Weeping indigenous leader denies Guarani killed in police action were armed; ‘Sometimes we don’t even have food’

Bruno Pacheco – Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – The Guarani-Kaiowá chieftain Valdelice Veron denied on Thursday, 30 March, that the indigenous victim Vito Fernandes, 42 years old, was carrying heavy weapons during an operation by Military Police (MP) shock troops in a rural property of Amambai, in Mato Grosso do Sul. On the occasion, Fernandes was killed with three gun shots. Security authorities claim that the police were shot at in the community, but the indigenous people deny it.

Valdelice was one of the leaders of villages in Amambai heard by the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) about the conflicts in the region. In a statement to the authorities, the cacique asked for justice and for the attacks on the indigenous people to be stopped, and also reported that Vito Fernandes was “lame”, that is, lame, unable to carry heavy weapons because of a physical deficiency in his leg.

“How could Vito have been carrying heavy weapons if he was “lame”? He walked like this. How could he run, he couldn’t run […] Enough lies, they are lying. How can we be there with heavy weaponry, if we don’t even have food many times. It is a massacre, it is genocide, it is terrorism that we are living”, reported the cacique Valdelice Veron, in tears.

In the video, shared on social networks and obtained by CENARIUM MAGAZINE, the indigenous leader also points out that the attack on the Guarani-Kaiowá people is not the first that has happened. Valdelice narrates that she even went into a coma, in 2017, because she was no longer able to stand living amidst the confrontations against her ethnicity.

Check out the video:

Confrontation with the Guarani

The confrontation between native peoples of the Guarani-Kaiowá ethnic group and military police in Amambai took place on Thursday 23rd and became more intense on Friday 24th, with reports of shots and deaths of injured indigenous people and police officers. The Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib) mentioned that two deaths were reported, but only one death was confirmed by the hospital, which received the wounded from the confrontation.

The episode involved a group of 30 indigenous people from the region and about 100 soldiers. According to the Secretary of Justice and Public Safety, Antônio Carlos Videira, the indigenous people occupied the rural property and the shock troops were called in to attend “occurrences of crimes against property and against life” and to help maintain the peace. Upon arriving in the region, the military police affirm that they were received by gunfire.

The indigenous people, however, claim that they own the territory and that they occupied Guapoy because it is ancestral land. According to the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi), an agency linked to the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB), “Guapoy is part of a traditional territory that was stolen from them – when part of the Amambai reserve was taken away”.

Historical conflicts

Valdelice is a teacher and the daughter of another Guarani-Kaiowá cacique, Marcos Veron, who was assassinated, at the age of 72, in January 2003. At the time, after having led about one hundred indigenous people in a repossession of the Taquara indigenous land, the cacique was beaten with punches, kicks, and a rifle butt to the head on the Brasília do Sul farm in Juti, Mato Grosso do Sul.

On the day of the murder, Marcos Veron was taken to the hospital with cranial trauma, but he did not resist and died. According to the Federal Public Ministry (MPF), the case happened after a group of 30 to 40 armed men were hired to attack the indigenous people who were camping in the region, resulting in a conflict, with kidnappings, deaths and acts of vandalism, between January 12 and 13 of that year.

Four men were accused of attacking the cacique Marcos Veron. Three of them, identified as Carlos Roberto dos Santos, Jorge Cristaldo Insabralde and Estevão Romero, were held in pre-trial detention for four years and eight months on charges of killing the cacique. In 2011, however, they were acquitted of the crimes of murder and attempted murder, but were sentenced to 12 years and three months in prison for kidnapping, torture, bodily injury and gang formation.

The fourth defendant, Nivaldo Alves Oliveira, was at large at the time of the trial and the case against him was dismembered and suspended. After 12 years of the crime, however, Nilvaldo turned himself in to the authorities. On January 23, 2015, the man presented himself at the Prosecutor’s Office in Dourados (214 kilometers from Campo Grande), and the case against him was reinstated.