How global agribusiness in Brazil is destroying indigenous peoples’ lives

For more than half a century, the indigenous Kaiowá and Guarani people of Brazil have been deprived of their ancestral lands and consigned to small reserves where it is impossible to maintain their traditional livelihoods. Generations of these indigenous peoples’ lives have been marked by violence and vulnerability as they have tried to reclaim what, according to the Brazilian constitution, is rightfully theirs.

And now we have found that increasing globalization is posing an urgent threat. In March 2018, as part of the Global-Rural research project based at Aberystwyth University, we visited the Kaiowá and Guarani people who live near Dourados, in the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

We investigated how increasing worldwide integration is impacting the Brazilian countryside, and explored the ways in which the Kaiowá and Guarani peoples’ lives are being affected by the intensification and expansion of industrialized agribusiness production used for foreign markets.

We spoke to indigenous leaders and families based in several Kaiowá and Guarani villages across the municipalities of Juti, Rio Brilhante, Dourados, and Caarapó, and found out the devastating consequences of globalization on their way of life.

Ancestral lands

The first dispossession of Kaiowá and Guarani indigenous lands took place at the end of the 19th century, when the Brazilian government gave five million hectares to the Mate Laranjeira Company. Under the pretext of defending the interests of the native peoples, the state also founded the SPI (Indian Protection Service), which created indigenous land reserves.

Different ethnicities (the Kaiowá, Guarani, Terena, and others) were forced to live together in these reserves, despite historical...