{"id":1299,"date":"2025-02-06T22:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T16:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlinepeoplesnews.com\/?p=1299"},"modified":"2025-02-06T17:24:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T11:39:01","slug":"one-of-the-worlds-largest-hydroelectric-plants-itaipus-50-year-legacy-in-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlinepeoplesnews.com\/?p=1299","title":{"rendered":"One of the world’s largest hydroelectric plants: Itaipu’s 50-year legacy in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Understand its impact, the Indigenous displacement it caused during the dictatorship, and more<\/h2>\n
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Employees of Itaipu Binational Hydroelectric Plant celebrating the burning of Indigenous houses, July 1981. – Comiss\u00e3o Estadual da Verdade PR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n
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This year, when Itaipu Binational Hydroelectric Plant is celebrating its 50th anniversary, with a documentary series on Brazilian channel\u00a0Globoplay<\/em>\u00a0and a concert by Brazilian pop singer J\u00e3o, the Av\u00e1 Guarani Indigenous people in western Paran\u00e1 state are being\u00a0shot at by gunmen<\/a>\u00a0throughout the border with Paraguay. One thing apparently non-related to the other actually has not only a causal historical relationship but could also be, if the company fulfils the Indigenous demands, a way of alleviating the violence the Guarani people suffer; they, who have been fighting to reclaim their territory.<\/p>\n

Built during the Brazilian\u00a0business-military dictatorship<\/a>\u00a0(1964-1985), the Itaipu hydroelectric dam on the Paran\u00e1 River submerged 135,000 hectares of land. Underwater since the 1980s, much of this was Av\u00e1 Guarani territory.<\/p>\n

As reparation, the binational company has committed to acquiring farms that are currently overlapping Av\u00e1 Guarani areas and which, although being traditionally occupied, have not yet been demarcated. This negotiation is also the subject of what is called Original Civil Action (ACO) No. 3.555, which is being processed by Brazil\u2019s Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

One of\u00a0the areas that could be permanently destined<\/a>\u00a0for the Av\u00e1 Guarani through the ACO measure is the current center of the conflict over land in the region. The Yvy Okaju village in Gua\u00edra, in the Paran\u00e1 state, is one of the areas retaken on July 5, 2024, when the Indigenous people carried out seven occupations within the Guasu Guavir\u00e1 Indigenous Land. Since then, a non-Indigenous encampment has been set up next to the retaken land, perpetrating armed attacks that have already hurt 12 residents of Yvy Okaju.<\/p>\n

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The most recent wave of attacks against the community began on December 29, continued through New Year’s Eve and had its\u00a0bloodiest episode<\/a>\u00a0on January 3rd, when two children and two young men were shot.<\/p>\n

The retaken Indigenous village is part of the Guasu Guavir\u00e1 Indigenous Land which, overlapping 165 farms, was identified and delimited by the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI, in Portuguese) in 2018. Since then, however, the demarcation process has been at a standstill due to a lawsuit filed by the municipalities of Gua\u00edra and Terra Roxa, both located in the state of Paran\u00e1 and accepted by the Federal Court at the trial court level.<\/p>\n

The continuation of land demarcation depends on a final legal decision in the higher courts. This, however, is also suspended until the Supreme Court rules on the validity or otherwise of the so-called “Time Frame Thesis”\u00a0or\u00a0cut-off point<\/a>\u00a0(No. 14.701\/23). The justice who will decide on the issue is Gilmar Mendes, who opted to create a \u2018conciliation commission\u2019, postponing the final rule.<\/p>\n

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Ava Guarani children in the Yvy Okaju Indigenous community, next to where houses were burned down in attacks carried out by gunmen \/ Ava Guarani Community<\/p>\n

Approved by Congress in September 2023 \u2013 days later and despite the Supreme Court having ruled it unconstitutional \u2013 the thesis is in force in Brazil for the time being.<\/p>\n

The Av\u00e1 Guarani are directly affected by the idea that only Indigenous lands occupied by their original peoples in October 1988 can be demarcated. Expelled from their lands between 1975 and 1982, when Itaipu was built,\u00a0it was not by choice<\/a>\u00a0that they were not there when the Brazilian Constitution was promulgated.<\/p>\n

