This year, when Itaipu Binational Hydroelectric Plant is celebrating its 50th anniversary, with a documentary series on Brazilian channel Globoplay and a concert by Brazilian pop singer Jão, the Avá Guarani Indigenous people in western Paraná state are being shot at by gunmen throughout the border with Paraguay. One thing apparently non-related to the other actually has not only a causal historical relationship but could also be, if the company fulfils the Indigenous demands, a way of alleviating the violence the Guarani people suffer; they, who have been fighting to reclaim their territory.
Built during the Brazilian business-military dictatorship (1964-1985), the Itaipu hydroelectric dam on the Paraná River submerged 135,000 hectares of land. Underwater since the 1980s, much of this was Avá Guarani territory.
As reparation, the binational company has committed to acquiring farms that are currently overlapping Avá Guarani areas and which, although being traditionally occupied, have not yet been demarcated. This negotiation is also the subject of what is called Original Civil Action (ACO) No. 3.555, which is being processed by Brazil’s Supreme Court.
One of the areas that could be permanently destined for the Avá Guarani through the ACO measure is the current center of the conflict over land in the region. The Yvy Okaju village in Guaíra, in the Paraná state, is one of the areas retaken on July 5, 2024, when the Indigenous people carried out seven occupations within the Guasu Guavirá Indigenous Land. Since then, a non-Indigenous encampment has been set up next to the retaken land, perpetrating armed attacks that have already hurt 12 residents of Yvy Okaju.
The most recent wave of attacks against the community began on December 29, continued through New Year's Eve and had its bloodiest episode on January 3rd, when two children and two young men were shot.
The retaken Indigenous village is part of the Guasu Guavirá Indigenous Land which, overlapping 165 farms, was identified and delimited by the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI, in Portuguese) in 2018. Since then, however, the demarcation process has been at a standstill due to a lawsuit filed by the municipalities of Guaíra and Terra Roxa, both located in the state of Paraná and accepted by the Federal Court at the trial court level.
The continuation of land demarcation depends on a final legal decision in the higher courts. This, however, is also suspended until the Supreme Court rules on the validity or otherwise of the so-called "Time Frame Thesis" or cut-off point (No. 14.701/23). The justice who will decide on the issue is Gilmar Mendes, who opted to create a ‘conciliation commission’, postponing the final rule.
Ava Guarani children in the Yvy Okaju Indigenous community, next to where houses were burned down in attacks carried out by gunmen / Ava Guarani Community
Approved by Congress in September 2023 – days later and despite the Supreme Court having ruled it unconstitutional – the thesis is in force in Brazil for the time being.
The Avá Guarani are directly affected by the idea that only Indigenous lands occupied by their original peoples in October 1988 can be demarcated. Expelled from their lands between 1975 and 1982, when Itaipu was built, it was not by choice that they were not there when the Brazilian Constitution was promulgated.
While the legal knot doesn't untie the demarcation, one of the parallel ways to regularize the Avá Guarani lands is via Itaipu. Guasu Guavirá Indigenous Land has 24,000 hectares. The company has offered to buy three thousand hectares.
Ongoing negotiations
Itaipu Binational told Brasil de Fato that the negotiations are being held by the Federal Attorney General's Office, with the participation of the Land Conflicts Commission of the National Council of Justice. “We already have a draft agreement. We just need the approval of some bodies, including the Brazilian government. In principle, we are really moving towards an end,” the organization said.
Asked about the possibility of acquiring the 24,000 hectares of the Guasu Guavirá Indigenous Land, Itaipu Binational said it understood that, “within the budget we have and what is owed for historical reparation, it is necessary to acquire another 3,000 hectares, which will be added to the other 2,200 hectares previously acquired.”
Defending what it considers a “commitment” to ‘its socio-environmental legacy”, Itaipu will, within its budget, be one of the major funders of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30). “The federal investment of BRL 4.7 billion (over US$ 811,3 million), with BRL 1.3 billion (US$ 224,4 million) from Itaipu, is part of the federal government's strategy to make Belém an example of sustainable urbanization,” the company said.
Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples told Brasil de Fato that in August 2024 it signed a “protocol of intentions” with Itaipu Binational, aimed at “reparation” and “socio-environmental justice” for the Indigenous persons affected by the hydroelectric dam. The negotiations, however, are “ongoing” and, therefore, “will not be commented on.”
“Faced with the demarcation of Indigenous Lands in Brazil and the delay regarding the deadline the Constitution establishes, the ministry’s position is to find solutions that put a definitive end to the cycle of violence in land conflicts, which deepened throughout 2023 and 2024 as a result of the cut-off point law,” the statement reads.
