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In the first two decades of the 20th century, two important facts marked Terena history: the creation of the Service for Protection of the Indians (SPI) and the building of the Northwest Railroad of Brazil (NOB), the latter being responsible for the increase in the non-indigenous population of the region of Mato Grosso do Sul to five times its size in two decades.

The SPI installed its posts in the area in the 1920s, for the purpose of bringing to the Terena the “fraternal protection” professed by Rondon – which, at least in the first few years, was at least attempted. But soon this “protection”, which was supposed to be by right, gradually transformed into an ideological imposition, culminating in the loss of what was still left of the political autonomy of the Terena.

The “head of the post", after awhile, began to interfere in practically all aspects of Terena social life: from the mediation of internal conflicts between families to the tilling of the land – and keeping of the records – birth, marriage, and death statistics – to the administration of the work contracts and establishment of an “indigenous guard" to keep the “order”: in every detail and at every moment, it became clear that the Terena there were living almost as if by on concession. As we shall see later on, in the case of Buriti, a head of the post – in the 1920s – was the person directly responsible for the “authorization” that allowed a neighboring rancher to take possession of a glebe of lands from the Indians, thus contributing to the expulsion of the village that was established there.

A local subaltern agent of a truly colonial system of power, this employee went on to decide the future of the Terena people. And this future, now "legitimately guided" by a purutuyé, would be directed towards marking all the Terena reserves as labor reserves for the cattle-ranching companies of the region – and he, the manager of this stock. In the oral history of the Terena, few employees of the SPI (or later, the Funai) would be remembered for having conducted an administration that gave attention to work on the reserves.

The “post”, the place of a structure of colonial power, essentially worked to immobilize the internal labor force in order to make it available for work outside the reserves. In fact, back in the 1950s, the data gathered by Cardoso de Oliveira in Cachoeirinha were impressive: of the 127 domestic groups that made up the village in 1957, only 19 (17%) lived exclusively off agriculture on the reserve and artwork, while 46% lived exclusively off work outside the reserve and another 37% combined work in their gardens with sporadic work outside the reserves. The population at the time was around 900 people (Cardoso de Oliveira 1968 ).

These numbers have not changed in the last few years; with the establishment of sugar and alcohol processing plants in the region, at the end of the ‘70s, the numbers, in absolute terms, have certainly increased – as well as the indigenous population residing on the Terena “reserves” which surpassed ten thousand in the mid-1980s.

The phenomenon of the urbanization of Terena individuals in the regional urban centers (above all Campo Grande and, to a lesser degree, Aquidauana and Dourados), which increased from the end of the 1950s, was directly related to the overpopulation of the “reserves” and the lack of any future on them (Cardoso de Oliveira, 1968). In 1960, Cardoso de Oliveira counted 418 Terena living in Campo Grande; today certainly this number is greater than 2 thousand – most of whom still maintain their ties with their villages of origin.

The majority of these migrants left the "reserve" of Taunay/Ipegue and survive as wage-earners (domestic maids, general laborers, owners of small commerce, public employees or employees of the old railroad etc...). The reasons given by the first generation of urban migrants for leaving the reserves were internal conflicts (above all due to religious differences, after the arrival of the Protestant missionaries to the two reserves mentioned). Comparing with the other reserves, there are few urbanized Terena who have left Cachoeirinha (and these maintain permanent ties with their families of origin on the reserve).

We can infer from the analyses by Cardoso de Oliveira (1968 e 1976) that the adverse conditions that were imposed on the Terena by the dominant regional society, in the four decades immediately after the War with Paraguay, were, during that time, transformed in a sociologically positive way by the Terena: thus, the situation of confinement on the reserve, while it led to the loss of political autonomy of the villages – given that it submitted the Indians to the political dependence of the White head of the SPI-FUNAI post – was transformed by the Terena into the territorial basis necessary for maintaining and ressignifying their tribal ethos; their integration to the economic structure to a certain extent compensated for their loss in economic self-sufficiency; and finally, the growing urbanization of part of their population was the response the Terena formulated for the social, political, and economic limitations dominant in the reserve situation. Thus, we could understand the new social agendas generated by the “modern” Terena as deriving from the strategy of a people in search of new spaces of survival, spaces where the pressure to negotiate their indigenous identity would be minimized.

