Wave Of Suicide Sweeps Brazil’s Guarani Indians The Once-Dominant Tribe Is Grappling With Disorientation And Poverty After Losing Its Land
Ten people have killed themselves since the beginning of the year in this rural community of 3,200 Guarani Indians. The youngest suicide was Fortunata Escobar, 10.
Fortunata’s father had been away for more than a month, working for a distillery. Her mother had died earlier in the year. Eight brothers and sisters were staying by themselves in the family’s rustic hut, with thatched roof and dirt floor.
Alone in the house with a 4-year-old sister one August day, Fortunata strung herself up by the neck from a pole in the roof.
Why? “I don’t know,” says Lourdes Escobar, Fortunata’s oldest sister. She says Fortunata hadn’t seemed upset or sad. Could she have heard about other people hanging themselves and tried it herself in play? “I think so.”
Lourdes, 20, doesn’t have much more to say about her sister’s death. Many others here seem equally unable or unwilling to explain why so many of their relatives and neighbors have hanged themselves or taken poison.
But clearly, something is deeply and desperately wrong. The epidemic of suicides in Caarapo and other communities of Guarani Indians at the southern end of Mato Grosso do Sul state shows no signs of abating.
While there is no simple explanation for the epidemic, Guarani leaders and outside analysts agree that it has to do with a breakdown of old cultural patterns and a failure to adjust to new ones.
Throughout the Americas, many native cultures are crumbling under the onslaught of outside pressures and influences. The toll in human suffering and degradation is often dramatic; perhaps most dramatic of all is the toll of Guarani suicides here in western Brazil.
In the first 10 months of 1995, 48 Guarani suicides were reported in Mato Grosso do Sul - double the number in all of 1994. In a Guarani population of about 30,000 in the state, that translates into an alarming rate of 160 suicides per 100,000 people.
By comparison, the annual suicide rate among Navajos living on U.S. reservations is 17 per 100,000, according to a U.S. Indian Health Service report based on 1987-89 data. Nationwide, the U.S. rate is about 12 per 100,000, and Brazil’s is fewer than four per 100,000, according to 1991 statistics.
The Guarani have lost most of the ancestral lands on which their culture was based. Communities that once lived by hunting, fishing and subsistence farming are now crowded onto reservations that don’t have enough land for that kind of life. Cities have sprung up nearby, tempting the natives with consumer goods and urban diversions.
Alcohol distilleries, which produce fuel from sugar cane to supplement gasoline in Brazil, recruit Guarani men for cane-cutting and other menial, low-wage jobs. Some women find work in town as domestic servants, some girls as prostitutes. Alcoholism has become widespread.
As the old ways of the Guarani have faded, their disorientation has increased. As their need for commercial goods has grown, their awareness of their poverty has sharpened. Family unity has weakened, community life has wilted, religious meaning has waned.
“For the Guarani, their life is not a life worth living,” says Antonio Brand, a Brazilian historian who has done extensive research on Guarani culture.
Brazil has a total of 250,000 to 300,000 Indians in many language and cultural groups. The Guarani are the largest group, but their numbers are now tiny compared to centuries ago.
Guarani-speaking peoples once dominated a large region of South America extending from northern Argentina through Paraguay and deep into southern Brazil. The total estimated Guarani population when the Spanish and Portuguese came to South America in the 16th century was 2 million.
Today, about 25,000 of the 30,000 Guarani Indians of the Kaiowa and Nandeva tribes in Mato Grosso do Sul live on 22 small reservations scattered over rolling plains of red earth that once was forested but now is mostly farm fields and pasture. Much of their land is overgrown with a deep-rooted weed called “coloniao.” The Guaranis’ farming methods are rudimentary, and the soils are weak from heavy use.
“Guarani society is deeply connected to the land,” says Mauricio Souza Vilalba, a Guarani-speaking university student. Because they no longer have enough land for their traditional lifestyle, “the people are being pulled away from their roots.”
To understand the suicide problem, it is necessary to understand the strong spiritual element of Guarani culture, says Vilalba, who is active in a Roman Catholic Church agency called CIMI that does social and educational work among the Guarani. For them, all aspects of life - hunting, farming, family life and community activities - have religious significance.
Traditionally, Guarani religion was reinforced in a close-knit community led by a “cacique,” or religious chieftain, and by the family. As community structures have broken down and families have lost unity, the individual’s sense of religious well-being has faded, Vilalba says.
The Guarani worship a divine family headed by Nande Ru, “the great father.” Nande Ru speaks his truth through the souls and lives of the Guarani people, according to the religious tradition.
“The life of the people must mirror Nande Ru’s way of life,” Vilalba says. “Every aspect of life should be the expression of Nande Ru’s word.”
Because they can no longer live their lives in the traditional way, many Guarani find life empty of meaning, he says.
“What they are living today is no longer what Nande Ru wants; it no longer is the word of Nande Ru. They feel that they have lost the way of Nande Ru. …
“Suicide is a protest because a person can no longer express the word of Nande Ru. It is the withholding of words.”
According to Vilalba and other analysts, the use of hanging or poison in almost all Guarani suicides is a way of stopping the word, or spirit, from ascending through the throat.