Source: ‘O poder do rap guarani’, a ninety-minute online conversation with Bruno Veron and Kelvin Peixoto, of Brô MC’s (from Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul), and Kunumi MC (now known as Owerá), of the Tekoá Krukutu (in Parelheiros, São Paulo), moderated by Jamille Pinheiro Dias. The conversation can be accessed on CARLA’s YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqvpH1HpNHw.
Context: the Brazilian rap and hip-hop movement began in São Paulo in the late 1980s, led by Black performers and activists who gathered in a square in the city centre, Praça Roosevelt. The first album, Hip-hop cultura da rua (1988), was a collective work led by legendary DJ Thaide. It was soon followed by Consciência Black (1989) by Racionais MC’s, a group that would spearhead the rapid rise of the genre all over Brazil. As in other parts of the world, Brazil’s rap and hip-hop are mostly urban. For example, the lyrics of Racionais MC’s, which became emblematic of the genre, centre on youth life in the peripheral areas of the city of São Paulo, featuring topics such as racism, social inequality and drug violence. These themes held clear appeal for Indigenous peoples confronting racism, displacement and violence in Brazil, and in 2009 Brô MC’s emerged as the first Indigenous rap and hip-hop group, singing in a combination of Guarani and Portuguese. The region they come from, Mato Grosso do Sul, is characterised by extreme forms of violence and racism against Indigenous people.
Jamille: The topic of our conversation today is the power of Guarani rap. Guarani rap is capable of transforming consciousness, contributing to the fight for demarcation and respect for Indigenous rights. It would be really cool to hear from you about this.
Kelvin: Indigenous rap has emerged in order to give voice to everything that’s happening with our Indigenous brothers, for example those who are in the process of re-occupying land, or the people fighting to expel the miners in the Amazon. They carry on their fight there while at the same time we give voice to this fight on the stage so that it reaches high-ranking people. We are often treated as invisible beings. So that’s why Indigenous rap, Guarani rap, is important, because it brings up a lot of themes that people are discussing. Brô MC’s shows what really happens in our Indigenous communities, Jaguapiru and Bororó, both Guarani, located here in [the Indigenous reserve] Francisco Horta Barbosa.
And it also highlights land re-occupations, because there are three areas of re-occupation that are very close to the community. I have witnessed conflicts between farmers and Indigenous people, and often it is the farmer who wins because they come with very heavy weapons. Many people have already been injured in land re-occupations. One person went blind, others have lost their fingers. This leads people into depression. Not long ago there was a boy whose fingers were torn apart by a bomb thrown by the police to disperse them. And last week they found him dead, hanging from a tree. His parents said that he became depressed because he lost his hands. The press does not show what is happening there. So, we write lyrics that talk about this and also about our daily lives.
Bruno: So, as Kelvin said, [the state of] Mato Grosso do Sul is where Indigenous leaders are persecuted and killed by farmers and landowners. And nobody says anything about Mato Grosso do Sul. I believe it’s because it’s a state created for agribusiness. There are a lot of farmers. They kill Indigenous people and say it was an accident. It is like a song we wrote, which says: ‘Mato Grosso do Sul is a state built on the dead bodies of Guarani-Kaiowá people.’ It’s something you don’t see in other states, in other places. Here, we live in fear, as if it were a new kind of Iraq. We often wake up to gunshots, like an alarm clock. A bomb going off near you or a tractor called a caveirão [big skeleton] tearing down your house. The media doesn’t show this reality to people who live in other states or other countries. And Brô, in the midst of this, portrays it through rap, through these rhymes, through these songs, that we use on stage as a protest to spread this knowledge.
Just this week, an Indigenous territory that was demarcated, I think, in 2008 or 2005, will be returned to farmers. It will be a huge eviction of Guarani-Kaiowá families. And we are waiting to see what will actually happen: if they’re going to leave, if they’re going to resist. We’re a bit scared because we have relatives living in these repossessions. And the media doesn’t show this, it doesn’t show this issue, this reality. One minute you can be alive, next minute you may be dead. It is a state in which Indigenous people are very persecuted. Even Brô MC’s, when we go out to sing, we don’t announce where we’re going. We just leave the village and don’t tell anyone. Brô MC’s are also persecuted, for singing, for expressing ourselves, for bringing this message, for depicting this harsh reality of Mato Grosso do Sul.
Jamille: I would like to hear also from you, Kunumi, because you live in a very different reality at the Krukutu village, in Parelheiros, São Paulo. What are the situations that you try to make visible, through rap?
Kunumi: Firstly, I would like to thank you very much for this live streaming event. I believe it is really important. For us, the best weapon is music. Mainly rap, which is a style that is not Indigenous, it is a technology of Black people, but which Indigenous people took and started to build MC’s. Today, there are several Indigenous peoples already singing in their own languages. Guarani is also a very cool language to speak, and many people can pick up and understand some of the words we sing. And Guarani language fits perfectly into rap. Our reality is indeed very different, there are no longer farms here in the areas on outskirts of São Paulo city. We live in tekoás.Footnote 1 But we suffer prejudice all the time. We are still fighting for our land to be demarcated. Our leaders fought hard in the past to have schools in Indigenous villages. And today, in many places in Brazil, we have schools in Indigenous villages. This is very good, because we can now talk confidently with each other.
