{"id":52048,"date":"2015-01-05T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=52048"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:06","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:06","slug":"suicides-spread-through-a-brazilian-tribe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/01\/suicides-spread-through-a-brazilian-tribe\/","title":{"rendered":"Suicides Spread Through a Brazilian Tribe"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Credit<\/a>

Credit Enzo P\u00e9r\u00e8s-Labourdette<\/p><\/div>\n

4 Jan 2015 – <\/em>Friends and family gathered around the limp body of a 15-year-old boy laid out on a bed in a thatched hut near the Brazilian town of Iguatemi, close to the border with Paraguay. A shaman shook a small wooden rattle while chanting and dancing \u2014 final rites for yet another victim of a suicide epidemic that has plagued the Guaran\u00ed Indians of the western Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul.<\/p>\n

The boy, Dedson Garcete, had hanged himself \u2014 one of 36 suicides among tribe members in 2014 through September, and one of about 500 among the tribe of 45,000 since 2004, according to Zelik Trajber, a pediatrician with the special secretariat for indigenous health within the Ministry of Health in Mato Grosso do Sul.<\/p>\n

Indigenous peoples suffer the greatest suicide risk among cultural or ethnic groups worldwide. Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men ages 25 to 29 have a suicide rate four times higher than the general population in that same age group in Australia, according to the country\u2019s Department of Health.<\/p>\n

In the United States, suicide is the second leading cause of death, behind accidents, for American Indian and Alaska Native men ages 15 to 34, and is two and a half times higher than the national average for that age group, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.<\/p>\n

Among the indigenous in Brazil<\/a>, the suicide rate was six times higher than the national average in 2013, according to a study released in October by Brazil\u2019s Ministry of Health. That translates into 30 suicides per 100,000 people. Among members of the Guaran\u00ed tribe<\/a>, Brazil\u2019s largest, the rate is estimated at more than twice as high as the indigenous rate over all, the study said.<\/p>\n

In fact it may be even higher. The Indigenous Missionary Council says there were over 70 suicides in 2013, substantially more than the figure of 49 provided by Dr. Trajber.<\/p>\n

The Guaran\u00ed have long made their home in the fertile land of Brazil\u2019s southwest, where swaths of vast forests and savannas have been transformed into farms and ranches. In the process, the tribe has been dispossessed and uprooted from its traditional way of life. Many in the tribe face extreme discrimination and live in abject poverty close to the farmers and ranchers who occupy land that was once theirs.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiving in this nonplace, they commit suicide,\u201d said Maria de Lourdes Beldi de Alcantara, an anthropologist at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo who for years has studied adolescent suicides among the Guaran\u00ed.<\/p>\n

Nearly 100 years ago, the Guaran\u00ed, who today live primarily in Brazil and Paraguay, were forced off their ancestral land when the Brazilian government granted farmers and ranchers the legal title to that land. Tribe members were placed in crowded reservations, and often separated from family members.<\/p>\n

Then, in 1988, the Brazilian government created a new Constitution that established rights for indigenous people. Among them: giving Guaran\u00ed and other indigenous families the right to repossess their ancestral land, a process that has been slow and frustrating for both Indians and farmers and that has put them even more at odds.<\/p>\n

In many cases, farmers, too, have lived in Mato Grosso do Sul for generations. They raised their families there, and worked and profited from the land, first from mat\u00e9 (a kind of tea), and later from sugar cane and soybeans. Like the Guaran\u00ed, they are rooted in the land, making the conflict between landowners and the Guaran\u00ed both cultural and material. Where the indigenous see repossession of their ancestral land as integral to revitalizing their cultural traditions and regaining their sense of well-being, ranchers and farmers view it as a hindrance to Brazilian progress and development.<\/p>\n

James Anaya, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples from 2008 to last May, said suicides among indigenous youth, across the globe, are common in situations where tribe members have seen the upheaval of their culture, which produces in the indigenous a lack of self-confidence and grounding about who they are.<\/p>\n

In the southwest of Brazil, he said, distress, poverty and violence against tribal leaders have led to despair among Guaran\u00ed teenagers, who feel they don\u2019t have a future. \u201cThey see taking their own lives as unfortunately and sadly an option,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Professor Alcantara said that over the past 10 years tribe members have come to live between two cultures \u2014 the culture of nearby cities, where they are discriminated against, and the culture of their own tribe. Young tribe members, in particular, feel that they don\u2019t belong either to the city or to the tribe, she said.<\/p>\n

Tonico Benites, a Guaran\u00ed and anthropologist, said that during Brazil\u2019s dictatorship of the 1970s and \u201980s, conditions on Guaran\u00ed reservations deteriorated: There was overcrowding and families were split apart. Today, the situation has grown even worse, he said, and many Guaran\u00ed feel lonely and isolated.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some point, many people I knew, friends, had lost their autonomy, their way of supporting themselves,\u201d he said. \u201cSo they end up thinking about death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Off the reservation, Guaran\u00ed have suffered extreme prejudice, threats and worse, Dr. Benites said. \u201cIt happened to me three times, when I was waiting on the side of the road and a truck came at high speeds toward me,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI had to jump, otherwise it would have hit and killed me … and later they\u2019d say it\u2019s an accident, but it isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said pistoleros hired by farmers have burned Guaran\u00ed huts, tortured his friends and killed tribal leaders.<\/p>\n

Mr. Anaya, a law professor at the University of Arizona, said he believes that improving educational systems for the Guaran\u00ed and other indigenous groups can help. \u201cWe need education that doesn\u2019t try to take out of indigenous children their identity but rather helps to reinforce it with all the modern tools that are appropriate to modern life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Both sides want a peaceful solution, but in small Guaran\u00ed villages across Mato Grosso do Sul, Guaran\u00ed boys like Dedson continue to despair.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur biggest hope, for which we struggle every day,\u201d Dr. Benites said, \u201cis that our children may be happier in the future. That one day they can live another kind of life, a better one.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Charles Lyons is a multimedia journalist and filmmaker.<\/em><\/p>\n

A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 4, 2015, on page SR6 of the New York edition with the headline: Suicides Spread Through a Brazilian Tribe.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 nytimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 15-year-old boy, Dedson Garcete, had hanged himself \u2014 one of 36 suicides among tribe members in 2014 through September. Indigenous peoples suffer the greatest suicide risk among cultural or ethnic groups worldwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}