Poetry from the Ruins: The Retaking of Land and the Word-Soul

ABSTRACT

The following texts arise from an ongoing war conducted by the Brazilian State against the Guarani Kaiowá people in state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Since 2020, there has been an intensification of distinct violations related to the misappropriation of Guarani Kaiowá body-territories. The first poem, ‘Ogá Pysy’, focuses on the arson attacks committed by Pentecostal churches against the sacred houses where many relevant socio-cosmological practices of the Guarani Kaiowá people take place. The second poem, ‘Where to Die’, reflects the contradictions related to the anti-colonial action of retaking ancestral territory, conducted by the Guarani Kaiowá people since the 1970s. Thus, the following poems reflect insurrection and contemporary forms of Indigenous autonomy and struggle facing centuries of capitalist and colonial enterprise. The experience of active solidarity and direct participation by the authors on the daily Guarani Kaiowá uprisings intend to express collective meanings through an engaged literary and cosmopolitical writing.

KEYWORDS:

• Land Retaking
• Ogá pysy
• Tekoha
• Guarani kaiowá
• Poetry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The walking paths of pilgrimage to connect territories/tekoha.

2. The ogá pysy are Guarani Kaiowá traditional prayer houses, as we will see in the text that follows. This is a poem written by Felipe Mattos Johnson and translated by Valdineia Aquino, counsellor of Kunãngue Aty Guasu, the great women’s assembly of the Guarani Kaiowá people. This poem originally mixed Portuguese, Spanish and Guarani. The original poem will be published in the author’s thesis.

3. Literally ‘cross’, a reference to the ancient method of preparing the crops in Guarani Kaiowá fields. The sacred white corn always stands in the centre of the cross, as if planted in the heart of one’s body.

4. The Yanomami people use the metaphor of the Giant Armadillo to refer to the machines of extractivism, especially mining, one of the main threats against their territory.

5. Guarani Kaiowá shaman.

6. Sacred ceremonial object used by the shamans.

7. Shaman’s apprentice/disciple.

8. Translation into Guarani by Valdineia Aquino.

9. Original version written in Portuguese, Spanish and Guarani by Felipe Mattos Johnson.

10. Reference to the tekoha, ancestral Guarani Kaiowá territory where one can live – can be – according to their customs, traditions, and ways of living.

11. The streams and rivers in Mato Grosso are generally filled with pesticides from monocultures of soy. The Guarani Kaiowá children commonly play on the riversides, and it is a fountain of life for the Guarani Kaiowá people, that believe in guardian spirits of rivers and other vital forces, called jara.

12. The forbidden place of retakings is a reference to the opposition between private property and communal life in the tekoha, characterised by relations with shamanic beings.

13. The soil is literally red in the south region of Mato Grosso do Sul. But it’s also red of blood.

14. The Guarani Kaiowá people bury the umbilical cords in the place of birth and in the sacred land.

15. The Guarani Kaiowá houses on recovered lands (retakings) are commonly made of tarps, due to the harsh conditions. Sometimes, it’s possible to cover them with thatch, as with the ogá pysy, although the ogá pysy is fully covered by thatch.

16. It is commonly said that Nhanderu Tupã, one of the shamanic beings, rides the sky with its apyka, a small bench, sitting on a boat from where he launches thunder and rain. The rain can also be, according to the shamans, a consequence of specific prayers directed to provoke rain. The prayers are made with the use of a sacred instrument called mbaraká, made of gourd.

17. Campomonesia adamantium. Wild fruit typical of Mato Grosso do Sul region. The Guarani say that this fruit is the Jakaira’s fruit, the guardian of the sacred corn.

18. Sacred wind instrument used by the shamans to speak with the shamanic beings.

19. Original version in Portuguese, written by Felipe Mattos Johnson.

20. The suffix ‘rã’, which indicates future. Where to die is translated as ‘a place [tekoha] where we can be in the future’.

21. More information on Kunhangue’s projects, actions and reports can be accessed here: https://www.kunangue.com/.

22. Original in Portuguese, as in the references at the end of this paper: Intolerância religiosa, racismo religioso e casas de reza Kaiowá e Guarani queimadas.

23. In Brazilian law, there is a difference between Reserves – imposed by the SPI to free up land for colonisation –; Indigenous Lands, currently claimed by indigenous people as ancestral places of occupation; and Retakings – retomadas, in Portuguese – realised by an autonomous action of entering the claimed lands as a reaction against the state’s refusal to demarcate.

24. Own translation.

25. Faculdade Intercultural Indígena.

26. Own translation.

27. The first indigenous rap group in Brazil. We understand rap as poetry too.

28. The word-soul, according to the Guarani Kaiowá. Sacred dimension of a word-soul-body-territory.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [UI/BD/154315/2022].

Notes on contributors

Valdineia Jorge Aquino

Valdineia Jorge Aquino is an undergraduate student in the Intercultural Indigenous Faculty and a Kaiowá woman from the Panambizinho indigenous land. She is from a family of important shamans of the Kaiowá people and also a teacher in indigenous education at her territory.

Felipe Mattos Johnson

Felipe Mattos Johnson is an Anthropologist. In his master's thesis at the Federal University of Grande Dourados, he wrote about the new youth resistance of the Guarani and Kaiowá people through their great youth assembly: the Retomada Aty Jovem. Currently a PhD Anthropology student in the University of Lisbon, where he develops a thesis about the Guarani and Kaiowá shamanic critics against the capitalist way of being of the white people.