While the legal knot doesn’t untie the demarcation, one of the parallel ways to regularize the Av\u00e1 Guarani lands is via Itaipu. Guasu Guavir\u00e1 Indigenous Land has 24,000 hectares. The company has offered to buy three thousand hectares.<\/p>\n

Ongoing negotiations<\/p>\n

Itaipu Binational told\u00a0Brasil de Fato\u00a0<\/strong>that the negotiations are being held by the Federal Attorney General’s Office, with the participation of the Land Conflicts Commission of the National Council of Justice. \u201cWe already have a draft agreement. We just need the approval of some bodies, including the Brazilian government. In principle, we are really moving towards an end,\u201d the organization said.<\/p>\n

Asked about the possibility of acquiring the 24,000 hectares of the Guasu Guavir\u00e1 Indigenous Land, Itaipu Binational said it understood that, \u201cwithin the budget we have and what is owed for historical reparation, it is necessary to acquire another 3,000 hectares, which will be added to the other 2,200 hectares previously acquired.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defending what it considers a \u201ccommitment\u201d to \u2018its socio-environmental legacy\u201d, Itaipu will, within its budget, be one of the major funders of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30). \u201cThe federal investment of BRL 4.7 billion (over US$ 811,3 million), with BRL 1.3 billion (US$ 224,4 million) from Itaipu, is part of the federal government’s strategy to make Bel\u00e9m an example of sustainable urbanization,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples told\u00a0Brasil de Fato<\/strong>\u00a0that in August 2024 it signed a \u201cprotocol of intentions\u201d with Itaipu Binational, aimed at \u201creparation\u201d and \u201csocio-environmental justice\u201d for the Indigenous persons affected by the hydroelectric dam. The negotiations, however, are \u201congoing\u201d and, therefore, \u201cwill not be commented on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFaced with the demarcation of Indigenous Lands in Brazil and the delay regarding the deadline the Constitution establishes, the ministry\u2019s position is to find solutions that put a definitive end to the cycle of violence in land conflicts, which deepened throughout 2023 and 2024 as a result of the cut-off point law,\u201d the statement reads.<\/p>\n

Villages burned to the ground and underwater<\/p>\n

Jussara Rezende, from the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI, in Portuguese), was there on a day in June 1982, when the last remaining Av\u00e1 Guarani community had to say goodbye to their village in what was then Ocoy Jacutinga Indigenous Land. On this day of change, the entire village was set on fire.<\/p>\n

In addition to Jussara, the Indigenous chief Fernando Martinez and his wife Isadora Kamba’\u00ed, representatives from Itaipu, the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI, in Portuguese) and the National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (Incra, in Portuguese), were also there. These bodies were under the command of the military regime.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe watched until the end. It was horrible. They [the Indigenous people] saw \u2013 and to this day I can still see the scene \u2013 their houses made of wood and straw burning down,\u201d says Rezende.<\/p>\n


\nWith a burning house in the background, a Itaipu emplyee poses next to a truck with the Itaipu Binational logo \/ Paran\u00e1 State Truth Commission<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember to this very day. Itaipu employees were celebrating. They had finally managed to \u201csort it out.” Because the last ones to leave were the Av\u00e1 Guarani,\u201d says the missionary. Four months later, the floodgates opened and everything was under water.<\/p>\n

Photographs from July 1981 show staff from Itaipu’s legal department posing in front of Indigenous houses set on fire. The images were provided anonymously by a former employee to the Paran\u00e1 Truth Commission, which compiled the crimes committed by the dictatorship in Paran\u00e1.<\/p>\n

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\nAccording to the Truth Commission report, Itaipu Binational ordered Indigenous houses to be burned \/ Paran\u00e1 State Truth Commission<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter identifying the Guarani of western Paran\u00e1 as an \u2018obstacle\u2019 to the project of building the binational hydroelectric dam,\u201d says the Truth Commission report published in 2014, \u201cthe state worked to remove and expel them from their lands, using a series of artifices, which included denying them their ethnic identity by issuing \u2018acculturation reports\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

