Just 15km from the Iguazú Falls in Misiones lies Fortín Mbororé, a Guaraní settlement of 800 people. As I walk into the community from the main road, along a red dirt track, I feel I couldn’t be further away from the waterfalls and the slick circus of tours that go with them.

But within a few minutes a bus arrives here too, and soon exclamations of ‘how cute!’ drown out the peaceful birdsong, as tourists ogle at the Guaraní children.

As Silvino Moreyra, Fortín’s cacique (community leader), tells me, the tourism is necessary. Opening up the community to outsiders in a measured way is the only way to ensure it can hold onto its 725 hectares. Otherwise, the residents of Fortín may be forced to sell their land as a neighbouring community has already done.

“They live on land worth gold,” Noelia Enriz, an anthropologist at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) tells me, acknowledging the tourism boom that has hit the region in the last decade.

This is proven by the recent sale by Fortín’s neighbouring community, Yryapú, of 300 hectares – over half their land – to a consortium of 35 parties, including the Hilton, Sheraton and Hyatt.

But as I look at the tour of the village, complete with a music show, a visit to a traditional house and handicraft-sale pit stops, I can’t help but feel the Guaraní are somehow prostituting their culture. Despite their smiles, the singing children seem to just be going through the motions, rather than actually enjoying themselves. Then again I am aware of something that the camera-wielding whistle-stop tourists are not: the double suicide that rocked Fortín last year, and the groundbreaking measures taken by Moreyra to turn the community around.

Suicide

The suicide rate among indigenous communities is widely acknowledged to be far higher than that of non-native populations.

Global Health Watch highlighted the phenomenon in their 2005 report, stating: “Indigenous peoples often have a higher rate of mental illness, manifesting as alcoholism, substance abuse, depression and suicide… These problems come in the wake of social disintegration caused by modernisation and the destruction of traditional authority structures, and autonomous decision-making.”

As in non-native populations, young males have the highest rate of suicide.

Unicef attributes suicides among young indigenous people to social breakdown, low self-esteem, depression, racism, loss of land, integration problems, and lack of opportunities. The psychological trauma and sense of loss that come with dislocation and the confusion that accompanies separation from land and traditional livelihoods are also to blame.

Whilst these patterns are manifested in indigenous communities around the world, recent reports indicate that nowhere is the rate of suicide equal to that of the Guaraní.

The Guaraní

According to Survival International, a British-run NGO that supports tribal communities worldwide, between 1985 and 2000, 320 Brazilian Guaraníes committed suicide out of a population of 30,000 – a figure that is equivalent to one percent of the population choosing to take their own lives. This figure is hard to put into perspective, but when it is compared to Brazil’s national average of 3.9 suicides per 100,000 for the year 2000, the extent of the epidemic starts to become clear.

The majority of the Guaraní victims were in their teens or twenties, with the youngest a nine-year-old girl, Luciane Ortiz.

FUNASA, the Brazilian government’s health agency, has shown that the pattern of suicide continues into this century, with 199 Guaraníes killing themselves between 2000 and 2003, with the vast majority of victims again younger than 30.

In 1996 Rosalino Ortiz, a Guaraní elder, told Survival International: “The Guaraní are committing suicide because we have no land. We don’t have space any more. In the old days, we were free, now we are no longer free. So our young people look around them and think there is nothing left and wonder how they can live. They sit down and think, they forget, they lose themselves and then commit suicide.”

Mariela Flores, an indigenous lawyer working for INADI, Argentina’s institute against racism, xenophobia and discrimination, reiterates Ortiz’ statement.

“When you take their land, you take their life. It’s not like having a house, having land is everything. Without it they can’t survive,” she says. “Access to land is not just an issue for the Guaraní – it is a problem for indigenous people throughout South America.”

Traditionally, most native communities lived in harmony with the land, hunting and gathering in a sustainable way. Some were more nomadic, exhausting one area’s resources and moving on, in order to give the place they had left time to redevelop in a natural way.

As more and more deforestation occurs for large-scale agriculture, land that once belonged to the indigenous is removed, often with force. The area they are left to roam in becomes smaller and smaller leaving them unable to feed themselves. This was shown last year, when 15 indigenous Toba people died from malnutrition in Argentina’s Chaco province in the space of five months.

Survival International points out that almost no other tribe has survived after suffering the scale of loss of land that the Guaraní has. Fiona Watson, a Brazil specialist for the organisation, says they have seen their ‘tekoha’ (traditional territories belonging to a group of extended families) systematically taken away, and are now crammed onto small areas. This is startling in light of the fact that there were once 1.5m Guaraní in what is now Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina occupying 135,000 square miles.

Now the Guaraní are mostly packed onto reservations and officially recognised territories (often a small proportion of their traditional land). Sometimes entire communities have been moved and placed on other families’ tekoha, leading to intertribal conflict. Those who are displaced have no ties to their new land, and those who were already there feel encroached on. Such arbitrary displacement leads to violence between different tribes.

Amnesty International has described the land of the Guaraní in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, as: ‘Rural pockets of poverty surrounded by large soya and sugarcane plantations, and overcrowded urban reserves where life is plagued by malnutrition, ill-health, squalid living conditions, suicide, violence and alcoholism.’

Alcohol

Despite the obvious problem of land rights, this is not the only factor that has led to the high suicide rate among the Guaraní. It is one of a number of elements that have come together in an explosive combination.

