Farewell to Damiana Cavanha: Guarani Kaiowá warrior and non secular chief

Damiana Cavanha, an inspirational determine to all of us who had been fortunate sufficient to know her, has died. 

A Guarani Kaiowá chief from Mato Grosso do Sul state in Brazil, her combating spirit additionally impressed the broader Indigenous motion in Brazil.

Damiana’s life was marked by tragedy and bitter battle, 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 grew to become identified throughout the nation. 

Damiana and her folks had been evicted at gunpoint from Apy Ka’y, their tekoha (ancestral land) within the early Nineties, when it was seized by agribusiness corporations for huge sugar cane plantations. Damiana mentioned: “We misplaced all the pieces and had been compelled to dwell on the facet of the freeway – the place we will’t develop something – and needed to beg.”

For years, Damiana and her household had been confined to a tiny strip of floor by a busy freeway, with vehicles consistently thundering by. Damiana’s husband Hilário, and three of their kids, Agnaldo, Sidnei and Wagner, had been all killed in accidents on the highway. Throughout the freeway from their camp, a barbed wire fence barred them from their former land, with gunmen patrolling recurrently 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. 

At the least 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 situations they had been compelled to dwell 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 threat to herself, to guide a number of retomadas (land reoccupations) over the past 15 years. All had 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 girl, a warrior and I’m not afraid.”

Following a retomada in August 2013, the neighborhood’s huts had been burned down and all their possessions destroyed. Damiana was as defiant as ever: “We are saying to everybody that we now have determined to withstand right here, by the stream and the forest edge, on our re-occupied land.”

The Guarani have misplaced one in every of their strongest leaders and we at Survival have misplaced an expensive buddy. Tragically, Damiana didn’t dwell to see her neighborhood again on its land, however her combating spirit will dwell on: an inspiration to her neighborhood, to Brazil’s Indigenous motion, and to us. RIP.