The Terena nation of Brazil, survivors of invarios, wars and discrimination

The state of Mato Grosso do Sul contains the second largest indigenous population of the country, second only to Amazonas. Because they have a very large population and because they have intense contact with the regional population, the Terena are a people whose presence in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul is more visible, as saleswomen on the streets of Campo Grande or the legions of sugarcane cutters who periodically move to the distilleries for the changa, temporary work on the ranches and sugar and alcohol producing plants. This intense participation in the daily life of Mato Grosso do Sul contributes to the stereotype of the Terena as “acculturated” and “urban Indians”. Such statements serve to mask the resistance of a people who, over the centuries, have struggled to maintain their culture alive, knowing how to make positive changes out of adverse situations resulting from an age-old contact, besides rapid changes in the ecological and social landscape which the colonial powers and later, the Brazilian state have forced on them.

With a population of approximately 17 thousand people, the Terena, an Arawak-speaking people, presently live in a discontinuous territory, fragmented into small “islands” surrounded by ranches and scattered over six municipalities of Mato Grosso do Sul – Miranda, Aquidauana, Anastácio, Dois Irmãos do Buriti, Sidrolândia, Nioaque and Rochedo. There are also Terena families living in Porto Murtinho (Kadiweu Indigenous Land), Dourados (Guarani Indigenous Land) and in the state of São Paulo (TI "Araribá" Indigenous Land). In the last two places mentioned, Terena families were taken there during the administration of the Indian Protection Service (SPI) to serve as an “example” for the local Indians (an example of diligence in agriculture and also of “obedience” to the control system imposed by the employees of the agency).

The present-day Terena indigenous reserves were “requested” from the state of Mato Grosso by the SPI in the 1920s and ‘30s; two of them, however, (Cachoeirinha and Taunay/Ipegue) were “granted” by the state government at the beginning of the century.

The total Terena population in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul is around 16,000 people. Of this total, 13,629 still live on the indigenous lands cited above, or around 2,400 families.

The sizes of the lots which were granted and are actually demarcated are the following:

Last survivors of the Guaná nation in Brazil, the Terena speak an Arawak language and have essentially Chaco culture traits (people from the region of the Chaco). The dominion of the Arawak language groups over the various other indigenous peoples of the Chaco, all of groups which, from ancient times, were predominantly agriculturalists – and with this economic base they were organized socially into more populous local groups (villages) which were both expansionist and warlike.

All the chroniclers who had contact with the Guaná in the 16th and 17th centuries noted the existence of “captives” among them – prisoners of wars with other ethnic groups of the Chaco, such as the Chamacoco, Chiquito and Guató, mainly. They also noted that these “captives” were treated with kindness and were not humiliated, revealing that they were at the same time employed in domestic and non-agricultural tasks and that they represented social prestige for their masters, more than any economic value strictly speaking (Cardoso de Oliveira, 1968). This observation is supported by the fact that the captives were treated as “foreigners” and the term "kauti" – which is still used today by the Terena – is a corruption of the Spanish-Portuguese term “captive”. That is to say: they were "captives" because the Westerners saw them as such.

These considerations are important because they provide elements for understanding the ethos of the present-day Terena and, above all, the social and political meaning of the alliance of the Guaná with the Mbayá-Guaycuru, an alliance which was responsible for the great Guaná migration to the eastern banks of the Paraguai River in the last two decades of the 18th Century.