Traduccin Tcnico-Cientfica I

Prctica 1: History: Guarani

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Guarani andeva
Archaeological investigations show that Guarani culture originated in the tropical
forests of the Upper Paran and Upper Uruguay basins and the extremities of the
southern Brazilian plateau (Schmitz: 1979,57). In the Vth Century (400 years B.C.) this
culture is supposed to already have become differentiated from Tupi and was
structured with observable characteristics in the 16th Century, much like those of the
present day. The same archaeologists suggest that the formation of this culture would
have taken approximately a thousand years. The "proto-guarani" populations, which
gave rise to the Guarani at the time of the Conquest (1500) and those of the present
day (Susnik: 1975), are marked by a history of intense movements within the spaces
that they consider appropriate as territories for occupation.
At the time of the arrival of the Europeans, the populations that became known as
Guarani occupied a vast region of the coast that extended from Canania (So Paulo)
to Rio Grande do Sul, penetrating to the interior of the Paran, Uruguay and Paraguay
River basins. From the junction of the Paran and Paraguay rivers they were spread
out along the eastern bank of the Paraguay and both banks of the Paran. The Tiet
river, to the north, and the Paraguay to the west, formed the limits of their territories.
Archaeological studies indicate that in the years 1000/1200 A.D., groups of Guarani
expanded to the south from regions located in the Brazilian west (headwaters of the
Araguaia, Xingu, Arinos, Paraguay river), and occupied territories covering the
present-day south of Brazil, north of Argentina and the eastern region of Paraguay (Cf.
Smith, 1978; 1975; 1979-80).

After the arrival of the Portuguese and Spaniards in the 16th and until the 18th century,
the history of the Guarani was marked by the presence of Jesuit missionaries who
sought to catechize them and by the insistence of the "encomenderos" the
encomienda, in the Spanish colonial system, allowed the colonizers to enslave the
Indians under the official disguise of protection Spaniards and Portuguese
bandeirantes who intended to enslave them.
With the European presence, the Guarani territories were the stage of disputes; the
region was strategically important and relevant geopolitically in that historical moment.
For the Spaniards, the territories of the Guarani were an access route between
Assuncin (Paraguay) and Europe; besides that, control over them would facilitate
defense against the advance of the Paulistas. For the Portuguese, it represented an
area of expansion to the interior of the colony and access to supposed mineral wealth.
It was delimited by the vague Treaty of Tordesilhas, which allowed for varying
interpretations on the locations of the border. It is worth noting, on the other hand, that
the space between Assuncin and So Paulo/So Vicente did not afford the mineral
wealth idealized by the Iberians in the myth of Eldorado; the only wealth in this part of
Amrica was to be had from the Guarani labor force.
In 1603 the governor of Paraguay requested the presence of Jesuit priests for the work
of catechizing the indigenous population. Thus, part of the Guarani population was
reduced (forcibly concentrated) into the "settlements" or missions implanted and
administered by the Jesuits. The initiative of reducing the Indians sought to submit
them to a certain regime, according to a colonial model, in specific spaces known as
reductions or missions, Christianize them and thus facilitate Access to the
indigenous labor force for the encomenderos of Assuncin. The Jesuit Fathers,
however, were against this economic model, for they did not allow their neophytes to
be enslaved on the encomiendas, thus undermining the basis on which the colonial
economy was structured and [ placing] in risk the future of the colonists". (cf. Thomaz
de Almeida, 1991; Gadelha, 1980; MCA, 1951). From 1608 to 1768 scores of Jesuit
reductions were formed in the then Paraguayan provinces of Guair (part of presentday Paraguay, So Paulo and Paran), Itatin (part of present-day Mato Grosso do Sul
and eastern Paraguay), Paran (part of Paran and Santa Catarina) and Tapes (part
of Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraguay, north of Argentina).
By the second quarter of the 17th Century, the Paulistas "fretted over the
encomenderos who who were approaching the town of So Paulo in order to take
Indians" (Belmonte, 1948: 151), and thus they organized themselves into expeditions
the bandeiras for the purpose of advancing to the west in search of Indians on whom
they could prey, a business in which they were unwittingly helped by the Jesuit
reductions which served as depositories of Indians, which facilitated their work.

