_940.png "© Paul Patrick Borhaug/Survival")
Damiana Cavanha, an inspirational determine to all of us who have been fortunate sufficient to know her, has died.
A Guarani Kaiowá chief from Mato Grosso do Sul state in Brazil, her preventing spirit additionally impressed the broader Indigenous motion in Brazil.
Damiana’s life was marked by tragedy and bitter wrestle, however she by no means gave up on her quest to regain her ancestral land. She remained firmly rooted in her household and neighborhood, however her braveness and tenacity within the face of adversity turned identified throughout the nation.
Damiana and her individuals have been evicted at gunpoint from Apy Ka’y, their tekoha (ancestral land) within the early Nineteen Nineties, when it was seized by agribusiness firms for huge sugar cane plantations. Damiana mentioned: “We misplaced every thing and have been compelled to stay on the aspect of the freeway – the place we will’t develop something – and needed to beg.”
For years, Damiana and her household have been confined to a tiny strip of floor by a busy freeway, with vans continually thundering by. Damiana’s husband Hilário, and three of their kids, Agnaldo, Sidnei and Wagner, have been all killed in accidents on the street. Throughout the freeway from their camp, a barbed wire fence barred them from their former land, with gunmen patrolling repeatedly to implement their dispossession.
The neighborhood’s solely supply of consuming water was (and is) a small stream, polluted by pesticide run-off from the sugar-cane plantations. One girl died from suspected poisoning.
No less than three members of the 15 household teams which made up Apy Ka’y dedicated suicide in despair on the fixed threats and harassment by the sugar-cane farmer; the horrible circumstances they have been compelled to stay in; and the dearth of any progress by the authorities in recognizing their land rights.
Damiana by no means gave up. She defied the gunmen, landowners and politicians, at nice private danger to herself, to guide a number of retomadas (land reoccupations) during the last 15 years. All have been brutally suppressed – gunmen repeatedly evicted the Kaiowá, firing on them, burning their homes and destroying their property.
In a single eviction, a 7-month-old Guarani child died of chilly and malnutrition whereas gunmen patrolled across the Guarani’s camp 24 hours a day, threatening Damiana and her household.
Damiana declared: “I’ll by no means depart right here. I’ll die on our ancestral land. I cannot flee. I’m a lady, a warrior and I’m not afraid.”
Following a retomada in August 2013, the neighborhood’s huts have been burned down and all their possessions destroyed. Damiana was as defiant as ever: “We are saying to everybody that we’ve got determined to withstand right here, by the stream and the forest edge, on our re-occupied land.”
The Guarani have misplaced certainly one of their strongest leaders and we at Survival have misplaced a pricey pal. Tragically, Damiana didn’t stay to see her neighborhood again on its land, however her preventing spirit will stay on: an inspiration to her neighborhood, to Brazil’s Indigenous motion, and to us. RIP.
