ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the Guarani Kaiowa has been undergoing a process of cultural genocide with repercussions seen in all aspects of their lives. Brazilian Attorney General Jader Figueiredo launched a Report in 1968, which exposed the genocide and decimation of the Amazon indigenous peoples perpetrated by the Indian Protection Service, from the end of the 1940s to the end of the 1960s. According to the NGO Conselho Indigenista Missionario, the Figueiredo Report presented ground-breaking evidence pointing to the genocide of the Brazilian indigenous peoples in that concise period of time. Indigenous peoples worldwide share similar stories of land dispossession, environmental destruction, murders, suicide epidemics, destitution, malnutrition, and high levels of mortality. Deforestation and indigenous conflicts are particularly severe in Mato Grosso do Sul. The second largest indigenous group in Brazil with a population of 43,000, the Guarani and Kaiowa, collectively known as Guarani Kaiowa of Mato Grosso do Sul, live on the frontier with Paraguay.
