Occupation of the Paulist Avenue and Augusta Street in defense of the rights of the Guarani Kaiowa that live in Mato Grosso do Sul. Flickr. Some rights reserved.
I watched a video the other day in which a lady landowner in the State of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, said that her family owned those lands for the simple reason that they were its “tamers”. This was a funny testimony: the lady claimed that her forebears had conquered the area so that they could build their houses and start their crops. What did she mean? Taming the place implies clearing it, subduing, civilizing. This is what the dictionary says. Now, you only make tame or civilize someone. And who was to be tamed? The Indians. This is a digest of the comic opera starring the landlords of Mato Grosso do Sul. The lady herself confirmed that the land that is now occupied by her and her family belonged originally to the Guaraní.
The landlady’s speech is quite enlightening for understanding the situation of the Kaiowá Guaraní people in the region. To her and her friends, the Indians are mostly a nuisance, a disturbance on their nicely drawn map. If one day whites invaded the land and cleared the Indians out, now they should not come back claiming ownership over anything. They were destroyed, they should leave.
