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 bullets.
Amambai is a small, dusty,
almost for-
gotten city in an out-
of-the-way part of
Brazil close to the
Paraguayan border.
Until the mid-1980s,
its 26,000 inhabi-
tants had never
savored the glory of
seeing their city
mentioned in the
country’s most
important newspa-
pers. Lately, howev-
er, Amambaf has
gained notoriety as a 3
stark example of the ‘The brasiguayo encampment near Amambai. The community lives without plight of some half potable water, electricity, access to health care, or land to grow food.
million Brazilians
who have been deprived of their
political and civil rights.
A few miles out of town,
between the city and the border,
hundreds of people remain
camped at the side of the road, liv-
ing without potable water, electric-
ity, access to health care, or land to
grow food. They dwell in
makeshift canvas houses, under the
permanent threat of bullets. They
are the brasiguayos.
A dirt road sandwiched between
enormous haciendas leads to the
Aldo Horacio Gamboa is a freelance
Argentine journalist living in Rio de Janeiro. Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.
improvised camp, set up in 1986.
On first impression, everything
seems chaotic. Each person, how-
ever, regardless of age, knows his
or her duty: farming, getting food,
cooking, building new huts, caring
for the community’s few animals,
even defense. In the dust churned
up from the nearby road, each face
shows fearful determination.
“The most dangerous time is at
night,” says Francisca, one of the
brasiguayas. “They (men on the
payroll of the large landowners)
silently arrive and begin shooting.
Sometimes they shoot in broad
daylight, although the authorities
never see anything.” 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. Since
1990, at least 11
people have died in
Amambaf alone in
similar conflicts.
No judicial process
is in place, howev-
er, to investigate
these incidents.
Francisca, the
mother of eight,
looks likes she’s
in her fifties-
although she’s only
31 years old. Her husband, Dimido
Lopes, is a farmer. He spends most
of the day working the land, and
walks to Amambai in the after-
noons in search of odd jobs such as
bricklaying. “I lost 17 years of my
life working in Paraguay. The only
thing I’ve got now is my sickle,”
he says, showing his old tool.
Of all the things the brasiguayos
lack, one is particularly painful:
citizenship. Without any kind of
identity documents, these rural
Brazilian workers emigrated to
Paraguay a decade or two ago.
Now, as they try to return to their
country of origin, they find them-
selves outcasts in both countries.
NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASUPDATE / BRAZIL
Nobody knows exactly how many people are caught in this sit- uation. According to Milton Malulei, the First Justice of Mato Grosso do Sul, around 280,000 brasiguayos live on both sides of the border. Unofficial sources say they may number between 400,000 and 500,000.
The brasiguayos are the belat-
ed consequence of the expansionist policies of the military regimes that governed Brazil between 1964 and 1985. With the objective of increas-
ing its influence in Paraguay,
the Brazilian military directly
and indirectly encouraged the
migration of peasants to that
country, thereby creating a “liv-
ing border” in its neighbor to
the south.
In the first phase of this poli-
cy, during the second half of
the 1960s, the military govern-
ment 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.
The pace of mechanization
picked up when the soybean pro-
ducers gained access to the export
market. In 1970, there were 19,000
tractors in the state of Parand; by
1980, the number had grown to
89,000. As a direct consequence,
1.3 million inhabitants of Parani–
the great majority of whom were
peasants-left the state in the
1970s. In the first half of that
decade alone, 77,000 small agricul-
tural properties disappeared from
southeast). This coincided with The shaded area marks where most of the brasigu
the increasing modernization live.
and mechanization of agricultural the north of Parand. A similar
production. process occurred in Mato Gross do
In that same period, the govern- Sul.
ment began to give special back- The military government’s strate-
ing to the large estates bordering gic priority was the removal of
Paraguay as a means of bolstering Paraguay from the sphere of influ-
defense along the country’s ence of the Argentine military,
perimeter. Accordingly, the trans- against whom it was embroiled in
fer of technology to the estates in continuous border disputes. By cre-
that region was much more intense ating a “living border” inside
than in other border areas. The Paraguay, the Brazilian military
military regime also gave out agri- achieved two objectives: they creat-
cultural 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 set-
along the border with Paraguay. 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.
