Forgotten Indians are other side of Brazil farm boom

DOURADOS, Brazil, May 8 (Reuters) Flashy pickup trucks and designer stores are testimony to Brazil's agricultural prowess in this southwestern frontier town but a ghetto-like Indian reserve on its outskirts tarnishes the farming success.

More than half a century ago, Indians inhabiting the region's river valleys were rounded up into reserves to allow settlers to farm the land and to help protect borders.

Today, some 40,000 mostly Guarani and Kaiowa Indians live in a state of despair. They do not have the land to hunt and farm as they once did and are largely cut off from society.

Drug and alcohol abuse are widespread and suicide by hanging is the second most common cause of death after heart attacks.

''It's an entire people with absolutely no prospect for a decent life,'' says Zelik Trajber, chief physician in the Dourados reservation.

Recent governments have created generous reserves for Indians in the remote Amazon forest but not in the fertile lands of Mato Grosso do Sul state.

More than 11,000 Indians of three rival tribes are packed into the 3,500 hectare reserve in Dourados. By contrast, 5,500 Indians live in the Amazon's 2.8 million hectare Xingu reserve.

Chickens and dogs rummage through empty tins, soda bottles and used diapers around huts on small family plots.

In one thatched-roof hut, Amelina Amarilho crouched over a white coffin on the dirt floor, stroking her son Anderson's face. He was 38 days old, the sixth infant to die of malnutrition or disease in four months.

Infant mortality has fallen since 2001 but remains high.

''Some parents have such problems with drugs and alcohol we can't leave the babies with them,'' said Esdras Augusto Hossri, head of a child-care center run by a Presbyterian mission.

Some Indians survive on a 40 dollars government hand-out each month. A few able men earn a living cutting sugar cane in stifling heat at around 8 dollars a day during a four-month season.

But authorities recently released 150 Indians from a sugar plantation where they worked under inhumane conditions.

There are almost no other options for work and most locals do not want Indians as domestic help. ''They're lazy,'' said one store attendant in town, where cattle, sugar, soy and corn businesses have attracted multinational investors and forged a rural middle class.

DRUGS, ALCOHOL ''They fall unconscious in the street by the dozens,'' said Marina Duarte, who works at the government's Indian agency Funai in the Amambai reserve about 80 miles away near the border with Paraguay. ''Many swap their government food baskets for booze.'' Brazilian law obliges the government to protect Indians and their land, and bans restaurants from serving alcoholic drinks to them. In practice, authorities often turn a blind eye.

In Amambai, Indian chief Italiano Vasques and two government officials who requested anonymity said a senior local official takes bribes to permit drug and alcohol sales in the reserve.

In front of the Funai office in the Dourados reserve, drug traffickers haul students out of school to push drugs, 20 year-old Aldineia Oliveira said.

''They are drugged every day, they lose their mind and do crazy things,'' she said.

Violence and crime are major concerns. In the first three months of this year, two youths were decapitated, a chief shot to death, and numerous people assaulted.

''I'm desperate, I don't know how to lead my people,'' said Getulio Oliveira, a Dourados chief.

Critics say the government needs to provide Indians fewer hand-outs and more opportunities to earn money, from land to job training, and greater efforts to combat discrimination.

''Brazil's policies toward the Indians have been mistaken for decades. Setting so many wrongs right unfortunately will also take time,'' said Rosangela Carvalho, head of the government's Indian task force.

Reuters AGL DB0844