Os Guarani Mbyá

The Mbyá-Guarani cosmo-ecology classifies the Plata Basis Region into four great geographical unites, distributed in a sequence which goes from the interior of the continent until the Atlantic coast. Where nowadays is Paraguay, it is localized Yvu Mbité, – the center of the world, risen after the primordial deluge – a region erst recovered by dense and exuberant forests, the same manner the Mbyá believed that the whole terrestrial disc was in the moment of creation. The aquatic substratum was not completely parted in the new land – flooding the region at the east of the center of the world and, then, composing Para Miri (mesopotamia Paraná-Uruguay, currently Province of Misiones, Argentina). On the oriental side of the Uruguay river, we enter the region of Tape (traditional path), zone of circulation and access tot he border of the aquatic stratum – the great water (Pará Guaçu) that geography nominates Atlantic Ocean. Those cosmo-ecological unites survive despite the intense frontier struggles that had culminated in the division of the Guarani territory among the countries of the current Mercosul, after many Guaranis were dead. The Mbyá were crushed by national societies, burrowed in the last existing forests, after the devastation of the logging. They increasingly moved away from the fluvial axis of their former tribal life, living on the margins of legality both by the countries and by the smuggling done through the rivers. In the Republic of Paraguay, the Mbyá are still treated today as primitive savages. Para Miri protects the pluvial dimension of the ancient Guarani way of being, by the time Paraguay, Paraná and Uruguay rivers used to drain in the center of their world, with their old canoes and collective houses, ornamenting the landscapes. Currently, the region of Misiones concentrates the major portion of preserved forest among Mbyá’s geographical unites.