Brazil: new armed attack on Avá-Guarani indigenous peasants
We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article published by A Nova Democracia. We recently reported on the attacks by latifundium and the old Brazilian State on the Avá-Guarani indigenous peasants. We will follow closely the developments to continue reporting on them.
During the night of last Friday, January 3rd, an still unidentified shooter carried out an attack on Aldeia Tekoha Yvy Okaju (formerly known as Tekoha Y’Hovy), located near Mirante Clube, in Vila Eletrosul, in Guaíra, in Paraná.
The victims, according to preliminary reports, are two men and two children. As far as is known, one man was shot in the chest, while the other was shot in the chin. The two children, aged between 7 and 12, were shot in the legs. First the victims were taken to the Emergency Care Unit (UPA) in Guaíra to receive medical care and, after receiving care at the UPA, they were transferred to hospitals in Toledo-PR.
Local leaders claim that the attack was a coordinated ambush, which fits with arguments presented by residents of the region who pointed to signs of tire tracks and footprints in the area, making it a very likely planned attack.
In recent days, as reported in a previous article, the region has been the scene of successive episodes of violence against the Avá-Guarani indigenous communities, including fires, gunshots and firecracker explosions.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, part of the reactionary media insists on alleging that the attacks that the Avá-Guarani people have been suffering in recent days are the result of “internal conflicts” and that these individuals are in fact “Paraguayan citizens posing as indigenous people” and that they would be trying to expand organized crime in Paraguay.
These allegations seek to delegitimize and criminalize the struggle of the Avá-Guarani peoples and, more than that, to disconnect it from the just struggle for land that has been waged for years by the Avá-Guarani peoples since their expulsion from their territories for the construction of the Itaipu hydroelectric plant.
