Mystery 'suicides' of Brazilian Indians

DOURADOS, Brazil -- When the body of Lindomar Cavalheiro was found on a muddy roadside, a sleeveless T-shirt tightened around his neck, police ruled it "just another Indian suicide".

After all, Lindomar, 17, was a Guarani-Kaiowa, and his tribesmen have been killing themselves at an alarming rate for years.

Anthropologists studied them, journalists sounded the alarm, but the suicides persisted -- 255 reported over a dozen years for the 20000 Guarani-Kaiowas living on 22 reservations.

And it seems to be getting worse. After a decline from 56 suicides in 1995 to 17 last year, six Guarani-Kaiowas killed themselves in just six weeks over December and January.

Or so police say. Mr Cavalheiro's father doesn't think so.

For one thing, his son didn't own a sleeveless T-shirt, Mr Cavalheiro says. And there was nothing near the body he could have hanged himself from, he adds.

"For the police, everything is a suicide," M r Cavalheiro says. "But Lindomar didn't kill himself. He was murdered."

Lindomar's death wasn't the only suspicious one on the reservation near the city of Dourados.

A patch in the endless soybean fields of southwestern Brazil, 1300km west of Rio de Janeiro, the Dourados reservation has been the scene of 121 of the Indian deaths classified as suicides over the past dozen years.

Police say Lindomar's uncle hanged himself in December from the leaf of a banana tree, barely strong enough to support a cat. Other official suicides are said to have hanged themselves while kneeling or standing on tiptoe.

Tribal chiefs charge that the two "captains" of the Dourados reservation's indigenous police force are behind some of the deaths. The chiefs complained to the attorney-general's office, and federal police have reopened nine cases.

The captains, who serve as liaisons between the Indians and the Federal Indian Bureau, deny the accusations. They paint the allegations as a power play by the chiefs, their political rivals.

Critics have offered no specific motive for any of the deaths they link to police.

But Indians say that officers of the indigenous police often treat people brutally and sometimes death results.

An Associated Press reporter and photographer were allowed onto the Dourados reservation on condition that they travel in the company of one of the captain's brothers.

So it was difficult to find people willing to talk freely about the deaths.

No matter whether a particular case is a suicide or murder, the violent deaths reflect a clash of values and lifestyles, of tribal traditions and Western influence.

And the future of the Guarani-Kaiowa -- and other Brazilian tribes -- may ride on the outcome.

The conflict became apparent in the 1950s, when Brazilians began moving from the Atlantic coast into the lightly populated interior -- and traditional Indian lands.