Villages burned to the ground and underwater
Jussara Rezende, from the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI, in Portuguese), was there on a day in June 1982, when the last remaining Avá Guarani community had to say goodbye to their village in what was then Ocoy Jacutinga Indigenous Land. On this day of change, the entire village was set on fire.
In addition to Jussara, the Indigenous chief Fernando Martinez and his wife Isadora Kamba'í, representatives from Itaipu, the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI, in Portuguese) and the National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (Incra, in Portuguese), were also there. These bodies were under the command of the military regime.
“We watched until the end. It was horrible. They [the Indigenous people] saw – and to this day I can still see the scene – their houses made of wood and straw burning down,” says Rezende.
With a burning house in the background, a Itaipu emplyee poses next to a truck with the Itaipu Binational logo / Paraná State Truth Commission
“I remember to this very day. Itaipu employees were celebrating. They had finally managed to “sort it out." Because the last ones to leave were the Avá Guarani,” says the missionary. Four months later, the floodgates opened and everything was under water.
Photographs from July 1981 show staff from Itaipu's legal department posing in front of Indigenous houses set on fire. The images were provided anonymously by a former employee to the Paraná Truth Commission, which compiled the crimes committed by the dictatorship in Paraná.
According to the Truth Commission report, Itaipu Binational ordered Indigenous houses to be burned / Paraná State Truth Commission
“After identifying the Guarani of western Paraná as an ‘obstacle’ to the project of building the binational hydroelectric dam,” says the Truth Commission report published in 2014, “the state worked to remove and expel them from their lands, using a series of artifices, which included denying them their ethnic identity by issuing ‘acculturation reports’.”
From 1973 onwards, when the Itaipu Treaty was signed between the dictatorial governments of Brazil and Paraguay, INCRA took 12,000 hectares of land considered vacant and began resettling settlers. According to the Guasu Guavirá Identification and Delimitation Report (RCID, in Portuguese), it aimed to relocate rural people displaced by the Iguaçu National Park and to “clear the land” for the construction of the power plant.
“Thus, amid intense land conflicts in the border area, the Brazilian government invested in a project that led to the removal of more than 42,000 people from the region,” the report points out. “This expropriation process established compensation and resettlement criteria that served only holders of regular titles to these areas.” This was not the case for the Indigenous people.
Also according to the anthropological study, during the 1970s, entire Indigenous communities were “murdered and thrown into the Paraná River, families were forcibly removed to Paraguay, their existence denied by various mechanisms” by the military government, “Itaipu, Incra and FUNAI itself.”
“Even before the hydroelectric dam was built, the Guarani were being expelled by the Matte Larangeira company,” recalls Vilma Rios, from the Yvy Okaju retaking encampment. “Many Guarani worked cutting yerba mate without payment. The “reward” for the families was staying on land. Families who didn't want to work for free were persecuted and killed. And those who didn't want to die began leaving the territory,” he says. “But the construction of Lake Itaipu was the total extermination,” he says. “The Itaipu company was built with Avá Guarani blood.”
The last Indigenous village
It was in Guaíra, where Vilma is, that the sanctuary for the Guarani people known as the Sete Quedas waterfall complex was also submerged by the dam. Unlike the Indigenous people of Ocoy, from the city of São Miguel do Iguaçu, Paraná, who were accompanied by CIMI, those from the municipality of Guaíra and Terra Roxa were the first to be displaced.
When Jussara Rezende arrived in Ocoy in 1981, the community was already completely isolated. “They were terrified,” she says. “The flooding was imminent. The farmers in the area had already been removed. On the road linking Foz do Iguaçu to Santa Helena, there was nothing left. Empty houses burned down, the electricity transmission line was deactivated. It was a scenario of total abandonment, a very deadly atmosphere,” she describes.
“The only people there were the small Avá Guarani group, resisting. And they stayed until 1982, until the very last moment. During the night, when they were performing their rituals, goons would suddenly arrive and shoot them, to intimidate them. It happened time and time again. I was astonished to see such a thing,” says Rezende.
“At that time, they didn't trust anyone arriving there. I don't think they understood what was going to happen. The only thing they knew was that there was going to be a lot of water. It was terrifying,” says Jussara.
To overcome the language barrier, CIMI asked the Guarani from other Brazilian states with whom they were already working – such as chief Antônio Branco and Marçal de Souza (the driving force behind the organization of Indigenous peoples as a social movement in the country) – to translate messages from Portuguese into Guarani. Cassette tapes traveled from one state to the other so they could talk.