The Terena reserves, consolidated after the 1920s, served as a point of vital support for the regrouping of the families dispersed by the war and who were still under servitude in the barracks of the ranches. They came to represent, for the Terena, not only the space necessary for the re-affirmation of the tribal ethos, but also a certain freedom. For the inhabitants of the reserves, working outside the reserves would go back to having its characteristically optional quality, that is, they would regain the freedom to choose the type of work and even the boss for whom they would work. This period of relative freedom, it seems, lasted a short while, precisely until the SPI changed its policy on the reserves.

The 1st Indigenous Post

The SPI installed its first post among the Terena in Cachoeirinha (in 1918), for the purpose of bringing to the Terena the “fraternal protection” professed by Rondon – which, at least in the first few years, was at least attempted. But soon this “protection”, (which should have been by right) gradually transformed into political imposition. The “head of the post", after awhile, began to interfere in practically all aspects of Terena social life: from the mediation of internal conflicts between families to the tilling of the land – and keeping of the records – birth, marriage, and death statistics – to the administration of the work contracts and establishment of an “indigenous guard" to keep the “order”. In every detail and at every moment, the omnipresence of this power was designed to make the Terena see that they were living almost as if by concession.

The “ indigenous post”, the place of a structure of truly colonial power, according to the interpretation of Cardoso de Oliveira, essentially worked to immobilize the internal labor force in order to make it available for work outside the reserves. And also, we would add, to impose on the Indians the confinement of their labor force to the limits of the reserves. And why was there necessity for that, if the limits were already defined and accepted by all, the SPI, State government and neighboring ranchers?

There was the need to impose limits on the reserves because, in fact, the Terena did not respect them, that is, they continued using and occupying the neighboring areas for their needs - hunting, fishing and gathering their medicinal herbs or honey, always and whenever it was necessary for them to do so. And it was only after 1960 that the Terena would begin to be persecuted and repressed by the ranchers and the SPI heads of posts, when they went on these expeditions. And even after, when there emerged a truly clandestine situation, they never interrupted their incursions into these areas. The complaints from the neighboring “owners”, which were formalized into official documents archived at the Buriti Indigenous Post, in Cachoeirinha or in the Museum of the Indian, are eloquent.

"When I was a boy, the greatest happiness was when my father, my grandfather would take me to 'melar' [get honey]. It was a party; everyone going out with cans looking for the swarms, women, children...Because, there wasn’t any sugar, like today. We’d go to the woods, in that time it was all woods, to get honey, to eat with manioc flour, jatobá...In the field it was guavira, we’d sleep in the winter pastures, because the cowhands were all fellowmen, all Indians..." (Agenor, Córrego do Meio village, 55 years of age).

"We’d go out hunting caitetu around there too.. We had freedom...The foreman didn’t mind, he was a friend of the Indians; the ranchers didn’t show up around there, it was all woods...But we respected the cattle, no-one killed cattle...But the game animals, we didn’t respect, it was ours, right ?...Their cattle was raised loose, in lowlands at the riverbanks, in the fields near the mountain...these woods there, these ranches only opened up a short time ago…" (idem).

The facts narrated above are perfectly intelligible if we take into account that almost of the neighboring cattle-ranching establishments employed the Terena as laborers, whether on a day-to-day basis or as fixed laborers ("peons"). What we conclude from these data is that the Terena never accepted their situation of confinement on the reserves. These data also lead us to conclude that, yes, there was a political intention on the part of the SPI, with the veiled support of the regional elites, to induce the Terena to adjust themselves to the limits of the reserves: the advice of the SPI agents to the Terena was in the sense of restricting indigenous inhabitance to the narrowly defined limits of the reserves. Thus, all of the description and analysis that Cardoso de Oliveira makes, in the work cited above, of the “colonialist” relation maintained by the SPI agents on the reserves has greater weight.

