Country: Brazil

Group: Guarani

Date Finalized: 4/21/20

Team: Rayna Castillo (lead), Colleen Clauss, Payton Thompson

Content Warning: labor exploitation, slavery, violence, death, imprisonment

Approximate Time Period: 1500-present

The Guarani, as an ethnic group generally, have experienced a long history of targeted lethal violence. In the 16th century, the Spanish forcibly relocated over 40,000 Guarani with the goal of exploiting their labor and subjecting them to their Christian teachings (Lippy et al., 1992). About a hundred years later, thousands of Guarani were captured or killed by slave traders from Sau Paulo during what was known as the “Paulina Invasion” (Jackson, 2008). According to a 1756 census, the Guarani had lost more than 15,000 of their people from the combined brutality of the Spanish expansionists and Sau Paulo slave traders (Jackson, 2008). More recently, and within Brazil specifically, the Guarani attempted to retake their ancestral lands in the 1990s, but dozens were killed by local militias who had connections to the local landowners (Survival International, 1999; Human Rights Watch, 2016). In a 2010 Survival International Report, the NGO lists several documented instances of targeted lethal violence against the Guarani, much of which have been the result of the forced removal of the people from their ancestral land (Survival International, 2010). Another example of targeted lethal violence against the Guarani took the form of assassinations (Survival International, 2010). In 2008 alone, there were 42 assassinations of Guarani, most of whom were targeted for their advocacy of land rights and reoccupation campaigns (Survival International, 2010). Because the Guarani have systematically “suffered from high rates of unfair imprisonment, exploitation in the workplace, malnutrition, violence, homicide, and assassination,” this is an appropriate coding of targeted lethal violence (Survival International, 2010). The data quality for this code is a 3, because the information comes from peer-reviewed sources and reliable organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Survival International. 

Sources

  1. Human Rights Watch. (2016, January 5). World Report 2015: Rights Trends in Brazil. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/brazil
  2. Jackson, Robert H. (2008). “The Population and Vital Rates of the Jesuit Missions of Paraguay, 1700-1767”. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 38 (3): 401–431.
  3. Lippy, Charles H, Robert Choquette and Stafford Poole (1992). Christianity comes to the Americas: 1492–1776. New York: Paragon House. pp. 98–100.
  4. Survival International. (1999). Violations of the rights of the Guarani of Mato Grosso do Sul State, Brazil. Retrieved from http://digitallibrary.un.org/record/276366
  5. Survival International. (2010). Violations of the Rights of the Guarani of Mato Grosso do Sul State, Brazil, (March), 26. Retrieved from http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/5671