Brazilian Landless Workers Support the Defense of the Ava Guarani Territory
MST women in communities of the Ava Guarani people, March 2025.
March 21, 2025 Hour: 9:24 am
They donated food to Indigenous communities in the state of Parana.
On Thursday, the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) donated 5,000 kilos of food to the Ava Guarani communities in Guaira. This donation came from crops grown in settlements in the state of Parana.
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“MST women harvested and carefully prepared food baskets with great care and dedication, bringing the best we have to share. Strengthening this alliance has great significance: MST supports the fight for Indigenous territories,” said Sandra Ferrer, an MST leader who lives in the Eli Vive community.
Through the distribution of baskets containing rice, beans, plantains, sweet potatoes, squash, oil, and salt, the Landless Workers’ Movement seeks to strengthen the resistance of the Ava Guarani, an Indigenous people that inhabits the states of Parana, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, and Mato Grosso do Sul. They also have communities in Paraguay and Argentina.
For decades, the Ava Guarani have faced land conflicts, particularly with agribusiness, illegal land occupation, and infrastructure projects such as the construction of hydroelectric dams. Many Ava Guarani communities have been forcibly removed from their ancestral lands due to deforestation, farming expansion, and urban development.
“MST is a movement of struggle, which also fights for land, preservation, and the continuity of life. That is why we welcome you today with great respect and honor. You will always be welcome. We count on your support,” declared Ilson Okaju, a representative of the Tekoha Yvy Okaju village.
The food distribution takes place in a context of attacks and extreme violence. The Yvy Okaju community is one of seven occupations carried out by the Ava Guarani in the Guasu Guavira Indigenous territory in July 2024. Since then, they have suffered constant attacks from armed groups linked to settlers.
At the beginning of 2025, for example, armed men shot four Indigenous people, including a child and a teenager, and set fire to community homes. Five Indigenous people still have bullets lodged in their bodies, without access to adequate medical care.
“From the moment a child is in their mother’s womb, they already have the right to fight and to have their territory guaranteed by the Brazilian state,” stated Paulina Kunha Takua Rocay Ponhy Martines, a leader of the Yvy Okaju village.
“They say we are Paraguayans and that we should go back to our place of origin. But where do we come from? We come from this land. We are not from another world; we did not come from across the sea. We have always been here. Our history cannot be framed within a fixed timeline,” she emphasized.
teleSUR/ JF
Sources: Brasil de Fato – teleSUR