CTI’s work in Ava Guarani villages of Western Paraná includes cross-generational exchanges of seeds and knowledge.
By BGR Staff
The Guarani are Indigenous peoples of the Atlantic Forest region of South America who now live in villages scattered throughout southern Brazil. Centuries of colonization have resulted in the loss and/or degradation of much of their historic territory. Today, much of their ancestral land is used for the production of soy and corn by large agribusiness corporations, which rely heavily on pesticides and transgenic seeds. The loss of agricultural land to colonization parallels a series of losses to the Guarani way of life, among them the weakening of traditional agricultural practices.
The Center for Indigenous Work (Centro de Trabalho Indigenista or CTI), a BGR partner since 2019, works closely with Indigenous people in Brazil to support land rights and the preservation and sustenance of traditional cultures. Since its founding in 1979, CTI has focused on understanding and centering the social and political realities of Indigenous life. CTI supports Guarani communities in identifying their own needs and works in partnership with them to develop solutions.
Today, the Guarani are working to restore parts of their ancestral lands through planting and reforestation projects. In the Ti Tenondé Porã region on the outskirts of São Paolo, Guarani communities seek to maintain their traditional way of life by resisting the unregulated urban sprawl threatening the remaining Atlantic Forest ecosystems in this area. In western Paraná, the Guarani have been carrying out several projects to plant traditional foods as a means of achieving food sovereignty for their communities.
The fields cultivated by Ava Guarani people are islands of biodiversity within the corporate monocultures that surround them. These fields not only support their communities’ food needs, but also preserve traditional species that, despite the risk of being decimated due to land loss and contamination by transgenic seeds, have been protected over time by Indigenous planters.
Through our 2021 project with CTI titled “Knowledge and biodiversity in Ava Guarani villages in western Paraná,” BGR supported the efforts of these communities to strengthen traditional agricultural practices, preserve biodiversity, and bolster food security, all while honoring the value of the associated traditional knowledge and spirituality.
For this project, CTI facilitated a series of exchanges of knowledge and traditional seeds between the Guarani villages of western Paraná and Guarani biodiversity guardians from other regions. These exchanges began with a meeting in the Tekoha Y’Hovy village, where participants shared the needs of their various communities. The project supported the construction of a Jeroky aty, the Guarani meeting house where the Ava Guarani hold their spiritual and political gatherings and perform rituals related to the consecration of seeds and food. At the end of the project year, this was the location of ll Oporaiva Kuera Aty, an exchange of knowledge and traditional seeds bringing together village elders—the main guardians of traditional seeds—as well as Indigenous youth from various villages in the region. The project provided participants with seedlings, agricultural materials, and tools needed for the cultivation of traditional crops.
Working with other local organizations, CTI also facilitated a knowledge exchange and a workshop on the cultivation of jataí, a species of native stingless bee crucial for the pollination of flowers and tree species. The bees’ honey is traditionally used in Guarani food and medicine, and the beeswax is used in several ritual activities.
Gilberto Benites is a young man who lives in Tekoha Pohã Renda village, in a small Guarani area that is home to a remnant of ancient forest as well as family farms and homes. The community is surrounded by non-Indigenous soy and eucalyptus agribusiness farms, whose pesticide runoff contaminates the local soil and water, affecting plant, animal, and human lives.
The limited size of the reservation area means that farmers here lack the acreage to cultivate sufficient crops to feed their families. Nevertheless, the families of Tekoha Pohã Renda make efforts to maintain their traditional agricultural species, preserve the small forested area, and protect the animals that live there.
Gilberto is one of the Ava Guarani who have been dedicated to cultivating and protecting several hives of jataí in his village, and in April, he joined other community members in hosting a CTI workshop about breeding the native stingless bees. They were joined by Guarani people from other villages in western Paraná and the states of São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul.
Among the attendees was Lourdes Gabriel, who lives in the Tekoa Kuaray Oua village on the São Paulo periphery. In her garden, Lourdes cultivates several traditional agricultural species, including corn, manioc, sweet potato, beans, and pumpkin. Recently, she also started breeding jataí bees. The bees, she said, are important not only for her people but “for the whole of humanity, which is very difficult for the jurua [non-Indigenous] to understand.”
Lourdes’ trip to Terra Roxa, in western Paraná, to participate in the CTI workshop in Tekoha Pohã Renda, was her first time seeing the region. She described her excitement, not only about the workshop’s educational content, but also for the opportunity to share experiences and knowledge with other Guarani people on the raising of native bees and the planting of traditional species.
Paulina Kunha Takua Matinez is a young spiritual and political leader of the Ava Guarani people, a rare woman among a leadership comprised mostly of men. The political movements for reclaimed territory, for food sovereignty, and for gender equality cannot be separated, she argues—but neither can they be achieved without spiritual grounding, the wisdom of the elders, and the nhemongarai rituals, when seeds and traditional species are celebrated at planting time within the Jeroky aty.
A member of the leadership team for the Oporaiva Kuera Aty, Paulina spoke about the importance of rescuing the traditional seeds that the Ava Guarani have lost due to the territorial dispossession of their people.
She also looked to the future. At the event, Paulina and the elders of her village spoke about the recent epidemic of suicides among young Ava Guarani people, a conversation that led to a commitment to strengthen the village youth group.
This article is based on reporting by the Center for Indigenous Work.
