Brazil: Disrespect for human rights continues generating violence against Guarani Kaiowa

The Guarani-Kaiowá are indigenous people from the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. In the past they were expelled from their ancestral lands to make way for large-scale agricultural plantations and cattle breeding. This year on August 18th and 19th, several dozen indigenous persons that have been demanding the demarcation of their ancestral territory, YPo´I for years, occupied an area of the São Luiz farm in Paranhos, on the border with Paraguay, in the southern part of Mato Gross do Sul. The group of indigenous people is now isolated since the area´s owner will not allow the responsible organisms, such as the Federal Public Ministry, FUNAI and FUNASA, to enter, because “that would endorse the occupation”.

This arbitrariness caused FUNASA to be unable to medically attend to a 3-year-old indigenous child who then died on September 21st. On September 23rd, FUNASA published a notice explaining the causes of the death. According to the death certificate, the child died from a cardiorespiratory arrest caused by pneumonia, dehydration and malnutrition. Another group of 86 Guarani-Kaiowá families from the Ita’y Ka’aguyrusu camp realized an occupation of their ancestral lands on September 4th in the municipality of Douradina (MS), now they are being violently attacked by the landowners from the region.