The Brasiguayos: People in Search of a Country
Gamboa, Aldo Horacio
A few miles outside Amambai, near the Brazilian border with Paraguay, hundreds of people remain camped at the side of the road. They dwell in makeshift canvas houses, under the permanent threat of...
...By 1990, the Movimiento Sin Tierra was already actively functioning in Paraguay, similar to its combative counterpart, Movimento dos Sem Terra, on the Brazilian side...
...A few miles out of town, between the city and the border, hundreds of people remain camped at the side of the road, living without potable water, electricity, access to health care, or land to grow food...
...Now, as they try to return to their country of origin, they find themselves outcasts in both countries...
...The guidelines are: a) work to legalize the brasiguayos' ownership of lands in Paraguayan territory so that they can return to agricultural work...
...b) negotiate with the Paraguayan government to give these peasants access to lines of agricultural credit that would allow them to buy tools, fertilizers and seeds...
...process occurred in Mato Gross do In that same period, the govern- Sul...
...Interested in the advantages of a partnership with Brazil-especially in a gateway to the Atlantic Ocean through the Brazilian port of Paranagu--the Paraguayan government signed the agreement...
...and mechanization of agricultural the north of Parand...
...The presence of enormous contingents of undocumented Brazilian workers with knowledge and experience with crops that could be sold on the world market had a notable impact on the Paraguayan economy...
...Amambai is a small, dusty, almost forgotten city in an outof-the-way part of Brazil close to the Paraguayan border...
...Francisca, the mother of eight, looks likes she's in her fiftiesalthough she's only 31 years old...
...That is one reason why a solution to the problem was not arrived at...
...Until the mid-1980s, its 26,000 inhabitants had never savored the glory of seeing their city mentioned in the country's most important newspapers...
...With the objective of increasing its influence in Paraguay, the Brazilian military directly and indirectly encouraged the migration of peasants to that country, thereby creating a "living border" in its neighbor to the south...
...Lately, however, Amambaf has gained notoriety as a 3 stark example of the 'The brasiguayo encampment near Amambai...
...Between 1970 and 1979, however, Brazilians came to account for 72.2% of the population...
...The timid agrarian reform programs are lost in the dark corridors of the parliamentary bureaucracy...
...by 1980, the number had grown to 89,000...
...In the first half of that decade alone, 77,000 small agricultural properties disappeared from southeast...
...iayos According to geographer Luiz Carlos Batista of the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMT), between 1950 and 1969, only 4% of the population on the Paraguayan side of the border was Brazilian...
...zens...
...Accordingly, the trans- against whom it was embroiled in fer of technology to the estates in continuous border disputes...
...We are counting on the good faith of the Paraguayan authorities, but the question should be resolved by legislation in that country...
...he knot of the brasiguayos is difficult to unravel...
...ment began to give special back- The military government's strateing to the large estates bordering gic priority was the removal of Paraguay as a means of bolstering Paraguay from the sphere of infludefense along the country's ence of the Argentine military, perimeter...
...The present Brazilian government has three basic guidelines for its diplomats to follow...
...Once Brazil takes this step, these outcast peasants can request identity documents, and then be included in official resettlement and agrarian reform projects that will allow them at least to grow their own food...
...The building of the gigantic dam served many purposes for the Brazilian military: it would guarantee electrical energy to all of southern Brazil...
...But pressure on the government from the large landowners in the border region is enormous and influential enough to delay any decision...
...In 1970, there were 19,000 tractors in the state of Parand...
...Since 1990, at least 11 people have died in Amambaf alone in similar conflicts...
...The agrarian bloc in Congress is so solid that the government cannot even punish the grain producers who, in order to maintain high prices this year, let three million tons of wheat, rice and beans spoil...
...No judicial process is in place, however, to investigate these incidents...
...The same official acknowledged, however, that the approximately 150,000 Brazilians still in Paraguay suffer from the same two problems as those who have returned: lack of legal documentation, and lack of recognized ownership of land...
...The environmental devastation wrought by that shift has not yet been fully evaluated...
...As a direct consequence, 1.3 million inhabitants of Parani-the great majority of whom were peasants-left the state in the 1970s...
...Sometimes they shoot in broad daylight, although the authorities never see anything...
...Her husband, Dimido Lopes, is a farmer...
...The pace of mechanization picked up when the soybean producers gained access to the export market...
...From a traditional exporter of meat, wood and yerba mate, Paraguay was transformed into a vendor of considerable quantities of soya and Vol XXVII, No 3 NOV/DEC 1993 5UPDATE / BRAZIL cotton...
...The governments of Paraguay and Brazil have never officially recognized the existence of the problem...
...A dirt road sandwiched between enormous haciendas leads to the Aldo Horacio Gamboa is a freelance Argentine journalist living in Rio de Janeiro...
...Each person, however, regardless of age, knows his or her duty: farming, getting food, cooking, building new huts, caring for the community's few animals, even defense...
...They dwell in makeshift canvas houses, under the permanent threat of bullets...
...About 40 brasiguayos were killed in armed clashes with these hired guns last year in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where Amambaf is located...
...In the first phase of this policy, during the second half of the 1960s, the military government began to encourage the creation of soybean plantations for export, mainly in the states of Parand (in the south) and Mato Grosso do Sul (in the leased land on the Paraguayan side...
...In reality, the Brazilian government can do little," he says...