The data on the number of Indians taken prisoner by the bandeiras present widely
differing totals, but they reveal considerably high quantities. In 1557 there were
approximately "40 thousand hearths" or nearly 200 thousand individuals just in the
Paraguayan province of Guair (cf. Perasso, 16:1987); the reductions of San Ignacio
and Nossa Senhora de Loreto on the banks of the Paranapanema and Tibagi rivers,
also in Guair, together provided shelter for nearly 10 thousand ava in 1614 (cf.
Gadelha, 1980). Ellis Jr. (1946: 60-70) calculates that 356.720 Indians were taken in
slavery in the 16th and 17th centuries. He calculated the total on the basis of the need
for slaves in the Northeast, relating this to the utilization of Africans as slaves. For
Simonsen (1937), approximately 520 thousand slaves were utilized in sugar
production during the 17th century; of these, 350 thousand were Black slaves and 170
thousand Indian slaves. In the 18th Century, reasoning on sugar production data by
arrobas, Simonsen concludes that the total number of slaves was on the order of
1,300,000; a fourth part Indians, that is, nearly 320 thousand. For Meli(1986: 61-2), in
the colonial period, there were an estimated 60 thousand Guarani living in the province
of Tape, present-day Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and part of Paran. On
Guair, this author divides the provinces history into three cycles: the
encomenderos, when from 200 thousand to a million Guarani were enslaved; the
Jesuit period, nearly 50 thousand souls; and the bandeirante, nearly 60 thousand.
According to Gadelha (1980: 175), reporting on demographic data from Itatim, in 1688
there were 9,925 individuals left in that province after the bandeirante incursion. The
Viscount of Taunay (1951: I, 61), writing on Guair, reports that the number if Indians
enslaved by the Paulistas exceeded (...) 200,000. Just the attack in 1629 would have
cost the freedom of more than 50,000 Indians. In 1625, still according to this author,
the province of Itatim had more than 4,000 settled Indians and 150 Spanish colonists.
He highlights the fact that the term Indian can be uderstood as ndio de flecha, that
is, corresponding to an average family of four people, thus totaling nearly 20 thousand
individuals. Srgio Buarque de Holanda (1945: 29), also writing on Guair, relates that
no less than seven hundred rafts, not to mention individual canoes, carrying more
than 12 thousand individuals, went down the Paran by order of Father Montoya, in
order to flee from the bandeirante attacks. Cassiano Ricardo (1970: 93-4) relates that
the calculation of historians reaches the sum total of one hundred thousand Indians
from Guair (...). Varnhagen calculates that no less than three hundred thousand
Indians were taken prisoner by the bandeirantes between 1614 and 1639.
Priests and reduced Indians tried in vain to resist the onslaught of the bandeirantes
who destroyed Paraguayan villages and ferociously attacked the Guarani reductions
which had been established in the Paranapanema, Tibagi, Iva, Piquiri and Iguau
basins. Coming from So Paulo via the Tiet and Paranapanema rivers, the
bandeirantes continued on, from the junction with the Paran, to the south, in search
1

