[The Guaraní-Kaiwá suicide epidemic: investigating its causes and suggesting the impossible return hypothesis]

The suicide of six young Guaraní-Kaiwá Indians within the timespan of two weeks is enough to fulfill any criteria to define an epidemic. In a total population of 7,500 individuals, the available data account for 52 cases of suicide between 1987 and August 1991. The epidemic is more dramatic among the Kaiwá subgroup among which 14 individuals died in 1990 and a number of suicides were reported for the first semester of 1991. For both sexes, most deaths were observed in the age group 12-20 years. The author advances the hypothesis of the impossible return according to which, under extreme pressure exerted by western society, they see no possibility of returning to their traditional way of living. Under circumstances of extreme self-devaluation, suicide becomes the last alternative for the survival of their culture. Suicide epidemics have been reported among Amerindians in other countries suffering from the same kind of pressure. In Brazil and also in other countries, other tribes have been urbanized and yet did not experience the tragedy which the Kaiwá are going through because they had some kind of acceptable insertion in the national society.