May 29, 2025

Democracy in the Twenty-first Century

Irina Velicu

This research departs from frequent complaints from Guarani-Kaiowá Indigenous leaders regarding the increasing number of indigenous children being removed from their original families by the Brazilian State. According to the Indigenous movement, the increasing and permanent removals threaten the future generation of their People and, therefore, their existence. In addition, they highlight the lack of respect regarding the rights of Indigenous mothers to their motherhood and the relationship of these cases with racism and the territorial dispossession of Indigenous People which paves the way for the exploitation of rural properties by agribusiness sector. Under this social scenario, the research questions how the control over the Indigenous motherhood by the State is related to the ongoing dispossession of the Indigenous People. The hypothesis is that such cases reflect the increasing control and surveillance over indigenous mothers, to whom the responsibility for biological and social reproduction is blamed and maintains a close relationship between continued discipline of Indigenous Population as a labor force. The research aims to show how such control is regulated through the Judiciary branch and how there is a relationship of this situation with the safeguard of exploitation and oppression of the workforce. Theoretically, his research dialogues with a feminism inscribed in a historical-dialectical materialism and investigates the cases of continuous and increasing removal of Guarani-Kaiowá children and young people from their original families in the Mato Grosso do Sul Brazilian State based on the historical-social reality of Guarani-Kaiowá women. To this end, a methodological triangulation combines quantitative and qualitative analysis regarding the removals of indigenous children and youth in Brazil, with a special focus on the intervention in the motherhood of Guarani-Kaiowá women and the case study of the removals of Guarani-Kaiowá children and youth Indigenous People in Mato Grosso do Sul. The research thus relies on a myriad of data sources, such as: reports from indigenous mothers about the removals, interviews with some of the agents of the child and adolescent protection network who act as personifications of the State in controlling maternity, and legal proceedings for custody of indigenous children and youth in southern Mato Grosso do Sul. The research methods also include the participant observation of the Aty Guasu and Kuñangue Aty Guasu movements. The research tests and validates the hypothesis that the State's intervention into Indigenous families is attached to the control of the Indigenous motherhood. The State's intervention is thus part of its primary and historical function in social control over the reproduction of indigenous women as a commodity of labor force. Furthermore, given the reality of Indigenous women in Brazil in the structural crisis of capital in the actual neoliberal context, the State's social control has been more constantly intervening in these Indigenous moms', turning motherhood into an impossible task. In a row, the State blames indigenous mothers for a supposed social dysfunction it ascertains and deepens such dysfunctions in custody proceedings, making motherhood impossible. Finally, the research concludes that the source of the socials disfunctions is not rooted in the poor distribution of income but in the way in which the lives of indigenous peoples as a working class are controlled and maintained violently dispossessed as inhumanly as a commodity of labor power.

Keywords: Dispossession; Reproduction; Sociosexual division of labour; State; Women's Emancipation