Diversity in the territory: incorporation of difference and sharing in Guarani Mbya Communities

Abstract

From a recent context of territorial reclaiming, with a dozen new villages and a proliferation of new and diverse crops in the Tenondé Porã Indigenous Land in São Paulo, I intend to share reflections on a central relational operator in this process, which simultaneously involves territorial rebirth and a resistance to the excessive predation of the jurua (non-indigenous) world: the mborayvu. Mborayvu is a significant Guarani Mbya concept that, beyond representing an ideal in kinship relations, is associated with a political practice that should guide the leadership’s relationship with the community. In the mborayvu ideal, the work of political leadership, much like that of the shaman, should be carried out without prescribing or expecting reciprocation from those who receive it. This is also reflected in the leadership’s ability to bring different kinship groups together in their village, which, much like the new agroforestry in the retaken areas, share abundance through the management of their diversity. Thus, the practice of mborayvu, conducted by the prominent presence of the leaders of these new villages, points to political ways capable of diversifying life and sharing the land that succeed in disarticulating the non-indigenous machinery of capitalist valorization and its environmental threat.