Quarantine For Villages Young

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina. Oct. 5, 2007 — -- The virtual quarantine of all young people on an indigenous reservation in the northeast fringe of Argentina is defended by the tribal chief as "the only means to get back to the roots of our culture."

ABC News spoke with the controversial chief, Silvano Moreira, a man who has taken his village of 758 tribe members out of extreme poverty and into the real world. But the recent suicides of two adolescents in the Mbyá community has caused a rethinking or at least a readjustment, of values.

The community is part of the 5,000 Mbyás remaining in Misiones province, 800 miles north of capital city Buenos Aires and just 15 miles away from one of South America's most important tourist meccas, Iguazú Falls.

The Mbyás are part of the Guaraní nation, which is still very prevalent in Paraguay (Guaraní and Spanish are the official languages) and neighboring areas of Brazil. Although Mbyás speak a Guaraní language, it is considered a dialect with distinct forms and nuances, distinctions that Moreira is hoping will not disappear altogether along with other parts of the Mbyá culture.

"We have been put in a difficult situation from an economic and social standpoint," said Moreira, who has been chief of the Mbyás in the village of Fortín Mbororé for the last 17 years. "When I became chief, it was obvious that to survive the hunger and extreme poverty we needed to utilize our close proximity to Iguazu Falls, living alongside the tens of thousands of national and international tourists who visit each year."

Thus Fortín Mbororé became a center of indigenous arts and crafts and, more recently, tour groups began visiting the village en masse.

"When the suicides happened, we were shocked," said Moreira, who quit the tribal leadership until the villagers begged him to return. "We know there is a high incidence of alcoholism among the tribe, among our youth, and we knew we had to do something about it."

The tribe meets every fortnight to discuss community issues, and part of that meeting is to confirm the tribal chieftain. Moreira admitted his own alcohol problems and started a personal program to stop drinking "even the wine I used to drink with the barbecue."

And so the Mbyás organized a quarantine or curfew for the 250 young people between the ages of 12 and 21, who can work and go to school — there is only a bilingual elementary school in Fortín Mbororé — but have to be back inside the village and inside the family hut by seven in the evening.

Another element of the curfew is that no outsiders can enter Fortín Mbororé after that hour. Patrol teams of 70 village adults enforce the curfew.

All 250 young people signed off on the program in a tribal meeting last month, said Moreira.

"It is one of the measures we decided to take to get back to our spiritual roots. But we are doing other things like trying to reincorporate the sacred chants, the language and the traditional foods," said Moreira.

Potato, corn, mandioca root, beans and corn bread are the order of the day as community gardens return in an area whose lush red soil is home to Argentina's main tea, tobacco and yerba mate crops. Baked mandioca, crushed corn in flour and chipa — corn roll with fresh honey — are returning to the tribe's diet.

"In a way they are lucky that they are so close to the waterfalls," said Ernesto Azarkevich, the local correspondent for Argentina's leading daily Clarin, which has covered the situation of the indigenous tribes in Misiones.

"But then again that close proximity has meant giving up much of their tribal identity," said Azarkevich. "This is an attempt to recapture the spiritual past. Most of the other Mbyás are spread around the province, most in very isolated situations where there is extreme poverty and hunger among them."