Jesus de Souza still struggles for breath, despite the assistance of an oxygen tube. He has had two operations after a bullet pierced his intestine. Lying in hospital, the 29-year-old teacher from the Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous community in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul tries to control his emotions as he recalls the day he was shot by local landowners, in an attack that left his brother, Clodiodi, dead, and five others seriously wounded. “Since this happened, I have not shed a single tear,” he says. “I won’t until I am back in my village.”

Tension over land rights between the early inhabitants of the southern part of the state and the European-origin farmers who settled there in the 19th and 20th centuries is boiling over. In a feud that dates back decades, indigenous people seize private property they claim as their ancestral lands and farmers respond with deadly violence.

On 12 May, in the final hours of the government of President Dilma Rousseff, whose presidency has now been suspended, the indigenous affairs agency, Funai, finally approved a long-delayed report that would massively expand the Guarani-Kaiowá territory, from 3,600 hectares (8,900 acres) to 56,000.

In the weeks that followed, local farmers protested vigorously, warning that the move would turn valuable agricultural land into unproductive rural ghettos. They vowed to challenge the report.

On 12 June, dozens of Guarani-Kaiowá from the Caarapó indigenous reserve invaded the Fazenda Yvu, a neighbouring farm that belongs to one of the founders of a local agricultural association, in an act they describe as “retaking” their original lands.

After a day of failed negotiations between police, white farmers and the indigenous people, at least 100 of the farmers returned on the morning of 14 June. According to the local state prosecutor, Marco Almeida, some of the landowners opened fire, killing one of the Guarani-Kaiowá and wounding six others. One was a 12-year-old boy, who was shot in the stomach.

A month later, on 17 July, the Conselho Indigenista Missionário (Cimi), a Catholic organisation dedicated to the defence of indigenous rights, reported that another group of Guarani-Kaiowá occupying farms around Caarapó had come under attack, with three men, including a teenager, shot by a group suspected of links with local landowners.

Almeida says the attack is yet another example of the long history of “genocidal policies” of the Brazilian state, which has sought to deny the rights of its indigenous peoples.

Land occupied by the Guarani-Kaiowá community in Mato Grosso do Sul. Photograph: Phil Clarke Hill

The rich, red earth of Mato Grosso do Sul is fertile territory for growing soy, corn and sugarcane. Before mechanisation, much of the original backbreaking farm work was done by indigenous labourers. Many lived and toiled on large estates in appalling conditions: the state labour ministry only granted indigenous people formal employment rights in 1999.

While some Guarani-Kaiowá worked on white-owned farms, others were herded into small indigenous reserves. Over time, changes in farming techniques meant indigenous labour became increasingly redundant. Intensive monocultures have also denuded much of the countryside, rendering the Guaranai-Kaiowá’s hunter-gatherer lifestyle unviable.

The state has also procrastinated on its commitment, set out in the 1988 constitution, to demarcate larger permanent indigenous territories.

“There has been a strategy of resistance by agribusiness and Congress to granting rights to indigenous people,” he says. “We have to ask: how much does this process of denying rights rather than seeking to resolve conflict contribute to the worsening of the situation?”

However, for Tereza Cristina, a congresswoman from Mato Grosso do Sul, the government’s decision to approve the report was “an incitement” to the Guarani-Kaiowá to invade legally held private property. “There are some big producers in the region, but many are small and medium-sized landowners who have had the title to their land for 60, 70, sometimes 100 years,” she says.

Her view is echoed by Maurício Rasslan, a criminal lawyer based in the city of Dourados, who has close ties to the agricultural community and diligently documents crimes committed by local indigenous people. “There’s this view abroad of the poor Indians as unarmed, alienated people who don’t know what they are doing,” he says. “That’s not true.”

Rasslan points to article 67 of the 1988 constitution, which states that the demarcation process “will be concluded within five years”. In other words, he says, there is no validity to reserves created after 1993. “Anywhere in the world where the law does not rule, [it] becomes a mess,” he adds.

If the indigenous people want more land, he argues, they should buy it.

Just hours after the killing of Clodiodi de Souza, a group of Guarani-Kaiowá took three police officers and a truck driver hostage, torturing them for several hours before they were released, following mediation by an evangelical preacher.

In the weeks that followed, hundreds of indigenous families occupied other properties in the area. Rene Escobar, 32, a pig farmer, was in Caarapó when he heard that his small, 6.5-hectare estate had been invaded. “They stole all my furniture, smashed up my house and killed all my animals. All the pigs, all the chickens. Even the dogs,” he says. Escobar has made only one trip back to his house, under police escort, to retrieve documents.

Like many other smallholders in the region, he expressed bewilderment at what appears to have been a sudden deterioration in the relationship between indigenous Brazilians and those of European descent. “I never had any problem with any of them,” he says. “I was friends with all of them.”



After the landowners withdrew in the wake of Clodiodi de Souza’s death, the Guarani-Kaiowá reoccupied the Fazenda Yvu and buried the former health worker there. His grave has been covered with concrete; a Brazilian flag spattered with red paint flutters above it.

The grave of Clodiodi Aquileu Rodrigues de Souza, who was killed on 14 June in Tekohá Tey Jusu. Photograph: Phil Clarke Hill

Another victim of the attack in June, Cunamí Vera, 37, lives in a tarpaulin-covered shack on one of the farm’s fields. Doctors told him it would be more dangerous to remove the bullet lodged just above his heart than to leave it, but he is in constant pain and has difficulty sleeping.

He has no intention of giving up the farm, and believes it is up to the government to compensate the Guarani-Kaiowá for the destruction of their environment. “There is no more forest for us to hunt. There’s nowhere for us to fish,” he says. “The only way that we can live in peace with the white man is if they approve and register our land.”