About rap: I had already heard about Brô MC’s and once they came near here, to Parelheiros. I was nine years old, I saw their concert and I got really excited. We are very grateful to them, because every story, every musical style has a root, and that root [for Indigenous rap] is called Brô MC’s. Today, when I sing, I actually sing more about prayer music. I try to bring prayer into rap. I believe that when I’m rapping, when I’m on stage, I feel the strength of the ancestors helping me. But it’s also the same thing when I talk about protest, about struggle. The ancestors are still here, helping us, because the topic may be different, but the ancestry is always here with us, giving us strength.
Kelvin: Our God is Nhanderu, Nhandejara. We put him in our songs, too. Because in our music we say: ‘Xe ru, Tupã, aiko ne ndive.’ So here I’m talking exactly about our God. So that he always strengthens us and protects us from everything. And we also sing in our own languages. I think that 95 per cent of the songs I sing are in Guarani. My ancestors spoke Guarani-Kaiowá, a language that our people never abandon. I think that the Indigenous blood runs so strong in our veins that we don’t need to mix so many things to show the reality that we live, and also the way we live together in community.
Bruno: Yes, the question of ancestry is something that has been passed on to us from generation to generation. When we are singing on stage, he [Nhanderu] will always be protecting us, looking out for me, for the people who are going through difficulties, for the people who are listening to our message, making them understand our songs. My grandfathers, my grandmother, they always say their prayers, their guaru, their guaxiré, their songs. So it comes from our family. But fighting for demarcation, being a militant also runs in the family, from my grandfathers who used to fight for land.
Kunumi: Although I don’t know how to ask questions, I’d like to talk about how the situation is today compared to when you started, in terms of your careers.
Bruno: So, bro, when we started, around 2003, 2000, the hip-hop movement here was very, very small. Here in Mato Grosso do Sul it was difficult to start, we were only well received outside our own state, in São Paulo, Rio, Brasília. Just now, for the first time ever, we did a concert in our city, Dourados. It is like this: if you turned on the radio or TV, you’d hear people saying bad things about Indigenous people. But what they were saying wasn’t what was happening in the village where I lived. So, that was something that led me to rap. I said: ‘No, I want to make a difference, to take our messages, not only to us Indigenous people, but to other peoples too, be they white, Black, other races. So that they can hear about the social problems we face in our daily lives.’
So, at the end of 2009, we released our first CD. For us, Brô MCs, when we started, all we wanted was to record a little CD and keep it for ourselves. I made that CD at the back of our producer’s little house, on a balcony. Since then, seeing that our message through music has reached several places, it’s made me believe that it is possible to change things through music. It is possible to encourage other Indigenous people to think like us, to fight the prejudices they suffer. This led me to believe that people together are like sticks: you can break one stick, but when you put more than twenty sticks together they are difficult to break. And when other guys appeared, like Kunumi, Oz Guarani, other Indigenous rap groups, that has given even more strength to Brô’s work.
Kelvin: I agree with what Bruno said. When we started we didn’t have much faith in being able to spread our songs, and now our rap is everywhere. People, especially from São Paulo and other states, know our songs. And here in the village too, people really enjoy it. Mainly kids, and there are young people who are sometimes inspired by us to try to write. So I think we managed to change things here. Many young people are interested in music. And I tell them we don’t have to have just one musical style. It doesn’t matter whether it is rap, country music, Paraguayan polka. We have to fit in everywhere, no matter what style we like. And not only music, but other arts, too, for example, theatre, visual arts, paintings. There are a lot of young people here who have talent. We also have people entering the digital world, like games.
This what I always tell them: regardless of where you are, don’t leave your culture. Some time ago, there was a boy, about fifteen, sixteen years old, who came to us so we could give him tips. So we talked to him about our ancestry, our culture. It’s something we can’t leave aside. And that’s how we talk. I always say to people who are in the world of music, or art: ‘You cannot leave aside your culture, your ancestry, your origin.’ Put on a headdress, put on a necklace, feather earrings, body paint. This is ours. Some people tell us we are the guys, that we are very famous, and I tell them, ‘No, I don’t feel famous, I don’t consider myself famous, because I consider myself a representative of my people, so I can show this reality, show what is happening to our community here in Mato Grosso do Sul, to our relatives, both Guarani-Kaiowá and Terena, all the atrocities.’ Also, Brô represented Brazilian Indigenous people in Europe: Bruno and Creb went there to represent the MC’s. It is not only the Guarani-Kaiowá that we went to represent, but also all Indigenous people in Brazil and the world.
Jamille: I think that much of what you have already shared with us draws attention to racism, to the violence that is so present Mato Grosso do Sul. In what contexts do you observe racism in Mato Grosso do Sul?
