father. My father began this fight many years ago and I must continue it — it is my duty. I know that in Brazil they want my head, but I am not afraid. Right now it is important that I am in Italy, that I am travelling across Europe to make other countries aware of what is happening in Brazil and what my people are going through.