...In the dust churned up from the nearby road, each face shows fearful determination...
...From Itamaraty, we can only suggest courses of action and take on support work...
...More and more brasiguayos began to make the trek homeward with Stroessner's ouster from power on February 3, 1989, and the subsequent return to Paraguay of about 100,000 Paraguayans who had been living near the border in Argentina and Bolivia...
...This was the period of the greatest exodus of Brazilians into Paraguay...
...Unofficial sources say they may number between 400,000 and 500,000...
...tiers and large landowners in The map showed then, as it does Parand and Mato Grosso do Sul today, a long chain of huge prop- into Paraguayan territory...
...This mass return increased pressure for lands located on the Paraguayan side of the border with Brazil, making it difficult for the brasiguayos to stay in the region...
...The Paraguay, the Brazilian military military regime also gave out agri- achieved two objectives: they creatcultural credits and promoted other ed a human barrier between Brazil policies that contributed to the and Argentina, and they pushed the enormous concentration of land all ongoing land conflicts between setalong the border with Paraguay...
...The brasiguayos' tragic predicament causes hardly a ripple in the consciousness of a nation grown inured to the misery and hunger of more than 25 million of its people...
...generate an important energy reserve...
...Afraid of losing their lands or suffering reprisals, these illegal and hungry peasants were systematically called upon to participate in fraudulent elections that over and over again returned the Paraguayan general to power...
...Yet among the makeshift canvas houses in the camp near Amambaf, men and women hope...
...In 1980-even as the brasiguayos began to leave Paraguayan territory--these crops accounted for almost 50% of exports...
...This coincided with The shaded area marks where most of the brasigu the increasing modernization live...
...He spends most of the day working the land, and walks to Amambai in the afternoons in search of odd jobs such as bricklaying...
...The only thing I've got now is my sickle," he says, showing his old tool...
...The topic of the so-called brasiguayos is not analyzed bilaterally with the Paraguayan authorities, or even within the framework of Mercosur (the Southern Cone common market), because it's not considered a problem," says an official in the Brazilian statehouse of Itamaraty who asked to remain anonymous...
...Without documents to prove that they own land in Paraguay or Brazil, or even to show that they are really Brazilian, the brasiguayos are demanding that the Brazilian government recognize them as citiWithout documents to prove that they own land in Paraguay or Brazil, or even to show they are Brazilian, the brasiguayos are demanding that the Brazilian government recognize them as citizens...
...and c) set up separate books in the Brazilian consulates in Paraguay to register properties of Brazilians in that country, regardless of whether these properties have been inscribed in the Civil Register of Asunci6n...
...They are the brasiguayos...
...On first impression, everything seems chaotic...
...They (men on the payroll of the large landowners) silently arrive and begin shooting...
...improvised camp, set up in 1986...
...million Brazilians who have been deprived of their political and civil rights...
...permit shady negotiations with the oligopoly construction companies...
...The historian Alfredo da Mota Menezes, a professor at UFMT, contends that the brasiguayos were also used to consolidate the regime of General Alfredo Stroessner...
...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASUPDATE / BRAZIL Nobody knows exactly how many people are caught in this sit- uation...
...In the years following the inauguration of Itaipti, a large part of the Paraguayan lands surrounding the dam became inhabited by undocumented brasiguayos...
...Day after day, as they have for years, the brasiguayos look forward to that promised day when they will have their own plot of land and a country that embraces them as its own...
...The authorities prefer to classify it as a mere migratory issue in a border population...
...To protect Brazilian interests inside Paraguay, the authorities once again used the migrant population...
...According to Milton Malulei, the First Justice of Mato Grosso do Sul, around 280,000 brasiguayos live on both sides of the border...
...The most dangerous time is at night," says Francisca, one of the brasiguayas...
...The community lives without plight of some half potable water, electricity, access to health care, or land to grow food...
...Of all the things the brasiguayos lack, one is particularly painful: citizenship...
...Translated from the Spanish by NACLA...
...All three make it clear that Brazil expects the solution to the problem of the brasiguayos to come from the Paraguayan side...
...erties-in large part unproduc- The second phase of the drama tive-on the Brazilian side, and of the brasiguayos began to unfold large numbers of Brazilian peas- at the beginning of the 1970s with ants cultivating small plots of the official decision to build the Itaipd hydraulic dam in partnership with the Paraguayan government...
...A similar production...
...They dwell in makeshift canvas houses, under the permanent threat of bullets...
...and flood the only piece of Brazilian land claimed at the time by Paraguay...
...By 1984," Batista concludes, "this number dropped to 18.8%, which indicates a process of return...
...In 1973, soybeans and cotton accounted for less than 18% of exports from Paraguay...
...Further, "for many years," says da Mota Menezes, "the opposition to the Stroessner regime lacked a clear policy with respect to the brasiguayos...
...The brasiguayos are the belated consequence of the expansionist policies of the military regimes that governed Brazil between 1964 and 1985...
...Without any kind of identity documents, these rural Brazilian workers emigrated to Paraguay a decade or two ago...
...I lost 17 years of my life working in Paraguay...
...By crethat region was much more intense ating a "living border" inside than in other border areas...
...For its part, preoccupied with the massacres of street kids and Yanomami Indians, the Brazilian government has still not devised a plan to deal with the drama of internal migration...
Vol. 27 • November 1993 • No. 3