Bruno: So, here, like Mato Grosso do Sul, the city of Dourados was created by landowners, at a time when they wanted to divide Mato Grosso do Sul from Mato Grosso. In anthropological studies, half of Mato Grosso do Sul belonged to the Guarani-Kaiowá. But when they created this [Indigenous] reservation here, with [the communities of] Jaguapiru and Bororó, they created it in a desert, a place where there was nothing. So here, there are two cities sucking the life out of the villages: Dourados, which is behind me, 2 km from here, and Itaporã, 3 km from here. When this village emerged, the intention of white society was to eliminate Indigenous peoples from the Mato Grosso do Sul region. It was supposed to be the end. So, when our ancestors saw that this was a desert, they tried to return to where they had been removed from, where their tekoá is. And when they returned, they found a farm, with cattle ranching, with an electric fence. And then prejudice begins.
When this village was created, there was nothing here, just dirt and nothing else. So, the Indigenous people thought: ‘We have to plant trees, let bushes grow, let the vegetation emerge again.’ They [the landowners] think that the Indigenous people do that because we are lazy, that the Indigenous people just want land to go to ruin, ‘the Indigenous guy, that guy over there, wants the land just to let it run wild’. But no, the point is that we Indigenous people have always lived off nature. We lived from hunting and fishing. So, nature provided our sustenance. It provided our livelihood. So, that’s what they don’t understand. They don’t understand our customs.
So, when our ancestors, our grandparents, return to these lands from where they were removed, which is their tekoá of origin, through re-occupations, prejudice arises here in Dourados, in Mato Grosso do Sul. The Indigenous people here in Mato Grosso do Sul are called lazy bums. They often call us land stealers, they say we are stealing their land. And the media, radio, TV help spread that message that Indigenous people just want to let the land run wild, not to farm it. The white guy, his thinking is to invest, to make a profit for his pocket. And for us Indigenous people, the land is precious, it is more than money. They don’t understand this.
For this reason, there is this prejudice against Indigenous people. When you go to the city, go into a store, people look at you from head to toe, discriminating against you like this: ‘Oh, look at this Indian coming in.’ Here in Mato Grosso do Sul you see this. It is an issue that Indigenous people suffer on a daily basis. I believe that if Indigenous people care too much about this they will not be able to survive. There have been many Indigenous people who suffered prejudice and then came to the village and committed suicide. You see it all the time, an Indigenous man who committed suicide, who fell into depression because he was humiliated in front of everyone in the city. That’s why there is a village, here in Mato Grosso do Sul, known as suicide village, a village where many people committed suicide.Footnote 2
So the media, TV, pass on bad information to non-Indigenous people, to white people. That’s why when people come here at night, for example, when they take a taxi to come to the village, the taxi drivers are afraid. On the radio they always say that [Indigenous] villages are dangerous. But that’s not true. It’s bad information they give about the Guarani-Kaiowá and Terena people here in the Jaguapiru and Bororó villages. Sometimes I listen to the radio. They say things like: ‘I don’t know why the Indigenous people want the land, since they don’t plant anything.’ Or, ‘You saw, right? They demarcated that land there and we only see bushes there.’
Also, they are so prejudiced against us that they treat us as if we were invisible people. So, they stop us in stores: when we enter a store, the guard is on top of us, as if we were going to steal something. Because, in their view, Indians steal, just take things, thinking that they don’t belong to anyone, but that is not the case. I’ve seen it many times when I enter a store: employees keep an eye on us. When we go somewhere, they walk around, or when we go to get something, they watch us. Or on the other hand: when we enter a place, people think we’re not there. They brush past us and don’t come and ask if we need anything. When something terrible happens, like deaths, which happen all the time because a lot of fatalities happen here on the highway, they don’t really care. When we went on Xuxa’s TV programme, an online newspaper said that we were representing Mato Grosso do Sul and Dourados. There were a lot of people who commented saying that we didn’t represent them, we didn’t represent Dourados, nor Mato Grosso do Sul, because we were Indigenous, lazy bums, we just liked to invade land, and that we were dirty and smelly.
This discrimination is plain to see, not only in the city, but also in universities throughout Brazil. And I see that our excellent president himself [Jair Bolsonaro] propagated this hatred even more. I think it is the Indigenous people who are holding things together here on the planet, because the Indigenous people are the protectors of the lands, the animals, the forest. It is the Indigenous people who are protecting life. If it were up to white people, the forest, the animals would have been destroyed long ago. And the forest is so important to us that without it we cannot survive, because it brings us the oxygen that we breathe. In Amazonas, you see the fires that happened, the landowners themselves did it, didn’t they? To put pressure on the government. Then there’s the issue of miners. They are destroying the forest. The Indigenous people, as Bruno mentioned, are not backward. Many white people say that we are backward. We are not. We are protecting something that is good for the world. And in the white world, the only value is greed. This is what happens here in our community, but I think it happens throughout Brazil as well.
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