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Teresa Murilha, a young Guarani Kaiowá mother of four children, killed herself on October 11. Her oldest son found her body hanging from the rafters of their shack in the community of Paso Piraju.
Teresa had left the community for the day, to seek legal advice on how to obtain benefits for families whose fathers are in jail. While she was away, the monthly food rations given to poor communities were delivered. As she was absent and could not sign for the rations her family received nothing. In despair at not having food to feed her young children, she took her life. Teresa's husband was arbitrarily arrested along with eight other Guarani in April. They accused of killing two policemen who entered the community. The Guarani community of Paso Piraju is battling for land rights. Dozens of families are living in squalid, cramped conditions on just 60 hectares of land, surrounded by cattle ranches on what was once their hunting and fishing grounds. Gunmen patrol the area, terrorizing and intimidating the Indians. Suicide and malnutrition are common amongst many Guarani communities, where hundreds of people are squeezed on to tiny plots of land and are no longer able to feed themselves by hunting, fishing and growing crops. In the last two decades over 300 Guarani Indians, approximately 1% of the Guarani population in Brazil, have killed themselves. In 2005 dozens of Guarani children died of starvation. Statement Several Guarani-Kaiowá communities met last year to discuss the alarming number of deaths from starvation among their children. At that time they issued a statement appealing for some of their land to be returned to them: The death of our children: starvation and our land We, leaders of the Guarani-Kaiowá Indigenous Rights Commission who live in Mato Grosso do Sul, met and talked about this issue which is being discussed throughout Brazil - the death of indigenous children from starvation. We are very sad about the deaths of dozens of our children during the last few months. Whilst we are grateful for all the support and help which people are giving us, we feel angry that we are not being heard or respected in many aspects to do with our way of life and our rights. At the root of the situation is lack of land, which is the consequence of the history of theft and destruction of our traditional territories, of the policy to confine us in reserves, of the loss our liberty and even the loss of will to live. Here in Mato Grosso do Sul we indigenous peoples were evicted from our lands, and killed so that first cattle could take our place, and then huge monoculture plantations of soya. It was a violent process against our people and our ways of life. The forests where we used to hunt were destroyed by loggers and the cattle ranchers' tractors. It was there in the forests that we used to collect foods like fruits and honey and raw materials to make our houses and utensils. Death and starvation are due to many factors, among which is the loss of land, which leads to the break up of our economy, of our way of producing food and feeding ourselves, and of our families. This matter cannot be discussed as if it were simply a question of 'giving food to the Indians'. Nor can it be said that our culture is responsible for the deaths. The solutions go far further than the distribution of foods from the government's food rations. We were a free people who lived surrounded by abundance. Today we live dependent on the government's aid. We feel that this policy is paternalistic and does not enable us to go back and produce our own food. It is like having a gun cocked against our heads. We need to have the right conditions to grow food in our own gardens once more, to cultivate manioc, potato, sugar cane, banana, sweet potato, corn, beans, rice... We need help to resuscitate our land. Our lands must be legally ratified and recognized by the government and cleared of invaders. Without respecting the federal constitution and ILO Convention 169, still today, public policies on indigenous peoples do not take into account our way of being, of living, of thinking and of organizing ourselves. Government food aid is handed out to homes without considering whether the food is suitable for our customs. More than anything we must have our lands ratified and protected and all invaders removed. These lands include Nhande Ru Marangatu (municipality of Antônio João), Lima Campo (in Ponta Porã), Taquara (Juti), Ivycatu (Japorã), Guyraroka (Caarapó) Kokueí (Ponta Porã), Sucuriy (Maracajú), as well the revision of the boundaries of the small areas demarcated by the SPI (government Indian Protection Service) at the beginning of last century. Moreover we must be able go home to cultivate our fields, produce our own food and recuperate the lands of our old communities which have been impoverished. These lands have been used without being rotated because there is no other land to cultivate. We must have clean, drinkable water in the communities, and sanitation and medical care which respects our cultures. But above all, we demand respect and justice. We don't want to be just another object of charity or of paternalistic projects. We have the right to be different and to be free, to exercise our autonomy and to be heard during the formulation of the policies for our peoples. Although we are wounded, we are not a defeated people and we have every faith in our wisdom, and we believe that one day we shall rebuild the Land without Evil. Caarapó Indigenous Territory, March 5, 2005 Silvio Paulo, Anastácio Peralto, Nito Nelson, José Bino Martins, Ladio Veron, Rosalino Ortiz Guarani Kaiowá Indigenous Rights Commission
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
You also have tens of millions citizens under nourrished...on top of those who are starving !
Be proud !
Lula repeated many times that he will have succeeded if every Brazilian will get enough food for 3 meals a day !
Here...you see his performance !