From 1973 onwards, when the Itaipu Treaty was signed between the dictatorial governments of Brazil and Paraguay, INCRA took 12,000 hectares of land considered vacant and began resettling settlers. According to the Guasu Guavir\u00e1 Identification and Delimitation Report (RCID, in Portuguese), it aimed to relocate rural people displaced by the Igua\u00e7u National Park and to \u201cclear the land\u201d for the construction of the power plant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThus, amid intense land conflicts in the border area, the Brazilian government invested in a project that led to the removal of more than 42,000 people from the region,\u201d the report points out. \u201cThis expropriation process established compensation and resettlement criteria that served only holders of regular titles to these areas.\u201d This was not the case for the Indigenous people.<\/p>\n

Also according to the anthropological study, during the 1970s, entire Indigenous communities were \u201cmurdered and thrown into the Paran\u00e1 River,\u00a0families were forcibly removed<\/a>\u00a0to Paraguay, their existence denied by various mechanisms\u201d by the military government, \u201cItaipu, Incra and FUNAI itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven before the hydroelectric dam was built, the Guarani were being expelled by the Matte Larangeira company,\u201d recalls Vilma Rios, from the Yvy Okaju retaking encampment. \u201cMany Guarani worked cutting yerba mate without payment. The \u201creward\u201d for the families was staying on land. Families who didn’t want to work for free were persecuted and killed. And those who didn’t want to die began leaving the territory,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the construction of Lake Itaipu was the total extermination,\u201d he says. \u201cThe Itaipu company was built with Av\u00e1 Guarani blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last Indigenous village<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was in Gua\u00edra, where Vilma is, that the sanctuary for the Guarani people known as the Sete Quedas waterfall complex was also submerged by the dam. Unlike the Indigenous people of Ocoy, from the city of S\u00e3o Miguel do Igua\u00e7u, Paran\u00e1, who were accompanied by CIMI, those from the municipality of Gua\u00edra and Terra Roxa were the first to be displaced.<\/p>\n

When Jussara Rezende arrived in Ocoy in 1981, the community was already completely isolated. \u201cThey were terrified,\u201d she says. \u201cThe flooding was imminent. The farmers in the area had already been removed. On the road linking Foz do Igua\u00e7u to Santa Helena, there was nothing left. Empty houses burned down, the electricity transmission line was deactivated. It was a scenario of total abandonment, a very deadly atmosphere,\u201d she describes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only people there were the small Av\u00e1 Guarani group, resisting. And they stayed until 1982, until the very last moment. During the night, when they were performing their rituals, goons would suddenly arrive and shoot them, to intimidate them. It happened time and time again. I was astonished to see such a thing,\u201d says Rezende.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that time, they didn’t trust anyone arriving there. I don’t think they understood what was going to happen. The only thing they knew was that there was going to be a lot of water. It was terrifying,\u201d says Jussara.<\/p>\n

To overcome the language barrier, CIMI asked the Guarani from other Brazilian states with whom they were already working \u2013 such as chief Ant\u00f4nio Branco and Mar\u00e7al de Souza (the driving force behind the organization of Indigenous peoples as a social movement in the country) \u2013 to translate messages from Portuguese into Guarani. Cassette tapes traveled from one state to the other so they could talk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndigenousness criteria\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, it wasn’t enough for the state to expel the Guarani from their land: it also sought to deny their identity. In 1981, C\u00e9lio Horst, Ernesto Geisel’s son-in-law, used the \u2018criteria of Indigenousness’\u00a0<\/strong>that had been drawn up by Colonel Ivan Zanoni Hausen and introduced into FUNAI’s fraudulent procedures from 1979 onwards, to produce a report in which he reduced from 11 to four the number of Guarani families that would be entitled to the land,\u201d the Truth Commission’s report highlights.<\/p>\n

In just one day in the Ocoy Jacutinga community, anthropologist C\u00e9lio Horst carried out his \u201cstudy\u201d. For him, most of the families were not Indigenous. \u201cA questionnaire was administered in Portuguese. Then, depending on the answers, there were points,\u201d recalls Jussara Rezende. Among those who didn’t receive their identity stamp was 101-year-old Mrs Francisca, who didn’t speak a word of Portuguese and, therefore, couldn’t answer the questions.<\/p>\n


