Vitorino Franco speaks to the press for the first time and brings an account of the dramatic hours in which he and another indigenous person were threatened with death.
In the image, the indigenous people of the Tekoha Guaiviry community protest against the genocide of their people, in Mato Grosso do Sul (Photo: Cimi/Survival)
Cuiabá (MT) – “They have already arrived beating and cursing, calling them a vagabond, that we just want to steal their land and that we had to die,” the Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous, Vitorino Franco, 37, told the agency Real Amazon about the moment of terror that he lived on March 16. He says he remembers the beak in the belly, the shots fired so close to his ear and the blows to his head with the gun. There were so many blows that he passed out and only woke up the next day, at 3 am, thrown in a ditch on a highway. Vitorino and two indigenous colleagues, Vander Genilton Martín and a 17-year-old teenager, were attacked by three heavily armed non-indigenous men in a silver Toyota Hilux pickup truck, on the banks of the MS-386 highway, in the municipality of Aral Moreira. , southwest of Mato Grosso do Sul.
When he woke up at dawn, alone on the highway, Vitorino noticed his bloody head and his whole body aching and with several bruises. But what worried him most at that moment was that he couldn’t hear anything. “I was deaf at the time and I still can’t hear things properly, I hear very softly. Vander has a similar problem”, says the indigenous person to the report.
In this region located on the border with Paraguay, but still within a Brazil whose president encourages the population to carry guns, the land dispute implies constant threats, veiled messages and unpunished murders. The armed men were, according to the beaten indigenous people, employees of Fazenda Querência, whose owner, Idelfino Maganha, also owns the Água Branca farm. This and the Nova Aurora and Três Poderes properties are part of the area where the indigenous people are encamped and claim the Tekoha Gauviry territory.
Vitorino Franco said he left the camp in the late afternoon of March 16, accompanied by Vander Genilton Martín and the teenager. They would buy food at a place known as “Tagi”, a disused gas station, but with a grocery store and restaurant. It is a traditional stopping point and meeting point for truck drivers, farmers and indigenous people. The site is about two kilometers from the community.
The Guarani-Kaiowá call Tekoha Guaiviry in the indigenous language the “place where you are”. For them, it is a traditional occupation, where there is a cemetery of ancestors. The National Indian Foundation (Funai) began the study of demarcation of the territory in 2008, but the process has been stalled at the agency since 2012. Last year, two attacks were recorded against the ethnic group. Read here.
Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous people who were beaten (Photos: ©Aty Guasu) Around 8 pm, the three returned from shopping and were surprised by the jagunços in the truck. The teenager managed to escape, even though he was the target of shots by the armed men, according to Vitorino. In the midst of the offenses, the henchmen asked if Vitorino “was the captain’s brother, because if he did, he would die”. The captain in the case is the leader of the Guarani-Kaiowá, Genito Gomes, son of chief Nísio Gomes, who in 2011 was killed by gunmen in the same region of the beating.
The same scene was repeated again amid the pandemic of the new coronavirus. When he arrived at the community injured, after an hour of walking, Vitorino found Vander also badly injured and the teenager, who had escaped, in a state of shock. “He was so traumatized that when he arrived in the community he was unable to report on the day what had happened. He just told us what happened a day later,” said Genito Gomes, the leader of the Guarani-Kaiowá.
The beating victims are still recovering from the beatings. Vitorino spends a good part of the day resting and when he decides to walk, he still feels pain in his body. Hearing begins to return to normal. He and Vander are treated with home remedies. Father of two children, one aged 9 and the other aged 13, Vitorino said he feared for his children and that the camp, in general, is in a state of alert, as vehicles from Fazenda Querência constantly pass in front of Tekoha Guaiviry. .
For a representative of the Aty Guasu Association – the General Assembly of the Guarani and Kaiowá, who asked not to be identified – there is no doubt that the crime is related to the land dispute involving indigenous people and farmers in the region. He says that the Civil Police investigated the case as a common crime, claiming that there are no elements to link it to an agrarian conflict.
The Aty Guasu Association did not agree and called the Federal Public Ministry (MPF), which began to investigate the case. “The MPF has an anthropological expert who is doing in-depth work on the case. He has already gone to the village, collected the information, collected the testimony of several indigenous people, carried out an investigation there”, explained the representative of the Guarani-Kaiowá association.
“For me, it is very clear that the aggression has to do with the land dispute, with a plan by the ranchers who sent their men to intimidate the indigenous people,” said Association member Aty Guasu.
THE Real Amazon sought out the MPF to find out the details of the expertise and which line of investigation the agency is working on, but there were no answers until the publication of this report. The Civil Police of Aral Moreira reported that delegate Eduardo Ferreira de Oliveira continues to investigate the case. Witnesses have already been heard, but there is still no outcome.
In a statement to Agência Pública, Marilene Lolli Ghetti Maganha, wife of the owner of Fazenda Querência – also owner of the property – said that she only learned about the episode “through the media”. She denied “any type of involvement” by her husband in the aggression against the indigenous people.
Funai was also contacted by the report, regarding the demarcation process of the Tekoha Guaiviry, but the indigenist agency also did not return the e-mail and calls to comment on the matter.
Retaking of territory and death of chief Tekoha Guaiviry, ancestral land, where the leader Nísio Gomes lived The Guarani-Kaiowá occupied the area on November 1, 2011, after spending 13 years camped on the banks of the MS-386 highway. They say they were expelled from the place in the early 20th century by colonists to plant yerba mate. From there, they were transferred to the Amambai Indigenous Land, created by the defunct Indian Protection Service (SPI).
from [re]occupation, the agrarian conflict was established between the indigenous people and the rural landowners. In the last ten years, there have been a series of attacks on the part of the farmers to remove the Guarani-Kaiowá from the area. On November 18, 2011, the great chief of the community, Nísio Gomes, 55, was murdered. The case was covered by the international press, with publications in the newspaper The New York Times and Al Jazeera TV.
According to the report “Violence against the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil ” by the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi), published in 2011, gunmen hired by a group of farmers in the region invaded the camp to expel the indigenous people. But Nísio and other indigenous people did not back down and went after the gunmen with clubs and hatchets. The gunmen started shooting and hit Nísio in the neck and arm. Before dying, the chief still hit one of the criminals with a hatchet.
In the report, Valmir Gomes, one of Nísio’s sons and Genito’s brother, the current leader, says he witnessed the gunmen throwing his father’s body into the back of a pickup truck and fleeing the scene. The chief’s body was never found and the community was unable to bury their great leader in a dignified manner in tekoha – a sacred ritual in the cosmology of the Guarani Kaiowá.
In 2012, the Federal Public Ministry pointed out that the group of farmers involved in the murder was formed by Idelfino Maganha – mentioned at the beginning of the report-, Cláudio Adelino Gali, Aparecido Sanches, Samuel Peloi, Levi Palma, Dieter Michael Seyboth and Osvin Mittanck.
According to the MPF, they are accused of planning to retake the area by hiring the gunmen who ended up murdering the chief. Idelfino Maganha was arrested for this, but today he is free to respond to the process.
Also according to the investigations, the gunmen were hired through the company Gaspem Segurança, owned by Aurelino Arce, also accused by the MPF of involvement in the murder. The case remains unresolved, pending in the Federal Court of Ponta Porã.
Nísio Gomes (center) was a Guarani-Kaiowá shaman and leader Read here about the violence against the Guarani-Kaiowá