of Guarani Indians reduced in the missions of Guair and Tapes. After seeing the
missions of the Provinces of Guair, Paran and Tapes devastated by the
bandeirantes between 1628 and 1632, the Jesuits founded the mission of Itatin, which
was short-lived, located between the Mbotetey, present-day Miranda, River, and the
Apa (see Meli et Alii 1976; Susnik 1979-80; Thomaz de Almeida 1991). The presence
of the bandeirantes produced a reorganization of spatial occupation at the time,
obliging Indians and priests to make forced moves, often fleeing from the Paulista
advance to distant places. In view of the persistence of the bandeirante threat, priests
and Indians from Itatin who came to later be recognized as the present-day subroup
of Kaiowa Guarani or Pa-Tavyter moved to the south, crossing, in the second half
of the 17th Century the Apa (MS) River, going on to occupy the southern part of
present-day Mato Grosso do Sul which they have inhabited until the present-day. The
"Province of Guair" was located between the Paranapanema, Paran, Iguau rivers
and the vague demarcatory line that divided Portuguese and spanish lands, imposed
by the Treaty of Tordesilhas, and corresponding in area to approximately 85% of the
present territory occupied by the State of Paran" (Blasi, 1977: 150).
The expulsion of the Jesuits from the region at the beginning of the 17th Century was
an important event for the Guarani population because it mobilized the reduced
Indians, which also had repercussions for those who had not been under the guidance
of the priests, thus setting into motion a redimensioning of the colonial reality. It makes
some sense to work with the hypothesis that, given their present-day territories, the
ancestors of the pa-tavyter or kaiowa were the ancient Guarani peoples of Itatin; the
present-day andeva would have derived from the peoples of the provinces of Paran
and Guair (V. Meli: 1976; Almeida: 1991) and that, due to historical circumstances,
they came to settle in the southern part of present-day from the 17th Century on.
With the signing of the Treaty of Madrid (1750) and the demarcation of the border
between Brazil and Paraguay in1752, the Guarani re-emerged in a generic information
found in the diaries of the demarcatory expeditions. Going up the Iguatemi (Mato
Grosso do Sul) River, these diaries relate that "of the nation that is known to inhabit
these regions, they are the monteces, (Hill, forest in Spanish) people on foot, who live
in the forests, we do not doubt that their dwelling-place is this mountain, and thus we
didnt even suspect their existence until we entered the woods" (Fonseca, 1937: 358).
These monteces or caagu, are thus those Indians who politically were not reduced,
a category referring to a specific historical situation and that serves to designate a way
of life as opposed to the way of life that the colony had come to establish (Meli et alli,
1976: 169).
From then until the end of the 19th Century, there is no information on these Indians.
One may suppose that part of the population that had been reduced was incorporated
into Paraguayan society and another part into the Brazilian regional population;
another part of the colonial Guair and Itatin Guarani would, with the expulsion of the

Jesuits, have been reincorporated to their non-Christianized kin. It is the descendants

of these Guarani that we find today and who remained deep in the forests of their
territories iuntil the end of the 19th Century. Their location in the forests, and their
discrete and fugacious manner kept the Guarani at a distance from the western
frontiers that were expanding and that progressively became constant, greater, ande
ver more threatening.
The southern part of Mato Grosso do Sul and eastern Paraguay, which are confused
today with Kaiowa and andeva territories, remained exempt from intense colonization
processes until the beginning of the 20th Century and served as a refuge for the
Guarani populations under discussion. From the last decade of the 19th Century to the
first two decades of the 20th, a large part of the Guarani territories became the target
for exploitative production of mate tea, not colonization, which was promoted by large
companies which held a monopoly over this product in the region that includes
present-day Paran, Mato Grosso do Sul, the north of Argentina and eastern
Paraguay. With powers to prevent the entrance and permanence of colonists or
competitors (cf. Thomaz de Almeida, 1991), leasing contributed to keeping the areas
under the control of these companies, free from colonists until the 1920s and 30s. The
forests were to a large extent conserved and in them the Guarani lived.
From the 1920s and more intensely from the 1960s, systematic and effective
colonization of Guarani territories began, unleashing a process of systematic
expropriation of their lands by the White colonists.
During the time in which the Indian Protection Service (SPI) was active, in 1913, in the
area around Bauru (the interior of So Paulo), indigenous reserves were created as a
result of the attraction front led by Curt Nimuendaju to attract the Kaingang and Terena
and to contain the migratory movements of the Guarani in the direction of the Atlantic
coast. After a major epidemic that decimated many indigenous families in Ararib, and
unable to attract the andeva families already established on the coast nor to totally
prevent the Guarani movements in the direction of the sea, two Indiagenous Posts
were created: the Padre Anchieta Post in the village of Itariri Peruibe Post in the village
of Bananal, both on the southern coast of So Paulo. In the state of Paran Kaingang
and Guarani indigenous reserves were created, on which a model of agriculture, labor
and development totally alien to the indigenous way of being was imposed, based on
the policy in effect at that time of integrating the Indians into the surrounding society.
Presently, in the south and southeast regions, various regional administrations of the
Funai include the Lands of the Guarani and other ethnic groups.