Day 238 - 22 Apr 96 - Page 19
1 A. I am referring to this map here, where all the small
2 areas of land are.
3
4 Q. Number 18?
5 A. Yes, and it should also be said that there is another
6 problem of over population of these areas. Because the
7 areas, at the moment, where the Guarani people have been
8 forced to live in, many people, sociologists and
9 anthropologists, recognise that if the situation is to be
10 alleviated more of their ancestral land must be restored to
11 them to enable them to survive as indigenous peoples.
12
13 Q. The area which the Guarani traditionally occupy -----
14 A. Would have been all of that area in the south.
15
16 Q. When you say "that area", can you just say what we are
17 talking about, south of Campo Grande?
18 A. Yes, south of Campo Grande down to the border with
19 Paraguay. All that area is traditional Guarani area. So,
20 in my opinion, the ranching industry has certainly
21 contributed significantly to pushing these people off their
22 lands.
23
24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just pause there. That is an extremely large
25 area from Campo Grande down to the bottom of Mato Grosso do
26 Sul?
27 A. Yes.
28
29 Q. Are there any estimates of how many Guarani would be living
30 in that very large area?
31 A. Well, the current population estimate is about 27,000.
32
33 Q. 27?
34 A. Yes, it is one of the largest Indian populations in
35 Brazil.
36
37 Q. But if we go back to an age when you say all that was their
38 land, are there any estimates of how many there were then
39 and how were they occupying the land? What were they doing
40 on the land?
41 A. Well, traditionally they are agriculturalists and they
42 would have supplemented agriculture by hunting and fishing.
43
44 Q. So arable cultivation?
45 A. Yes, manioc and corn, yes, but also supplementing by
46 hunting and fishing and in order to hunt you actually need
47 a great extent of land to be able to get meat because game,
48 particularly in Amazon areas, is not plentiful. It is
49 species rich but there are not very many. So there are,
50 for example, other areas in Brazil where you get a
51 population, say, of 10,000. There is one population in the
52 north of the country which occupies 9.4 million hectares
53 and they need that amount of land in order to survive
54 because they are hunters and gatherers.
55
56 So, in the case of the Guarani, it would be similar that in
57 order to supplement their agricultural basis they would
58 have needed to hunt and fish, and it is clear from the
59 evidence, the reports from Brazil at the moment, the amount
60 of land that they are confined to cannot even support
