Guaraní people

The Guaraní are a Native American ethnic group that already settled as farmers in the central South America in pre-Columbian times and is thus among the indigenous peoples of South America. Their settlements are now among Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

History

The Guaraní were one of the first people of South America who came into contact with Europeans. 1567 reported Ulrich Schmidl in his work Wahrhafftige histories of a wonderful voyage from them.

Already the first Spanish governor of Paraguay officially promoted the mixing of Spanish colonists with the indigenous people, a concern which had also later rulers. Many Paraguayans have therefore Guaraní ancestors, even though they are not officially attributed to this people.

The Jesuits were committed to the protection of the Guaraní before slavers and exploitation by the white upper class. With the " Jesuit reductions of Guaraní " they created from 1610, the first " Indian reservations " America. These protected settlements could only be entered by Guaraní as well as by the Jesuits and invited guests; they were not under the jurisdiction of the colonial government, but formally the Spanish crown.

The conflicts with the colonial authorities and landowners, however, led in 1767 to the fact that the Jesuits to the Spanish king Charles III command. expelled from the Spanish territories in Latin America and the Jesuit reductions were canceled. A testimony is the ruins of San Ignacio Miní, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Argentine province of Misiones.

1857 appeared the historical novel O Guarani by José de Alencar, one of the most important works of Brazilian Romanticism. The action takes place in the year 1604. The opera adaptation of Antônio Carlos Gomes ( 1870) considered a milestone in Brazilian music history.

The destruction of the Jesuit reductions by the Spaniards and Portuguese is the subject of the film Mission ( 1986).

Guaraní today

In Paraguay, the Guarani now make up about 1 percent of the population. Your language is, however, spoken by more than 80 percent of Paraguayans and is recognized as the second official language of the country. The currency is called Guaraní of Paraguay.

In Brazil, the Guarani are the largest indigenous people of the country, divided into three subgroups ( Kaiowá, Ñandeva and M'byá ).

The survival of the Guarani in the Brazilian Mato Grosso has the feature film Birdwatchers - the land of the red people on the subject, participate in the indigenous non-actors (2008, directed by Marco Bechis ).