Paul Patrick Borhaug

A Guarani-Kaiowá leader standing on occupied land that they are attempting to reclaim. The communities receive death threats and have experienced several violent attacks by hired gunmen in the past.

A Guarani-Kaiowá leader standing on occupied land that they are attempting to reclaim. The communities receive death threats and have experienced several violent attacks by hired gunmen in the past.

A Guarani-Kaiowá youth living on occupied land that they are attempting to reclaim. The communities receive death threats and have experienced several violent attacks by hired gunmen in the past.

A Guarani-Kaiowá girl, blonde in her hair from malnutrition, is seen outside her ramshackle home in a roadside camp.

The Guarani-Kaiowá are refugees in their own country.

Prayer Ceremony

Community leaders are seen performing a prayer ceremony where they chant and pray for evil spirits to leave their land. 

For as long as they can remember, the Guarani have been searching for a place revealed to them by their ancestors where people live free from pain and suffering, which they call ‘the land without evil’.

Profoundly affected by the loss of almost all their land in the last century, the Guarani-Kaiowá suffer a wave of suicide unequalled in Latin-America.

Roadside Camp.

The loss and destruction of their lands have been at the root of the Guarani’s suffering.

Many have succumbed to mental anguish. Figures reveal that, on average, at least one Guarani has committed suicide every week since the start of this century. According to Brazil’s Health Ministry, 56 Guarani Indians committed suicide in 2012 (the actual figures are likely to be higher due to under-reporting.)

The majority of the victims are between 15 and 29 years old, but the youngest recorded victim was just 9 years old.

The Guarani are committing suicide because we have no land, said a Guarani man. In the old days, we were free. Now we are no longer. So our young people think there is nothing left.

They sit down and think, they lose themselves and then they commit suicide.

A thin fence separates the Guarani-Kaiowá indians from their ancestral land, which has been occupied by industrial agriculture-corporations who use it to grow sugarcane.

A Guarani-Kaiowá mother is seen next to her ramshackle home by the roadside. The only option other than living on a reserve, is to live on small patches by the roadside. Many choose this in order to be close to their ancestral land which they have a spiritual connection to.

Three Guarani-Kaiowá children are seen sitting in a sofa at the edge of their occupied land. They are watching as trucks drive past, to see whether the drivers throw empty bottles out of the window. Plastic bottle recycling is their family´s only source of income.

Guarani Leader Murdered

Guarani leader Marinalva Manoel (left) was raped and stabbed to death after campaigning for her tribe's ancestral land.

Guarani leaders are frequently attacked and killed by gunmen employed by the ranchers who are occupying indigenous land and earning huge profits from sugarcane, soya and cattle whilst the Guarani are squeezed into reserves and roadside camps.

The Apy Ka’y community’s only water source has been polluted by chemicals used to spray soya and sugarcane plantations.

When it rained, we drank dirty water like dogs, says Damiana Carvalho - a community leader.

In the past few years, Damiana’s husband and three of her sons have been run over and killed on the highway.

They are buried on their ancestral land, which is now a fenced-off sugar cane plantation.

Damiana risks her life in breaching the area in order to pray at their gravesides.

They were my three warriors, says Damiana, of her sons who were killed on the road.

The location of their graves was a factor in Damiana’s decision to carry out the retomada (land re-occupation) here.

We decided to return to the land where three of our children are buried, she said.

Damiana trespasses into a sugarcane farm and explains how vast their forests used to be in this area, before it became sugarcane plantations.

Sugarcane is used for ethanol production which Brazil is the world´s second largest producer of. Petrobras (see back of shirt) is a major actor in this industry. Petrobras the most profitable company in the Brazilian economy and one of the largest multinational companies in Latin-America.

A Guarani-Kaiowá man stand watching as a trucks filled with sugarcane grown on his ancestral land, leaves for export.

A Guarani-Kaiowá boy living in an overcrowded reservation. In these "rural slums" alcoholism has become rampant, suicide rates are extremely high and internal violence is increasing.

A boy with a toy bulldozer living on occupied land.

The bulldozer is more than just a toy in this context. It is used as an instrument for narrating to the young the time before and after bulldozers came and destroyed their forests.

In an interview, a father points to his naked son and says: "look at the colour of our skin. Now look at the colour of the ground. Is it not obvious that we belong to this land?".

An elederly Guarani-Kaiowá woman standing on occupied land that they are attempting to reclaim. The communities receive death threats and have experienced several violent attacks by hired gunmen in the past.

In November 2014 Guarani leader Marinalva Manoel was raped and stabbed to death after campaigning for her tribe's ancestral land. She was found in a roadside ditch.

Guarani leaders are frequently attacked and killed by gunmen employed by the ranchers who are occupying indigenous land and earning huge profits from sugarcane, soya and cattle whilst the Guarani are squeezed into reserves and roadside camps.

Guarani-Kaiowá communities have had their camps set fire to several times. The last fire in Apy´kay camp was reported to have started on the São Fernando sugarcane plantation and mill that occupy their ancestral land.

It was not the first time the camp had been engulfed by flames; in September 2009, gunmen set the Apy Ka’y shelters alight and attacked members of Damiana’s community.

The Guarani now say that the characteristic reddish colour of the earth is tinted by the spilled blood of their people.