Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The terms
marae'y and Mbae'megua
, used in this chapter, are properly notated using a tilde over
the letter 'e' preceding the apostrophe in each case. But due to typesetting limitations, the terms are
printed here without the usual diacritic marks.
4
Cadogan 1950, 1959; Métraux 1948, 1979; Schaden 1963, 1974; Unkel 1987.
5
6
The only exception in which Guarani children and teenagers appear in the literature as having some
control over their own destiny is the tragic role played by the Guarani Kaiowá in their choice of
committing suicide. Whether it be in the choice of how they want to die (by hanging or ingestion of
pesticide), or in the reflections they produce about this form of violence, the children appear, in the
writings of J. C. Meihy (1991, 1994) as agents of their own destiny. They choose when, where and
how they want to die. The impossibility of living the Nhande Rekó on diminutive reservations and
shanty towns of the Brazilian South makes death emerge as “an appeal for life” (Meihy 1994:251).
The Guarani Mbyá and Nhandeva of the southern coast of São Paulo, however, do not voluntarily seek
death as a solution to their current afflictions, since there are no suicides reported in the communities.
Meihy (1994) does not believe, however, that the Kaiowá are anticipating early migration to the Land-
without-Evil by committing suicide. He says that by using a cultural “belief” to justify a perverse
outcome of the intense social suffering the Kaiowá face on the reservations, we (anthropologists) are
engaging in another kind of “essentialism” that keeps us from understanding the transformations of
the Guarani religious order.
See, for example, Brandão 1992; Chamorro 1998; Ferreira and Suhrbier 2002; Meihy 1991; Melià
1987; Suhrbier and Ferreira 2001; and Viveiros de Castro 1987.
7
“Divine abundance” was the expression used in the classic reports of Ulrico Schmidt and Alvar N.
Cabeza de Vaca to describe the plenteousness of agricultural products found in Guarani land at
the time of the first contacts between the natives and the Spanish conquerors in Paraguay (Melià
1987:2).
8
9
Almeida 1988; Clastres 1995; COMIN 1988; Ferreira 1998c, 1999c; Ferreira and Suhrbier 2002;
Meihy 1991, 1994; and Monteiro 1984.
1 0
In Ecuador, where 40 percent of the country's children are malnourished, kids ages 10 to 14 have
been campaigning on the streets for better schools, new community services, paved roads and more
parks in crime-infested areas. Children in Rwanda began volunteering for Solidarity Camps in 1996,
where they made bricks for returning refugees - more than 1 million of them - to rebuild homes
devastated by sectarian violence. In Zambia, where more than 360,000 children have lost at least one
parent to AIDS, kids in the Anti-AIDS Club of Chibolya began traveling to slums and rural villages
two years ago to perform skits about protected sex. The Children's Movement for Peace in Colombia
was launched in 1995 by preteens, such as Juan Elias Uribe, who at age 13 lobbied the mayor of his
war-ravaged hometown of Aguachica to let the children vote on the country's 35-year-old guerrilla
war referendum. One of the biggest successes of these young activists has been to draw attention to the
United Child, the most widely ratified treaty on human rights in history. But not everyone welcomes
the kids' efforts. The biggest problem for “Children's Governments” - and the reason some fell apart
- has been opposition from adults. Some community leaders actually put pressure on parents because
they feel their authority is being eroded. The only countries that have not yet ratified the Convention
on the Rights of the Child (CRC) are Somalia and the United States, where the leadership of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee sees many U. N. conventions as a threat to U. S. sovereignty
(Wright 2000).
It is important to note, however, that Guarani self-identification differs from the ethnic designations
coined by anthropologists. The Guarani Nhandeva identify themselves as “Tupi-Guarani” or simply
“Tupi.” This is the case, for instance, of the 150 individuals living in Aldeinha, a shanty town in
Itanhaém, 30 kilometers south of Itaóca. Headed by Catarina Guarani, the group founded the Awá
Nimbonjeredju Association of Tupi-Guarani Indians, representing the Tupi-Guarani Indians (or
Nhandeva, according to Schaden) of the southern coast of São Paulo. The Nhandeva designation, in
turn, is claimed by both the Mbyá and Kaiowá, because they are all related to
Nhande Ru
, the Guarani
Creator. When I asked Mbyá elder Cândido Ramirez, the oldest living Mbyá karaí living in São Paulo
in 2006, if the Tupi were also Nhandeva, he agreed, but added that the Tupi were not
Nhandeva Hete'i
,
or “real” (
verdadeiro
) Nhandeva.
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