“When each case isn’t just one case”: an analysis of structural state violence sparked by the criminalization of Kaiowá and Guarani existences and resistances in the south of Mato Grosso do Sul

Abstract

The following text is a contribution to an anthropology of abolition and insurgencies, based upon an analysis of the incarceration, torture and massacres occurred against the Guarani and Kaiowá people, especially since the Brazilian dictatorship and its ramifications in the so-called Democratic State of Rights. We intend to demonstrate that the basis of this State is structurally racist through documental analysis and ethnographic research. Our approach will be the case study of Leonardo de Souza, Guarani Kaiowá Indigenous man arrested in December 2018 charged with crimes related to the insurrection sparked during the Caarapó Massacre. We will discuss 4 legal suits in which he is accused. We aim to emphasize, through historical contextualization of the sarambi/sprawling that affected the Kaiowá and Guarani in the south of Mato Grosso do Sul, the permanence and mobilization of dispositives related to the complex industrial-corporative-penitentiary system by the Brazilian State, with the purpose of suffocating Indigenous uprisings for the recovery of their lands. One of the counter-insurgent strategies is precisely penal selectivity, part of a broader system that defends private property in detriment of the reproduction of life in the disputed Tekoha faced with the advance of monocultures and criminalization. Will the State be, after all, hyper-present in its own omission?

Keywords:
Guarani and Kaiowá; Sarambi; Criminalization; Racism