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.
The building of the gigantic dam
served many purposes for the
Brazilian military: it would guaran-
tee electrical energy to all of south-
ern Brazil; generate an important
energy reserve; permit shady nego-
tiations with the oligopoly con-
struction companies; and flood the
only piece of Brazilian land
claimed at the time by Paraguay.
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 agree-
ment.
To protect Brazilian inter-
ests inside Paraguay, the
authorities once again used
the migrant population. In the
years following the inaugura-
tion of Itaipti, a large part of
the Paraguayan lands sur-
rounding the dam became
inhabited by undocumented
brasiguayos. This was the
period of the greatest exodus
of Brazilians into Paraguay. 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. Between 1970 and 1979,
however, Brazilians came to
account for 72.2% of the popula-
tion. “By 1984,” Batista concludes,
“this number dropped to 18.8%, which indicates a process of
return.”
The presence of enormous con-
tingents 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. From a tra-
ditional exporter of meat, wood
and yerba mate, Paraguay was
transformed into a vendor of con-
siderable quantities of soya and
Vol XXVII, No 3 NOV/DEC 1993 5UPDATE / BRAZIL
cotton. In 1973, soybeans and cot-
ton accounted for less than 18% of
exports from Paraguay. In 1980–
even as the brasiguayos began to
leave Paraguayan territory–these
crops accounted for almost 50% of
exports. The environmental devas-
tation wrought by that shift has not
yet been fully evaluated.
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.
Afraid of losing their lands or suf-
fering reprisals, these illegal and
hungry peasants were systematical-
ly called upon to participate in
fraudulent elections that over and
over again returned the Paraguayan
general to power. Further, “for
many years,” says da Mota
Menezes, “the opposition to the
Stroessner regime lacked a clear
policy with respect to the
brasiguayos. That is one reason
why a solution to the problem was
not arrived at.”
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 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. By 1990, the
Movimiento Sin Tierra was already
actively functioning in Paraguay,
similar to its combative counter-
part, Movimento dos Sem Terra,
on the Brazilian side.
he knot of the brasiguayos is
difficult to unravel. 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 gov-
ernment recognize them as citi-
Without documents to
prove that they own
land in Paraguay or
Brazil, or even to show
they are Brazilian, the
brasiguayos are demand-
ing that the Brazilian
government recognize
them as citizens.
zens. 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. But pressure on the
government from the large
landowners in the border region is
enormous and influential enough to
delay any decision.
The governments of Paraguay
and Brazil have never officially
recognized the existence of the
problem. The authorities prefer to
classify it as a mere migratory
issue in a border population. “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 mar-
ket), because it’s not considered a
problem,” says an official in the
Brazilian statehouse of Itamaraty
who asked to remain anonymous.
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 documenta-
tion, and lack of recognized owner-
ship of land. “In reality, the
Brazilian government can do lit-
tle,” he says. “We are counting on
the good faith of the Paraguayan
authorities, but the question should
be resolved by legislation in that
country. From Itamaraty, we can
only suggest courses of action and
take on support work.”
The present Brazilian govern-
ment has three basic guidelines for
its diplomats to follow. All three
make it clear that Brazil expects the
solution to the problem of the
brasiguayos to come from the
Paraguayan side. The guidelines
are: a) work to legalize the brasi-
guayos’ ownership of lands in
Paraguayan territory so that they
can return to agricultural work; b)
negotiate with the Paraguayan gov-
ernment to give these peasants
access to lines of agricultural credit
that would allow them to buy tools,
fertilizers and seeds; and c) set up
separate books in the Brazilian con-
sulates in Paraguay to register prop-
erties of Brazilians in that country,
regardless of whether these proper-
ties have been inscribed in the Civil
Register of Asunci6n.
Yet among the makeshift canvas
houses in the camp near Amambaf,
men and women hope. 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 coun-
try that embraces them as its own.
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. The timid
agrarian reform programs are lost
in the dark corridors of the parlia-
mentary bureaucracy. 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. 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.
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