\nMrs Francisca, an Av\u00e1 Guarani elder whose identity as an Indigenous woman was denied by C\u00e9lio Horst’s report,. Photo taken in 1980 \/ Cimi Archive<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the same story as now: They’re not Indigenous, they’re Paraguayans,\u201d criticizes Rezende. On January 15, less than two weeks after Yvy Okaju was shot by gunmen, a news story by RICtv, an affiliate of the Brazilian TV channel Record, questioned the community’s Indigenous identity. Without providing any proof, it implied that they were Paraguayans and criminals. The Av\u00e1 Guarani responded with a 58-minute live broadcast.<\/p>\n

After seeing their village reduced to dust and then suffer intense pressure from Itaipu, including trips to Brasilia \u2013 Brazil\u2019s capital \u2013 and demands from the World Bank (the project’s financier), the community led by Indigenous chief Fernando Martinez was the only one of the Av\u00e1 Guarani to receive a piece of land in exchange for the one that was taken from his people. The first land had 1,500 hectares. The second was also called Ocoy Jacutinga, had 251 hectares and was the place where they settled in 1982.<\/p>\n

The revelations of Itaipu\u2019s classified documents<\/p>\n

The Truth Commission’s report brought to light a secret document about the case, written in 1987 by Itaipu’s legal director at the time, Cl\u00f3vis Ferro Costa. \u201cOn the one hand, my current personal conviction is that the Indigenous persons\u2019 claim is not unreasonable. On the other, it is clear that the report on which Itaipu based its judgments is not true. I say this in private, to avoid judicial and political exploitation,\u201d writes Costa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Av\u00e1 Guarani were presented as having an area of only around 34 hectares. And since Itaipu transferred around 250 ha to them, our stance would have been \u2018generous\u2019. It turns out the initial figure is manifestly incorrect,\u2019 admits the then director of Itaipu. \u2018Instead of Itaipu being generous, it probably subtracted a lot of land from Indigenous persons. Of course, I don’t say this publicly, but in private correspondence, I have no qualms about raising the issue,\u2019 writes Cl\u00f3vis Costa.<\/p>\n

The land retakings<\/p>\n

At the end of the 80s, Av\u00e1 Guarani groups previously dispersed in the municipalities of Gua\u00edra and Terra Roxa began to regroup in villages. \u201cThe movement to reclaim land from that time started with those who were grouped in the areas of the current Karumbe’y and Por\u00e3 tekoha, centers of Guarani resistance which, with the growth of Gua\u00edra’s urban sprawl, were swallowed up by the city,\u201d says the RCID.<\/p>\n

With population growth in the 2000s, these spaces became increasingly crowded and the struggle for retaking them gained momentum, leading to the emergence of 13 Indigenous villages within the Guasu Guavir\u00e1 Indigenous Land. \u201cIt’s when we get access to our history, the lineage to which we belong. We were also part of it, our great-grandparents were part of the expulsion story,\u201d says Vilma, a young Av\u00e1 Guarani leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s when, in 2009, there was another retaking initiative and that’s when the fight for Av\u00e1 Guarani territory began. It was no longer village by village, but our great struggle to get back to our territory,\u201d explains Vilma. \u201cThen came all this violence: Attacks, murders of Indigenous leaders, persecution. And today we are suffering in this clash. We’re feeling it on our skin,\u201d she says. She herself has shrapnel on her body.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo this day, we are feeling the impact of the past on the present,\u201d summarizes Vilma Rios. \u201cAnd even if Itaipu buys the area, especially here in Yvy Okaju, it still won’t be enough,” she emphasizes.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven so, Itaipu needs to acquire this land and give it to us. We belong to it. The owner of the land isn’t us, it’s someone invisible, but in our lives at all times, whether in moments of struggle, pain, sacrifice or survival. As much as we can’t physically see it, we can feel it,\u201d explains Vilma.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat connects the old struggle to the current one?\u201d reflects Jussara Rezende. \u201cAt a point when it was no longer possible to resist, the Guarani of Jacutinga accepted 251 hectares. This is not reparation; it never will be. But it has made it possible to keep the struggle alive since 1982,\u201d the missionary observes. \u201cThe difference,\u201d Vilma says, \u201cis that today we are not backing down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: BDF<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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