The availability of alcohol is also key to understanding the situation of these people.

According to Pablo Bonaldi, a sociologist from UBA who specialises in violent deaths and suicide, whilst alcohol is often not the core reason behind the suicide, it acts as an enabler, making the suicide more likely to be carried out.

Bonaldi is quick to point out that both alcohol and suicide are the result of a third variable; in this case a combination of loss of traditional lands combined with the clash of cultures.

The Case of Fortín

Fortín Mbororé is one of 78 Guaraní communities in Misiones, according to Enriz. However, unlike in Brazil, there are not many official records of the Guaraní in Argentina. Even the Guaraní population in Misiones is disputed. According to Indec (Argentina’s official government statistics agency) the population is 4,083, whilst the Guaraní claim there are closer to 6,000. As Enriz says: “With such a disparity between the population statistics, it is little wonder there are no exact suicide figures.”

Like most indigenous communities, Fortín is poor, and lacks facilities and infrastructure. There is a school, which sets them apart from most other Guaraní settlements in Misiones (only one in three of which have schools) but the ratio of students to teachers is the highest in the province. One teacher at Fortín’s school has 71 children in her class.

The community has 725 hectares, but, according to the cacique Silvino Moreyra, in a few years there won’t be enough room for the 150 families who currently live there.

Enriz states that the two Guaraní communities near Iguazú are in a complicated situation. Unlike their Brazilian counterparts, the danger they face is not agriculture, but tourism. An example of this is seen in last year’s sale by the Yryapú community of half their territory to a tourism consortium.

There is controversy surrounding the sale, and according to some sources, who didn’t want to be named, the land was ‘appropriated’ more than it was ‘sold’, such was the pressure on the community. There is also criticism that the Guaraní will have to travel much farther to fish and hunt, and food supplies will become scarce for them – as they have for their counterparts in Brazil.

Enriz explains that the two communities have only recently gained access to money, and it has still not become a vital part of their lives. Land is much more important than money to them, being traditionally self-sustaining hunter-gatherers. As a result, money is used haphazardly.

“The Guaraní live very much hand to mouth, and don’t have the western mentality of saving things – be it money or food or anything,” she says. This is reflected in their attitude towards alcohol: they will drink everything that is at hand, not just some of it. Those with more access to urbanisation and jobs have more money and so more alcohol.

And as the Guaraní of Fortín sell their handicrafts to tourists visiting the region, they are given money, and so are some of the worst affected by the problems money can bring.

The Quarantine

Against the backdrop of all of these problems and using last year’s double suicide as a catalyst, Moreyra decided to change what he could. Arguing tourism was unavoidable, he instead decided to stamp down on the prevalence of alcohol and drugs in the community.

Himself a former alcoholic, he explains how he lay awake one night thinking of how things could be improved. The next day he went to Fortín’s Council of Elders with his idea, and, after some discussion, they decided the way to resolve the problem would be by imposing a quarantine. They took their proposal to all of the residents, who voted on it and approved it.

Enriz explains how it is wrong to consider the quarantine by western standards: “We have the idea of a quarantine being like a prison – it is not like that. The Guaraní will use this as a space to find sense in what has happened without any external influences interfering with their time for reflection.”

The quarantine started more strictly, as a cold sharp shock: no alcohol or drugs were allowed inside Fortín, and curfews were imposed. Nobody under 20 was allowed to leave the community. Volunteers patrolled the outskirts of the village to stop people entering with alcohol, or other banned substances, and helped impose the curfew. There was a reprisal in traditional activities, from handicrafts to music, as the elders tried to revive the culture and to teach the youth, giving them more of an understanding and pride in the roots.

The measures so successful that after the initial two-month period ended in January this year, the residents voted to keep the quarantine in place. Other communities seemed keen to learn from the ‘experiment’. Moreyra tells of how he has been travelling around the province, meeting other caciques and telling them of his ideas, and many others are eager to try something similar.

When asked if everyone was in favour of the move, Moreyra admits that some families did not agree with the idea. “Some chose to leave, but that is typical of the Guaraní way – it is our way to move on, spending a few years in a community then leaving.”

Similar actions to Moreya’s quarantine are being carried out in Australia and Canada by those working in youth suicide prevention programmes. Terri Elliott-Farrelly, in her report on aboriginal suicide in New South Wales, Australia, states: “Programmes that connect young indigenous people with their traditional culture and spirituality have been highlighted as important in suicide prevention – this does not mean going back to old ways, but healing through re-learning of traditional ways by using new ways.”

Such cultural revival and pride are seen to be key in giving the young a sense of purpose, as well as giving them something to live for.

Flores of INADI says she is trying to improve access to education for the indigenous communities – working out if studying would be possible for a young person, and helping organise the logistics of such a task. She believes if she was able to do it, being an indigenous lawyer, then others could too.

As Enriz points out, the Guaraní are unable to run away from modernity and all of its changes. She feels they survived the Jesuits and the Spanish conquistadores, whilst managing to retain their language and culture. So perhaps with a few more caciques like Moreyra, and with the help of people like Flores, the future might still be positive for them.

Flores herself believes pride is the key. While she understands why the suicides are happening, given the daily struggle many indigenous Argentines face, she is adamant that indigenous people should walk with their heads held high: “If we’re here it’s because our ancestors were survivors; they were the strongest, which means the people around now are the descendants of those who fought and survived. We should be proud, not killing ourselves.”

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