The Terena nation survives in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil

Mato Grosso do Sul is home to one of the largest indigenous populations in Brazil. 

The Terena, because they have a very large population (more than 17,000) and maintain an intense contact with the Brazilian society and political system are the indigenous people whose presence in the state is revealed more explicitly. This takes place either through the women vendors in the streets of Campo Grande or the legions of sugarcane cutters that periodically move to the distilleries for changa, temporary work in the haciendas and sugar and alcohol factories.

This intense participation in the daily South-Matogrossense life favors the attribution to the Terena of stereotypes such as "acculturated" and "urban Indians". These statements serve to mask the resistance of a people who, over the centuries, struggle to keep their culture alive, knowing how to positivize adverse situations linked to the old contact, as well as abrupt changes in the landscape, ecological and social, that the colonial power and then the Brazilian State reserved them.

The last remnants of the Guaná nation in Brazil, the Terena speak an Arawak language and have essentially Chaco cultural characteristics (of peoples coming from the Chaco region). The dominance of the Arawak language groups among the various indigenous peoples of the Chaco was due to the fact that these groups were, for a long time, predominantly farmers - and on this economic basis they organize themselves socially into more populated local groups (villages), expansionists and warriors.

Scholars of the Chaco towns affirm that the Chané or Guaná had a much more sophisticated social base than their Mbayá neighbors. They were stratified into hierarchical layers: the "nobles" or "captains" (the Naati or "those who rule") and the "plebe" or "soldiers" (Wahêrê-xané, or "those who obey"). The Guaná-Mbayá alliance relations were based on marriage: the Guana chiefs yielded to women of their caste to marry the "mayorales" Mbayá. The relations between the two groups, in this way, consolidated a complex social structure over time: on the one hand, an autonomous social segment in the position of provider of women and food; on the other, a warrior caste that takes women and is responsible for the security of local groups and suppliers of iron instruments and horses.

In the 1760s, the increasing pressure of Spaniards on the Mbayá territories located on the western fringes of Paraguay, coupled with internal disputes for warrior prestige, would force the migration of innumerable Mbayá and Guaná subgroups to the eastern side of the river. This migration probably extended until the first decades of the 19th century. The Guanja - Terena, Echoaladi, Layana and Kinikinau subgroups - which settled in the east of the Chaco, maintained in the new territory the traditional form of organization in endogamous social strata and strata, their rozas and also the alliance with the Mbayá-Guaykuru .

The current Terena still keep the memory of this migration and the crossing of the Paraguay River:

I have the story with me, my father's story. There was no one here in Cachoeirinha ... My father is from here. His great-grandfather came from the Ejexiwa [region between the right bank of the Paraguay river and the so-called "morrería" of Albuquerque - today Corumbá - on the left bank of the same river], my father counted. They had been attacked by other different Indians beyond the Ejexiwa. Then they came from there, they crossed the Paraguay River to Port Hope, they came from Morraria ... They were something near Corumbá and then they made a village here in Miranda ... At that time there was no purutuyé [whites, Portuguese], in the same way the Indian Terena, Laiana, Kiniquinao, Echoaladi, Caduveo ... (Felix, elderly inhabitant of the village Cachoeirinha).

Another Terena  describes the way in which the crossing of the Paraguay River was made:

My grandmother, my grandfather came from Ejexiwa. (...) (...) (...) (...) (...) (...) (...) (...).

The resistance of the Mbayá-Guaykuru against the advance of the Paulistas who were heading to the region of Cuiabá kept the Guaná distant from relations with Europeans. This situation was maintained until the last decade of the eighteenth century, when, in 1791, the peace treaty between Portugal and Mbayá-guaicurú was signed.

This treaty allowed the Portuguese rule, although incipient, on the right bank of Paraguay, at the same time it would mean the wearing down of the guaná-mbayá alliance. One of the pillars of this association, as we have seen, was the supply of iron tools to guana by the Mbaba - and that the first would begin to obtain independently through trade with the Portuguese.

In the last century the Terena became more integrated with urban life in Mato Grosso do Sul but they have preserved their culture and tradicions more than other native peoples of Mato Grosso.

They probably will survive the new rules for indian lands demarcations that is implementing the new Brasilian government.