“Indigenousness criteria”
“However, it wasn't enough for the state to expel the Guarani from their land: it also sought to deny their identity. In 1981, Célio Horst, Ernesto Geisel's son-in-law, used the ‘criteria of Indigenousness' that had been drawn up by Colonel Ivan Zanoni Hausen and introduced into FUNAI's fraudulent procedures from 1979 onwards, to produce a report in which he reduced from 11 to four the number of Guarani families that would be entitled to the land,” the Truth Commission's report highlights.
In just one day in the Ocoy Jacutinga community, anthropologist Célio Horst carried out his “study”. For him, most of the families were not Indigenous. “A questionnaire was administered in Portuguese. Then, depending on the answers, there were points,” recalls Jussara Rezende. Among those who didn't receive their identity stamp was 101-year-old Mrs Francisca, who didn't speak a word of Portuguese and, therefore, couldn't answer the questions.
Mrs Francisca, an Avá Guarani elder whose identity as an Indigenous woman was denied by Célio Horst's report,. Photo taken in 1980 / Cimi Archive
“It was the same story as now: They're not Indigenous, they're Paraguayans,” criticizes Rezende. On January 15, less than two weeks after Yvy Okaju was shot by gunmen, a news story by RICtv, an affiliate of the Brazilian TV channel Record, questioned the community's Indigenous identity. Without providing any proof, it implied that they were Paraguayans and criminals. The Avá Guarani responded with a 58-minute live broadcast.
After seeing their village reduced to dust and then suffer intense pressure from Itaipu, including trips to Brasilia – Brazil’s capital – and demands from the World Bank (the project's financier), the community led by Indigenous chief Fernando Martinez was the only one of the Avá Guarani to receive a piece of land in exchange for the one that was taken from his people. The first land had 1,500 hectares. The second was also called Ocoy Jacutinga, had 251 hectares and was the place where they settled in 1982.
The revelations of Itaipu’s classified documents
The Truth Commission's report brought to light a secret document about the case, written in 1987 by Itaipu's legal director at the time, Clóvis Ferro Costa. “On the one hand, my current personal conviction is that the Indigenous persons’ claim is not unreasonable. On the other, it is clear that the report on which Itaipu based its judgments is not true. I say this in private, to avoid judicial and political exploitation,” writes Costa.
“The Avá Guarani were presented as having an area of only around 34 hectares. And since Itaipu transferred around 250 ha to them, our stance would have been ‘generous’. It turns out the initial figure is manifestly incorrect,’ admits the then director of Itaipu. ‘Instead of Itaipu being generous, it probably subtracted a lot of land from Indigenous persons. Of course, I don't say this publicly, but in private correspondence, I have no qualms about raising the issue,’ writes Clóvis Costa.
The land retakings
At the end of the 80s, Avá Guarani groups previously dispersed in the municipalities of Guaíra and Terra Roxa began to regroup in villages. “The movement to reclaim land from that time started with those who were grouped in the areas of the current Karumbe'y and Porã tekoha, centers of Guarani resistance which, with the growth of Guaíra's urban sprawl, were swallowed up by the city,” says the RCID.
With population growth in the 2000s, these spaces became increasingly crowded and the struggle for retaking them gained momentum, leading to the emergence of 13 Indigenous villages within the Guasu Guavirá Indigenous Land. “It's when we get access to our history, the lineage to which we belong. We were also part of it, our great-grandparents were part of the expulsion story,” says Vilma, a young Avá Guarani leader.
“That's when, in 2009, there was another retaking initiative and that's when the fight for Avá Guarani territory began. It was no longer village by village, but our great struggle to get back to our territory,” explains Vilma. “Then came all this violence: Attacks, murders of Indigenous leaders, persecution. And today we are suffering in this clash. We're feeling it on our skin,” she says. She herself has shrapnel on her body.
“To this day, we are feeling the impact of the past on the present,” summarizes Vilma Rios. “And even if Itaipu buys the area, especially here in Yvy Okaju, it still won't be enough," she emphasizes.
“Even so, Itaipu needs to acquire this land and give it to us. We belong to it. The owner of the land isn't us, it's someone invisible, but in our lives at all times, whether in moments of struggle, pain, sacrifice or survival. As much as we can't physically see it, we can feel it,” explains Vilma.
“What connects the old struggle to the current one?” reflects Jussara Rezende. “At a point when it was no longer possible to resist, the Guarani of Jacutinga accepted 251 hectares. This is not reparation; it never will be. But it has made it possible to keep the struggle alive since 1982,” the missionary observes. “The difference,” Vilma says, “is that today we are not backing down.”
Edited by: Nathallia Fonseca