On the other hand, the indigenous chiefs and leaders at times could defend the repression of the heads of the posts – which put them in a very delicate political situation; but, in most cases, they played the game that was necessary to, on the one hand and apparently, support the demands of the local authority of the purutuyé without, however, taking any effective measures to restrain the expeditions of the Indians to the neighboring areas. As long as the ecological conditions allowed them to do so, that is, before the formation of artificial pastures, the inhabitants of the reserves continued to systematically make expeditions for fishing and hunting on the neighboring lots, as we have seen.

Little would change in this structure of power with the substitution of the SPI by the Funai: the head of the post of the new agency inherited from his predecessor of the SPI the same prerogatives of power. However, the increase in “scale” of the search for manual labor for the sugarcane plants provided a motive for that public employee (with the approval of the “captain” and authorization from Campo Grande) to start collecting a tax, per Indian hired, from the intermediaries (“gatos”) of the plants. The money so raised should be used in the “maintenance” of several activities of the post. This resource would come to be, in the ‘80s, the main attraction for the dispute over the “captaincy"... and an important source of earnings for the Indigenous Post – the accountability for which is generally a secret, only to be shared between the head of the Post and the “captain".

The administration of the changa (as the temporary work on the ranches and today, on the sugar and alcohol plants, is regionally called) would come to be one of the main – if not the main – roles exercised by the nucleus of power on the reserve (head of the Post, captain and privileged members of the Council). Thus, by sustaining the position of power, presently, that nucleus is responsible for the exclusive indication of the "cabeçantes" – leading figures of the village, who are necessarily literate, who are in charge of the “crews" of workers hired by the contractor of the plants. These "leading figures” receive a higher salary and are held totally responsible for “their” crew (consisting of 20/30 workers) distributing (and noting) the tasks done during the day-to-day work of cutting the sugarcane. The selection of these individuals is basically determined by relations of the kingroup and – above all – by the suborning of loyal followers, which occurs during the elections, and is done by the candidates on the captain. A good "cabeçante" brings political dividends to his "godfather".

Outside the changa, therefore, there are few options – and the very system of power didn’t work in favor of alternatives beyond consenting to the operation of individual extractivism, for example in Cachoeirinha, in the decades of the ‘30s and ‘50s, which was also taxed by the Post (extracting angico bark for the regional tanners and firewood for the local ceramics/brickmakers and for a kiln that existed in a village near Cachoeirinha until 1960). This extractivism, however, in the ‘70s, came to an end due to the closing of the tanners and the opposition of the local leaders, who were concerned with the predation of the forest reserves. A head of the post also stimulated the planting of coffee, which at first had good results; but, with no adequate technical accompaniment, the plantations were attacked by insect pests until they were totally eradicated 8-10 years later.

Outside this burst of extractivist activities and an attempt to implant permanent commercial crops, another initiative seeking to promote internal work in the villages took place at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the ‘80s. Favored by a prodigious budget administrated by the military Presidents, the FUNAI at that time provided, for five years, benefits to the few local producers of Cachoeirinha through “community development projects". In reality, such projects (for which budgetary money was annually set aside, outside that which was sent under the rubric of “maintenance of the Indigenous Post") served as a sort of free seed money for the introduction of the “green revolution" into the universe of the Terena reserves. The effects on the natural environment of this process of “modernization” of agricultural labor will be analyzed later on. But it was from this modernizing burst that new areas for gardens would be cleared on the Terena “reserves", especially crops that were no longer for mere subsistence, but clearly looking to the production of commercializable surpluses.

As long as there was plenty of resources from the lost fund of the FUNAI, in fact several local producers were benefited, bringing some hope for those who lived exclusively off gardens (small tractors were acquired, as well as machines for increasing the quantity of agricultural production and supplies of fertilizer and selected seeds and oil for preparing the soil and planting – at times, the Post would cover the costs of replacing the seeds and oil, at times not, depending on the agreement with the “captain" and the cashbox at the Post). But also bringing resistant insect pests, thickening of the soil and a stimulus for clearing new areas. Agricultural technicians and agronomists were hired to provide support for Terena commercial agriculture. The head of the Post then went on to manage, besides the changa, a more sophisticated agricultural enterprise – which lasted only a short while.