THE GUARANI

A Guarani - Website for this image

The Guaraní people live in the area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay converge.

Much of what was originally Guaraní territory has been destroyed, or is threatened, by large-scale soy and sugar cane production and various other forms of commercial farming.


Guarani - Photo by carf

According to Survival International:

In 1983, Marçal de Souza Tupã-y, renowned Guarani advocate of indigenous rights, was shot dead at his home by gunmen reportedly linked to a local rancher.

In 2001, the young Guarani Kaiowá Samuel Martin was killed by gunmen during the reoccupation of his community of Ka’a Jari in Coronel Sapucaia municipality.

On 13th January 2003, the internationally renowned Guarani Kaiowá leader, Marcos Verón, was beaten to death by gunmen working for a local rancher, in front of family members after he led his community’s reoccupation to Takuara in Juti municipality.


Guarani by carf

On 24th December 2005, nine days after the eviction of Guarani from Nanderu Marangatu, 39 year-old Guarani activist Dorvalino Rocha was shot and killed by a private security guard employed by ranchers.

Following the attempted reoccupation of their land by the community of Kurusu Mba in 2007, community leader Kuretê Lopes was assassinated. Ortiz Lopes and Osvaldo Lopes, also leaders of the community, were assassinated on 8th June 2007 and 30th May 2009 respectively.

Nobody has been tried or convicted for these killings...



The day after their return to their ancestral land of Ypo’i on 29th October 2009, a group of Guarani was attacked by gunmen.

Ten days later the body of Genivaldo Verá, a member of the group, was found dead and bruised in a nearby river.

At the time of writing, a second Guarani man, Rolindo Verá, is still missing and it is feared that he too has been killed.

On 25th November 2009, the approximately 250 Guarani Kaiowá who had returned to their ancestral land of Kurusu Mba, were attacked by ranchers who approached the community in ten trucks and fired gunshots.

The body of Osmair Martins Ximenes, a teenager of Kurusu Mba, was found beaten up on 16th December. It is suspected that his killing is directly related to the community’s recent return to their land.


Guarani kids - by banana_travels

Twelfth Bough has reported on the area where the Guarani live (problems):

"The Guarani Aquifer, the planet's largest supply of fresh drinking water, is adjacent to the Chaco and directly under the Tri-Border Area. (Guarani Aquifer)...

"In Brazil the FBI investigated some North Americans going down to the Amazon on ecotourism fishing trips, and taking on young girls as sex slaves, and doing this every year.

"Paraguay has a huge human trafficking problem and a hardened group of sex tourists. See: the Bangkok of Latin America

"People known to have purchased large tracts of land in the Chaco include George Bush, Sun Myung Moon, and Maurice Strong...

"Moon's land sits atop the Guarani Aquifer, the Earth's largest resource of fresh drinking water, and also happens to be an "enormously strategic point in both the narcotics and arms trades," according to Paraguay's drug czar from 1976-89.

"The available intelligence clearly shows that the Moon sect is involved in both these enterprises."


Guarani boy by yryvu_py

Honduran Farmers Slaughtered In Name Of Global Warming

23 farmers in Honduras were slaughtered in cold blood by hired mercenaries as they tried to protect their land from being seized by a corporation who wanted to use the land to produce biofuels as part of a United Nations-accredited EU carbon trading scheme.

"Protests erupted in July when six international human rights advocacy groups presented a report to the EP detailing what they called murders and forced evictions of peasants in El Bajo Aguán Valley of northern Honduras," reports the New American.'

Many thanks to C for the information.