Retomada da terra

The "Retomada da Terra" are movements to occupy agricultural land in order to recover ancestral territories snatched from the Guarani indigenous people throughout history. The last Retomada took place on 3 March 2023 in Rio Brilhante, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

The "Retomada da Terra" are movements to occupy agricultural land in order to recover ancestral territories snatched from the Guarani indigenous people throughout history. A movement which, in a region of Brazil which is the stronghold of the Bolsonarist movement, claims dozens of lives every year in the greatest indifference.

Since the 2000s, these coordinated struggle movements have enabled many Guarani to reclaim part of their sacred ancestral territory, which corresponds to what was once the Atlantic Forest. These lands are located in the states of Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul, a region where soya and maize monoculture fields have replaced the forests of their ancestors, and where only 7.3% of the original Atlantic Forest remains today.

Surrounded on both sides by soya fields, squeezed between chemical fertilisers and urban expansion, victims of discrimination and violations of their rights, hit by food insecurity, the Guarani are resisting. The Guarani struggle is not just a struggle for their own survival and that of their traditions, but also an environmental struggle, for reforestation and against the abusive use of chemical pesticides. It is a struggle just like that which all human beings must wage for their own survival.

In this land where, as far as the eye can see, monoculture fields have long since replaced the vast forests that their ancestors knew, they become the guardians of the land, sometimes at the cost of their lives.

For the past two years, together with the Brazilian anthropologist Carol Mira, I have been putting my heart and soul into the creation of a series intended to bear witness to an environmental struggle and an act of decolonisation led by the indigenous Guarani people in Brazil, often at the cost of their lives. .

Carol Mira has been actively involved in the project from the very beginning. Without her, the initiatory encounter could not have taken place. For the past 8 years, her research has focused on the struggle waged by the Guarani in a territory from which history has driven them out in successive waves of violence. Her long-term work with the community has enabled her to learn its codes. Her acceptance and knowledge have been the gateway to the place and to the people who live there, and have created a bond.