Indigenous Guarani Kaiowá People Are Being Murdered – Act Now!
“We’ve been sprayed with gunfire”
Ten years ago, on a visit to the Indigenous Guarani community of Pyelito Kuê in southern Brazil, I helped people there set up film equipment and a satellite connection, as part of Survival’s Indigenous Voices project. The people of Pyelito Kuê were excited to speak directly to the world about their plight – but neither they nor I knew how visceral some of their early videos would be.
For decades, farmers had been attacking and destroying Guarani villages, installing huge cattle ranches and corn, sugarcane and soya plantations on stolen Indigenous land and gunning down Guarani people if they resisted and tried to re-occupy their ancestral home. And for decades, the gunmen did this in the shadows, largely unchecked by the authorities and ignored by the world’s media.
But just a few months after my visit, the people of Pyelito Kuê, using the equipment, were able to film and share a horrific attack by ranchers’ gunmen.
“We’ve just been shot at three times,” shouted one of our Guarani friends on the video they recorded in the darkness and sent us. “We’re demanding help now!”
The community had re-occupied a tiny part of their colonized land. But the gunmen ambushed them, shooting and injuring several people, blindfolding others and forcing them onto a truck to be driven away.
Throughout, the Guarani held on to their video equipment, and kept recording. The gunmen set fire to their homes and destroyed many of their belongings – but the footage remained, and the Guarani asked us to release it globally as part of the campaign for their land to be returned.
This unique Indigenous Voices video epitomizes the resilience and determination of the Guarani people on the front line. These attacks are not unusual and many Guarani leaders have been killed – but now, the world can bear witness.
We’ve been working closely alongside the Guarani for decades, campaigning for their land to be returned. The forces against them are immense, but the more the world sees what is happening, the stronger their fight back. Please, Andre, support them today.